VOLUME 13 MAY, 1995 NUMBER 2
Note: This issue did not scan very cleanly and contains more scanning errors than normal.  

Editorials

... AND THE LIFE EVERLASTING

"A poor funeral is better than a good wedding." This was not said to me by a person who can't stand to see people being happy, but by someone who has to conduct both weddings and funerals, and who is often put off by the artificiality of the former. Though I appreciate his concern, I must say I am feeling increasingly estranged from the unreality of funerals, even from those where the Church connection is strong.

My reaction is based largely on the almost universally accepted assumption about the simple transition, from the earthly setting here to the heavenly location there, that supposedly happens at death. It seems to be taken for granted that the good news offered by Christianity is that everybody goes to that pleasant place known as "heaven". So I often come away from funerals muttering to myself about what I perceive to be a lack of understanding about "the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting".

I'm not thinking about what we should be saying to families in the time of bereavement; in pastoral visits with the family and at the funeral we certainly are not going to be talking about things like the sheep and the goats, with speculation about who might make it and who might not! I am concerned here primarily with the assumptions held by the membership, and even the ministerial leadership, of our denomination and thus about the general education that goes on in congregational life.

In the New Testament, it is clear that we need have no uncertainties about God's attitude to us; the universal regard of God is central to the Gospel, and can be picked up in so many parts of the New Testament. "In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself' (II Cor. 5:19). "God so loved the world that he gave..." (John 3:16). "God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us." (Rom. 5:8) At the same time, however, there are very few pages in the New Testament that do not give a sense of the possibility of losing out on the chance of entering God's household. I put it now to our readers: in our denomination, is it customary to probe the question about the way these two poles of the New Testament witness are to be held together? Or is it more likely that they will be pulled apart, making it possible for the second pole to be discarded? Our whole perception of the Gospel gets skewed if we pull them apart. For the New Testament is clear that God has chosen to express His universal regard in ways where we can recognize Him and accept Him only in faith.

The standard to be met on earth as in heaven is God's self-giving love; we are being invited to be members of a family of such self-giving love. "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive .. Love your enemies." If we are unable to forgive it means God's forgiveness has not yet been able to accomplish its goal in us. If we are unable to love our enemies it means God's love has not yet been able to achieve its purpose in us. To enter the realm of God is to enter a state of shared love, to come into a setting the character of which is established by Jesus' words, "Love one another as I have loved you." The love spoken of here is the kind of self abandonment that we see in Christ. Getting into "heaven", then, is not simply a matter of waking up on the other side of death; neither is it a matter of passing tricky test questions, nor of having the correct code words, nor of having met some minimum standard of virtue in this life. It is a matter of being ready to accept a life with the God and Father of the crucified Saviour, whose over-flowing love either awakens a corresponding love in us, or bums us in our self-centredness.

We must want life with that God and on His terms; it is open only to those who desire it. The danger that faces us is that we will let our self-preoccupations so harden our hearts that we become people who can't desire it, that when the crucified love of God meets us in all its fullness we are repelled by it. Hell is thus what we have chosen, and not something to which we are consigned by an offended, thin-skinned God. Dorothy L. Sayers says:

Whether in Hell or Purgatory, you get what you want - if that is what you
really want. If you insist on having your own way, you will get it: Hell is
enjoyment of your own way for ever. 1

And in one of his books C.S. Lewis wrote words something like this: "It may be that in the end, in the very end end, God may have to say to me, 'Oh very well, Lewis, have it your own way; your will be done'."

Our main job, of course, is not to preach about what a dangerous position we are in. The focus of our preaching must never be on the dangers of hell, but on Christ who loves us with an everlasting love, and who in the Holy Spirit will pour into our hearts that love. But we must preach a Christ who invites, indeed expects faith and discipleship, and not a tolerant, easy-going Christ who becomes a formula for fostering indifference.

I have no insider's knowledge of how we are to do it, but it is that same Christ who needs to be held up at funerals. And it is no easy job; most of those who attend funerals, including the moumers, expect the minister to recall the life of the deceased, and make a few generalizations about the happy life to come, which expectations exercise an enormous control upon all of us who preside at funeral services. If anything more than that is done - which the mourners and the members of the congregation cannot readily translate into their own generalizations - we know only too well they are likely to be resentful that an intrusive note was sounded. It is in popular religion, and not in classical Christianity, that we find pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die theology. We have a singular challenge before us to provide the alternative Christian vision.

A.M.W.

1 Introduction to Dante's Purgatory (London: Penguin Books, 1959), p. 17

SALARIES

The chief executive officers of the wealthiest companies in our country receive a salary in the range of a million dollars per year, with additional perks that raise the actual figure a good deal higher. What do they do to deserve such incomes? Several things. They find ways of getting rid of a lot of employees, and put into place measures that will keep the salaries of the rest in careful check. They find ways to keep their company from paying into the public treasury, arranging for millions of dollars in taxes owed to Revenue Canada to be deferred. Or they may secure for their company large sums from the public treasury by negotiating with governments at all levels, including the federal government, for generous handouts to the company as a reward for placing, or keeping, their plants in certain locations. And they issue statements, and make speeches whenever possible, informing the people of this country that they must get along with a lot less, since the chief problem that faces us is the national debt.

A.M.W.
 

 Articles

"THE GIRL GOD WOULD HAVE ME BE"
by Margaret Prang'

In common with most of the industrialized world, Canadians discovered "adolescence" in the first two decades of the 20th century. They proceeded to incorporate from abroad, or to establish, organizations designed to exploit the "character building" possibilities in the crucial years between childhood and young adulthood. Canadian Protestants had long engaged in the organized Christian nurture of their young through denominational Sunday schools, mission bands, and young peoples' societies, as well as through interdenominational agencies like the YMCA, YWCA, and the Christian Endeavour Society. Through these organizations many ministers and lay people in the Canadian churches developed ties with their American counterparts, most extensively in the International Sunday School Association, with its headquarters in Chicago.

By the turn of the century the leading liberals and progressives in North American Protestantism had become convinced that Sunday schools must be reformed to reflect (a) modern educational principles, and (b) a more liberal theology than the evangelical fundamentalism that characterized much of the churches' teaching of the young. In 1903 they organized, under the leadership of William Rainey Harper, founding president of the University of Chicago, a new instrument for the regeneration of church and state, the Religious Education Association (REA). 'Me year of the founding of the REA also saw the establishment of the Hartford School of Religious Pedagogy. Within the next decade Union Theological Seminary in New York and the divinity schools at Yale and Chicago were all offering degrees in religious education, while most Protestant schools of theology in the U.S. and Canada gave at least one course in the subject. By 1930 many American seminaries offered masters degrees in this area, while "a director of religious education in every parish was the aim".

At the beginning of the REA only a handful of Canadians, all Presbyterians, were involved, but by 1907 there was a Canadian delegation fifty strong, all of them men, including Robert A. Falconer, the Presbyterian theological professor from Halifax, who had recently been appointed president of the University of Toronto. By 1914 Canadian representation was no longer confined to interested individuals, but included church administrators from several denominations. But the Canadians were becoming dissatisfied with the American orientation of the movement, and with the perceived limitations of non-denominational work, now launched a drive for the Canadian churches to take control of religious education.

One of the first results was the formation, in the summer of 1914 of the Canadian Advisory Committee on Co-operation in Boys' Work: established by the churches and the YMCA to promote a new program, the Trail Rangers (ages 12-14) and Tuxis (ages 15-17). Its guiding spirit was Taylor Statten, national boys' work secretary of the YMCA, and its core was the Canadian Standard Efficiency Training, a series of tests and awards intended to encourage high standards in four categories of living: intellectual, spiritual, physical, and social. Within eighteen months the program was meeting with enthusiastic response across the country, partly because the Great War was being fought, and it appealed to the idealism of boys who were too young to serve in the armed forces.

What Actual Girls Really Want

Adolescent idealism was not, however, confined to boys. Thus exactly eighty years ago, in the autumn of 1915, four women, all active in the YWCA - Una Saunders, Winnifred Thomas, Olive Ziegler, and Constance Body - began to discuss the launching of a new organization for teenage girls. Before the end of the year they had established, in co-operation with the various denominational boards of Christian education, the Canadian Advisory Committee on Co-operation in Girls' Work. A majority of the members of the committee were women appointed by their church boards or the YWCA, but included as well the male secretaries of those boards (Anglican, Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian), all clergymen, and representatives of the Canadian Council of Provincial Sunday School associations. The executive officers, however, were all women, with Una Saunders in the chair.

They were convinced that adolescent girls were in many respects different from boys, and that replicas of Trail Rangers and Tuxis for girls was not what was needed. It would not do, as some men thought, to "just adapt their books for boys by turning every mention of 'he' into I she'. We resolved to know what actual girls really wanted."

During 1916-17 they endeavoured to find out what Canadian girls wanted - through questionnaires and Round Table discussions among YWCA secretaries and leaders, Sunday school teachers, Girl Guide leaders, and high school teachers. ne discussion with Guide leaders led briefly to the hope that there might be agreement on one unified program for Canadian girls. When Guiding was first introduced in 1910, the YWCA had found the program, and its international character, attractive, and had sponsored a number of Guide companies. However, by 1917 the Advisory Committee found that the educational philosophy of the Guide program was deficient - it gave excessive encouragement to the competitive spirit, as revealed in the emphasis on the winning of badges; it held a concept of leadership that was too authoritarian; and provided little opportunity for girls to participate in making decisions. Further, Guiding was not essentially devoted to Christian education, and Guide leaders were unwilling to accept a policy in which group leaders would be responsible to local congregations and their officials. And there was considerable feeling that Girl Guides was too British; Canadian girls needed a program that was more distinctly Canadian.

In their continuing study of work with girls, Una Saunders and her committee found some acceptable elements in the Camp Fire Girls program begun in the U.S. in 19 10, but far more influential were the precedents of the girls' clubs organized by the YWCA in both the U.S. and Canada. Since 1909 the Dominion Council of the Y had given increasing attention to clubs for middle-class high school girls, and there were now young women in various Canadian centres who had some experience in their activities. Furthermore, in the student departments of the YMCA and YWCA, there was much useful experience in the planning and conduct of study groups and conferences. On the eve of the War, about half the women students in Canadian universities and Norrnal schools were participants in groups sponsored by the Student Department of the YMCA and YWCA, soon to be united as the Student Christian Movement of Canada (SCM). Thus the Y was by far the most irnportant influence in shaping the new program for Canadian girls.

A New Program

By the autumn of 1917, the Advisory Committee began to circulate a booklet, Canadian Girls In Training: A Programme of Practical Suggestions for the Mid-Week Meetings of Sunday School Classes, Clubs, etc., for Teen-Age Girls. So enthusiastic was the response that the only barrier to almost unlimited expansion seemed to lie in a shortage of the right kind of leaders. The summer camps which soon became an important feature of Canadian Girls In Training (CGIT), and remained one of its most enduring attractions and strengths, were begun partly in an attempt to solve the leadership problem. CGIT camps, the first of which were held in 1918, gave girls a familiarity with the CGIT program and encouraged them to become leaders.

The early response to the CGIT program encouraged the Y to pour additional resources of staff and money into promoting it. In the years 1918-20 the Dominion Council of the Y appointed provincial girls' work secretaries, who organized co-operating boards and served as their executive secretaries. By early 1920 there were forty-one local co-operating committees and twenty-six girls' work secretaries at national, provincial, and local levels, all but five of them appointed by the Y. This level of participation by the Y was not sustained after 1920. In the face of a post-war financial crisis in the Y, the churches gradually assumed responsibility for the support of CGIT, and appointed denominational girls' work secretaries who gave much of their time to the inter-denominational body, the National Girls' Work Board (NGWB), that would supervise CGIT work across the country, while similar arrangements were developed at provincial levels. Of decisive importance was Winnifred Thomas, formerly of the Y staff, who had played a leading role in relations with the churches from the beginning, and who now became the girls' work secretary of the Methodist Church.

In its first three years (1917-20) CGIT attracted 12,000 girls in 1,200 groups. By 1925 nearly 30,000 girls were following the CGIT program in 3,000 groups, from Wabana on Bell Island in Newfoundland to Cumberland on Vancouver Island. The Depression had little negative effect on membership, and a peak of nearly 40,000 was reached in 193334. Throughout the twenties and thirties weekend camps flourished. In 1925 about 10,000 girls and leaders attended CGIT conferences, and over 2,300 went to fifty-three summer camps across the country. In 1938 the numbers at summer camps had risen to 5,000.

Continuing expansion made leadership training a perennial concern. In 1922 the NGWB assumed responsibility for girls' work training under the Standard Teacher Training Course organized by the Religious Education Council of Canada (RECC), and before long hundreds of young women, at least 75% of whom had already been CGIT members, were preparing to take examinations, mainly through attendance at CGIT training camps. Beginning in 1923, some provincial religious education councils made arrangements that allowed Normal school students to take leadership training in girls' work as an option among their regular courses, and sometimes special summer session courses made the same training available to women who were already teachers. The course covered Bible study, story telling and drama, recreation skill, psychology of the adolescent girl, mission study, a written examination on the CGIT Leader's Book, and eight weeks' practice in teaching Sunday school and leading mid-week CGIT sessions. To those who took more intensive work in biblical studies and methods in religious education, the RECC awarded a diploma. It is impossible to determine how many certificates in the Specialization Course in Girls' Work of the Standard Teacher Training Course were actually awarded, but throughout the thirties between four and five hundred seem to have been awarded each year.

What was the program which evoked such a positive response from Canadian girls? The educational philosophy of CGIT was elaborated in a growing number of publications, notably in the first book for leaders, which sold 8,000 copies in less than two years, in the Girl's Own Book, which was revised every couple of years, and in the movement's magazine, The Torch. As Winnifred Thomas summarized it, the program was based on the belief that the important institutions in the lives of girls were home, school, and church. The major responsibility for the Church was Christian education. CGIT was to discharge the responsibility of the churches for "the Christian education of every girl in the Protestant constituency in Canada". The most effective organization was held to be a small group of eight to ten girls following an "activity centred" program; in keeping with the current psychology of adolescence, groups should be composed of girls twelve to fourteen years of age (intennediates), or fifteen to seventeen years (seniors); ideally, they should meet as a Sunday school class and in a mid-week session under the same leader, appointed by and responsible to the local congregation. This leader was all-important. She was to be guide, teacher, and friend, "a member of a democratic group in which the girls reached their own decisions under her guidance". Such a subtle form of leadership required maturity, sensitivity, broad knowledge, and imagination to ensure that the "chosen activities would aid in the development of Christian character".

The Uniqueness of the Educational Philosophy

While continuing to reject tests and awards as measures of progress in "the four-fold life" (physical, intellectual, religious, and service), and insisting that activities should be engaged in for their intrinsic rewards and pleasures, CGIT did adopt "A Girl's Standard" by which girls could discipline and judge themselves, often in consultation with group leaders. In their efforts to live up to the four standards, intermediate girls especially were urged to use "the CGIT Code", by which a girl would select certain items needing emphasis or checking in her life; these might include anything from brushing one's teeth, being punctual, or reading a book regularly, to being more considerate of others or praying daily. A typical mid-week meeting began with the ceremony of saluting the Christian flag and the Union Jack, followed by a business meeting conducted by the officers who had been elected by the group (fifteen minutes), a devotional period (ten minutes), a practical talk on a subject related to one of the standards, usually by the leader, followed by some activity - sewing for missions, Swedish drill, learning how to set a table for a dinner party, listening to music, a debate, a play reading, or a nature study project (forty-five minutes to an hour). After 1920, girls attending mid-week meetings wore the CGIT uniform - a white middy with blue flannel collar and a white or navy blue skirt, and summed up their objectives in "the CGIT purpose":
  As a Canadian Girl in Training Under the leadership of Jesus It is my purpose to Cherish Health Seek Truth Know God Serve Others And thus, with His help, become The girl God would have me be.

The leaders were convinced that a major reason for the rapid growth of CGIT was the uniqueness of the movement's educational philosophy. Their belief found confirmation in the many expressions of interest fron, other countries; numerous groups in the U.S. used CGIT materials, the World Council of the YWCA discussed it in Geneva in 1923, and it wasg not long before the first book for leaders had found its way to eighteen countries.

Was there anything unique about the program? The methods which generated so much enthusiasm among girls' work secretaries, and the leaders they trained, were clearly derived from the complex of ideas known as "progressive education", or as it was more often called in Canada "the new education". Leading Canadian educators of the were familiar with the theories of John Dewey and his many instructors in Normal schools and colleges of education espoused the new views. Yet changes in the actual practices followed in Canadian schools were minimal. It's true that the socializing functions of the high school were enlarged through the extension of extra-curricular activities, counselling services and physical education programs were being introduced, and manual training and home economics were added to the curriculum. But such expansions of the school program had little effec on the methods of teaching the traditional academic subjects, and no until the end of the 1930s were sig ificant changes initiated in the curriculum in most provinces.

During the interwar decade, progressive ideas received a far mo hospitable reception in the Protestant churches of Canada than in th public school systems. The"new education" was deliberately and firml embodied in the CGIT program from the outset.

Thus many women, from national secretaries to local leaders, foun that in CGIT they had opportunities to use the new methods they leame in teacher training courses, but which were rarely embodied in the schoo curriculum. And although the practice of the "new education" mad heavy demands upon the leader-teacher's imagination, knowledge, an adaptability, those who were able to work in the newer style foun th experience very rewarding.

The study of the Bible was central to the CGIT program. Here th "new education" and modem biblical criticism were combined in a man ner that often produced dramatic responses. While the pattern of stud owed much to the liberal ethos then dominant in North American Prot estantism, it reflected specifically the experience of CGIT leaders in th student YWCA and later in the SCM. The major intellectual forces i the student Ys, and then in the SCM in the twenties, were Dr. H.B Sharman and Prof. S.H. Hooke. Sharman, a graduate of the Ontario Agricultural College, later studied New Testament history and literature at the University of Chicago, taught there, and then went into business to acquire the financial independence that allowed him to devote the remaining forty years of his life to promoting the study of the life of Jesus, especially as it is recorded in the synoptic Gospels. Sharman groups followed a "non-directive" style of leadership in a course of study designed to illumine the "Jesus of history" rather than the "Christ of faith". During World War 1, and through the two succeeding decades, there were dozens of groups in universities across Canada led by faculty members, YW/YMCA and later SCM staff, or senior students experienced with the Sharman method. These groups included a host of future girls' work secretaries and CGIT leaders at all levels.

A good example of CGIT Bible study is to be found in a booklet used over several summers at camps, as well as in many local groups. The Kingdom of God, prepared by Winnifred Thomas, was based on the synoptic Gospels and evidently owed much to Sharman. Its purpose was to make real to girls "the Jesus of history... to lead them to see clearly what he meant when he spoke of the Kingdom of God", and to inspire them "to commit themselves unreservedly to the extending of His Kingdom in the world". The mode of study was "research and discussion"; the girls were expected to prepare for every discussion, and written assignments were suggested. "The leader should encourage the girls to do their own thinking. It is irreverent to approach the study of the Bible with a lazy mind." Similar in emphasis was a guide to the study of the life of Jesus prepared by Mary Austin Endicott. The group leader was instructed that "the important thing is to start the girls thinking for themselves.... Truth discovered for oneself is doubly precious and vivid."

The methods of Bible study favoured in CGIT often had the desired effect. A daughter of the Presbyterian manse in Yarmouth, N.S., attended her first CGIT camp, found herself "bombed out of [her] mind" by the freedom of discussion in a study of the meaning of biblical myth, led by a major figure in CGIT, Marjorie Trotter, currently the girls' work secretary for the Maritime provinces. For many girls the approach to the Bible first encountered in CGIT was the core of the movement's appeal to intellectual freedom and independence. If even the Bible could be questioned in new ways, perhaps much else could, too.
 
Sex Education

From the outset the founders of CGIT had questioned the adequacy of sex education available to Canadian girls. Although in earlier years some attempt was made to move into this area, usually under the heading of "Health" or "Family Life", the advance was slow and cautious.,,,~. Perhaps this was due to fear of arousing controversy among parents and,',~'~ church leaders; to a feeling among the girls' work secretaries, who were, nearly always single women, that it was inappropriate for them to take~,~, the lead; to continuing diffidence concerning the subject on the part oRY, local leaders, whether single or married; and to the belief that there was little literature on sex that was suitable for teenage girls.

The publication in 1933 of The Mastery of Sex by Leslie 13.~ Weatherhead was a landmark event for many in the churches, including the CGIT. Weatherhead was a leading Methodist preacher and popular psychologist in England. Ernest Thomas, secretary of the Board of Evan-, gelism and Social Service of the United Church, told readers of The, Torch that his ten-year search for "a book which one might without res~ ervation recommend both to teen-age boys and girls and to their elders" had ended. In doing battle against the ignorance, guilt, and shame which he believe maimed or ruined the lives of countless numbers of men and women, Weatherhead revealed his indebtedness to contemporaries such as Freud, Havelock Ellis, Marie Stopes, Margaret Sanger, and J.A4 Hadfield, as well as to his conviction about distinctive Christian insights concerning sexual relations. Although this approach to sexuality represented no complete break with "the doctrine of creative sexual repression" as expressed in the popular Self and Sex series, so widely read, among Canadian Protestants before World War 1, its emotional overtones, as well as the level of medical knowledge, were considerably removed from the earlier reliance on appeals to fear and guilt. While older attitudes were no doubt common within CGIT, its leaders were ready for more liberal views and they helped to make Weatherhead's book a best seller in Canada.

The search for more appropriate forms of sex education was closely related to the assumption that the vast majority of girls would become wives and mothers. They must be equipped with the knowledge and attitudes that would enable them to establish and sustain Christian marriage and to bring up their children in a changing world, where movies, novels, and plays of doubtful moral value, the mobility and privacy afforded by the automobile, the increasing proximity of men and women in social life and in the work place, seemed to make adherence to Christian standards more challenging than in previous generations. As the basic unit of society, the family was the place where right human relations must be first learned and practised.

Although some might view the home as the Kingdom of God in microcosm, homes were also part of a wider Canadian society and of a yet larger world. Girls must be enabled to understand and participate in the life of that world. Biographies of women "achievers" were a staple of CGIT reading lists. Perennial favourites included Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Charlotte Bronte, Florence Nightingale, Mary Slessor, Frances Willard, Jane Addams, and Alice Freeman Palmer. In various ways girls were actively encouraged to finish high school and to pursue postsecondary education. In sessions on "vocations" held regularly in midweek meetings and at camps and conference, women from various professions discussed their work and the education required for it. A title which frequently appeared on CGIT reading lists was The Girl of the New Day, by Ellen M. Knox, principal of Havergal College in Toronto. In discussing a variety of careers, the book gave highest ratings to missionaries, YWCA secretaries, teachers, and nurses, while positions in business were at the bottom since the service element in them was low. "The Queen of Them All", as one chapter heading announced, was motherhood.

In another way CGIT also helped girls to continue their education. In provincial councils, in conferences and camps, as well as in smaller groups, girls learned to participate in discussion, to conduct a meeting, to keep minutes and accounts, to stand on their feet and speak, and to prepare and lead services of worship. For most girls there was nowhere else at the time to acquire this kind of experience.

A Vision of Canada

The CGIT perception of the world in which girls would exercise their vocations continued to be pervaded by the Canadian nationalism in which the movement was born. In the reading lists which were prepared with great care, Canadian prose, poetry, and drama were prominent. The cover design of the first Leader's Manual and of The Torch were by the Canadian artist Thoreau Macdonald, and in The Leader's Book of 1932 the frontispiece was a reproduction of Tom Thomson's West Wind.
 
In 1927 groups across the country celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of Confederation with a special program prepared by Olive Ziegler, which included, in addition to hymns and prayers, readings from Egerton Ryerson, George-Etienne Cartier, George Brown, G.M. Grant, James L. Hughes, and the "Jubilee Ode" by Wilson Macdonald. Expressions of the British imperial sentiment, so prevalent in the text books and general ethos of the public schools until the late 1930s, were rare in CGIT literature. Rather, exhortations to defend the British Empire were replaced with calls to build the new Canada and to create a peaceful world society. The CGIT vision of Canada - while not entirely devoid of hints that assimilation of immigrants to a "Canadian way of life" would be ideal - was generally a "mosaic", and members were urged to study sympathetically the backgrounds and customs of ethnic minorities, especially those represented in CGIT and in their own communities.

This strong sense of being Canadian was partly responsible for the failure of continuing efforts to co-operate with the Girl Guides. During a visit to Canada in 1923 Lady Baden-Powell urged closer relations between the two groups, and the NGWB agreed on principle to avoid overlapping of effort on certain conditions, notably that the CGIT would stay out of communities where Guide companies were organized under church auspices. Thereafter the NGWB sought a conference with the National Girl Guide Council, with no result, apparently because the Council believed that the continuing priority given to Church affiliation in the CGIT presented an insurmountable barrier to extensive co-operation. At the same time the NGWB rejected a proposal to acquaint the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire (IODE) with the CGIT program. Apparently the NGWB assumed that the British imperial feeling which suffused the IODE, whose chapters often sponsored Girl Guide companies from which they hoped to recruit future IODE members, was alien to the dominant Canadianism in the CGIT, and perhaps even a positive threat to the values, including "world-mindedness", which the NGWB/CGIT was promoting.

To promote citizenship the NGWB adopted a study guide for use with older teenage girls. It outlined the structure of Canadian government, gave a history of the women's suffrage movement, exhorted girls to register to vote as soon as they were of age, and to study public issues (such as the liquor trade and immigration). it suggested that much recent legislation for the protection of women and children showed the influence of the women's vote, thus demonstrating that women had a distinctive contribution to make to society. It drew attention to two laudable measures for which many women were working - the establishment of old-age pensions and mother's benefits.

In 1926 a special issue of The Torch on citizenship offered some practical suggestions, ranging from visiting the city council, holding a mock municipal or provincial election, a public speaking contest on "A Woman Citizen Of Our Province", to organizing a social service clinic charged with investigating typical problems of women and children. In the same issue Charlotte Whitton, the leading professional social worker of the decade (and later Mayor of Ottawa), stressed attitudes towards motherhood and child care as basic yardsticks of good citizenship. Thus in the twenties the traditional female vocations of mothering and nurturing were fully accepted in the CGIT, while at the same time there was agreement that women could and should play other, more public, roles in society.

With the onset of the Depression, the emphasis on social relations and their political implications became more evident in the pages of The Torch, and presumably in the activities pursued in many groups. Following Christmas, 1930, CGIT groups were asked to evaluate their recent Christmas Cheer projects using a discussion outline prepared by the Ontario girls' work secretary, Jessie Macpherson, who had recently returned from a term of study at the London School of Economics. In asking whether the people the girls could see standing in bread lines were responsible for their own poverty, the outline invited an unambiguous answer to the question: "Is it worthy of a Christian country to have men who must accept such charity? Why not?" Soon after, The Torch featured four articles by Irene M. Biss, a young lecturer in economics at the University of Toronto, and a founding member of the League for Social Reconstruction (LSR). Biss analyzed the causes of the Depression, challenging the efficacy of the profit motive in providing incentives to meet social needs, and advocating a planned society characterized by "production for use" rather than "production for profit".

The editorial committee of The Torch in the 30s displayed a decided leaning toward the political left. Ibis is not surprising, since several national girls' work leaders and others at local levels were members of the Christian socialist group, the Fellowship for a Christian Social Order, and often of the LSR as well. This orientation was also in accord with the thinking of many groups in the churches during the Depression, notably in the United Church. Although no political party was endorsed in CGIT literature, a discerning reader of The Torch would be~,, likely to conclude that the newly-organized CCF Party was the chosen vehicle for bringing the Kingdom of God in Canada!

Missionary Education and World Friendship

Looking at the world outside Canada, CGIT leaders tried to culti- 1~,, vate "world-mindedness", defined in a special issue of The Torch as "the creation of a mental attitude that transcends the racial, national, religious and political prejudices of the group to which one belongs", an~i attitude that "sounds very much like Jesus' specifications for those who would be citizens of the Kingdom of God". Leaders were urged to sup-~ port the activities of the League of Nations Society in Canada, especially~ its Youth Section Committee, of which the NGWB was a member, andj~ to study attempts at disarmament, notably the World Conference on Dis-armament in 1932. In November, 1936 groups across the country observed CGIT Peace Week.

World-mindedness included the study of missions, an arrangement~ which represented a perspective not entirely satisfactory to the Wornen's,', Missionary Societies (WMS) of the denominations in which CGIT groups were to be found. They feared that members might be drawn away frorm the "Mission Bands", the seed beds for future adult support of missionary endeavour. The fears of the more traditionally minded members of., the WMS were not allayed when it became clear that, in practice, mission study in the CGITs often really meant study of race relations and-,, the promotion of good will among all peoples, an emphasis by no means unknown in the WMS itself. Eventually the CGIT and the WMS, whoselil blessing was important for the movements' success in local congregations, agreed that one group meeting a month should have a missionary theme, and that no CGIT group could be officially registered unless it,~- gave due emphasis to "Missionary Education and World Friendship". A regular feature of CGIT camps and conferences was the presence of Ca".' nadian women missionaries on furlough, and of young female graduates of missionary schools and colleges overseas, who were continuing their~ studies in Canada. For hosts of Canadian girls this was their first association with educated women from another country, and represented N,
significant extension of their perception of the world.

Who were the leaders and members of the CGIT? A majority ot~,",, the girls' work secretaries who were collectively the most influentia force in designing and directing the program were well-educated middle class women, daughters of businessmen and professionals like clergy, lawyers, and university teachers. This was especially true before or during World War 1; some of the later secretaries of the 30s came from more diverse backgrounds. With the steady increase in female attendance at universities in the two decades after the war, the proportion of university graduates among the local CGIT leaders grew in numbers. Most of these leaders were high school teachers, or married women who had been teachers before marriage, while some were librarians, social workers, or nurses. The largest single group among local leaders, however, were elementary school teachers, of whom a majority would have attended a Normal school following high school matriculation. The limitations in background, education, and experience of many of these women, especially in rural areas, were a frequent cause of concern among girls' work secretaries. The long-standing community expectation that "respectable" school teachers also taught Sunday School no doubt propelled some women'into roles for which they were unprepared.

In an organization which spread so widely, the membership of CGIT was more socially diverse than its leadership. In urban centres CGIT groups reflected the structure of those communities and their local congregations. The conventional charge that the Protestant churches in Canada were overwhelmingly middle class after the turn of the century, if not before, is probably correct, but clearly some congregations were composed mainly of working-class families, or included a substantial number of such families. CGIT flourished not only in High Park United in Toronto's middle-class west end, but also in Woodgreen on Queen Street East, in the prosperous Ryerson Church in Vancouver and in First downtown. In industrial Brantford, CGIT was at least as active in Wesley Church in Eagle Place, where many factory workers lived, as it was in the more affluent Presbyterian church in the centre of town, or in Brant Avenue United where the congregation was composed largely of managerial and professional families. In the Presbyterian Church in Verdun, where all but four families in the congregation in the late 20s were recent Scottish immigrants and largely working class, CGIT was a popular part of congregational life.

Varied Denominational Support

In small towns CGIT, usually in the United Church, often included most of the teenage girls in the community, except where there was a substantial Roman Catholic population, or an Anglican Church with a Girl Guide company. It may have been rare in the cities, but in prairie towns it was not uncommon to find girls of non-Anglo-Saxon origin, even a few Roman Catholics, in CGIT. During the Depression, CGIT was an especially important resource for prairie girls, and a sojourn at an inexpensive CGIT camp was often the only vacation they knew. In the small towns of the west CGIT came closest to its ideal of reaching all the girls in the community.

In its denominational affiliation the membership of CGIT was not as diverse as the movement's official sponsorship would suggest. Before church union in 1925 Methodists seem to have been the largest group, with Presbyterians not far behind. The good relations among Christian education workers who had learned to know and trust one another in their co-operative labours survived church union without the bitter feeling that often existed between the minority continuing Presbyterians and the new United Church. There was no break in Presbyterian support for CGIT.

Although Anglicans were instrumental in helping to establish CGIT, and thereafter some active Anglican leaders appeared, the Anglican Church never gave whole-hearted support, and in 1946 official recognition was withdrawn. The traditional and sacerdotal character of Anglicanism favoured either denominational enterprises or the Girl Guides, which because of its British connections found a congenial home in the Anglican Church. One difference between the Anglican and CGIT programs was that Anglican girls did Bible reading while CGIT members engaged in Bible study. That the distinction was not insignificant is evident from a request by the Anglican Council on Girls' Work to the NGWB that at co-operative CGIT camps Bible study "should be the devotional and practical type rather than of the critical type".

Statistics on the denominational affiliation of the general membership of CGIT have not been discovered, but there are some for attendance at camps which may represent the overall picture. In 1930 United Church girls constituted 85.7% of all campers, with Anglicans having 5.3 %, Presbyterians 4.6%, Baptist 2.6%, and "others" 1.7%.

While CGIT continued to flourish during World War 11 and the post-war years, it claimed the interest of a larger proportion of female adolescents and exercised a more distinctive influence during the first twenty-five years than it was ever to do again. About 250,000 Englishspeaking girls aged twelve to seventeen participated in CGIT in the year4,,~..,, 1917-39, representing perhaps 16% of all the adolescent girls whos parents claimed an affiliation with one of the sponsoring denominations. Thus the movement fell far short of becoming a vehicle for "the Christian education of every girl in the Protestant constituency in Canada", as the founders had hoped, but if the constituency is defined more narrowly as the actual membership of the participating churches, then the percentage rises from 16% to about 33% in 1931. The extent to which membership in CGIT fostered among those girls a long-term commitment to the churches in which they were brought up is impossible to determine precisely, but apparently it did so for many, especially in the United Church where CGIT was strongest.

CGIT was not overtly committed to radical change in female roles. Rather it sought to enhance female influence, and specifically to make women more effective Christian educators of the young in the Church, the home, and the community. But its effect can be seen in the way many of the girls became community leaders in a variety of spheres. Pauline McGibbon, lieutenant-governor of Ontario (1974-80), the first woman to be appointed to that office in any province, received leadership training in a CGIT group in Sarnia, and was thus launched on a career as a volunteer leader in a host of cultural and educational organizations. Experience at CGIT camps helped Eva Macdonald to develop her "potential as a person" and encouraged her to go on to become a distinguished physician and chancellor of the University of Toronto. In Cape Breton, Flora MacDonald, who was to become a successful politician and federal cabinet minister, and to continue in public life following that, first spoke in public at a CGIT conference. Grace Hartman, the significant Canadian labour leader, declared that her years in CGIT prepared her "to be my own person" and made her "a leader in the fight against discrimination against women".

It cannot be demonstrated conclusively that these women, and many others less well known, would have had very different lives had there been no CGIT. However, the evidence suggests, and the participants themselves remain convinced, that in the absence of similar opportunities and challenges from other quarters, they would indeed have been different without their CGIT experience.
 
 1 Dr Prang had intended to write an article on this subject specifically forTouchstone. Health problems, however, forced her to change her plans. What we have here, in somewhat abridged form, is an article by her published in The Canadian Historical Review in 1985. The most important differences between the present version and the original is the onmission of the eighty-eight footnotes - some of them quite long - by which Dr, Prang meticulously blazed the scholarly trail she followed in finding the material for the article. Those who would like to follow that trail themselves are directed to Volume LXVI, No. 2 of The Canadian Historical Review, pp 154-84. Permission to publish has been received from Dr. Prang and the University of Toronto Press.

"LET US TASTE THE HEAVENLY POWERS":
SOME MUSINGS ON THE SACRAMENTS
by Mac Watts

In the Introduction to the Service Book, published by our denomination in 1969, we find these words:

One concern [of this book] is to emphasize the unity of word and sacrament. Implicit here is acceptance of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper the basic Christian service and as such normative for Christian worship. 1

When in 1983, the Working Unit on Worship and Liturgy issued A Sunday Liturgy, containing several eucharistic prayers, the same principle was affirmed by quoting in the Preface the above statement from the Service Book. 2

As one who has conducted workshops on public worship, and often drawn attention to that same statement, I have found plenty of people in our Church, including many ministers, who could not accept the principle. At the same time, however, more frequent observance of Holy Communion is to be found throughout our denomination than was the case at the time of the publication of the Service Book, or even at the time of the issuing of A Sunday Liturgy. Moreover, the move in that direction is often supported by some of the same folk who disagreed with the stated principle, that the Lord's Supper is normative for Christian worship. It's my contention that, though our practice has changed somewhat, there has not been any general shift in perception of what the Sunday service is about. It's also clear, generally speaking, that United Church folk are no more likely today to spring to attention when ancient liturgical precedents are drawn to their notice, than they were twentyfive years ago, or fifty years ago! I think the move to increasing frequency in the observance of the Eucharist is due more to a greater acceptance of ceremonial than to anything else. We have come to like celebrating Communion in the much same way that we like a processional hymn, or the lighting of candles on an advent wreath, or the use of palm leaves on Palm Sunday. Some, I believe, like the ceremony of observing the Lord's Supper in the same way that they like the ceremony of using balloons!

Appreciation of ceremonial is something no one needs to apologize for, but I think there is need for us to probe the matter a little deeper than that, and I'm going to try to do that here.

The Unrecognized Incarnate God

I will begin with a proposition: Jesus is the primal Sacrament. God was indeed in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, but there was no automatic recognition of Him for who He really was, because the Son of God came not in unmistakable divine splendour, but in the ordinariness of a carpenter's son. To mundane human sight He remained a carpenter's son who had taken to itinerant preaching, and who had the gift for performing some wonderful deeds. By faith, however, He was seen differently; faith saw that He was the Christ, the Son of the living God. And when light from the resurrection, ascension, and the giving of the Spirit shone back on His life, He was seen by believers as the Redeemer of the world.

Let's take this a little further. With Jesus' death on Golgotha a change took place in the relationship of the world to God that was so fundamental the New Testament writers could only compare it with the creation of the universe. They didn't look back to Golgotha simply because a wonderful man died there for a great cause. They looked to Golgotha because there the Son of God was crucified, and in and through that crucifixion a key alteration in the relationship of humanity to God was established.

But if that is really what happened on Golgotha we might ask, was it apparent to anyone the day Jesus was crucified? We know it wasn't apparent to Pilate, or to Caiaphas, or to the soldiers, or to the people who hung round and mocked Him. But was it visible even to his mother? Or to the beloved disciple? No, apparently not even to them. For all of Jesus' followers it remained a day of unmitigated horror, of heat and dirt and pain and meaninglessness. The day the world was redeemed was a day when the world went on its way without being aware of it.

It was only later that His followers came to see it differently. Only after the resurrection and ascension, and after Pentecost, did a new light shine on that terrible day, so that instead of it being seen as Black Friday, or Bad Friday, or the Worst-Of-All-Possible Fridays, it came to be known among believers as Good Friday.

I would like, therefore, to put forward a second proposition, one that derives from the first, but which can properly be used separately: Christ's death is the prime sacramental action. What was seen by ordinary human vision was, depending upon your attitude to Jesus, that a trouble-maker was put out of the way, or that a remarkable teacher-healer was executed, or that a terrible death was inflicted upon a courageous and generous person who didn't deserve it. And what was seen by faith was at one level partly the same - a terrible death inflicted upon a courageous and generous person who didn't deserve it. But Christian faith, in addition, came to see another dimension altogether - the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. For as Paul says in 11 Corinthians, we may at one time have known Christ simply from a human point of view, but we know him thus no longer. Now we know, he says, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. Now we know that God made Christ to be sin, who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God. (5:18 & 21)

Looking at the Sacraments Sociologically

Before I follow this theological line any further, we should note that the sacraments can be looked at not only theologically, but also sociologically. And it is important for us to look at them that way, too, to see them as the public ceremonies of the Church. In a similar way that other communities and associations have rituals, so has the Church. And we as Church members have rituals in addition to what we do in Baptism and the Lord's Supper. Bowing our heads for prayer, standing up to sing hymns, taking up the offering in a formal way, passing the peace - all these and more are rituals connected with most of our congregations. But a good sociologist, even one who was not a Christian believer, would note that Baptism and the Lord's Supper are special to the Church. They are not rituals thought up by the Church during the course of its life - as for example ceremonies associated with candles and wreaths in Advent, or with ashes on Ash Wednesday, or with palm leaves on Palm Sunday - but were handed down from the very oldest time in the Church's life. Indeed a discerning sociologist would find that it was part of the faith of the Church that Baptism and the Lord's Supper have the authority of the Church's Founder behind them.

But even though we in the Church assume that Christ's authority is behind Baptism and the Lord's Supper, we know that they are still human ceremonies. Moreover, from the angle of normal observation, nothing exceptional takes place. Somebody is baptized, but they don't look any different afterwards than they did before. People go into Church for Holy Communion and their appearance when they come out is not likely to be any different than when they went in. Good sociologists no doubt would observe that in some denominations the sacraments are done in a more impressive manner than in other denominations, and that people in the former usually behave toward them in a more respectful manner than they do in the latter; the sociologists might speculate whether that's the essential clue to the significance of the sacraments.

If we were to use only sociological or psychological categories, perhaps we would have to say that the manner of performance was indeed the clue to their significance. But when we look at the sacraments theologically, that is from inside the faith rather than outside of it, we will want to say something more than that. From that angle we affirm that the ultimate significance of the sacraments is not found in how they might impress an audience, but in Christ's person and work. And that's why I point to the fact that Christ is the primal sacrament, and only by derivation from Him do Baptism and Holy Communion have their character as "sacraments". And that's why I have been saying that Christ's death on Golgotha is the prime sacramental deed, and the sacramental actions accomplished in Baptism and the Lord's Supper are grounded in that deed. In Christ's self-giving on the cross a hidden victory of incalculable significance was accomplished; so in Baptism and in the Lord's Supper a hidden victory, again by Christ's self-giving, is accomplished. Christ's death didn't simply show something, it also did something, though that is known only by faith. The sacraments do not simply show something, they also do something, though that is known only by faith.

We're dealing, then, with what we might call surface reality and ultimate reality. A baby born in a stable, in a tiny village, of obscure parents, is by normal human standards nothing special; but faith now sees that the great God of heaven and earth quietly entered into human history in that infant. A man executed with two criminals outside Jerusalem is by normal standards nothing special; but faith now sees that in the death of that particular person, the Creator of the Universe brought about the world's redemption. Water poured over a person with words here about Father, Son and Holy Spirit is by normal human standards nothing special; but faith sees that through this action a person is bonded to Christ's death and resurrection. The distribution of a little bread and wine with some words about the body and blood of Christ is by normal standards nothing special; but faith sees in this action that Christ's death and resurrection become once again a living reality in our midst.

Symbols Belong to the Realm of Mystery

Are they not symbols, then? Yes, of course they are symbols. To call something a symbol is not to demean it. It's true that in both liberal and evangelical churches the sacraments are often demeaned; just listen to the way they are talked about: one person will say to another, "Well, they're only symbols, after all." If we say that such and so is only a symbol, there is some likelihood that it is for us not even a symbol, but simply a contrivance - like the planting of a seed as part of a worship service at one of our annual Conferences! It's not suprising that we're not accustomed to stand in awe of the sacraments. For symbols are sacred. Symbols belong to the realm of mystery. Communities are defined by symbols. People will walk to hell and back for a symbol, since it has everything to do with who they are, and with what their community is, and with what life ultimately means.

I remember hearing Rollo May talk once in a lecture about symbols, during the course of which he recounted being on vacation in Turkey, where he and his wife had had a series of rather unpleasant incidents to cope with. On the evening before they returned to the U.S. he was in the port area of Ankara and he saw a ship in the harbour flying the Stars and Stripes. "The power in the flag reached out to me, and stirred in me something that 1 had never experienced before with such intensity - a feeling of pride in my country, and an enormous love for it." The day after May's lecture 1 was watching television, and saw a mob in Iran cheering themselves into a frenzy as the American flag was burnt. Symbols, positively or negatively, define reality.

Baptism and the Eucharist deserve the utmost respect from us as symbolic actions that have behind them the authority of Christ Himself, and that are thus the defining ritual actions of the Christian community. That is, these symbolic actions are part of the given of the Gospel. They are not extras to provide a little colour to our Church life. Wherever the biblical Gospel is, there are Baptism and the Lord's Supper. And when we look at the longer history of the Church, we find that these symbolic actions have been seen by Christians not only as witnessing to the Gospel but also in a unique way bearing it.

Baron Friedrich von HOgel who, in spite of his name, was an Englishman, responded to a letter he received from his niece in 1921. She was an Anglican, and carried on a regular correspondence with "Uncle Freddie", who was a Roman Catholic. In the letter she was asking questions of her uncle about the Eucharist, and wondered if it wasn't possible to have too physical a conception of the presence of Christ in the bread and wine of the Eucharist, as she thought Catholics had. He replied: "Of course it is possible to [do that].... Yet I do not doubt that - upon the whole - the danger lies far more in an evaporation of the Presence into no more than the universal Presence of Chfist, or even into a mere subjective thought of Him as though present." 3

In the.United Church I think, "upon the whole", we have evaporated the Presence. I suspect that's why we are always fiddling with the Lord's Supper, trying to make it into something, make it into what we call "a meaningful worship experience". The sacraments can, of course, be done in a manner that makes them impressive, and it is appropfiate that they should be performed in an impressive manner. So far as I can tell, however, in the history of Christendom, in the main there have been two contrasting motives in the search for a style and manner that will make the sacraments impressive. The first is to be found chiefly in the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic communities. In those traditions, it is assumed that the sacraments are mysteries; that is, that in actions designed to affect all the senses something fundamental beyond the senses is also taking place. They look partly to St. Paul for inspiration:

"The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ?" (I Cor. 10:16)

In his Apology for Christian faith written to the Roman emperor around the year 140 C.E., Justin Martyr provided a brief description of what Christians do when they gather for worship, which centred on the Eucharist, and explained what they believed about it:

For we do not receive these things as common bread or common drink; but as Jesus Christ our Saviour being incarnate by God's word took flesh and blood for our salvation, so also we have been taught that the food eucharistized by the word of prayer which comes from him, from which our flesh and blood are nourished by transformation, is the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus. 4

The elaboration of the style and manner associated with the performing of both Baptism and the Eucharist was therefore done as an acknowledgement of the mysterium tremendunt to be found in the sacraments. Or to put it differently, because God is performing so mighty a deed in these events they must be awarded the greatest of ceremonial respect and honour.

The other motive is to be found chiefly in Protestant liberalism and evangelicalism. In both of those closely connected streams it is assumed that the significance of the sacraments is to be found in the memories aroused, the emotions generated, or in the renewed commitments elicited, by their enactment. If attention is given to the style and manner associated with their performance it is because of a desire to create "meaningful experiences". It is taken for granted that there is no real substance in the sacraments as such, no real mystery, let alone a mysterium tremendum. The importance of the sacraments is to be found in the intellectual illumination, or emotional stimulation, or moral animation experienced by the people who are present at the time of their performance.

I find many in our denomination who assume that that's the genuine Protestant understanding, that the true Protestant perception has always been that the sacraments are only symbols. This may have been true of people like Zwingli, but was not in fact the case with either Luther or Calvin, nor with the Wesleys, nor with those who prepared our own Articles of Faith in the Basis of Union.

This is Luther talking about the Eucharist:

• [I] firmly believe not only that the body of Christ is in the bread, but that the bread is the body of Christ .... What is true in regard to Christ is also true in regard to the sacrament .... [In Christ both the human and divine] natures are simply there in their entirety.... It is not necessary in the sacrament that the bread and wine be transubstantiated and that Christ be contained under their accidents in order that the real body and real blood may be present. But both remain there at the same time. 5

n Calvin's Catechism of 1541 the minister asks the catechumen:

What is [the signification of the Lord's Supper]?
Catechumen: Our Lord instituted it to assure us that by the communication of His body and blood, our souls are nourished, in the hope of eternal life.
                                .............
M: Do we have in the supper simply the testimony of the things already mentioned, or are they truly given to us in it?

C: Seeing that Jesus Christ is the Truth, there can be no doubt that the promises which He made at the Supper, are actually fulfilled in it, and that what He figures in it is made true. Thus in accordance with what He promises and represents in the Sacrament, I do not doubt that He makes us partakers of His very substance, in order to unite us with Himself in one life.6
 

Or consider the Wesleys. They, in particular, can be seen as the quintessential Protestant evangelicals who, because of their emphasis upon experience, would be expected to have a very "low" understanding of the sacraments. Just at the external level, however, we might remember the significance the Wesleys put upon attendance at the Lord's Supper. They encouraged their converts, wherever possible, to go to communion every Sunday. They did this because of their "high" eucharistic theology, as we can see in the following rather didactic hymn by Charles Wesley, one of about one hundred and sixty he wrote on the Eucharist, to be published in a book John was issuing on the meaning of the Lord's Supper. 7 0 the depth of love Divine, Th' unfathomable grace! Who shall say how bread and wine God into us conveys! How the bread His flesh imparts, How the wine transmits His blood, Fills His faithful people's hearts With all the life of God!   Let the wisest mortal show How we the grace receive, Feeble elements bestow A power not theirs to give. Who explains the wondrous way, How through these the virtue came? These the virtue did convey, Yet still remain the same.   How can heavenly spirits rise, By earthly matter fed, Drink herewith divine supplies, And eat immortal bread? Ask the Father's Wisdom how; Him that did the means ordain! Angels round our altars bow To search it out in vain.   Sure and real is the grace, The manner be unknown; Only meet us in Thy ways, And perfect us in one. Let us taste the heavenly powers; Lord, we ask for nothing more: Thine to bless, 'tis only ours To wonder and adore.8

Evangelical experience was extremely important to the new Metht)thst converts, and many of them were disappointed when, at the urging ofthe Wesleys, they had gone to communion services and not felt anything particular. They complained to the Wesleys, "Why should we go to communion if we're not inspired by it? Surely we can get Christ's blessing without going to the Lord's Supper." For all their emphasis upon evangelical experience, the Wesleys did not lodge the ultimate significance of Holy Communion in the feelings generated among those attending a celebration. In several rather didactic hymns Charles tries to help Methodists see that, no matter how they feel, Christ is truly given in the Eucharist.

The Basis of Union

If we look at No. XVI of the Articles of Faith in the Basis of Union of our Churc , h, we can see that its framers were maintaining a perception of the sacraments that is more faithful to both the Reformed and the Wesleyan traditions than one might have expected.

Article XVI. We acknowledge... [the sacraments] to be of perpetual obligation as signs and seals of the covenant ratified in His precious blood, as means of grace, by which, working in us, He doth not only quicken, but also strengthen and comfort our faith in Him, and as ordinances through the observance of which His Church is to confess her Lord and be visibly distinguished from the rest of the world.

The Article, then, refers to the sacraments (1) as signs, (2) as seals, (3) as means of grace, and (4) as ordinances.

It is the word ordinance that we might note first. It is the designation, and I believe the only one, officially used among the Baptists and the Mennonites. In their official documents they do not call Baptism and the Lord's Supper sacraments, but ordinances. It's a good word. Whatever disagreement we might have with our Baptist and Mennonite sisters and brothers, it would not be in their use of this honourable term. The exclusion of other terms, to round out the whole reality of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, is the place where we might part company.

In any case, Article XVI in the Basis of Union says that Baptism and the Eucharist are ordinances by which the Church confesses Christ and is thus distinguished from the rest of the world. They are thus part of the Church's public face. Baptism and the Lord's Supper give testimony to Christ, first of all to those inside the Church but also to the world generally. They are the official defining ceremonies of the Christian community; they mark out the Church as the distinct body that it is.9 And the word sign in the first sentence can easily be used together with the term ordinance. The sacraments are signs that point to Christ and to the work of Christ. Signs and ordinances can be seen by all, even by detached observers, and after a fashion can be understood by all, to some extent understood even by detached observers.

But the Article doesn't stop there. It uses terms that are affirmations of faith, and which can only be understood by faith. It calls the sacraments seals, and it says that they are means of grace. The term seal has had a double connotation: on the one hand, it is something that was used to place the official royal stamp on something or someone; on the other it is something that binds one thing to another, which is what we have already claimed for the sacraments - they bind us to Christ. And they are the means by which the grace of Christ reaches out to us. The Article is making a significant faith claim: that the sacraments do not simply show something that all can see, but they also do something that only God can see, and that one day we will see.

We cannot claim, then, that the reductionist position on the sacraments normally held among us corresponds to classical Protestant teaching. It's not as though there is no truth in the former; the sacraments are indeed part of the Church's proclamation; the dedication of children to God, accompanied by parental promises, are certainly part of what infant Baptism is about; a mature confession of faith is a normal 10 part of adult Baptism; Holy Communion is in part a remembrance ceremony, the occasion for rehearsing the story of salvation, and for recommitment on the part of the congregation. But in all of this where is the good news? The good news does not only surround the sacraments, it is to be found in them. We do not perform them only in response to the gift of life in Jesus Christ, we also find the gift in them. Christ is not just the passive object of our witness when we observe Baptism and the Eucharist; He is also the active subject who uses them to bestow upon us His unsearchable riches. 11

Depth of Feeling

It seems necessary to conclude here, in spite of everything that has ah-eady been said, that the feelings aroused during the course of a sacramental service are not the gauge by which to measure its reality. There may be times, of course, when our feelings will soar. The novelist Reynolds Price, suffering from cancer, had communion served to him in his hospital bed.

In the slow eating that one morning I experienced again the almost overwhelming force which has always felt to me like God's presence.... No prior taste in my old life had meant as much as this new chance at a washed and clarified view of my fate - and from the hands of a strange young minister .... 12

Such depth of feeling is a great gift, and wherever it happens we can be grateful. We shouldn't assume, however, that the depth of feeling is the only, or even the most important, jewel God bestows in that moment. C.S. Lewis had sensible advice to give to a godchild who, in 1949, was about to be confirmed:

Don't expect... that when you are confirmed, or when you make your first communion, you will have all thefeelings you would like to have. You may of course; but also you may not. But don't worry if you don't get them. They aren't what matters. The things that are happening to you are quite real things whether you feel as you would wish or not.... Our Lord will give us right feelings if He wishes - and then we must say, Thank you. If He doesn't, then we must say to ourselves (and Him) that He knows best. This, by the way, is one of the very few subjects on which I feel I do know something. For years after I became a regular communicant I can't tell you how dull my feelings were, and how my attention wandered at the most important moments. 13

The wonderful 14th century English mystic, Julian of Norwich, had some general comments about the life of faith that can also bear on our expectations in public worship:

Our trust is often not complete, because we are not sure that God hears us, as we think, because of our unworthiness, and because we are feeling nothing at al I; for often we are as barren after our prayers as before.... [Our Lord says to us] Pray wholeheartedly, though you may feel nothing, though you may see nothing, yes, though you think that you could not, for in dryness and in barrenness, in sickness and in weakness, then is your prayer most pleasing to me, though you think it almost tasteless to you. And so is all your living prayer in my sight. 14

To move away from a sole focus upon that which might engage us emotionally - or perhaps intellectually or morally - during the course of any and every worship service is not easy; the pressures within both the evangelical and the liberal wings of the Church are very much in the other direction. But I suggest that when we come to Holy Communion we can trust the promise of Christ, and look out upon the Table with awe and wonder at what is being offered there.

1 Service Book For The Use ofMinisters Conducting Public Worship (Toronto: Published for
The United Church of Canada by Ryerson Press, 1969) No page number.

2  Sunday Liturgy (Toronto: The Working Unit On Wotship And Liturgy, Division of Mission in Canada, United Church of Canada, 1983) p.3.

3 Letters To A Niece (London, LM Dent & Sons, 1965) pp. 125f.
 
4 Library of Christian Classics, Baillie, McNeill & Van Dusen, Editors, Volume I (London:SCM Press, 1953) p. 286.

5 Luther, Works, Vol. 36, (Philadelphia: Muhlenburg Press, 1959) pp. 34,35.

6 As found in T.F. Torrance, The School offaith, (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1959) pp. 59 & 62.

7 John Wesley was very much taken with a book published in the seventeenth century by Dr. Daniel Brevint, entitled Christian Sacrament and Sacrifice. He put out an abridged version of the book with hymris by Charles, and the volume was reissued several times. Brevint's position was that the Sacrament of Holy Communion should be seen as having at least six aspects to it: it is (1) a memorial, (2) a sign, (3) a means of grace, (4) a pledge to us of future glory, (5) a commemorative sacrifice, and (6) the oblation of ourselves to God. Charles wrote a certain number of hymns on each of those themes, a total of about one hundred and sixty. Tbrough the abridged Brevint, and the hymns by Charles, we have a clear idea of where both the Wesleys stood on the significance of the Eucharist.

8 From J. Ernest Rattenbury, The Eucharistic Hymns of John & Charles Wesley (London: Epworth Press, 1948), Hymn 57, on p. 213.

9 For that reason I would suggest that, when we observe the Lord's Supper, one ofthe traditional eucharistic prayers be used, because they always contain a rehearsal of the essential elements in the story of salvation. When baptisms are performed I recommend that the faith ofthe universal Church be confessed by the person being baptized, orby the sponsors, and then together by the whole congregation. I deeply regret the animosity throughout much ofthe United Church presently towards the Apostles' Creed, which in the western tradition has for about fifteen hundred years been the baptismal creed, and a slightly abbreviated form of it was the baptismal creed for about three hundred years before that. It is precisely at Baptism that such an ecumenical creed should be used, since the person being baptized is being received, not into a denomination, but into the universal Church. It appears as though the recently composed -United Church creed" is the one almost universally used at our baptisms, which I consider to be a regrettably sectarian practice.

10  I initially wrote that it was an "essential" part of adult Baptism. But I then realized that wasn't the correct way to put it. There are mentally retarded adults who could not make a "mature" confession of faith, yet Baptism is for them as much as it is for anyone.

11 There is no time in this article to unravel any of the difficult theological issues surrounding the nature of Christ's presence in the Eucharist. A most helpful summary and analysis of these issues as they have been surfacing in recent Protestant/Catholic dialogue is to be found in a book by the American Lutheran scholar, Robert W. Jenson, Unbaptized God: The Basic Flaw In Ecumenical Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992).

12 From A Whole New Lif~: Illness AndA Healing, quoted in Theology Today, January 1995, p. 493.

13 Letters of'C.S. Lewis (London, Geoffrey Bles, 1966)p.216. The focus on feelings undergirds the comment, still to be heard in our Church, that we devalue the Sacrament if we observe it too often. I'lie easy answer is that a comparative survey of members in the Anglican and United Churches would demonstrate decisively that Holy Communion is more greatly valued among Anglicans than it is among us, not in spite of the fact but partly because in most of their parishes they are accustomed to observe the Eucharist every Sunday.

14 Julian of Norwich, Showings (Toronto: Paulist Press, 1978) pp. 248f.
 

Profile

THE SAINT FROM YORKTON
by James Kirkwood

"'This is the best course we've ever had.' If words of introduction are needed, these will help us to meet one whose life and witness have influenced, and will continue, through lives touched, to influence the I ife of the entire nation of Zambia."
So read the opening words of the citation for Essie Johnson at the 1975 General Meeting of the Division of World Outreach of the United Church of Canada (UCC), on the occasion of her retirement. We'll see a little later why the words "the best we've ever had" were used in this context.

Essie Johnson was bom in Yorkton, Saskatchewan, on January 7, 1912, the daughter of Cyrus Baldwin and Maude Ross. "Active" and "enthusiastic" were two words to describe her from her youngest days. Fond of athletic activities, she and her sister Mildred would frequent the park behind their house on McGrath Street, practising the high jump, the hop-step-and-jump, and many other track and field activities. At lunch time on school days they would rush home from school to play a game of croquet on the lawn, their tolerant, supportive mother agreeing to do the lunch dishes so they could finish their game! Her life-long interest in music found expression in the trombone in the Junior Yorkton Band, first the old valve trombone and then the slide one. She graduated from Yorkton Collegiate in 1928, went on to Regina College where she did two years of Arts courses, and then to Normal School in Moose Jaw for Teacher Training.

After teaching briefly at Kirby School south of Regina, and Crescent Lake school, south of Yorkton, she married Gunnsteinn Johnson. His untimely death only six years later led to a resumption of her teaching career, and for the following nine years she taught at Yorkton.

"Active" and "enthusiastic" we have called her; that characterized her leadership of children both in and out of school, particularly with the Canadian Girls in Training (CGIT) movement. One of the women who was in Essie's CGIT during those years was Luba Magis, who spoke at Essie's funeral in 1991.

Essie taught us about multicultural ism long before it was fashionable.... She taught us that every person is a unique human being, and has much to contribute to our society.... She taught us to love the Bible, the Greatest Book ever written.... She taught us if you want something badly enough you work for it....

During this period Essie studied piano and received her ATCM degree in 1945.

And God Said, "Go"

Essie was active in the Methodist and later the United Church, in camping, and as a camp leader, over many years. At the Round Lake CGIT camp Essie's nickname was "Trigger", perhaps because she was always quick from the lip with an appropriate, helpful and often very funny comment. At some of those camps she met graduates of the United Church Training School (UCTS), the national centre in Toronto for training deaconesses for the UCC. In 1950 she attended a World Conference on Christian Education in Toronto. These two influences led to her call to serve in the Church full time, and to her application to study at UCTS beginning in 1952. "1 am confident that God has called me to His service," she wrote on her application.

Africa: Love at First Sight

On March 25,1954, Mrs. Taylor, executive secretary of the Women's Missionary Society (WMS), with whom Essie was to have a close relationship and extensive correspondence over the next seven years, wrote to Essie:

I am very happy to tell you that... you are appointed as an Evangelistic Missionary to Northern Rhodesia. I wish to welcome you most warmly to the fellowship of missionaries under our society. I trust you will find your work in Northern Rhodesia satisfying. I know there is a lot of opportunity there. 

Essic traveled with the family of Bill and Phyllis Hincks, as the first WMS appointee to Northern Rhodesia. (The Hincks were the second family appointed there by the Board of Overseas Missions, following Geoff and Jara Smith who had gone out the previous year. Essie and the Hincks traveled first to New York, took the liner "Ile de France" to England, then flew to Northern Rhodesia by way of Athens, Cairo, Khartoum and Nairobi.

Essie was grateful for all arrangements made, especially the Ile de France, "which seemed like a fairy story, and I did feel like a princess," she wrote to Mrs. Coates, Mrs. Taylor's assistant, on September 6th. "We have been in Africa just a little over a week, and each day I find myself becoming more and more enthusiastic."

Visiting Livingstone, the location of the famous Victoria Falls, after a visit to the church community there, she commented further in her letter to Mrs. Coates, "If only more people would feel called to come to Africa - the way women's faces light up when they hear that we have come to work with them, would surely move many, could they but be here to see the response."

After visiting a church secondary school the same day, she wrote to Mrs. Taylor:

I was simply amazed with (the girls') work - having taught school for so many years in Canada. I couldn't help making comparisons, and if any one is ever inclined to think African children have inferior mental IQ's I wish they could have similar opportunities to visit an African school in session.

Despite having seen only one school, Essie waxes typically enthusiastic, throws down a challenge to any racist who might be near, and adds a strong political challenge, namely: "We must help these people in their struggle to achieve a rightful place in the land of their birth."

Kitwe, Black and White Together?

Finally Essie and the Hiricks family reached Kitwe, a large city on the Copperbelt, where copper mining was the big industry, and Africans from all over the country, and indeed from Nyasaland (later Malawi), Tanganyika (later Tanzania), and other neighbouring countries were coming to find work. They lived in compounds in tiny houses, which may have seemed alright to them, but seemed very inadequate to Essie.

Immediately her heart went out to them as having "no dwelling place of their own". At the same time her indignation about racism began to show, as she was struck by the comparison between European and African standards. (All whites were called "Europeans" in those days. White miners, in particular, were well paid and lived in excellent quarters with good social services provided). "Why must the distinctions be so great? Why must Europeans always have so much more?" was what Essie wanted to know.

Attending a meeting of the Kitwe District Church Council she was glad that efforts were beginning to be made to integrate at least the leaders, but her joy was short-lived, for at lunch-time blacks and whites went to separate tables; at tea time, blacks drank from tin cups, Europeans from china ones. Blacks entered by the back door, Europeans by the front. Essie would never put up with this sort of thing, at least not happily. When it was proposed to her that she could come to church with her African colleague Monica Makulu, and even enter by the same door, as long as they sat on opposite sides of the church, and as long as Monica did not try to stay for tea afterward, Essie flatly refused. On this point she defined one of the main goals of her ministry in Africa, as she put it later, "next to the gospel itself our task is surely to help the races live together in harmony as God intended."

Language Study

Essie went north to the Lubwa Mission station of the Church of Central Africa in Rhodesia to learn the language of the Bemba people. This station had been opened in 1905 by the Rev. David Kaunda, an African pastor, under the auspices of the Free Church of Scotland, which had already established a strong church in Nyasaland to the east. Kaunda married a local Bemba woman and one of their children was Kenneth David Kaunda, already an established leader in the African National Congress, the movement for political liberation from the British colonial masters, and later, in 1964, the first President of Zambia.

Writing on November 6, 1954 to Mrs. Taylor, Essie described her first overnight visit, in the company of an older missionary, to an African village where she stayed five days. Living with people there was exciting for her, and she found people "so friendly, warm and appreciative". Though unable to communicate much yet, she must have made a good impression, for one family came to visit her after she returned to the mission station, and had dinner with her. This family had brought notes of greeting on any available scraps of paper, from "all your friends in the village". Essie wrote in that same letter: "Do you wonder that I feel so at home in Africa among African people?" Of course she was still very new in the country, and in the honeymoon period people often pass through when they first enter another culture, but this warmth and rapport with African people never faded for Essie, and was indeed one of the hallmarks of her life in Africa. Here is her theological reflection on the experience: 

Only as we grow in our love for God is our response to those around us an outreach of love, rather than of pity, superiority, or of Christian duty. How hopeless it would be to say "I must love these people" for love does not respond to command.

 Learning the language, (and Bemba is a complex, sophisticated language), and beginning to give bits of leadership, Essie was kept busy, "and in between times I try to do a bit of cycling!" By February she was going out on Sunday, on foot, with the man who worked in her house (she uses the soon-to-be-forbidden term "houseboy") as interpreter, to take services. His job was to find a clearing where the villagers could come together, translate what Essie had to say, and after to organize a football game for the children - apparently an integral part of evangelism!

Let Us Smoke!

The six-month language study period was lengthened to a year, and then cut back to eight months. On returning to Kitwe she was assigned to work with women and children in the huge compounds outside the (white) city centre. They had names like Buchi (honey), Kwacha (dawn), Chimwemwe (Joy), Wusikili, and Mindolo itself, near the Church station where she was living. She would spend one day a week in each one, teaching home economics, doing Bible study, leadership training, and sharing worship with the women. They already had an organization, known by its Bemba initials the K.B.B.K., and roughly translated "Christian women helping each other". The women were very enthusiastic, but the drain was heavy, especially as Essie was still gaining mastery of the language. She commented that she often invited people to smoke in church since the difference between "Let us pray" and "Let us smoke" is a slightly higher pitch on the second syllable!

Later she was to reflect on the fact that the women were so patient. One day after three years of using the language, a woman came up to her and said, "Oh, my Sister Johnson, I am so happy today." Essie asked, "Why, what happened Mary?" "Today I have understood what you said", replied the woman. Essie asked, "What have you been doing for the past three years?" and Mary said, "Sitting waiting". Right there Essie realized two things: (1) that the women were incredibly patient; "where in Canada would a group of women wait for three years till a foreigner learned their language?"; and (2) "We should get Africans in charge of doing this...(teaching)" (quotes from an interview between Essie and Donna Sinclair in Regina, August 5, 1989).

Essie may have been putting herself down here, as she passed both lower and higher Bemba exams which were set by the colonial government for its civil servants. In a March 1, 1956 letter to Mrs. Taylor, Essie reports a funny story from a women's meeting, which also illustrates different attitudes to time:
 

We usually begin at 2 p.m., worship until 3, knit and sew until 4, and then the youth club meets until 6. It was pouring rain yesterday so the group didn't assemble until 2:45. The woman who was to have led in worship ... (didn't appear) so I took her place as well as I could without preparation. We were just finishing when the lady came in (she was a blind woman named Tabita, and a real old saint if ever there was one). In deference to her years and wisdom I asked her to lead in prayer and then I pronounced the benediction. But Tabita wasn't too concerned that the service was over ... she began all over again, and quoted from memory nearly all of John chapter 14, and then expounded at length, after which we prayed and sang and sang and prayed until 4:30. The women were greatly amused by a double service. I explained that we would carry on with our knitting and sewing next week, and one of them whispered: "Could you just tell me how many stitches to kill at the armhole, so that I can keep on going?"

Living Standards

The question of living standards preoccupied Essie, including the matter of wages for the various missionaries and Africans working with the Church of Central Africa, and she pioneered efforts in Kitwe to make gestures toward trying to bridge the gap. There was a wide disparity between white and black salaries, and even between Canadian and British missionary stipends. Phrases like this crop up in her letters to Mrs. Taylor: "I am sure you will realize the wisdom in my desire not to receive any increase in salary". It took her about three years to persuade colleagues on the Mindolo Station to let her move into a smaller grass-roofed house on the side of the station nearest the compound where African miners and their families stayed. Only when a new missionary family was coming from- Australia, and there was no house for them, did she finally get agreement to move. She named the house "Icibote" (prosperity), and when it was fixed up along with its little visitor's rondavel, African women found it easier to visit. And Europeans still visited in record numbers; she was hardly ever alone; national or international visitors alike enjoyed her hospitality. (In 1968-69 her sister Mildred spent some 10 months with her, which she greatly appreciated).
Op5

Towards Racial Harmony?

Another burning question for Essie was race relations. She saw that this was the key issue facing the church in Africa. Though clearly on the side of those discriminated against, she was not naive. In a clear piece of analysis, she wrote in a letter to Mrs. Taylor, February 1, 1956:

Wherever one goes one is confronted by hate, suspicion, fear and mistrust, misunderstanding and frustration on the pail of both African and European. The African who has served for years is no longer willing to be any man's slave, while the European is afraid to yield his position in case he be finally over-powered. Even in the church there is little concern over the lot of the African for most folk are in favour of African advancement only in so far as the African knows "his place" and keeps it. 

Some British missionaries, who were in charge of white congregations and of church districts on the Copperbelt, too often had difficulty distinguishing their Christian loyalties from their allegiance to British colonial traditions and policies. They appreciated the arrival of Canadians in 1954 as a boon to their short-staffed situation, but some began to resent what they saw as a too permissive or too-eager-for-change approach to race issues. Essie's impatience with, and anger against, discrimination were typical of others who would soon follow her from the UCC.

Many Africans welcomed Canadians like Essie, and those WMS appointees who followed her, Thelma Conway, Elsie Bunner, Shirley Johnson; as well as Eric and Marg Read, Charles and Barbara Catto, and other couples who came out under the Board of Overseas Missions. In her 1957 annual report to the WMS Essie quotes an African minister: "Will you thank your church in Canada for sending the missionaries with the New Testament faces, and ask if there are any more like them?" Essie's description of a visit of the moderator of the Church of Scotland, the famous George McLeod, to the Copperbelt in 1956, illustrates the tension the British missionaries were under:

At a youth rally ... during the question period an African asked why they were not made welcome in European churches. Dr. McLeod said he had been given to understand that they were, and there was such a spontaneous groan which quickly became a rumbling murmuring, one could not misinterpret the African resentment. Gordon (the British Missionary in charge) went to the greatest length to assure them they were welcome in Kitwe church, but my heart was cold, because I knew that he knew as well as I do, that its not true.... And then yesterday Gordon was telling me there had been repercussions because Africans had been going to the services, and he asked if we take any in, if they could enter the church separately and sit on their own. It seemed like such an artificial approach, I just couldn't ask a friend like Monica to part company at the door.

 Essie never tired in her mission to get the races to understand each other. She used her home as a place where they could meet, and European women who had never met Africans except as servants in their employ in their house or garden, came away with comments like, "But I never realized they were so fine." She records one small triumph in here 1957 report:

Last year the African women shared with the European Womens' Association in their annual church fete (bazaar). For months they sewed garments and what a fine display they had in their booth.... It was a new experience to have African women walking among the crowds, making their purchases from the various booths, and sharing in all the fun and excitement of so festive an occasion. Several European ladies resigned in protest, but those who remained have taken a more active interest in the life of an African congregation... have adopted an African evangelist and his family, and have assumed full responsibility for the payment of his salary.

She worked hard on sensitizing Africans to their own worth, and emphasized the call of God to love and not to hate. A story, also from 1956, illustrates her faith-based approach, as well as her skills as an educator. It comes from a class in Mindolo Girls' Secondary School, speaking of how Jesus' message of the love of God differed from the message of the Jewish leaders of the day. Essie wrote:

One of the girls exclaimed: "But it's just the same to-day! The Europeans hate the Africans." I replied that the statement was a bit sweeping.... that I agreed some Europeans did but that there were many who were eagerly concerned with finding better relationships in Africa. "What about the Afrikaaner?" I asked [the name of white settlers of Ductch extraction in South Africa, many of whom had come to Northern Rhodesia to work in the mines, many of which were owned by the South African company Anglo American]. Impulsively she answered, "We hate them!" and then she was taken aback as she realized what she had said. That led the way to a good discussion on how we must all begin by putting our own house in order first, and finally Vivian exclaimed: "But do you ever think there will come a time when people really love the black man?" "What do you yourself think?" I asked, and I shall long remember her face when she whispered: 'God give me faith'."

Essie continues in her letter:

Yes, Vivian, and may God give us all faith... a faith great enough to resist despair when one's friends are hurt and insulted and ill-treated for no other reason than the colour of their skins.... A faith which does not seek to shelter one's self from the conflict and the prejudices, but which gladly remains aware of the injustices and the bitterness of the insults and the pain, by trusting in God's ultimate purpose triumphing over all forces of greed and hatred.

Political Liberation

Another important issue for Essie was the related one of political independence for Africans. She had an early appreciation for Kenneth Kaunda and his leadership qualities. He was imprisoned at times, or banned to remote areas, and he and his colleagues had the task of organizing a whole nation with next to no budget. Much of his travel, especially in early days, was done on bicycle, and money was raised by selling second-hand clothing purchased earlier in urban areas. "Kaunda", she said, "has the interest of all races at heart", and she felt strongly the justice of the struggle for political rights.

African Leadership and Social Witness

Africans were beginning to exercise leadership in both the civil. and church spheres, and Essie welcomed it.

It is an exciting development to find that Africans are really assuming positions of responsibility, and there is an ever-growing hopefulness that there will soon be a strong indigenous church that will speak with a voice of Christian authority to Africans, to trade union leaders, and to the political aspirations of all. I do not think I exaggerate when I call it the Christian Miracle of Central Africa.

Essie expands on this theme in her report to the WMS for 1958,, and adds a prophetic comment on the implications for mission policy of a serious push for the "Africanisation" of the church.

In this situation one becomes increasingly aware of the real challenge facing the African Church, for if she fails to produce strong leadership, how will her voice be heard in the new emerging society? If there is still time... not time to save our old established Mission pattern - God forbid! - but' time to make the African Christian voice heard, surely the answer is to seek strong African leadership not only from around the world, to come as "missionaries" to give guidance to the desperate masses of the ... (country). 'Mis would mean that Missionary Societies would have to withdraw many of their own missionaries to make the necessary financial assistance available; it would probably mean that the "personal" appeal to missions would be lost in the home churches; but it would undoubtedly mean that the African Church would cease to feebly echo the European missionary and would speak with the voice of authority from within.

In fact that is what happened in mission policy and practice: by thel mid-60s the United Church of Zambia was created; by the end of the decade all significant leadership was in Zambian hands; by the 70s missionaries were coming from Jamaica, Western Samoa, and Guyana for example, and going to Canada, the United Kingdom and France among others; by the late 80s there were no more UCC staff working in Zambia,,, and only four in all of Africa; and the resources of the Division was devoted to the support of the indigenous church and its mission to its own society. Indeed a Zambian woman, Omega Bula, is now staffing one of the two part-time Africa desks in the Division of World Outreach, and covering Southern Africa for the Canadian church! Essie would have been pleased, or more properly, is pleased to know that!

The Mindolo Women's Training Centre (WTC)

In 1958 a dream of Essie's came true: a training centre for women leaders. It was based at Mindolo Ecumenical Centre, where major PanAfrican leadership training enterprises had been emerging since 1955, with significant help from the World Council of Churches and several ecumenical partners around the world, including the UCC. Essie's conviction was that "the need for this work is everywhere apparent, and it is recognized by everyone who is concerned with the development of the African people, that the training of the African woman is a fundamental issue."

The program was four months long and the subjects will include Bible Study, Christian leadership, Christian Education in the home, Christian Marriage, Case work, English, Gardening, and practical work in the African townships.... As I talk to the women about the school, I wonder who is more excited, the future pupils or the staff....

But in a letter to Mrs. Taylor she wrote:

To say I'm apprehensive is a mild understatement. It's the first time I have ever begun a new venture.

She wondered if the women would come? Would their husbands allow them? Who would look after the children for four months? Each woman was allowed to bring not more than one child - and the babies had to learn to fill up before class so they could stay in the creche; at home they would ride on mother's back and get a snack whenever they needed it!

Well, the men did allow their wives to come; in fact they were keen for the privilege. They themselves were coming into more advanced positions and wanted partners who could keep them company socially, intellectually, and entertain guests from all social classes. In a United Church Observer article in 1965 called "The School That Saves Marriages", Pat Clarke reported on a conversation with Essie in which she got some illustrations of contemporary African mores. Essie first described a couple who came to see her:

He was well-dressed and neatly groomed. He had studied in England and spoke English well. Now he was a government official. with a good income, a modem house and a social life among other educated people, both black and white. He wanted his wife to take her place by his side. But she was shy and uncertain. She had been to school only a few years and knew no English. While he studied abroad she went back to her village. When he came home, used to western ways of dress and housekeeping, he found her unable to cope with the new life in an Independent Zambia, baffled equally by the intricacies of electrical equipment and those of after-dinner conversation .... .. 1 don't want to put my wife away," the husband said, "but if she can't keep up, I'll have to send her back to her village and get another wife."

A Mr. J. Maphenduka of Chief Chiwala's area wrote to "the lady in charge". "How 1 wish I was one of the 30 husbands who lost their wives the first day of March 1958! We need leaders of women, the most backward part of the Bantu race!" Another said, "Most men stand on one foot and walk on one leg!, because their wives cannot support them in their new endeavours."

The women were determined to make good on their opportunity. One woman had her baby the day after she arrived. It was an extremely rough trip over bush roads, and Essie asked whether she wasn't afraid the baby would come on the way. "Yes, but 1 had to come; 1 didn't want you to give away my place." Another woman named Fostina was assigned to go and give a talk to women as part of her practical work; it was to be her first speech. She feared to go, but then thought of Moses, who said to God he didn't know how to speak, yet God sent him anyway. So she went and, on returning, said "Now, 1 am no longer afraid." Essie's courage and faith had rubbed off onto her. She was the same program member who later said, '17his is not our course, it's God's!" At the closing the class president said, "We are the pioneers, and the future of our school depends on the witness which we make when we return to our homes and communities."

Essie would start a project on a shoestring and expect God to provide. He (God was always "He" to Essie, as was the case with most of us in those days) always did, though in different ways. One way was through the loyal members of the WMS and their annual contributions to---the worV. and Essie would often appeal for funds to the WMS (or later to the Board of World Mission which absorbed the WMS and the Board of Overseas Mission in 1962). She was usually careful, however, to go through the proper channels - the local church leaders. Someone once asked her how her group could afford such an extensive training program, to which she replied: "We can't .... we just go ahead as though we can And somehow the funds always came. (One notable exception was her request for the UCC to fund a secondary school for girls, which
was rejected as being not only very expensive but against the current trend of the church handing over social services to the government.) As the program flourished, and there were enough applications to fill three of them, she wrote for more funds to hire national staff. The first course was run jointly with the Copper Mine Company, who provided three staff. For the next one Mindolo went it alone. Essie and Monica Makulu were co-principals. Essie herself handled Bible study, field work, teaching cooking and laundry, English, arithmetic, handwork classes, as well as being principal and business manager! She begged for money for rnore staff and got it. Mary Sikaneta, Harriet Mubanga, Omega Bula, and many other able leaders were recruited over the years, even when the WTC developed into a Pan-African training centre for regional and
national leaded only.

Harriet Mubanga needed training in designing clothes and nutrition; the UCC brought her to Canada for a year to study. $10,000 was needed for buildings to house the new program; the UCC provided most of it through the WMS.

Essie's eye for leadership talent in others, and the ability to encourage that talent and develop it, were remarkable. Not only here but later with the Girls' Brigade, she started an institution, and handed it over successfully to African leadership, and both are still running that way today.

Health

Furloughs home were to be one year long after five years on the field; Essie cut short her first furlough because the WTC was still in its infancy. By her second term she had begun to bum herself out with the pace she was setting, and after only six months in the field had to return to Yorkton. She was home for a year, completing the furlough she should have had, and building up her strength. Her father was also not well during that time, and she was looking after him. In March of 1962 she made a revealing comment to Floyd Honey in the Toronto office, who had Passed on a Board decision that she must have complete rest at least until July 1962: "T'he mere fact that I'm willing to rest makes me realizehow much I need it". By December of 1962 she was back in Rhodesia again, at the head of the WTC.

Zambia Is Born

The longed-for political moment came at one minute after midnight on October 24, 1964, and Essic was in Lusaka, the capital, along with 120,000 others! Here is how she described it:

We will long remember the silence at midnight, when the lights died and the great crowd held its breath as the Union Jack came down. Seconds later, a spotlight traced the unfolding flag of the Republic of Zambia as it climbed and spread to the night wind. Then the crowd went wild, and shouts of "Zambia, Kwacha, UNIP" drowned the military band playing the new national anthem ... Dr. Kaunda said, "The struggle was won with pain and suffering, but the wounds have healed without bitterness, and to-day I urge you to look forward, not back.... We must now concern ourselves with justice, with the banishment of ignorance and the ignominy of poverty, and with an end to racialism and tribalism."

The School on Wheels

By 1965 the WTC was well established; there were 600 applications for 40 places. A marriage preparation course for young women, and a refresher course for earlier graduates had been added to the program.

In 1966 a large covered five-ton truck was bought to launch a "School on Wheels". The training could now be taken into rural areas during the dry seasons, a much appreciated venture, especially by women in remote rural areas who could not afford to come to Mindolo. Finding and keeping staff was hard though, because the village women would often not accept training from a young or single woman, and married women with children could not get away for so long a time. Later another truck would be added, and the WTC became national in its coverage of Zambia, reaching to remote comers of the country and staying long enough to build up the women of the community.

An increasingly popular feature of the WTC program was the "husband's week" which came at the end of each course. Hilda Kaonga wrote about this aspect of Essie's program in 1994:

Most of her trainees heard, I am sure, who a woman is in the sight of God. She built many marriages and promoted Christian living in the homes of those who were in touch with her. I remember being invited to a husband's week where Titus and I were both requested to speak to both husbands and their wives. I can still recall how the enthusiastic Essie danced with joy that afternoon and how some partners hugged each other for the first time in their lives... and then they could go back home together at the close of the term very happy indeed.

The Girls' Brigade

By 1969, Mindolo, like all of Zambia, was pushing a policy of Zambianization of staff, a policy with which both Essie and the UCC agreed. She discussed with Garth Legge, who had been her World Mission Secretary since 1965, where she might serve. Both agreed that she should make a clean break with Mindolo to give new leadership a chance, and if no other placement could be found in Zambia or elsewhere she would return to Canada. She was now 58 years of age, but wanted if possible to remain until retirement with the church.

The Rev. Jonas Sinyangwe, Moderator of the Copperbelt Presbytery of the United Church of Zambia (UCZ) - successor to the Church of Central Africa for whom Essie had worked in the townships of Kitwe in her first placement - learned very late of her decision to leave Zambia. He pointed out that she had originally been assigned to this church, and had only been seconded to Mindolo for the special work of the WTC. He insisted that she return to the UCZ to do leadership training, and to establish a movement for girls, likely to be called the Girls' Brigade. Essie had often been involved in developing curriculum and doing leadership training for girls in Zambia, with names like "Seekers of the Light" and "the Light Brigade"!!

After her furlough in 1970 she returned with great enthusiasm, and began to hold national leaders' training weeks, local leaders' weekends, as well as weekends for the girls themselves. The response was tremendous. "Thanks be to God for this new appointment, and because I know He is guiding us in our planning, I'm confident this initial joy and enthusiasm will continue." It did!

She was thrilled when Hilda Kaonga was chosen to work with her, an extremely able leader, a teacher, and a deeply spiritual person with a great sense of humour. Hilda had acquired both social action and evangelism skills from Canadian missionaries serving her home parish of Chibuluma. Both skills were needed. Between her and Essie it was very much a case of a mutual admiration society. Hilda spoke of Essie as a very unique person with a unique ministry... she related so well with the people that eventually we could not see the different colours. We became colour blind.... It was her attitude that drew many to the Lord.... She was practically flowing daily with love and joy,... her radical sense of humour and kindness caused me to be drawn to her.... Her first commitment and love was to the Lord Jesus.... Essie was a trainer. She never did things alone but involved us.... Her life in Zambia was lived to prepare leaders.... People used to say "you cannot know mama Johnson and remain the same".

But where to get the money for Hilda's salary and expenses? From the UCC, of course, and a letter went off to Garth Legge in Toronto. Garth replied that the 1972 budget was "tighter than a drum" and, though he was very sympathetic to the cause of Zambian leadership, he held out no hope of finding the money Essie was asking for. So Essie organized the girls and their leaders to pay about 10 cents each per month toward Hilda's costs, and it was done. Essie was effusive in her thanks to Garth for having responded negatively to the request; and the girls and women said, "Now we really are the Girls' Brigade of Zambia." The "G.B" continues to this day, with perhaps 20,000 members, and hundreds of voluntary leaders, with only one or two paid staff, including Hilda.

Closing Days in Zambia

One lesson Essie had not learned well was to look after her own health. By 1973 she was having mysterious "freak bowel" attacks, and spending time in hospital and bed. She returned to Yorkton in August 1973 for 6 months. While there, an Essie Johnson Clinic was opened at Mindolo to honour her. Betty Kaunda, the President's wife and her .. former pupil, had started the fund that had been collected to build it. Her last spell of work lasted 16 months and by May 1975, she had really burned herself out for the people of Zambia. Hilda was ready to take over and Essie returned home for her last furlough before retiring.

The following account of her leaving was published in the Mindolo newsletter, and forwarded by Jason Mfula, the Director, to Roy Webster, General Secretary of the Division of World Outreach: over and Essie returned home for her last furlough before retiring.

The following account of her leaving was published in the Mindolo newsletter, and forwarded by Jason Mfula, the Director, to Roy Webster, General Secretary of the Division of World Outreach:

It was with the greatest regret that we said good-bye to Essie Johnson on 7th May. She had been repatriated on medical advice, suffering from nervous exhaustion caused by 20 years dedication to her work in Zambia .... and she behaved magnificently, standing on the Southdown runway singing, "How do I feel? I feel fine." - checking her own emotions in order to stay our tears. Essie we salute you.

In his covering letter Jason concluded, "It is the wish of all of us that our admiration and love for this splendid woman is recorded".

Garth Legge wrote in his citation to her at the Division of World Outreach Annual Meeting,

Through Essie's devotion to her task, her cheerfulness and optimism often under very difficult and discouraging circumstances and her deep Christian faith, the whole nation of Zambia has been influenced and led to a deeper understanding of God's will for the nation. President Kaunda, in one of his speeches to the nation paid tribute to her for what she had done for himself, his family and the nation.

Home Again

Essie settled back into life in Yorkton, and became active in St. Andrew's Church. She joined both women's groups, and about 1979 a third group started by young women was called the Essie Johnson Unit. And there are other such units in other UCW's in Canada! About 1977 she started her famous Bible study group where every lesson turned out to be "the best one yet", to quote Essie, ever the optimist. Fran McLaren, a member of the group until its end in 1991, remembers it this way: 

• Essie introduced us to her Lord; she showed us by her example and by her love, how to live life to the fullest, how to live each day with love. Her life is a challenge to all who knew her. Thank you Essie for showing us "the Way"... thank you Lord for giving us Essie, "the best one yet!!" (spoken at Essie,s funeral).

The children of Yorkton, now mostly grown, remember Essie Warmly as the promoter of UNICEF in their community; her love for children, her compassion for children of the world, especially the needy, expressing itself in Hallowe'cn campaigns, talks and slide shows in school, and concrete projects for assistance overseas.

In 1979 St. Andrew's College, Saskatoon, conferred an Honorary Doctor of Divinity on Essie. President Kaunda sent a warm congratulatory telegram, as did so many others to this deserving servant of Jesus Christ. In 1983, she was able to return to Zambia for the 25th anniversary celebrations of Mindolo Ecumenical Centre. President Kaunda graced the occasion, and he and Betty invited Essie to spend three days with them at State House in Lusaka.

Back home in Yorkton, Essie was scheduled to lead the devotion at a General UCW meeting on September 16th, 1991, and as one who was always at home with the high and the low, and with the highest and lowliest tasks, she was also scheduled to wash dishes at the chicken BBQ on October 4th. She didn't manage to do either; she went into hospital on September 16th, and died on the 21st.

Post-Script

In a January 29, 1957 letter to Mrs. Taylor, Essie wrote:

Sometimes one cannot help but wonder if Right will ever supplant Might, but just to be able to be pail of the struggle is a privilege which one cannot explain or merit, but for which one is joyously grateful.

With her insights and optimism, and her gift for hard work, can we not think of Essie still following events in Canada, in Zambia, around the globe, and indeed in heaven itself, and pronouncing every day, even there, as the Best One Yet! Still increasing in wisdom, stature, and in favour with God and the people, why may we not claim her as THE SAINT FROM YORKTON?

Reviews

CHRISTIANITY IN THE 21ST CENTURY REFLECTIONS ON THE CHALLENGES AHEAD
by Robert Wutbnow
New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. 251 pp. $36-25.

Robert Wuthnow, Director of the Center For the Study of American Religion at Princeton, has written an important book to help traditional "mainline" churches remain a significant cultural force. Coming out of a Baptist/Presbyterian background, Wuthnow views the Church as a moral community offering identity, guidance, and support to its members. He argues that while traditional churches are shrinking in numbers, they still retain substantial resources for influencing society and attracting new members. 'Tbe purpose of his book is to suggest how these can best be used. The result is an insightful look at the contemporary religious situation, identifying five major challenges facing traditional congregations: (a) providing a meaningful sense of community, (b) transmitting ethical values to others, (c) responding to the challenge of fundamentalism, (d) influencing the public realm, and (e) forming Christian identity among an overworking, materialistic middle class.

Wuthnow advises that churches refocus on fostering a local sense of community; transmit values by telling stories that encapsulate them; cease reacting to fundamentalism and become instead a counterculture to secularism; present themselves in the public sphere as -outsiders-~ and offer an identity capable of showing the significance of people's lives in a larger framework.

Wuthnow argues that in the U.S. in recent years, traditional liberal churches have let fundamentalists seize the initiative and set the agenda in the public realm. As long as traditional churches define themselves in opposition to fundamentalism, instead of presenting their own vision of Christianity, they actually perpetuate fundamentalism. Wuthnow's analysis of some sermons from traditional congregations that do this is devastating. His appraisal of fundamentalism is quite interesting, though he neglects one of its chief drawing cards, its intense celebration of the self. Also, by analyzing the American religious scene in tenns of a liberal/fundamentalist dichotomy, he leaves out an important third party, radical Christianity. While nowhere near equal in numbers, Christians committed to radical social change have a long history in North America and are present in both liberal and conservative denominations, exercising an important influence within the Church and in the public sphere. Perhaps in the future Wuthnow will analyze the prospects and challenges the contemporary situation holds for them.

Wuthnow writes about the religious situation in the U.S., and there are significant differences in the Canadian context. Roman Catholicism and traditional Protestant churches here have not to the same extent lost the initiative to fundamentalists in the public realm. Still, this is an important book for Canadian Christians, too.

People from all the Canadian denominations will find an insightful analysis of the social dynamics affecting Church life. Clergy will find insights here for every aspect of their work, from preaching and programming to pastoral care. Not all Wuthnow's ideas are new, but his sociological analysis shows why they are important. His book could help traditional churches respond to their present decline while maintaining their denominational integrity.

- Donald Schweitzer

ECCLESIASTICAL MINEFIELDS
by Ian W. Outerbridge, Q.C., with C. Gordon Ross & Joseph H. Kary Toronto: Or Emet Publishing, 1994. 215 pp.

The Basis of Union of the United Church of Canada is the constitution of the Church, much like the British North America Act is Canada's constitutional foundation. Like the Canadian constitution, the Basis of Union can be amended or expanded, but the process of doing so is surrounded by important checks to prevent hasty decisions.

In addition to the Basis of Union, various General Councils over the years have passed a number of by-laws. Like the statutory laws of the country, these laws are cumulative and are subject to repeal or amendment by any succeeding General Council.

Unlike the statutes of our country, however, which are put into appropriate words by people who are trained in the procedures, the Church by-laws are often drafted by people untutored in the art of preparing legislation. There seems to be insufficient attempt in drafting the by-laws today to employ the terminology of yesterday, so the same meaning can be conveyed. It is no wonder that the constitution and bylaws of the Church, collected together and published as The Manual, are often contradictory and confusing.

To make a bad situation worse, recent General Councils have produced "Guidelines", which presumably the authors believe should be followed. But if they are simply "guidelines", Church courts have the option either to follow or to ignore them.

Ecclesiastical Minefields is the product of three Ontario lawyers from a firm that has acted for members of the ordained ministry who have successfully used the civil justice system to question the fairness of proceedings in the Church courts. The basic message of the book is this: if the laws of the Church are confusing, and the procedures have been unfair in the past, things have become all the worse because of the Sexual Abuse Guidelines adopted by the General Council in 1992.

Many complaints dealt with in the Church courts often do not attract the attention of civil courts; that is, on questions of doctrine or membership, the civil courts are content to let religious bodies set their own rules, and enforce them according to their own procedures. But where property rights are implicated, the civil courts will become involved in order to ensure the basic fairness of the ecclesiastical courts. Where the process in the ecclesiastical court is judged to be unfair, the decisions will be set aside. Continued employment raises the issue of "property" rights. The process of dealing with complaints against ministerial staff which could lead to the termination of employment must meet the standards of fairness in terms of notification, the right to be represented, the right to know the complaint, the right to an unbiased tribunal, etc.

The authors of this book plod through sections of The Manual commenting on inconsistencies and ambiguities in the provisions relating to formal and informal hearings. To what end? Everyone recognizes that the bylaws of the Church need a consolidated rewriting. In the meantime, when disciplinary proceedings are undertaken which could result in loss of employment, lawyers will continue their attempts to enlist the civil courts in aid of their clients.

The major focus in the last part of the book is on the Sexual Abuse Guidelines. A strong statement is mounted that the whole recommended process is inconsistent with the procedures for formal hearings and therefore unconstitutional. The Guidelines are also attacked as being inherently biased in favour of the complainant, and therefore so flawed that decisions would be set aside in civil court. There may well be merit in these criticisms of the Guidelines. The simple response is that, being guidelines, they need not be followed. Church courts are capable Of doing what is fair, and can ignore the Guidelines in order to be fair.

Is the book worthy buying? Not really. It is dull stuff. Many of the pages are taken up by reprinting large sections of The Manual and the Guidlines. The commentary is repetitive and, from time to time, of questionable legal validity.

- Charles Huband

RECLAIMING FAITH: ESSAYS ON ORTHODOXY IN THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH AND THE BALTIMORE DECLARATION
Edited by Ephraim Radner and George Sumner Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993. 298 pp. $36.25, paper.

Had I not been asked to review this book I probably would have passed it by: the editors and other contributors were all unknown to me, with the exception of George Lindbeck who wrote the forword. And after all, what has the Episcopal Church and the Baltimore Declaration have to do with us as members of the United Church of Canada? But to have missed the book would have been to lose out on something of importance.

Far from exploring rarified topics of Anglicanism, it speaks to the current confusion at the heart of all the mainline churches: what is it that constitutes Christian identity and belief9 Is there such a thing as right belief? If so, to what extent is it found in historic expressions of the faith? Readers of Touchstone will be familiar with these questions.

The book consists of essays written in response to the Baltimore Declaration, a statement (thankfully included) issued in 1991 by six Episcopal priests. The Declaration challenges revisions of the faith where "in the name of inclusivity and pluralism we are presented with a new theological paradigm which rejects the doctrinal norms of the historic creeds and ecumenical councils and which seeks to relativize, if not abolish, the formative evangelical authority of the Holy Scriptures". It goes on in deliberate imitation of the Ban-nen Declaration (see the September, 1994 issue of Touchstone for information about Barmen) to present seven articles, each containing a scripture verse, an affirmation of faith, and a repudiation of error. The topics addressed include the Trinity as Father, Son and Holy Spirit; God's relationship to the world as immanent yet transcendent; the decisive revelation of God in Christ through whose atoning death and resurrection salvation by grace comes to all peoples; evangelism and the blessed status of the Jews; and the affirmation of the inspired unity of the Scriptural canon as containing all things necessary to salvation. The blunt manifesto style of the Declaration was not intended to be the final word, but the provocative opening to a vital discussion. The essays in this volume take up that discussion. It should be noted, however, that they are occasioned by the Declaration, and are not direct critiques or commentaries on it.

The contributors to the book are, in general, sympathetic with the concerns raised by the Declaration about the loss or continuity with the historic Christian faith, though it doesn't mean they are uncritical of some of its statements. They often find the Declaration overly zealous, but they nevcrtheless seek in their own ways to promote a "generous orthodoxy", steering a course between an immutable deposit of apostolic doctrine on the one hand and what might be described as recent attempts to recreate God in our own image on the other.

Several of the articles trace the development and role of doctrine within the Episcopal Church (Robert Pritchard, Ephraim Radner, Russel Reno). There are parallels here with our own denomination; while our histories are different, our shared ambivalence toward confessionalism is shaped by many of the same forces in our current consciousness, namely "ambiguity, relevance and inclusivity".

Some of the articles deal with the central questions underlying the Church's mission, such as "What is the saving significance of Jesus?" and "What does that mean for non-Christians?" (George Sumner). More specifically, Ellen Charry looks in a sensitive and thoughtful way at the issues raised by the Declaration regarding the evangelizing of Jews.

While the Baltimore Declaration is concerned about the new paradigm, one might well ask why there has been movement away from the old one. Has not some of the shift come about out of genuine concerns, especially on behalf of women? Can the old paradigm bear good news for our time? Charry, in a second article, takes up some feminist concerns about the Trinity, the Fatherhood of God, and the Atonement, pointing to resources within these doctrines themselves to address past abuses.

Other articles include a fascinating discussion on preaching and imagination (Ellen Davis); an article which points us beyond both a propositional use of scripture and a critically disinterested approach (Christopher Seitz); as well as an article proposing a future of ecumenical encounter based on koinonia (David Yeago). Also included is an afterword by Philip Turner which identifies some areas of this discussion which need further exploration.

Beyond the specific content of each essay, the book raises some important considerations. To lose touch with historic faith is to lose our identity as a specifically Christian community, and also the contribution of historic resources to address the issues of our present age. For mainline churches to give up the sense of continuity with historic faith is to abdicate that faith to the sectarians. The practical result of that would be to put at risk the kind of Christian community where a generous orthodoxy could flourish. This book is certainly worth a read, and could play an important role in furthering a discussion which is so vital to all our churches.

- David Hoffman

THE PREACHING LIFE
by Barbara Brown Taylor Boston: Cowley Publications, 1993. Paper, $16.95.

Several weeks ago a brown paper envelope arrived in the mail. When I opened it, it turned out to be a paperback called The Preaching Life. I looked for a note inside that would tell me who had sent the book. Finding nothing, I decided that some wellmeaning person thought I needed some tips on preaching. I read the first chapter the next day, and decided to keep going. A couple of days later I was looking for an address and, rummaging through the drawer where I keep paper for recycling, quite by chance I saw a white paper poking out of a brown envelope. It proved to be a note from Mac Watts asking me to review the book. Now, having read it, I conclude that perhaps Somebody did indeed think I needed some tips on preaching!

In the Introduction to the book, Fred Craddock says that Barbara Brown Taylor is a preacher and a teacher, but not first of all either a preacher or a teacher. "Barbara Brown Taylor is primarily a worshipper." It is in this that light shines from her book. There is an autobiographical section and then a series of sermons. It's clear that Taylor comes to the examination of her own life, to her encounter with the world, to her use of the Bible, and to the task of preaching, always in the same mode: one of awe and worship.

She has a gift for drawing on her own experience in describing the life of faith and preaching, without letting her ego get in the way. There are refreshing, even disconcerting flashes of honesty. She is a storyteller, gifted by faith and imagination. She begins with a Church in ruins, and draws on an incident of visiting a long-abandoned cathedral in Turkey. Putting that together with the chaotic religious landscape of the America of her growing up, she says, "God has given us good news in human form and has even given us the grace to proclaim it, but part of our terrible freedom is the freedom to lose our voices She thus begins with a realistic understanding of where we are, without the despair that can so easily be part of the understanding of the dark side of our times.

Taylor tells of her own call with searching honesty. Being clear that she was called to faith, and to ministry, from the very miscellaneous religion and values of her childhood and college years, she decided upon being an Episcopalian and upon seminary training. But she had no clarity about her call. She had five years of uncertainty, and short-term jobs and projects. "One midnight I asked God to tell me as plainly as possible what I was supposed to do. 'Anything that pleases you.' That is the answer that came into my sleepy head." She decided forthwith to seek ordination. She then traces the life of faith through vocation, imagination, Bible, worship and preaching. It is her use of imagination that sets her apart. But it is a cultivated imagination. She seeks to have the biblical scenes come to life, dwelling on the details, but going beyond them to what must have been. She takes into account the findings of biblical scholarship, without ever becoming pedantic about them. Thus the stories of the Bible simply live. And her unrestrained honesty makes the present live as well, so when she preaches we are both here and there, in the Bible lands and in North America at the end of the 20th Century.

Taylor's identity is clearly that of an Episcopal priest. She understands her vocation as priest and affirms the two great, and five lesser sacraments. The Eucharist is central in her worshipping life. We here might call her a "high Anglican". But in her exuberant faith, her use of Sacrament and Prayer Book are not precious or exclusive or starchy. While conscious that it is different from my own United Church tradition, I find myself attracted to the style and the content of her faith.

Taylor must have been ordained at some stage of the controversy in the Episcopal Church over the ordination of women, but it does not seem to be one her issues. Her issue is the life of faith in a world where chaos is common, where pain is real, and where we of the middle class live in a strange ambiguity to the deepest hurts of the world. One cannot imagine that Taylor is not conscious of the struggles of feminism, and one is quite aware that the book was written by a woman. But doctrinaire feminism seems as far removed from her as any kind of doctrinaire theology - and yet it's clear that she is an orthodox, even conventional Christian. What I found unconventional is her ability to get hold of the wonderful reversals in the biblical faith. and in the stories of Jesus, and bring thern to where we are. In a serm(n called "The Prodigal Father" she leaves us at the end standing, as most of us are, outside the party with the elder son. The Prodigal Father is also there, pleading with us to come in.

- Sidney Rowles

SEXUAL EQUALITY WRITINGS BY JOHN STUART MILL, HARRIET TAYLOR MILL, AND HELEN TAYLOR.
Edited by Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994. xxv + 409 pp. Paper $24.95.

This is a helpful collection of letters, articles, and speeches, formulated by John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) and/ or one of the two most influential women in his life. J.S. Mill was amongst the most radical and respected thinkers in England during the nineteenth century, and unique among his contemporaries in his insistence that women be accorded full political and social rights. Harriet Taylor Mill (1808-1858) was a long-standing friend, and later the wife, of J.S. Mill. Helen Taylor (1831-1907) was daughter to Harriet and became stepdaughter to Mill when, after being widowed, her mother married Mill. Both women shared residence and intellectual life w'th Mill, stimulated his thinking, and worked actively on their own projects. This book, which contains works written between 1811 and 188 1, acknowledges the contributions made by all three persons to the struggle for women's equality.

The editors' well-crafted introduction to the collection serves several purposes: it sets the historical context of the documents, and explains the personal relationship among the three authors whose works are cited; it traces the influences that led to Mill's unusually progressive attitude toward women, pointing to some of the reasons he held such radically different views on social issues than his contemporaries; finally, in relation to general nineteenth century perspectives on gender relations, it offers some insightful summary observations about the feminist perspective contained in the works presented.

The original works themselves are distributed within six major sections - marriage and divorce, domestic cruelty and injustice, social equality, political equality, the suffrage campaign, and the subjection of women. Of these divisions, the greatest diversity is found under the heading "Social Equality", which deals with issues ranging from contagious diseases to criticism, education, equality in Russia, and prostitution.

While the collection covers a wide cross-section of issues, the emphasis on sexual equality remains constant. All three writers shared the belief that people are socialized into gendered ways of thinking about the world. For the most part, they rejected the idea of biological essentialism - the notion that fundamental biological differences between women and men lead to inalterable and irreconcilable natures. (Though, as the editors note, there are contradictory hints of at least partial belief in women's moral superiority.) As indications of the unequal treatment of women, the writers pointed to violence against women, differences in the education of women and men as well as the legal rights accorded each gender group, and denial of women's suffrage. Furthermore, they agreed that such inequality negatively impacts the whole of society by sanctioning abuse, producing barbarity within certain economic classes, and preventing the full development of personhood. Rather than supposing that issues of gender and sexuality were individual concems, the three authors extended their analysis to the social sphere.

The original texts contained within this volume provide a wealth of detail to be considered if one is to understand the complexity of the positions supported, and the social setting in which they were devised. The work, as a whole or in segments, is suitable for any individual or group interested in exploring historical perspectives on gender equality. Having the works consolidated into a single volume, and therefore readily accessible, is also a boon for academics working in gender studies, philosophy, ethics, history, or political science.

Insofar as it presents a model for women and men to work together for the well-being of all persons in society - the editors worked as a team, as had Taylor and Mill more than a century before them - the volume makes a contribution. The work is also of value for the insights it provides into the deep roots of the struggle for just relations between women and men, for its ability to illustrate some of the gains women have made, and to point to arenas in which progress is still required.

Mill and Taylor do not address certain issues of contemporary relevance, such as the nature of the family and homosexuality. 'Mere is an implicit assumption in their writings that women (and not men) will choose domestic work as a primary vocation. And viewed through contemporary lenses, there are noticeable inconsistencies: although Mill, remarkably, supported the use of inclusive language a century before "sexist language" was recognized to be a substantive issue, his commitment to inclusivity was not always realized in his own writing.

Despite the editors' ardent attempts to acknowledge the contributions of Harriet and Helen, it remains difficult to obtain an accurate sense of the full contribution of these two women. In this collection, as in life, J.S. Mill's work overshadows that of the women with whom he so closely collaborated. Clearly the imbalance of power between men and women was not surmounted in their lifetime. However, that this book is able to reveal nineteenth century roots for a wide range of contemporary feminist themes, while simultaneously acknowledging the continuing need to progress toward greater sexual equality, is the mark of deft editorial hands.

- Karen Krug

CONTRIBUTORS

David Hoffman is minister of Lakeview United Church, Regina.

Charles Huband, a member of Westminster United Church, Winnipeg, is a justice on the Appeal Court of Manitoba.

James Kirkwood at the time of his retirement was on the Africa desk in the Division of World Outreach.

Karen Krug is a lecturer at Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax.

Margaret Prang, a member of West Point Grey United Church in Vancouver, was at the time of her retirement professor of Canadian history at the University of British Columbia.

Sidney Rowles is minister of Naramata Community Church, Naramata, B.C.

Donald Schweitzer is minister of Wesley United Church in Prince Albert.

MaC Watts, at the time of his retirement, was associate professor of historical and contemporary theology at the University

Phyllis Airhart is associate professor of church history at Emmanuel College, University of Toronto.

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