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Women's Struggle for Professional Work and Status in the Church of England, 1900–1930

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Brian Heeney
Brian Heeney
Affiliation:
Trent University, Ontario
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Extract

Of all the professions none has proved more resistant to the inclusion of women than the Christian ministry; no branch of the church stemming from the Reformation has been firmer in asserting the ‘disability of sex’ for ordained ministers than has the Church of England. The contemporary struggle to open the priesthood to women is the latest phase in a long movement of church feminism which permeated the Church of England from the very last years of Victoria's reign, a movement which, by 1930, had succeeded in considerably increasing women's influence and even ministry in the English Establishment although it had failed in its more radical aims. As they battled for the right to vote for (and sit on) elective church councils, as they sought equality of ministry with male laity, as they searched for vocationally fulfilling modes of pastoral care and evangelism which respected the ban against ordination, and as they assaulted that ban itself, able and ambitious church feminists have been continually frustrated by sexist prejudice, clerical exclusiveness, and entrenched religious tradition.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , June 1983 , pp. 329 - 347
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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References

1 See, Heeney, Brian, ‘The beginnings of Church feminism: women and the councils of the Church of England, 1897–1919’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 33 (1), Jan. 1982.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Obelkevich, J., Religion and rural society: South Lindsey, 1825–1875 (Oxford, 1976), p. 180Google Scholar. Also see, Chadwick, Owen, The Victorian Church (London, 1970), II, 222–3.Google Scholar

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4 In fact, the only statistical returns available in 1889 are for 80 per cent of English and Welsh parishes which showed nearly 92,000 female Sunday School teachers. The number of district visitors in the same number of parishes was 47,000 (men and women) (Official year book of the Church of England [London, 1889], pp. xx–xxi).Google Scholar

5 Official yearbook, 1884, p. 76; 1896, p. 64; 1914, p. 72; The thirteenth report of the Women's Help Society (London, 1892).Google Scholar

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14 Ibid. p. 286.

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17 Robinson, Cecilia, The ministry of deaconesses (London, 1914), p. 110.Google Scholar

18 CCR, 1875, p. 60; CCR, 1885, p. 144; CCR, 1883, p. 157; Robinson, Deaconesses, p. 134.

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20 Robinson, Deaconesses, p. 139.

21 CCR, 1909, pp. 493–4; Reynolds, Bernard, Church work (London, 1905), p. 90Google Scholar; Robinson, , Deaconesses, pp. 146–57.Google Scholar

22 Robinson, Deaconesses, p. 137.

23 CCR, 1909, p. 494.

24 Minutes of the bishops’ meetings (Lambeth Palace archives), 1 June 1897 and 21 June 1905.

25 E. A. Gilchrist in the Guardian, 9 August 1917; Robinson, Deaconesses, p. 150.

26 For discussions of the professionalization of the clergy in this period, see Russell, Anthony, The clerical profession (London, 1980)Google Scholar and Heeney, Brian, A different kind 0f gentleman (Hamden, Conn., 1976).Google Scholar

27 Russell, Clerical profession, pp. 38, 63, 85, 100, 234–5.

28 Ibid. p. 234.

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33 Guardian, 25 June 1914; Guardian, 7 December 1916; Temple, William, ‘Co-operation in social work’ in Women and church work, ed. Bardsley, C. C. B. (London, 1917), p. 56.Google Scholar

34 Minute book 187 (Training committee, 1919–1920), Church House archives, London; Official yearbook of the Church of England, 1921–30; by 1930, twenty-three dioceses had established councils or boards of women's work (Lambeth Conference Proceedings, [hereafter L.C.], 11 July, 1930, p. 452. L.C. 1930, vol. CXLVI, Lambeth Palace archives).

35 Official yearbook, 1921, p. 238; Minute book 187, Church House archives, London. By 1930, four examination fields were offered: I, theology; II, pastoral work; III, social work; IV, educational work (Minute book 180; Central Council of Women's Church Work, Church House archives, London).

36 Official yearbook, 1931, pp. 483–4.

37 On the Inter-Diocesen Committee, in 1921, there were 13 men and 18 women; all the men were clergymen, and a bishop was chairman. A bishop was chairman of the new Council after 1930. See, Minute books 187 and 180, Church House, London.

38 Mosley, Henry, ‘Introduction’ to Pastoralia for women, ed. Marshall, H. S. (London, 1934), p. 8.Google Scholar

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41 Guardian, 20 July, 1916. Maude Royden (1876–1956), in addition to being a leading church feminist, was a prominent suffragist and editor of Common Cause.

42 The controversy was also featured in the Guardian. The term ‘conspiracy’ was used by the prominent Anglo-Catholic layman, Athelstan Riley, in a letter to the Guardian on 20 July 1916. ‘The feminist plot’ is the title of an article in that paper on 10 August 1916.

43 Guardian, 10 August 1916; Church Times, 15 September 1916.

44 Her move to the City Temple was described as ‘a sort of ecclesiastical militancy’ by a correspondent, Frances Eeles in a letter to Royden, dated 10 March 1917 (Royden papers, No. 222, Fawcett Library, London). She was forbidden to preach on Good Friday at St Botolph's in London, and actually spoke in an adjoining parish room instead (The Daily Chronicle, 19 April 1919). In 1921, she preached at the Good Friday service in the same church, ‘ignoring the objection of the bishop of London’ (The Daily Chronicle, 26 March 1921).

45 Guardian, 26 June 1919; The Daily Mirror, 1 June 1919. Edith Picton-Turbervill (1874–1958) was an officer of the Y.W.C.A. and a suffragist as well as a church feminist. From 1929 to 1931 she was a Labour M.P.

46 Royden, Maude, The Church and woman (London, 1924), p. 146Google Scholar; Raven, Charles and Heath, Rachel, One called help (London, 1937), p. 268.Google Scholar

47 Minute book 178 (Central Committee of Women's Church Work), Church House, London.

48 Guardian, 17 July 1919; The six Lambeth Conferences, 1867–1920 (London, 1920), p. 41.Google Scholar

49 Chronicle of Convocation (Canterbury) [hereafter CC], (1922), p. 315.

50 CC (1920), p. 30; CC (1919), p. 103; CC (1922), p. 229.

51 CC (1920), p. 30; CC (1919), p. 101; CC (1920), p. 36.

52 Letitia Fairfield, ‘Women and the lay ministries’, L.C. 1920. cxxxvi, 61–70. Lambeth Palace archives, London.

53 ‘Bid me discourse’: Royden papers, No. 224, Fawcett Library, London.

54 L.C. 1930, vol. CXLVI, 11 July 1930, p. 453.

55 Guardian, 15 April 1910 and 6 May 1910. See the speech of the present bishop of Chichester (Eric Kemp) to the General Synod of the Church of England on 3 July 1975.

56 The list of prospective participants in this conference is contained (in handwriting) on the opening page of a book of newspaper cuttings included in the large collection of cuttings entitled Women and the Church (Box IV) in the Fawcett Library, London.

57 Pinchard, pp. 4, 7, 8.

58 Streeter and Picton-Turbervill, p. 100; Guardian, 22 February 1917; Guardian, 1 November 1917; L.C. 1930, CXLVII, 69.

59 The ministry of women: a report by a committee appointed by his grace the lord archbishop of Canterbury (London, 1919), p. 5Google Scholar; Archbishops’ commission on the ministry of women (London, 1935), p. 9.Google Scholar

60 The six Lambeth Conferences, 1867–1920, pp. 40–1.

61 L.C. 1920, cvii, 178, 217, 236. The bishop of Ottawa was John Charles Roper.

62 L.C. 1930, CXLVII, 144.

63 L.C. 1930, CXLVII, 138; L.C. 1930, CXLVII, 171; L.C. 1930, CLXV (subcommittee on deaconesses, etc.), 15, 34–5.

64 L.C. 1920, resolution 48; L.C. 1930, resolution 67.

65 L.C. 1930, cliv, 150–1; Hunter, A parson's job, p. 142; Melinsky, Hugh, Patterns of ministry (London, 1974), p. 17.Google Scholar

66 See, Roxburgh, Margaret J., Women's work in the Church of England (London, 1958)Google Scholar. The interdenominational society changed its name to the Society for the Ministry of Women in the Church in 1957. The rhythm of church feminism in the twentieth century has corresponded remarkably to that of feminism generally according to Kate Millett's analysis (Sexual politics, [New York, 1969]); in both 1930 marks the beginning of a resting phase, thirty years or so of non-militancy.Google Scholar