Here's my Address for the Townswomen's Guilds 90th Thanksgiving Celebration at St Martin-in-the-Fields today:
The Junior Theology group at St Martin’s is one of the most interesting and frightening groups we run. Why? It is made up of teenagers and operates on the basis that they can ask the clergy any question that they wish about the Christian faith. So we go in fear and trepidation, not knowing what we might to be asked by this group of thoughtful teenagers who have no fear in regard to asking the big questions. A favourite question has been to ask why God is usually portrayed as being male or to put it another way round, why, when God became a human being, was it not as a woman?
Part of the answer to their questions is that the Bible was compiled by men living in a patriarchal culture and this influences the way in which God is understood and depicted. On this basis, it is surprising that female voices feature or that feminine imagery for God appear, particularly in the Old Testament, and yet they do. Patriarchy does not completely dominate. There is a struggle contained within the pages of scripture that leads back to the foundational understanding that, as Genesis 1 makes clear, both women and men were created equally in the image of God. It points forward, too, to Jesus’ ministry where women played key roles among his disciples and the Early Church where female leaders were to be found despite the continuation of patriarchal structures.
The Book of Ruth is one of those places in the Old Testament where women are central to the story and where the story is told from the perspective of the female characters. The book ends however with a genealogy in which the women's world of the story was completely ignored by the male voices of those who compiled a traditional patrilineal genealogy. So, this is a story of women surviving and thriving in a patriarchal world, a struggle that, as you know, continues to this day.
Ruth and Naomi became refugees driven by economic necessity from Ruth’s mother country in Moab to Naomi’s mother country in the land of Judah. They survive and thrive in these challenging circumstances through their commitment to and support of each other. Ruth could have left Naomi, as Orpah did, but there was a bond of friendship between the two women that held them together, as Ruth said to Naomi, ‘Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die.’ The world of women and female solidarity are at the centre of this story.
Ruth and Naomi then show great courage in leaving one culture to enter another, as do all those who become refugees today. In addition, they are proactive and resourceful in seeking ways forward to find security and a significant place in the history of Naomi’s people. Indeed, throughout the Book of Ruth, women are portrayed as active and decisive, taking the initiative, able to set goals and achieve them.
These qualities – friendship, courage and resourcefulness – are what was needed to survive and thrive in a patriarchal world and they are also qualities to be found in the Townwomen’s Guilds and among those who founded and those who have led the Townswomen’s Guilds through the 90 years you are celebrating today. Since your inception in 1929, members have collectively voiced their concerns to change and improve the livelihoods of women, something that is still pursued as passionately as ever. You do so whilst also providing the opportunity for women everywhere to find support, encouragement, friendship and fun!
Margery Corbett-Ashby who, together with Mrs Hubback, founded the first Townswomen’s Guilds, stated that the goals of the Women’s Movement are ‘equality, international understanding and peace’ which could be achieved by sweeping away ‘those ancient superstitions, customs and laws which hamper women’s free development’. At her last public appearance on Women’s Action Day in 1980, Dame Margery told delegates that she had ‘seen an enormous improvement in the status of women in this country’ while also recognising that women of today were ‘working under very much greater difficulties, economic and otherwise,’ than she had ever had ‘the bad fortune to encounter.’
Speaking out, as you do, against all aspects of violence against women and girls demonstrates the need to continue the campaigning undertaken by Dame Margery while combining that work with the friendship, courage and resourcefulness we noted in Ruth and Naomi. Change does come – the publication last year of gender pay gap information at BBC and the resulting controversies was the beginning of a new culture change in that organisation which led to the recent announcement of an all-female team for Newsnight. Your work as the Ruth’s, Naomi’s and Margery’s of today is just as necessary and radical as that which they undertook.
So, may you collectively continue to voice your concerns to change and improve the livelihoods of women whilst also providing the opportunity for women everywhere to find support, encouragement, friendship and fun! May you do so with courage and resourcefulness, putting friendship at the heart of all you do, and may God’s blessing rest upon you and all you do now and into the future. Amen.
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Judith Weir - Love Bade Me Welcome.
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