Women and the Anglican Church Congresses 1861-1938
Space, Place, and Agency
By Sue Anderson-Faithful and Catherine Holloway
Bloomsbury Academic, 259 pages, $115 (cloth), $102.50 (e-book)
This intriguing book focuses on women’s participation in Church of England congresses amid shifting perceptions on the role of women in church and society, from 1861 to 1938. Instituted by Archbishop John Bird Sumner, the annual congresses were intended to promote Anglican unity and cohesion during years of social change, religious division, and educational expansion. The week-long congresses were strategically held in different locations throughout the country each autumn and designed to build relationships between laity and clergy through church services, parades, exhibitions, civic receptions, and presentations on a variety of social topics, such as education, poverty, industrial relations, and the role of women. “The objective of congress was to promote more active lay participation in religious activity, if not church governance, and to make the Church visible as part of the political and social fabric of the nation,” the authors write.
Both authors are scholars in the history of education, and execute this engaging study by expertly utilizing a wide range of church and local sources. The chapters address women’s diverse participation in church congresses through the themes of religion, philanthropy, work, education, leisure, and political engagement. Throughout the book, the interplay between gender and social class, the importance of networks, the prioritization of various forms of knowledge, and the degree of authority accorded individuals or groups are key categories of analysis.
The first chapter paints a vivid picture of the congress experience for women. The available roles for women in the church before World War I as missionaries, sisters, and deaconesses, as well as aspirations for the priesthood after 1919, are the foci of chapter two. “Churchmen were having to come to terms with women as a presence in the Church. Women were strongly represented in the congregations, and also a conspicuous presence at congress, whether on the platform in later years, or in the audience.” The dominant discourses of purity, motherhood, patriotism, and the imperial project are the focus of the third chapter, which relates to the founding of the leading Anglican organizations for women and girls, the Mothers’ Union and the Girls Friendly Society.
Chapters four and beyond move the analysis beyond strictly Anglican organizations and locate congress women in networks such as the National Union of Women Workers. Educational initiatives aimed at women and girls and the emergence of elite institutions is the focus of chapter five. “The field of education was a site of an ongoing struggle for authority, power and control of educational provision between state, Church and rival denominations.
These struggles and their outcomes were reflected on congress main agendas and those sections addressed to, and by, women.” Chapter six focuses on professional women at the congresses, and the progression of women from roles in traditional philanthropy to positions of authority in public service.
The concluding chapter, “The Legacy of Congress — Women, Space, and Place,” focuses on how the congresses served as a significant means for women to access the professions and the public sphere. “At a time when opportunities for women were restricted congress served as a significant means for women activists and professionals to access the public sphere and demonstrate their competence in and commitment to civic life [sic].”
Although many of the persons, organizations, and themes found in this book are familiar to those conversant with Anglican history, this book breaks new ground in several ways. The authors make expert use of primary sources, namely congress documents, memoirs, and the secular press. The book is an excellent example of the importance of archival strategies regarding the preservation of the proceedings of local church councils. The detailed accounts of these congresses from 1861 to 1938 provided historians with a depth of consistent documentation that greatly aids historical inquiry.
Further, the authors utilize feminist geography as an innovative lens from which to examine the legacy of the congresses as a transactional space whereby women negotiated agency, authority, and autonomy at a time when public perceptions of women’s roles were changing in the church and the broader society. I am familiar with the use of spatial concepts and categories in cathedral studies and practical theology, but not commonly in this kind of an institutional history.
Here I find the lens of feminist geography an added value in interrelating the religious, social, cultural, and civic dimensions of women’s experience of the congresses. Given that much of the historiography of Anglican women of the era is through the growth of women’s organizations, missionary opportunities, religious orders, the deaconess movement, and so forth, an examination of how women created spaces to expand their agency, authority, and autonomy is a valuable question for further studies, as are the connections made here to non-Anglican women’s organizations during the period.
Readers should note that this book does not focus on the worldwide Pan-Anglican Congress movement (London 1908, Minneapolis 1954, and Toronto 1963), but is essentially focused on congresses within the Church of England. However, its findings do point to the efficacy of the proposal coming from the last Lambeth Conference for the first worldwide Anglican Conference in 60 years, likely sited in the Global South.
Given the lessons from this book, the congress model provides opportunities to magnify the voices of laity and persons otherwise marginalized in official church structures and could foreseeably support dialogue across the Anglican Communion on diverse aspects of identity and the effects of colonialism. The enlargement of participation congresses generated historically — both within the Church of England and worldwide — allowed for a creative synergy to address social problems through ecclesial institutions in partnership with philanthropic and political agencies. Indeed, the congress model may provide an opportunity to experience the diversity and richness of Anglican identity and mission beyond current polarization and divisions.
Though this book is primarily geared for an academic audience, it is accessibly written, compact, and informative for all those interested in the history of Anglican congresses and the evolution of women in ministry and the professions.
