‘Let’s get the Orthodox!” cried Pauline Webb, who has died aged 89, as she began to splash a group of bearded, swimsuited priests who had entered the sea during a break in a World Council of Churches meeting in Jamaica. Probably only this woman, who was one of the 20th-century’s ecumenical leaders and among Britain’s best-known Methodists, could have got away with voicing what other people might, less gracefully, have been thinking.

Pauline played an important role in WCC activities for many years. At the council’s fourth assembly, in 1968 in Sweden, she so impressed delegates with a speech on mission that they elected her vice-moderator of their central committee, the first woman appointed to this position. During her term of office, which ran until 1975, Pauline promoted and defended the WCC’s divisive Programme to Combat Racism, which gave humanitarian aid to liberation movements in southern Africa – one British newspaper notoriously described it as “blood money”.

Many were surprised when, in 1979, this outspoken and committed woman became the organiser of religious broadcasting for the BBC World Service. It was an inspired appointment, but not without its risks. However, Pauline put her own beliefs to one side and allowed others to voice their different views. Presenters did not have to agree with Pauline, they just had to be good broadcasters, as she was. She presented The Daily Service on Radio 4 until she was well into her 70s.

The youngest of three daughters of Daisy and Leonard Webb, Pauline was born in Wembley, north London. Her father was a Methodist minister and former missionary in Africa.

Pauline attended many schools, because her father, like all Methodist ministers at the time, moved appointments every three years. She studied English at King’s College London, during which time she moved from teenage agnosticism to a sound, if narrow, Christian faith. She graduated in 1948 and then trained as a teacher at the London Institute of Education.

From 1949 until 1952, Pauline taught at Thames Valley grammar school, Twickenham. Her horizons expanded after she took her class to hear a missionary doctor who had been working with blind people in India. The next day, the Methodist Missionary Society offered her the job of recruiting Methodist youth clubs to support its activities. In 1955 she became editor of all the society’s publications.

Pauline stayed with the MMS until 1965. It was a time when colonies embraced nationalism and sought independence. With missionaries caught up in the fight against discrimination and oppression, Pauline had to communicate these new realities to a British church membership. A year spent at Union Theological Seminary in New York deepened her theology and developed her political awareness; she went on civil rights marches and joined a church in East Harlem.

In 1958, Pauline’s first book, Women of Our Company, appeared. Two others quickly followed; their common theme was that the church must abandon all forms of discrimination, especially against women. Her popularity within the Methodist church rose rapidly. She made sometimes controversial points with a charm that challenged, but did not alienate, audiences. She had opponents but few enemies.

In 1965, Pauline became the youngest person elected vice-president of the Methodist Conference, the highest office for a lay person. In a memorable vice-presidential address, Pauline lamented the great gulf between the church and the modern world, and drew on her recent experiences in the US and the Caribbean. Then followed, from 1967 to 1973, a period as director of lay training for her church.

She was also a member of unity talks between the Anglican and Methodist churches. Pauline was in favour of unity and a supporter of women’s ordination, though afraid that the one might be attained only at the expense of the other. When the Anglicans rejected the union scheme, Methodism began to ordain its own women. Pauline was never among them; she felt called by God to remain a lay person.

In 1973 she returned to her missionary department with responsibility for the Caribbean and West Africa. She was back in her element (“How did Jesus ever manage without filing cabinets?” she once remarked). At the sixth assembly of the WCC in Vancouver in 1983, Pauline preached at the opening service. She delivered a daring sermon in which she drew on the healing by Jesus of the woman “with an issue of blood” and talked about the various ways in which women “bleed”. The sermon raised eyebrows among the male Orthodox and those for whom such talk was uncomfortable.

For the WCC, Pauline was one of the editors of the Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement (1991). She also wrote The Long Struggle (1994), a history of the council’s involvement with the fight against apartheid in South Africa, from which country she was banned.

She received an honorary doctorate from the University of Birmingham in 1997, but not the civic recognition her friends believed she deserved. A former archbishop of Canterbury said that if she had been an Anglican, Pauline would long ago have become a member of the House of Lords.

In the best tradition of Christian stewardship, she lived simply. To her, every penny was part of the world economy, for which everyone was responsible.

Pauline’s sisters, Muriel and Joy, predeceased her. She is survived by a step-nephew, Peter.

• Pauline Mary Webb, writer and broadcaster, born 28 June 1927; died 27 April 2017