Suffrage Sunday: Ephesians 6: 10-20, John 6: 56-69
As I’ve been thinking about this
Sunday – Suffrage Sunday – over the past week, I’ve had this song from Mary
Poppins in my head in a loop… (feel free
to sing along if you know it)…
…So, cast off the shackles of yesterday!
Shoulder to shoulder into the fray!
Our daughters' daughters will adore us
And they'll sign in grateful chorus
"Well done! Well done!
Well done Sister Suffragette!"[1]
Shoulder to shoulder into the fray!
Our daughters' daughters will adore us
And they'll sign in grateful chorus
"Well done! Well done!
Well done Sister Suffragette!"[1]
Some of you may recognize this from the Disney movie. In this early scene of the movie, as we’re
just getting to know the Banks family and their closest neighbors, we notice
that as Mr. Banks arrives home, Mrs. Banks immediately reverts to her domestic
roles and hides all evidence of her involvement in Women’s Suffrage because, “The
Cause” infuriates Mr. Banks.
Still, her moment of marching around the living room in song
sets the stage for the arrival of Mary Poppins, a remarkable woman who clearly
sets her own agenda … She says early on in her time with them, when confronted
and asked to explain herself, “First of all, I would like to make one thing
perfectly clear. I never explain anything.” And that’s a good thing because how
could she? She is magical… she is wondrous but she also gets away with it
because she’s never around very long.
In sharp contrast to the Disney portrait, the actual women
of the Suffrage movement knew it for the difficult, spiritual struggle it was.
“We
tend to think of suffrage as an “on-off” switch. Women didn’t have the vote,
then women did have the vote in 1920. The story is quite different.”[2]
Margaret Case Harriman described it this way:
“…The newspapers, poor dears, looked of course for something very
spectacular. But then newspapers are always apt to be more interested in
phenomena like meteors than in the slow growth of a mighty tree. Wait ten
years, and the politicians will one day wake up and say, 'Look who's here!'”[3]
Mary Church Terrell, African American advocate for women’s
equality, said, “And so, lifting as we climb, onward and upward we go,
struggling and striving, and hoping that the buds and blossoms of our desires
will burst into glorious fruition ere long. With courage, born of success achieved
in the past, with a keen sense of the responsibility which we shall continue to
assume, we look forward to a future large with promise and hope. Seeking no
favors because of our color, nor patronage because of our needs, we knock at
the bar of justice, asking an equal chance.”[4]
It was a terrible, and a wonderful struggle,
and that is also the kind of spiritual struggle that Paul describes in the
letter to the Ephesians. Paul writes: For our struggle is not against
enemies of blood and flesh… but against the cosmic powers, the spiritual forces
of evil.
When we have learning days together with Muslims (as we did in our forums last fall), always, from one of us Christians comes this question—tell us what you think about jihad. Through our news sources, jihad is presented as the particularly militaristic and violent aspect of Islam. But every time, our Muslim teachers, say something like this… jihad is primarily about the spiritual struggle that we have with ourselves. It’s not about conquering infidels (although it’s sometimes used like that among Muslims gone off the deep end – Which group of people, religious or otherwise, doesn’t have the element after all?)… but primarily, this concept of jihad is very similar to what Paul describes—“our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh… but against the cosmic powers, the spiritual forces of evil.”
It’s not easy to change ourselves. It’s not easy to change
systems. Even if we’re all in agreement (which as human communities, we seldom
are…) but even if we’re all more or less on the same page, we still struggle to
make change. And when we struggle, we’re ready to find enemies and scapegoats.
We’re ready to place blame. We’re ready to tell a story to ourselves that we’re
alone and not one person is on our side in the deep struggle of life.
This even happened to Jesus… as he got deeper
into his descriptions of what it really means to follow God, as he got into the
struggle, as he got really deep into life-changing gospel, John says “many
of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him…”
This leads to a very vulnerable moment where Jesus asks his closest friends,
“Do you also wish to go away?”
Peter says, “Lord to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to trust and know that you are the Holy One of God.”
This leads to a very vulnerable moment where Jesus asks his closest friends,
“Do you also wish to go away?”
Peter says, “Lord to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to trust and know that you are the Holy One of God.”
Jesus is in this struggle with them so for now, they are in
it too—they’re all in…
Paul, follower of Jesus, writes: “For our struggle is…
against the spiritual forces of evil.
Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be
able to withstand on that evil day…” The armor? Well, it’s not chain mail or guns
or tasers or nuclear arsenals… all these weapons are nonviolent:
The belt of truth, the breastplate
of righteousness…
Shoes… whatever will make you ready
to proclaim the gospel of peace.
The shield of faith… that quenches all the flaming arrows of the evil one.
The helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit… which is the word of God.
The helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit… which is the word of God.
Notice that because this is a spiritual struggle, nearly all
the garments mentioned are defensive, protecting you from whatever might be
hurled your way in life…
One, maybe two, items are for our part in the struggle…
1) “shoes” that make us ready to proclaim peace and
2) the “sword of the Spirit”… God’s words in us (not to use
as a “weapon,” as we’ve come to know some judgmental types of Christians do…
but) to keep us alert to God’s continuing presence, guidance, and help us
persevere.
These words in Ephesians start to sound a lot like the
Suffrage movement.
Madelyn Hanson, the incredibly enthusiastic historian who brought this celebration to us, has pointed out that U.S. women have had the vote for less than 100 years, and it was and has been a phenomenal struggle to get those rights and to keep things moving in this expansive direction.
Madelyn Hanson, the incredibly enthusiastic historian who brought this celebration to us, has pointed out that U.S. women have had the vote for less than 100 years, and it was and has been a phenomenal struggle to get those rights and to keep things moving in this expansive direction.
This is how we fight when our struggle is not
just for us, when it is for our daughter’s daughters, for all our children and grandchildren,
when we realize that we are really one body and God’s gifts of truth,
righteousness, peace, faith and salvation give us what we need for the struggle…
through freedom for the oppressed, freedom comes to all.
One of the earliest women clergy, Pastor Olympia Brown, put
it this way: “In
striving for the best, in losing onself in others, one is lifted above the
common material furniture of life, above the gaudy trappings and encumbering
paraphenalia... into the realm of peace which passeth understanding.”[5]
Are we in for the struggle? Oh, I hope so… but if we’re not
sure, here’s what we can know for sure. That Christ, who knows what it is to be
abandoned will never leave us.
That none other than Paul invited us to clothe ourselves in
spiritual practices to help us persevere… and that so many Women—Sojourner
Truth and Harriet Tubman, Elizabeth Cody Stanton, Rev. Dr. Anna Howard Shaw,
and Rev. Olympia Brown, Aretha Franklin and Mary Church Terrell, and our
mothers and grandmothers, godmothers and aunties, teachers and mentors that
we’ll remember in just a few moments… all these faithful women have lit the way
for us.
Are
we in for the struggle? Well, where else would we go?
It’s here that we have come to trust and know the Holy One.
It’s here that we have come to trust and know the Holy One.
It’s
here in the struggle, with Christ, where we taste life.
It’s here that Spirit clothes us so we can persevere.
A
few more quotes:
Helen Keller, explaining her stance in an article called
“Why Men Need Women[’s] Suffrage,” wrote: “There are no such things as
divine, immutable or inalienable rights. Rights are things we get when we are
strong enough to make good our claim to them.”[6]
“How can this Congress, which
voted for war to make the world safe for democracy not allow women this small
measure of democracy.” Jeannette Rankin, to the House of Representatives
(1918), in Louise Bernikow, The American Women's Almanac(1997)
Emmeline
Pankhurst put it this way: “We woman suffragists have a
great mission — the greatest mission the world has ever known. It is to free
half the human race, and through that freedom to save the rest.”[7]
“A gentleman opposed to their
enfranchisement once said to me, 'Women have never produced anything of any
value to the world.' I told him the chief product of the women had been the
men, and left it to him to decide whether the product was of any value.”
Anna
Howard Shaw, in
Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper, eds., History of Woman Suffrage,
vol. 4 (1902)
"Those who may read this will think it strange that I
could only find a field in run-down or comatose churches, but they must
remember that the pulpits of all the prosperous churches were already occupied
by men, and were looked forward to as the goal of all the young men coming into
the ministry with whom I, at first the only woman preacher in the denomination,
had to compete. All I could do was to take some place that had been abandoned
by others and make something of it, and this I was only too glad to do." -
Olympia Brown[8]
Though the suffrage movement was
fraught with its own problems, including racial inequalities, leaders of the
movement hoped suffrage would one day seem entirely unproblematic for American
culture. The fact that women’s suffrage is something so obvious for Americans
today was precisely what Susan B. Anthony wanted, [Allison] Lange explains.
“[Susan B. Anthony’s] goal was that
in 80 years, no one would understand why women worked so hard to gain the right
to vote,” she says, “and that would be representative of the success of their
movement rather than a negative thing.”[9]
[1]
Songwriters:
Richard M. Sherman / Robert B. Sherman, Sister Suffragette lyrics © Walt Disney
Music Compan
Sung in the movie Mary Poppins by Glynis Johns
Sung in the movie Mary Poppins by Glynis Johns
[2] Quote from Victoria Brown, Read more at http://www.beliefnet.com/inspiration/galleries/strong-women-quotes-from-the-suffrage-movement.aspx?p=9#hvExAP3mj2KPlOwO.99
[3] Margaret
Case Harriman, From Pinafores to Politics (1923), http://quotationsbywomen.com/authorq/33518/
[4] Mary Church Terrell, Advocate for Racial and Gender
Justice, https://www.thoughtco.com/mary-church-terrell-quotes-3530183
[7] Emmeline
Pankhurst speech, "I Incite This Meeting to
Rebellion" (1912), http://quotationsbywomen.com
[8]
https://sites.google.com/a/ysschools.org/the-life-of-olympia-brown/the-writings-from-olympia-brown
[9] On Women’s Equality Day, Here are Are 3 Things to Know
About the Suffrage Movement, by Rachel E. Greenspan, quoting Allison Lange, an
assistant professor of history at Wentworth Institute of Technology, August 24,
2018. http://time.com/5372770/womens-equality-day-2018-facts/
No comments:
Post a Comment