Today I met with a few other female ministers, and female para-churchworkers living and working in and around Dibley.  It is a very 'ad hoc' grouping, meeting when we happen to be able to get enough of us together and is slowly evolving into a tea-shop gathering (all very good Baptist stuff, coffee houses were where they met to work out their theology in the early days).  'Vicars in Knickers' (VIKs), also known as 'Girlies' is a place where we talk about church life, try not to whinge too much, and end up swapping funeral horror stories.  This week I managed to trump my own 'the coffin got stuck' with 'the hearse got stuck' (It did, yesterday, and I had to go the front of the crem chapel and ask if the owner of vehicle registration blah blah blah could possibly move it as it was causing an obstruction...).

Today we were pondering what it is that women bring into ministry that is 'good' and what is 'good' rather than bad about being a woman minister.  We commented that our approach to preaching is (possibly) different from that of men - though that may be as much about personalities and preferences in style (are those gendered?  Discuss!).  Then one of the VIKs started to share how a recent sermon had been very personal for her, as she reflected on Acts 21 and her desire to take her congregation onwards when people advised caution.  It was one of those odd moments when you know beyond a shadow of doubt that God is talking to you - and I now need to spend some time reflecting seriously not on what she had been preaching, but on what that passage is saying to me. 

Posting this in cyberspace is slightly risky, but I feel that if I post it, I might actually spend time working with what God is saying to me, rather than simply ploughing on regardless.

I'm not very good at being feminist about things.  In 15+ years in the world of science and industry it, by and large, didn't matter that I was female so long as I could do the job.  Granted, I sometimes got phone calls from people who didn't know me who assumed I was Mr Gorton's secretary and usually ended up pouring the tea at meetings (cos the blokes couldn't work the airpots) but it wasn't really an issue.

So when I started studying theology and came across feminist stuff I was wary, not least of the aggressive anti-maleness I encountered in some quarters.  By engaging with it, I learned a lot, and found I saw things I'd never before noticed.

This week we start the rehearsals for the GB Christmas show (oh joy!) and I have been looking over the script.  Once again the lead part is male - last year it was a little boy called Luke  (so I re-wrote it as a girl called Lucy) and this year a male donkey called Alfie (who will undergo gender reassigment to become Alice by tonight).  Now I know these things are written for mixed classes, and there need to be parts for both boys and girls, but why is it that the best parts always go to the boys?  Even in recpetion class there is a subtle message that 'this is a man's world' - usually perpetuated by female play writers - this seems to need to be challenged.  Or have I turned into a rampant feminist and just not noticed?

(Mind you at least I'm not faced with trying to persuade some unfortunate lad to play the part of Mary....)

We all know that in England the Particular Baptists triumphed (we do, trust me!).

We also all know that they were Calvinists, some of them so much so that it made them hyper, hyper-Calvinist that is.

And we all know that Spurgeon was a Particular Baptist.

So it has been interesting to read Underwood's take on developments among Victorian Baptists .  Here's a chunk from page 204...

More than once Spurgeon prayed "Lord, hasten to bring in Thine elect, and then elect some more."  He seems to have used this phrase often in conversation, and on his lips it was no mere badinage.  With its definite rejection of a limited atonement it would have horrified John Calvin.  Towards the end of his life, Spurgeon said to Archbishop Benson, "I'm a very bad Calvinist, quite a Calvinist - I look to the time when the elect will be all the world."

 

Hmm, Spurgeon tending to Arminianism or even Universalism?  Now there's a view you don't read every day.

It was cluster pulpit swap day today, so when the music stopped, we all rushed to find another church to preach in... or some such.  Some such actually.  It was all fixed up months ago when yours truly as resident organised person ("you did such a good job last time") worked out who hadn't previously preached where in this arrangement and how to split four ministers from three churches between five services over four churches without anyone preaching twice!  We did it (by missing one service, which one of my folk covered, at the only church that still has two services every week and which doesn't have a minister to offer into the shuffle).

The reality was that three out of four ministers ended up attending a servcie at which one of the others preached, but also had to preach an 'away' fixture. (Is this starting to sound like one of those logic puzzles... Revd Black didn't preach at Salem who use the RSV and BHB...).

My visit to D+2 went well enough in the end - though I was amused by one of the GB parents who clearly didn't grasp I'm a minister who told me I'd done well!  Intriguingly, both myself and the minister from D+6 (who came to us) found ourselves nervous about the away preaches - why was that?  Is it a good thing?  In some ways, yes, I think it is.

We had a great turn out this afternoon, and as I was pressing buttons for PowerPoint (they gave up on Impress) I got a very different view of procedings, as well as giving my usual button presser a week off.  For a while I found myself envying my colleague's adjective rich language, how she painted word pictures that really came alive, whilst I just deliver it pretty straight.  But only for a while.  Somewhere along the line, I have learned that my style is my style, and that there are plenty of people who can relate to it.  It's just enriching to get some variety - either way round.

Although three out of four ministers had to do a double shift today, we also had the blessing of taking in rather than only giving out.  It is always good to visit other fellowships, if only because they help you to see your own afresh.  For me, it felt a bit odd standing in a church on a Sunday rather than a school hall - rarely do I lead worship in church buildings any more.  For others I guess it was the size or age of congregation, the time or style of service that was unusual. 

Hopefully next time someone else will do the logic puzzle (which actually isn't that tricky) and next time the music stops we'll all once more have a novel experience of the wonderful diversity that is the Honey Nut Cluster we are.  (Did I tell you we serve clustered creams with our tea on these occasions....? sorry.)

Still thinking about A C Underwood's implied reader...

I have now read seven chapters of this book.  One thing that has struck me is how each chapter seems to be, roughly, here's a description of what happened, now here're are some examples of the fine Baptist fellows involved.  As I ended each chapter I've wondered why it's presented like this.  What kind of reader needs to hear how Mr X came of common stock, was largely uneducated but taught himself Hebrew, Latin and Greek by the time he was seven, married advantageously and lived happily ever after in the service of the Baptist cause?  Yes, I have merged several characters, but I keep getting the feeling that I'm reading the exploits of Biggles or Dan Dare or Roy Rogers (hence the post title, borrowed from the Elton John song 'Roy Rodgers').  I seem to recall reading somewhere recently that The Eagle and  Boy's Own were orginally published by some church or parachurch organisation, and included stories of Biblical heroes designed to inspire disicpleship in boys.  The little pen portraits and tales of spiritual daring-do feel as if it would take little to transform them into strip cartoons or radio adventure serials - especially the delightful bit I found on page 186 about William Gadsby, "How he came to baptize a sometime Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford, will be told in our next chapter.'  I can almost hear the radio announcer saying 'tune in again next week for the next exciting installment of William Gadsby special agent.'

Assuming that this is a fair (i.e. justified) reading of the book so far, what does it say about the implied reader?  It seems to that the reader is male, and young; it also seems to suggest that he perhaps needs heroes or role models.  Perhaps the privations of war mean that his education was cut short or in some measure inadequate; no matter there were plenty of similarly uneducated young men who were called into God's work.  Perhaps he has grown up with a diet of radio or film heroes, maybe he did read the exploits of Dan Dare of whoever; well here are real life heroes whose exploits are just as exciting.  Perhaps he wonders if he is really up to his calling; here are men fulfilling theirs.

In a totally mischivous moment, I imagined Underwood handing out to his students posters of the 75/76 Baptist worthies (here) to pin up on their bedroom walls rather than Hollywood pinups, so that these great and good men might become their heroes. 

Bonnie Tyler (yup, there's no limit to my lowbrow references today!) in one of her songs asks

Where have all the good men gone
And where are all the gods?
Where’s the street-wise Hercules
To fight the rising odds?

Isn’t there a white knight upon a fiery steed?
Late at night I toss and I turn and I dream of what I need

I need a hero
I'm holding out for at hero 'till the end of the night
He's gotta be strong
And he's gotta be fast
And he's gotta be fresh from the fight

 

OK, this is a girly song, about a hero to sweep her away on his white horse, but might it not be a question that haunts Underwood's readers?  Who are the heroes they can emulate as they enter the brave new world of post war Britain?

How much this is me going off on some total flight of fancy, I'm not sure.  I just sense that if I am to 'create' a mental picture of the implied reader, I need to get my head around why Underwood includes all these vignettes.  Maybe there is something that rings true in the Elton John song...

And Roy Rogers is riding tonight
Returning to our silver screens
Comic book characters never grow old
Evergreen heroes whose stories were told
Oh the great sequin cowboy who sings of the plains
Of roundups and rustlers and home on the range
Turn on the t.v., shut out the lights
Roy rogers is riding tonight

 

The characters described by Underwood are all long dead and largely forgotten - but the mystery is that as he describes them, they take on the 'comic book quality' of ageless heroes designed to inspire a fresh generation of young men to service in the Baptist cause.

No doubt some clever perosn has written a worthy tome on this in relation to the Bible and how we imagined the characters we read of.  And yes, it's going off at a tangent from what I'm meant to thinking about.  But it is interesting.

Oh, and just in case you ever wondered, Colman's mustard was founded by a Baptist (as was Chiver's jam (Hartley's was Methodist)) - important things to know next time you're in the supermarket!!