Copyright holder: Tyndale University, 3377 Bayview Ave., Toronto, Ontario, Canada M2M 3S4 Att.: Library Director, J. William Horsey Library Copyright: This Work has been made available by the authority of the copyright owner solely for the purpose of private study and research and may not be copied or reproduced except as permitted by the copyright laws of Canada without the written authority from the copyright owner. Copyright license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License Citation: Faragher, Christine. “A Complex Inheritance: The Ambiguous Legacy of Catherine Mumford Booth’s Defence of Female Ministry.” April 26, 2022, Toronto, Ontario: MPEG-3, 25:30 min. ***** Begin Content ****** Good morning to you all. I'm. Sharing this with you from Geelong and Victoria, Australia, and I look forward to talking with you and dialogue with you a little bit later about this paper, which is about the ambiguous legacy of Catherine Mumford, first defence of female ministry. So I'm just going to share my screen. There we are. Salvation Army has long seen itself as a leader among Christian Church bodies with regard to its willingness to accept, train and appoint women as officers, that is, as ministers of religion. For example, in the 1967 examination of women's role in the churches in Australia, the Salvation Army claimed that it accepted women's as officers in the army on the same terms as men, and reported that equal opportunity with men is a definite principle of the army. Incorporated into its foundation declaration. The declaration referred to is a statement frequently referenced within the Salvation Army in regard to its supposed commitment to gender equality. Taken from the minutes of the first meeting of the Christian Mission Conference in June 1870, it is generally read as a clear and unequivocal articulation of women's equal rights within the movement. This is what it says. As it is manifest from the scriptures of the old and especially the New Testament, that God has sanctioned the labours of godly women in his church. Godly women, possessing the necessary gifts and qualifications, shall be employed as preachers, itinerant or otherwise, and class leaders, and as such shall have appointments given to them on the preachers plan, and they shall be eligible for any office, and to speak and to vote at all. Official meetings. Consider for a moment, however, this historic statement and the claim from the 1967 report just shared. Juxtapose juxtaposed against the experiential accounts of three contemporary Salvation Army officer women from the Australia territory that have been drawn from a recent qualitative research project. Jane, not her real name, reported that she had experienced tremendous satisfaction in her first years of Officership, where she engaged in an incarnational ministry in a low socioeconomic area. However, she soon discovered that supposedly equal treatment of her as an officer changed when she felt pregnant. The organization took a particular attitude to her as a potential mother that differed from their attitude to her when childless. I felt pregnant, she said. And suddenly I was female. I couldn't stay in my inner city appointment or quarters. That's not good for baby. It was far better for me and baby to move to an outer suburban core with lots of other people like me. I couldn't hold an administrative position at THQ. Who would look after baby? And there was simply no need to arrange breastfeeding facilities at THQ because I wouldn't need to be there anymore. It was also better for all key life decisions to be run through my husband's e-mail. I didn't need to be distracted from the baby. And was a married woman officer who applied through the organization to be registered as a marriage celebrant. The response received was that as a married woman officer, she did not require a celebrants license. She protested the response on the basis that she had had the same training as her husband and the request was eventually supported. Kathy, a single woman officer, noted how the refusal of some men officers to meet with her one-on-one has had negative impacts on her work and sense of self. With certain managers, she said, this rule restricted access to supervision or created a lack of confidentiality, limiting the development of trusting working relationships. All three accounts clearly illustrate that statements about equality have not necessarily translated into experiences of equality. The movements aims might be to treat women and men equally, but other factors seem to be at play. In those examples, those factors include views about motherhood as the primary role for women and implied acceptance of the doctrine of male headship. And the perception perception that single women in particular are a sexual danger or threat to married men. To understand what is going on in the contemporary situation, we need to go beyond the army statements about equality to an examination of its culture. In organizational culture and leadership, Edgar Schein discusses what he calls the basic taken for granted assumptions for the cultural DNA of a group. He shows how shared learning is an essential component of culture and argues that the earliest shared learning provides meaning and stability and becomes in a sense, the cultural DNA, the beliefs, values and desired behaviors that brought the group and made it successful. This early level of beliefs, values and desired behaviour becomes non-negotiable and turns into taken for granted basic assumptions that subsequently dropped out of awareness. An important question to ask in this context then, is what were those early level beliefs, values and desired behaviours in the army? For our match of the Army, stance on equality has drawn on its 1870 statement and defences of ministry written by Catherine Mumford Booth are co-founder of the Movement. It has been equally shaped by the social and cultural environments for which it emerged and in which those arguments were embedded. By giving attention to these cultural beliefs and values, and not just to the theological justifications for stated principles, we can begin to understand the ambiguous nature of the legacy of Mumford Booth and others. So returning to the statement. The conference has statement from Women's place in the movement has often been read and quoted in a manner that it is almost completely divorced from its context. It's important to note that this was a provisional statement of a small, emerging mission, not the developed policy of the more regulated and extensive structure that the Salvation Army became. Its ongoing application was totally dependent on the power of its general Superintendent, William Booth. To interpret it and uphold it further, the mission soon moved to a fully autocratic leadership model where no one possessed voting power, rendering the second-half of the of the statement meaningless. The statement also had limits that are revealed and the details are more fully explored. The rules explicitly authorized for women are preaching and class leadership. And these are rules that women have been allowed to undertake throughout the army's history. However, women have really been given positions of leadership at either the local, national or international level. A report prepared for the Salvation Army International Conference of Leaders in July 2012, for example, stated that while 53% of the Army's more than 17,000 officer force were women. Only 9% of executive leadership roles were held by women. And less than 2% of those were held by married men. So 53% of the officer forces women. Only 9% of executive leadership and less than 2% of executive leadership roles held by married women. This supports the widely held conclusion that the most discriminated group within the Office of force. Discriminated against group within the officer force have been married women officers. Ironically, those whose life experience most closely resembled that of Mumford Booth. In the light of this reality, it is helpful to consider how statements about equality and Mumford boost defence of female teaching and ministry were shaped and communicated through particular cultural and social morays that have, in Chinese language, dropped out of awareness. The social and cultural setting of the emerging mission was once steeped in Victorian ideas of gender and theological and cultural ideas of male headship. These were assumed values which the booze and the Salvation Army challenge only in a very limited way. Mumford Booth, for example, retained a largely unspoken but nevertheless present commitment to non headship and work from the position of gender essentialism, assuming the existence of essential differences between the sexes. As well as embracing Victorian ideas of motherhood and female piety. Ideas about what women could do were shaped and conditioned by ideas of what women should be. Ideas about what women could do were shaped and conditioned by ideas of what women should be. However, this inevitable conflict of theological imperative with social and cultural realities has been largely ignored in the dialogue around women's officership and claims to equal status in the Salvation Army. I need to Catherine Mumford Booth. Mumford was a multifaceted individual. As the wife of the charismatic founder of the Salvation Army, she shared with Booth in shaping many aspects of the developing movement. As a mother of their eight children and household manager, she's simultaneously maintained a largely independent ministries of preacher, as well as being a theologian and apologist for the fledgling organization. She would not have claimed to be a feminist had that word be available to her. Rather, she was a woman whose goal of expanding Women's Spirit Ministry activity for the benefit of the Kingdom did not include radical ideas of a new style of womanhood. This is clearly illustrated in the way the life example of Mumford birth is presented. She is not an unwomanly woman or in any way neglectful of her primary roles of wife and mother. Biographer William Stead, for example, wrote of her missus booth was a woman who graduated in all departments of motherhood, of Womanhood, Sorry made wife, mother, and grandmother. Her domesticity was as pronounced as her revivalism. Paul Mumford, boost contemporary Josephine Butler, wrote Missus Booth had a remarkable completeness of character, the completeness of a human being of a woman. She was a most tender wife with feelings of deep reverence towards her husband, referring everything to his judgment, and anxiously solicitous to please him. It is important to note, then, that when in 1859, heavily pregnant with their fourth child, Emma Mumford, birth wrote the first of her two significant defences of women's rights, she was not proposing a departure from these norms of womanly and wifely behaviour. It is also important to remember at this point that the Salvation Army did not exist in imagination or reality. And so this document is properly viewed when seen as a personal statement rather than an organizational treatise. The track female teaching was written in defence of the Ministry of American Evangelists and economist teacher Phoebe Palmer, who commenced a four year Tour of Britain in 1859. That same year she visited Newcastle, a short distance across the Tyne River from the Booth home in Gateshead. Paul ostensibly defence of Palma, it is fair to argue that month that for Mumford Booth the track was a preemptive strike in the process of authorising and promoting her own preaching ministry, which commenced within a few months of the tracks publication. However, this was not acknowledged by the Buddhist in any public forum. Rather, the official picture painted the two activities as only indirectly related. In the same year, Phoebe Palmer wrote her own book left defence promises, her father, which Mumford birth drew on later editions of the pamphlet. Palmer commenced a book with the Word of Reassurance for her readers. Do not be the start, do not be start or dear reader. We do not intend to discuss the question of women's rights or women's preaching, technically so-called. We believe women has a legitimate sphere of action which differs in most cases materially from that of man, and in this legitimate sphere she is both happy and useful. Bob Mumford boosts argument went further than Palmers in its claim for preaching as an equally legitimate call for women As for men. She would have agreed with Palmer's statement here regarding women's primary roles and spheres of actions. As has already been indicated, Mumford Bird did not challenge the notion that women's culture, except her place in society, was in their role as wife and mother, nor that for most women their fear of action would be the private and domestic rather than the public realm. She saw her eye roll of mother as Paramount and the training of children as a sacred obligation. However, she also felt that fathers had a role to play. That role however she described in terms of the father being the head of the family. In a letter to Bush, she wrote, remember, the father is and must be in every well regulated family, the head of his household. And following her correspondence with her fiance, Mumford Booth set out clearly the view that woman was not naturally inferior to men. She nevertheless maintained this commitment to male headship. A letter in 1855, for example, included several pages of Cogent argument in which she confidently expressed her views on the ability and status of women. She acknowledged that in the majority of cases, the training of women has made her man's inferior, but nevertheless argued that there was no natural inferiority. But she also made it clear that she was not questioning the subjection of a woman to her husband in marriage. I would not alter women's domestic position because God has plainly fixed it. He has told her to obey her husband and therefore she ought to do so. Mumford birth accepted that subjection within marriage was a punishment for sin based on the Genesis narrative, but asserted I cannot believe that inferiority was the brand of it. The same argument was repeated in her female teaching pamphlet. Prior to the fall, she wrote, the human pair were equally nature, position and jurisdiction over the inferior animals. She quoted from Genesis 127 to 28 and argued here is not the semblance of inferiority or subjection. Woman was a helpmeet for man created to be his companion, assistant and friend are being in all respects save that of sex like himself. Here we should note that when Mumford birth used the term sex, what she meant was what we would name gender for. She saw when men and women as fundamentally different in their natures. She does not just talking about biological sex differences. These essentials view this. This essentialist view has obvious implications for women in the movement. If they are essentially different to men and have different natures and roles, then it would be natural for them to be given roles and responsibilities that match those characteristics. So, for example, if men are natural leaders and rulers and women natural supporters and helpers, it is clear who chosen for leadership positions. And this is in fact what's happened because this is a culturally. But not explicitly named view. Complementary partnerships have long been a feature of Salvation Army officers officership service, but always based on the implicit understanding of women as subject to men. So in my younger days, my husband was appointed the commanding officer I know who worked with him was called a core officer. This is depart the fact that I had actually I was a more senior officer in terms of years of service. It would have been unthinkable in those days for the army to interchange those titles. This situation, however, was made explicit in a comment from an Australian woman officer included in a 1975 report into women's officership discussing how women might handle the competing roles of officer wife and mother, homemaker wife, she addressed her fellow officers saying. Let us not be diluted. We cannot expect to have an equal minister with her husband, but we can have a shared ministry if we will accept the challenge and discipline of our role. In other words, our role is a gendered one and women should accept that position. The legacy of Mumford boost acceptance of a doctrine of wifely subjection cannot be mistaken. It is worth noting however that this view made explicit in female teaching was excised from the later tract female ministry. However, it's a bsence from the document should not be read as a change of mind on the part of its author, rather a more strategic decision related to the purpose of the pamphlet. Female Minister was intended for a different audience and had a different purpose. It was no longer a defence of Palmer, but a document designed to meet the most common objections to female ministry and to present a thorough examination of the text generally produced in support of these objections. Given the date of the pamphlet and the context, it is reasonable to argue that Mumford Booth was now quite consciously writing an apologetic for the justification of women's involvement in the Christian mission. She was making a defence for the missions actions in relation to the broader church and particularly the church's male hierarchy. In this context, Mumford birth was not just championing women's rights to preach, but arguing for them to extend their sphere of action in other ministry roles. She was forthright in her argument that women should have a much more upfront role in the church and called out the supreme selfishness of men who would argue that there is plenty of scope for women to work behind the scenes, visiting the sick and poor and working for the temporalities of the church. She averred that if women carry their approach in persecution, they should also share in the honours of ministry work. However, as her son Bramwell made clear in a memoir, utilizing women as evangelists and preachers was one thing, but the consideration of women being in charge was altogether a different idea, and was a source of significant consternation for the leaders of the movement. Opinion, he said, was divided amongst the most thoughtful of our leaders and, he added, the Army mother herself had never quite contemplated placing women in positions which would involve their authority over men. She had never quite contemplated placing women in positions which would evolve their authority over them. A further key difference in the 1870 document is found in what is omitted rather than what is included as previously indicated. It nowhere engages the question of subjection in marriage and completely expunges. The passages relating to the Genesis account the essential equality of men and women before the fall, and the subjection of wives to husbands afterwards. Given the importance of the Genesis account to theological understandings of the relationship of men and women, this is a highly significant emission and one which to this suggests some strategic editing and masking of underlying cultural beliefs. Unfortunately, however, this means that readers of the document may not grasp how much these complementarian views are sitting alongside the arguments for greater freedom for women in the movement. A semi detached house. In writing about Victorian values in relation to women's roles in the public and private spheres and Digby suggests a helpful word picture to describe the historical reality of an intermediate or semi detached area between public and private. This intermediate space was that occupied by women like Mumford Booth and those who followed in her train. It did not involve a jettisoning of previously held Victorian values around women's role in the world, but an extension of them. It was not like a move from one detached house to another completely separate one. Rather it was a construction of a semi detached house built alongside and connected to the mainstream home of Victorian gender values and conceptions. The shared wall connecting was made-up of agreed ideas of what a woman should be, the validity of male headship, the preeminent role of motherhood and so on. This semi detachment creates the ambiguous legacy. On the one hand, the army was promoting something new and different. On the other, it was holding on to conservative values of gender that have largely disappeared from view. But the fact that they are not seen or noticed because they have dropped out of view does not mean that they are not present and active in shaping the reality of women's lives in the movement. Writing in 1940, fifty years after the death of Mumford birth Australian officer many, Carpenter said. So much of the foundations of our movement was built upon the character of this great woman, and so much of her beliefs, methods, and teaching was woven into its early superstructure that though few salvationists of the present day can claim to have seen or heard her, the Army mother still speaks and unconsciously brides her great family. That assessment rings true, and perhaps there's something not quite intended by its author. And that alongside the theological defences Mumford Booth gifted to the movement, and which have been seen as central to its views of women's engagement ministry, sit other messages. These Victorian beliefs and values are deeply embedded in the army's cultural DNA and continue to unconsciously guide the movements, attitudes to and utilization of women. An ambiguous legacy of its 19th century beginnings, seemingly so full of the promise of something new. And that is the end of the presentation. So I'll stop sharing the screen and we're about to have a discussion in a moment. Thank you. ***** This is the end of the e-text. This e-text was brought to you by Tyndale University, J. William Horsey Library - Tyndale Digital Collections *****