Women wanted: The story written in blood red letters on the horizon of the Great World WarDaggett, Mabel Potter
History
Women wanted: The story written in blood red letters on the horizon of the Great World War
Daggett, Mabel Potter
Women -- Employment; World War, 1914-1918 -- Women
Hurry, hurry, urges this the first profession in which the women’s
battalions have actually arrived as it hastily clears the way for
you. The New York Medical College and Hospital for Women, not to be
outdone by any institution now bidding for women’s favour, has rushed
up an “emergency” plant, a new $200,000 building. The London School of
Medicine has erected a thirty thousand pound addition and the public
appeal for the funds was signed by Premier Asquith himself. The nations
to-day are waiting for the women who shall come out from the colleges
equipped for medical service.
A PLACE IN EVERY PROFESSION
And after the most arduous profession of all, how about the others? If
a woman can be a doctor at a battle front, how long before she can be a
doctor of divinity? At the City Temple in London on a Sunday in March,
1917, a slender black robed figure preceded an aged clergyman up the
pulpit steps. With one hand resting on the cushioned Bible she stood
silhouetted against the black hanging at the back of the pulpit, her
face shining, illumined. By the time that the white surpliced choir had
ceased chanting “We have done those things that we ought not to have
done,” the ushers were hanging in the entrance corridor the great red
lettered signs “Full.”
The house was packed to the last seat in the gallery to hear Miss
Maude Royden, one of England’s leading suffragists, “preach.” This
church is nearly 300 years old and only once before, when Mrs. Booth
of the Salvation Army was granted the privilege, has a woman ever
spoken from its pulpit. Some six months since, Maude Royden has now
been appointed pulpit assistant at the City Temple, the first woman
in England to hold such a position. Dr. Fort Newton, the pastor, in
announcing the innovation, declared: “We want the woman point of view,
the woman insight and the woman counsel.” The City Temple is not an
Episcopalian Church. But even the established church has recently heard
an archbishop cautiously pronounce the opinion that “we may invite
our church women to a much larger share in the Christian service than
has been usual.” You see there are 2000 English clergymen enrolled
as chaplains at the front. Laywomen were last year permitted to make
public addresses in the National Mission of Repentance. They thus
ascended the chancel steps. A committee of bishops and scholars—and
one woman—has now been appointed to see how much farther women may be
permitted to go on the way to the pulpit itself. A few of the smaller
churches in America have a woman minister in charge. But from the
arduous duties of the highest ecclesiastical positions women in all
lands are still “protected.” High established places are of course the
last to yield. Theology continues to be the most closed profession.
But Maude Royden in the pulpit of the London City Temple, the highest
ecclesiastical place to which a woman anywhere in the world has yet
attained, has, we may say, captured an important trench.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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