A talk delivered by Rev Mia Smith (Hertford) on 21st October 2017 to commemorate the centenary of Constance Coltman (a Somervillian, and the first woman to be ordained in England)

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I want to begin by asking the question Dr Selbie aksed Constance Coltman – “Can a woman’s voice be heard at the back of church”. You can hear me. Good. Then I shall proceed.

We are here today to celebrate the life and ministry of a remarkable woman, and to mark one hundred years since she was ordained, the first woman to be ordained into the ministry of the Congregational Church.

As I have read about her life, and pondered the auspicious anniversary, I have to confess to the rising of one particular emotion. And that emotion is not a comfortable one. I found myself becoming angry. One hundred years? But two thousand years ago Jesus ordained a woman, Mary Magdelene, as an apostle¹ – one who is sent to tell – to go and tell others about the risen Christ, in fact, to go and tell the men.

Mary had lingered at the tomb when the men had gone. And the love she showed then was hugely rewarded. Jesus could have revealed himself first to a man. But John tells us he did not. He honoured a woman. A strange move in a patriarchy, perhaps, which makes it all the more remarkable. It must have taken huge courage for Mary to be obedient, to go and tell the disciples. She must have known that as a woman, her word would bear little weight. She must have feared being dismissed as deluded, or too emotional (any women here heard that one before?), expressing wishful thinking that Jesus was no longer dead. Yet she followed what her Lord had called her to do. Women ever since have faced ridicule and risk in following their calling to ministry. And today I acknowledge the debt that I and my fellow priests owe to women of courage like Coltman, who follow whatever the cost.

Yet the question remains – why are we not celebrating two thousand years of women’s ministry? In fact, why, in the 21^st century, why do we live in a world where women are the targets of so-called honour killings, sexual slavery, genital cutting, violence against women, unequal pay, being discussed only in terms of our clothes or appearance, women being the property of their husbands, fathers, or brothers, being denied the right to vote, to drive, to divorce, even when their lives are threatened, and, as this week’s hashtag me too trend has indicated, facing a constant stream of belittling comments, sexual harassment and assault.

As a lifelong pacifist, a supporter of women’s suffrage and women’s reproductive rights, I suspect this is a question Coltman herself might be asking of us.

Here’s what she wrote in the Mansfield College Magazine in 1924: “Protestantism in its spiritual essence enshrines a conception of the dignity and sacredness of the individual soul, born from its direct and immediate relation to God, which involves the complete spiritual emancipation of womankind. The right of private judgement, the freedom to discover and to declare the mind of God, which the Reformers claimed, could not be confined to one sex alone. Woman has a value altogether independent of her sexual functions, which is derived not from her relationship to man, as wife or mother, but from her relation to God. She is His child, equally dear to His Father’s heart, equally capable of understanding and declaring His will. She shares with man the right and duty of passing on to others any vision or revelation that may be granted to her.  …… If the Free Churches stand fast by the ministry of women they will explicate and strengthen their own position; they may also reveal to others the mind of Christ as concerns the place and function of women in His Church”.  

Our poems both encapsulate the reality of Constance’s calling. A call to ordained ministry is a call to service and sacrifice, not to a position of power or self-satisfaction.

Ministry alongside the bereaved and hurting would have been familiar to Coltman, as she faced the pain of death and loss, the injustice of women’s voices not being heard, and the hardships of those who lose their livelihood. As a woman entering into that world of pain, Coltman would have brought something which a man might not. God’s comfort being brought, woman to woman, during the darkest of times. What a gift she must have been in her parish. As our poem The Parson’s Job indicates, the value of holding someone’s pain and anger is hugely valuable, and speaking hope into that place of pain would have been her dark privilege.

In our Bible reading, we see Jesus similarly approaching the grieving Mary, coming alongside her with comfort, with hope, and with purpose. Jesus, you see, is a feminist.

Dorothy L Sayers, Somerville Alumna, said this:

Perhaps it is no wonder that the women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man – there never has been such another. A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them, never flattered or coaxed or patronised; who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them either as “The women, God help us!” or “The ladies, God bless them!”; who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unself-conscious. There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that borrows its pungency from female perversity; nobody could possibly guess from the words and deeds of Jesus that there was anything “funny” about woman’s nature.”¹

The women who followed him on earth blossomed in his presence. This is God’s purpose for all of us – whatever our gender – that we flourish. Today we have heard many examples of how Coltman flourished as a suffragist, ordained minister, and pacifist, and as a result, others could thrive too.

As we come to the end of our time together, please don’t go away simply feeling that you have celebrated a mere century of something God has intended all along. So I’d like to send you out with this challenge – Where do you feel challenged by Coltman’s legacy? How do you feel about the cause of feminism, about the active and costly pursuit of peace and reconciliation, about the struggle for equal rights? And what will you do about it?

Amen.