| Book Reviews Spring 2007
A Wing and a Prayer Katharine
Jefferts Schori
Review by Miranda Threlfall-Holmes
The Beginning of Women’s
Ministry: The Revival of the Deaconess in the Nineteenth-Century
Church of England Henrietta Blackmore (ed.)
Review by Revd Dr Charlotte Methuen
Women of the Word: discovering the women of the Bible Edited
by Jackie Stead
Review by Shirley-Ann Williams
Grant Me Justice : HIV/AIDS & Gender
Readings of the Bible Edited by Musa W Dube and Musimbi Kanyoro
Review by Jean
N Mayland
Spirited Women: Encountering the first Women Believers Mary
Ellen Ashcroft
Review by Rachel Moriarty
Let
Every Soul be Jesus’ Guest...a
theology of the Open Table Mark W. Stamm
Review by Shirley-Ann Williams
A Wing and a Prayer
Katharine Jefferts Schori
SPCK 2007
ISBN-13: 978-0-281-05932-4 pbk 176pp £9.99
MANY PEOPLE will relish the chance to learn more about Katharine
Jefferts Schori, the first woman Primate in the Anglican Communion.
This book has clearly been published precisely to meet that desire
to know what makes her tick, and how she might be going to approach
the issues and arguments that lie ahead for her in steering TEC
through the years ahead. The format itself is telling. This book
is not a manifesto or an apology (in the theological sense), but
rather a collection of essays based on sermons preached by Schori
in her time as Bishop of Nevada. She thus makes an emphatic statement
about her ministry being primarily just that – ministry.
She is also able to present her main thematic concerns in the context
of a pastoral and prophetic ministry rooted in the local community.
As Schori says in her introduction, the essays ‘look at [her]
dream for the Church and the reckless, abundant love of the God
we serve.’ Certain themes repeat themselves in compelling
and creative ways throughout this collection, which is itself arranged
thematically in eight sections. The titles of these are evocative
and descriptive of her main concerns: ‘Body-building – nurturing
the body of Christ’; ‘Shalom, everybody – the
vision of peace’; ‘A billion people, a dollar a day – working
for justice and peace’; ‘Funny purple shirts – The
Church in the new millennium’; ‘Dream a little dream – opening
up to the vision of God’; ‘Reckless Love – living
faith with abandon’; ‘God and me – finding a
personal path’ and ‘Taking flight – mission and
ministry’.
Throughout this collection, Schori emphasises the themes of every-member
ministry and the vocation of all Christians, the work of the Spirit
and the abundant love and mercy of God, and social justice and
human flourishing. ‘Shalom’ is a key concept for Schori,
recurring again and again throughout this collection. She defines
it as ‘a vision of the city of God on earth, a community
where people are at peace with each other because each one has
enough to eat, adequate shelter, medical care, and meaningful work.
Shalom is a city where justice is the rule of the day, where prejudice
has vanished, where the diverse gifts with which we have been so
abundantly blessed are equally valued.’ In her first ‘Postscript’,
written after her election as presiding bishop, she writes: ‘What
keeps us from the tireless search for that vision of shalom? There
are probably only two answers, and they are connected – apathy
and fear. One is the unwillingness to acknowledge the pain of other
people, the other is an unwillingness to acknowledge that pain
with enough courage to act. The cure for each is a deep and abiding
hope.’
The collection as a whole avoids (I assume deliberately) directly
addressing questions of women’s ministry or the controversy
surrounding TEC’s stand on the ministry of those in homosexual
relationships. Nevertheless, there are occasional points where
Schori makes her position and her feelings clear. Describing a
meeting of bishops fearful of the increasing inclusiveness of the
Episcopal Church, she comments ‘What I saw in that room looked
an awful lot like Nicodemus, afraid of where the Spirit might be
blowing next, and unable to predict or control it.’ In discussing
communion, Schori uses the analogy of the family table and insists
that ‘communion is about learning to live and thrive with
those obnoxious people around us’. These issues are also
obliquely addressed throughout by her emphasis on the Spirit blowing
in new directions, and on the extravagance and limitless-ness of
God’s love.
There is a great deal of energy and passion in Schori’s writing
and sentiments. On the strength of this collection I imagine she
must be an extremely powerful preacher. She uses a rich array of
imagery – especially drawn from flying, as the title of the
collection suggests – and again and again returns to her
main themes and her vision of what God could be calling us to be. ‘Our
task...is openness and eagerness to receive spirit, whether it
feels like surfing or battling upwind. Our task is a willingness
to be surprised, an openness to those accusations of drunkenness – being
drunk on God, which is what enthusiasm means. Our task is to be
open to being changed, and being re-created, and being filled with
boldness. Our task is to be willing to partner with this inspired
community to change the world.’
Miranda Threlfall-Holmes is Solway Fellow and Chaplain of University
College, Durham. She has recently been elected to General Synod
and co-opted onto the steering group of WATCH.
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The Beginning of Women’s
Ministry:
The Revival of the Deaconess in the Nineteenth-Century
Church of England
C of E Record Society 13
Henrietta Blackmore (ed.)
The Boydell Press: Woodbridge 2007), pp. l + 139; plates; appendices;
index.
978 1 84383 308 6 £33.75
THIS VOLUME offers the first collection of published sources illustrating
the foundation of the Deaconess Orders in England in the nineteenth
century. It is introduced by Henrietta Blackmore with a comprehensive
and fascinating essay considering the establishment of the North
London Deaconess Institution (NLDI), with its focus on sending
Deaconesses out from an established, stable community, and the
development of the Rochester Diocesan Deaconess Institution (RDDI),
which took a more parochially based approach.
The key figure in the establishment of the NLDI in 1861 was Elizabeth
Ferrard. In the 1880s, Bishop Thorold of Rochester persuaded Isabella
Gilmore (sister of William Morris) to set up the RDDI. Blackmore
considers the work of Ferrard and Gilmore, and traces the influence
of residential deaconess communities such as that at Kaiserswerth
in Germany (where Florence Nightingale trained as a nurse) on the
founders of the English deaconess movement, and particularly Elizabeth
Ferrard. Deaconesses sought to distinguish themselves from the
newly established women’s religious orders, defining themselves
as neither nun nor lay parish worker.
Finally, Blackmore considers the status of the order of deaconesses.
Deaconesses were a biblical order, and although in some dioceses,
deaconesses were “set apart”, in others deaconesses
were “ordained” using a liturgy very similar in form
to the ordinal for deacons; admission generally included the laying
on of hands, but was emphatically not life-long. Deaconesses were
understood by some to be ordained, but not into the threefold ministry.
This tension, Blackmore notes, persisted until the ordination of
women to the diaconate in the late twentieth century.
The texts gathered here begin with the diary kept by Elizabeth
Ferrard during her visit to Kaiserswerth in 1856, which gives some
indications of the work of the German deaconess house. There follow
liturgical texts associated with the new order. The service at
the opening of the NLDI in 1861 indicates the kind of work expected
of deaconesses: “visiting the sick and nursing them in your
home (i.e. the deaconess house)...privately instructing the young
and ignorant by visiting them in prison and other such works of
Christian charity” (p. 39). The form of admitting deaconesses
to their office in the London Diocese (ca. 1868) draws on the parallel
between the deaconesses and Phoebe: “Almighty God, who didst
call Phoebe and other holy women to succour Thy Church, behold
these Thy servants now to be called to the like ministration...” (p.
43). Obedience and the acceptance of a woman’s proper place
were key: the deaconesses were enjoined “to minister to the
poor, the sick, and the ignorant; and in all humility and godly
submission, setting aside all unwomanly usurpation of authority
in the Church, to help the Ministers of God’s Word and Sacraments” (pp.
43-44).
The documents gathered in the second section, “Work and worship” illustrate
the emphasis on a simple, plain lifestyle of obedience, but also
the pains taken not to offend the religious sensibilities of others
(no “chains, beads, crosses or crucifixes” are to be
worn: p. 53), and a deaconess is not to cross herself, bow to the
altar or genuflect, but is to receive the bread “into the
palm” and take the cup “into their hand” (pp.
59-60). Candidates must be in good health, not too young and not
too old: a candidate under thirty needs the permission of her parents
or guardian (p. 58); many came with the support (frequently financial)
of their parents. A deaconess took no vows, but agreed to make
herself available for five years at a time, although she could
leave at any time. Guidelines were offered for the deaconesses’ work,
for instance (collected here) those working away from the mother
house, for those who undertook parish visiting, and for those working
in schools and hospitals.
The work of a parish deaconess is illustrated by a fascinating
account by Isabella Gilmore of the establishment of the RDDI, including
the decisions about dress and a moving account of her “ordination”,
and of the subsequent work. The depth of the relationship between
the deaconess and those for whom she cared is clear, but so too
is the strong sense that her primary task is to preach Christ’s
gospel through action and word. The relationship of Deaconesses
to the Church includes both documents drawn up the Deaconess orders,
but also the Bishops’ statements about the orders, which,
Blackmore notes in her introduction, some times had the effect
of discouraging women from joining the order which they sought
to promote. A final section, “Deaconesses in the Early Church,” reproduces
an address given by the historian J S Howson in 1883, illustrating
the level of knowledge of the role of women in the early church,
which even then was quite detailed. Two appendices record the dates
of establishment of the various deaconesses institutions, and the
number of their members.
This is a fascinating book which sheds considerable light on a
very significant development in women’s ministry. My major
quibble was with the title: The Revival of the Deaconess in the
Nineteenth-Century Church of England indeed, but The Beginning
of Women’s Ministry? Surely women had exercised important
ministries throughout the Church of England’s history. With
the “revival” of the deaconesses, however, questions
of order and ordained ministry were almost bound to emerge.
Revd Dr Charlotte Methuen is Departmental Lecturer in Ecclesiastical
History in the Faculty of Theology at the University of Oxford,
specialising in the history of the Reformation. She has published
widely on questions of women and ministry, especially in the early
church. Besides her academic work she currently serves as honorary
assistant priest in the Old Catholic parish in Offenbach, near
her home in Germany, and is also associated with the Episcopal
parish of Christ the King in Frankfurt.
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Women of the Word: discovering the women of the Bible
Edited by Jackie Stead
Oxford: BRF
1 84101 425 7 £5.99
THIS TELLS of some well known women by name or story of the Old
and New Testaments and of others less familiar such as Gomer, Sapphira
and Rhoda. These studies elaborate on stories originally published
in Woman Alive magazine. They give insights not only into the women’s
lives but into the surrounding culture, attitudes and sometimes
how their symbolism relates to Israelite history.
Each chapter is followed by a suggested reflection on the woman
described there, posing questions relevant to today and the reader’s
own experiences. Finally there is a suggested prayer.
Some of the women are named, other stories contain no name as we
realise from our reading of the Biblical texts. Apart from Lydia’s
acknowledged business acumen the stories emphasis the ‘lowly’ position
of most women in those times even though some of them attained
a comfortable life, respected wifely recognition and in Ruth’s
case started an important genealogical line.
This is a book that will encourage you to search for mention of
more women in the Bible or re read stories not told here.
The stories are written by a group of women writers, simply and
with an understanding of how the problems or situations faced so
long ago can, in most instance, translate emotionally to those
of today’s world. This would make a useful gift especially
for those who are dipping their toe in the water as far as Bible
study is concerned.
Shirley-Ann Williams
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Grant Me Justice
HIV/AIDS & Gender Readings of the Bible
Edited by Musa W Dube and Musimbi Kanyoro
Cluster Publications South Africa and Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New
York 2004 Pp xiv +210
ISBN 1-875053-46-8 (Cluster Publications)
ISBN 1-57075-600-7 (Orbis Books) $24
AS I write this review Anglicans all over the world are trying
to digest the results of the Primates’ meeting in Tanzania.
In the communiqué and the draft covenant one can see played
out the struggle between traditional interpretations of the bible
and those who interpret using their reason and experience and read
the bible in the light of today’s needs and mission. Those
from the global south are presented as those who demand the traditional
interpretations – though they are also supported and used
by fundamentalists from the west. Yet here in this book women from
the ‘Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians’ explore
the Bible from the angle of justice and the terrible spread of
Aids in Africa and come to some challenging conclusions.
The central theme of the book is justice and a number of key concepts
are captured through an analysis of the text of the bible. These
include a belief that women are not victims and their vulnerability
does not stem from inherent physical or psychological weaknesses.
There is a need to build on the resilience and persistence of women
and also their persistence and ability to reject injustice. Throughout
the whole book, the texts of the Bible continually show that resisting
injustice is God’s option and it must become the option of
African women in the face of HIV and AIDS. Women must also become
strong advocates for free and affordable treatment for all people.
Conditions must be created for people to address their sexuality
and change of behaviour in the face of AIDS and HIV. Gender inequalities
are a major driving force behind the AIDS epidemic and must be
addressed.
The two editors set out their methodology and then in separate
chapters women from different parts of Africa examine a particular
bible text and interpret it for today.
Denise M Ackerman re reads Tamar’s cry in the midst of the
AIDS Pandemic. Saronjini Nadar searches Job for a theology of suffering
in the face of AIDS. Johanna Stiebert examines women’s sexuality
and stigma in Genesis and the Prophets. Dorothy Akoto re- reads
Ezekiel in the AIDS context. Musa W Dube gives a postcolonial feminist
and HIV/AIDS Reading of Mark 5.21-43. Malebogo Kgalemang uses John
9 to deconstruct the HIV/AIDS stigma. Anastasia Boniface- Malle
contributes a chapter entitled ‘Allow me to cry out: Reading
of Matthew 15.21-28 in the context of HIV/AIDS in Tanzania’.
Finally Musa.W Dube uses a number of African stories and the story
of Jesus healing the women with an issue of blood to present her
chapter entitled ‘Twenty-two years of bleeding and still
the princess sings’.
This is a most stimulating study, more original and justice based
than anything coming out of the west at the moment. It requires
careful reading but it is worth the effort. It leaves one with
huge sense of respect for those who struggle with the AIDS epidemic
and a knowledge that, for African women at least, facing the Aids
epidemic and being inspired in that way to read the bible with
new eyes are all part of the same struggle for God’s justice.
Jean M Mayland is a retired Anglican Priest and a member of WATCH
(National) Committee and Chair of WATCH (York).
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Spirited Women: Encountering the first Women Believers
Mary Ellen Ashcroft
The Bible Reading Fellowship, Oxford 2000 pp. 132
1 84101 443 5 (paperback) £6.99
SINCE THE 1970s there has been interest in the women of the earliest
church as they appear in the Gospels and Acts and the surviving
literature of the first centuries, and it has revealed a paradox.
Studies of Late Antiquity and Theology show from the texts that
Christian women enjoyed a degree of independence and authority
uncommon in their otherwise patriarchal society, in what Elizabeth
Schüssler Fiorenza has called the Christian ‘discipleship
of equals’: but within the later tradition of the Church
this historic authority has been lost, with women’s contribution
forgotten or marginalised and replaced by a construction of womanhood
whose virtues lie in meekness, obedience and penitence. Generations
of pious Christians have learned of the quiet obedience of Mary,
the supposed prostitution of Mary Magdalene, and the submissiveness
of their sisters, and based their female models on a picture a
long way from the sources.
Mary Ellen Ashcroft, an American priest and Professor of English,
is not the first to combat this unhelpful picture of early Christian
women and present a positive revision of it for a general audience.
In this book she takes six women from Jesus’ circle in the
days after his Ascension, Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene,
Martha and Mary (here called Maria), Joanna, and the Samaritan
woman at the well from John 4 (here called Suheir), and imagines
them meeting and talking together at table as they reflect on the
past and prepare for the future. Each woman has a separate chapter,
with notes and comments to fill in her historical background and
questions for individual and group study, and there is an extensive
bibliography. The whole is designed to let us encounter ‘our
spiritual foremothers’ and in recovering their ‘unheard
voices’ to understand their history and offer informed challenge
to the patriarchal assumptions still surviving in organised Christianity.
Many people, including readers of Outlook, will be enlightened
and encouraged by this book, either as individual readers or in
study groups. Reflection on Christian origins is essential to a
proper understanding of the church today and the way its tradition
has modified and sometimes distorted its past, and a ‘revisionist’ picture
like this is especially important for women to whom historically
the Church has not been kind. This is a useful and thought-provoking
corrective.
Even so, this book leaves me uneasy. While the explanatory passages
are clear, informative and helpful, and contain much that will
be new and valuable for many readers, the imaginative narrative
is a rather different matter. For one thing, it contains speculative
additions to the women’s stories as they appear in the sources:
did the Samaritan woman really join Mary and the others? Did Joanna
leave her husband? Did she and Mary Magdalene go to Antioch after
Stephen’s death? Does their shared bread and wine say anything
about early eucharistic celebration – or not? Reasonable
as the speculations are (and some are explained in notes), I wonder
if it is really helpful to include them in the narratives of women
who have a name and a place in scripture, even if it has been misread
for centuries. For another, the tone of the whole scenario seems
to owe more to the idiom of modern women’s groups than to
what we know of first-century Bethany, and that will not appeal
to all.
Does this matter, as long as the imaginative accounts yield the
interactive engagement with the Christian past which Ashcroft hopes
for, and, as the book jacket has it, help us to ‘be challenged
and empowered in our walk with God’? Is it simply churlish
to criticise an imaginative evocation as though it were historical
reconstruction? It may be that this reviewer’s academic past
limits her appreciation of such historical imagining; so readers
may dismiss these scruples as pedantic irrelevance. But in one
sense it does matter. Nobody can be fully objective in these matters,
and we must all admit to preconceptions; but we should not, surely,
reject a version of early Church tradition based on misleading
patriarchal assumptions, and then replace it by another version
which draws on inference of a different kind.
Mary Ellen Ashcroft hopes that her book may lead some of her readers
to further study of the early Church; this would be an excellent
outcome for her introduction to Jesus’ women friends.
Rachel Moriarty is a retired teacher and lecturer in theology
and the Early Church, still engaged in working in Church and education.
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Let Every Soul be
Jesus’ Guest...a
theology of the Open Table
Mark W. Stamm
Nashville: Abingdon Press, Pp. 223
068749383-8 £10.49
AS WE look at admission to communion before confirmation in the
Church of England this detailed and very readable theological exploration
of the ‘open table’ has particular resonance.
Stamm speaks as a member of the United Methodist church in the
USA and begins with a quotation from one of Wesley’s hymns
“Come sinners, to the Gospel feast,
Let every soul be Jesu’s guest”...
We read of much of Wesley’s early life with some interesting
anecdotes of his attitudes and personal experiences. The historical
reasons for baptism being the condition for acceptance at the Eucharist
are fascinating as are the traditions of baptism immediately leading
to admission to communion. Samm traces the prospects and problems
associated with our interpretation of the open table illustrating
that however open that is there seem always to be restrictions.
Some of these are because of a person’s variation from what
we call the norm, especially in children with some of the conditions
such as Aspergers Syndrome and physical disabilities. Other barriers
can come about through language difficulties and most controversially
the question of a person’s sexuality. All these present difficulties
in exercising hospitality for many churches and congregations.
We are told “a church cannot sustain its integrity with an
entirely unconditional invitation to communion.” What those
conditions are or should be Samms tries to posit in a fair and
compassionate manner. Methodism has practised a theology of ‘exception’ over
the use of wine, presidency, ordination and the like which could
give one to believe that it all depends on who is making the decisions!
Perhaps that is not a fair comment but if on the one hand there
are to be rules then on the other should there be so many ways
of circumventing them?
The growing ecumenical consensus seems to be that baptism is the
only pre requisite and churches have made their own decisions re
the Eucharist and these have not been made lightly.
The historical details in the book are fascinating and I would
recommend it as a study background for anyone who is wrestling
with the problems of whom to admit to communion in their own church.
Whether or not you agree with the theories here the important thing
is to think through how “God is at work in the Eucharist
, drawing people into the dynamics of Christ’s dying and
rising.” Samms relates this to whether or not marriage preparation
should be before or after the wedding or both...maybe we could
learn from that and make sure that preparation for supping at the
Lord’s Table is continued after people have been made welcome
to partake. This is a book I found interesting and although not
agreeing with all its theories I would recommend it to anyone who
wants to have a broader perspective on this never to be solved
question.
Shirley-Ann Williams LRAM, LLAM Cert Theol. Voice coach, tutor
for the College of Preachers. Member of General Synod, CTE, CTBI
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