Abstract
The dust-jacket of The Church’s Other Half: Women’s Ministry claims that Trevor Beeson has written ‘numerous highly entertaining books’; this is certainly a good read. He does several different things: narrates the contribution of women to Church life; gives an account of the movement to allow the ordained ministry of women in the Church of England, and suggests ways in which the contribution of women could make a difference to today’s Church. The first 20 pages cover women in the Church from the New Testament to the eighteenth century, followed by 17 pages on the road to ordination and possible Episcopal consecration in the Church of England, and there is a short chapter at the end on hopes for the future. The remaining 224 pages are devoted to biographies of significant women from the Victorians to the present day.
Beeson’s approach is by topic: the religious life (Priscilla Sellon), medical reform (Florence Nightingale), social work (e.g. Henrietta Barnett and Josephine Butler), writing (e.g. C.F. Alexander, Charlotte Yonge, Dorothy Sayers), feminism (e.g. Monica Furlong), priestly ministry (e.g. Lucy Winkett) and so on. It is a rich tale told with verve, though without photographs. Beeson sticks to narrative and eschews analysis, but many questions arise. If wealth left these remarkable women free to do non-domestic work, why was it these particular wealthy women? Their tendency to Evangelical Christianity? The supportive character of the men who surrounded them? It is certainly clear that there was a price to pay. Many suffered from illness, nervous strain and collapse. Was it the sheer difficulty of exercising leadership in such a male-dominated world? Were women over-conscientious?
It was clearly fine as long as the Church of England moved with you. The success of Mary Sumner (b. 1828) in founding the Mothers’ Union owed much to her connections with clergy in high places. But Maude Royden (b. 1876), who felt called to a preaching ministry and then priesthood, was forbidden to speak in churches and had to find non-Anglican venues. Of course, many of the women whom Beeson brings to life were opposed to the ordination of women. Others, such as Christian Howard (b. 1916) worked tirelessly in the Movement for the Ordination of Women without a vocation to ordained ministry themselves.
Beeson depicts women’s long-standing capacity for leadership and transformational change in general; he tends to present it as a one-way road to ordination, but that issue really only arose with the general movement for women’s rights in the later nineteenth century. It has now gone so far that it is hard for those outside the Church to understand why obstacles still remain for women’s leadership. When the Church of England appoints its first women bishops, Beeson hopes for new female vision: more collaborative ministry, enhanced inclusion and deeper spirituality. Feminist antennae may detect a certain essentialism here, but the book as a whole is a splendidly hopeful cheering-on of the cause.