A
Problem Like Maria
Part 1 of a 2 part
series by JoAnn Shade
In their 1959 musical, The Sound of Music, Rogers and
Hammerstein story began in a convent with Maria, a young woman
who didn’t quite fit the mold of what a nun should be. As the
sisters talk about her, they break into song, with the key
line, “Oh, how do you solve a problem like Maria?”
As an officer of thirty-seven years (now retired), I’ve
watched as the Salvation Army has wrestled with our version of
the married woman “Maria problem.” Is there a joint covenant
or individual covenant? Is she a volunteer who is expected to
assist her husband in his religious and charitable work
(rendering little or no service or devoting full time [effort]
to this work (as defined in a letter written in 1957)? Is the
married woman officer (as is the case in the United States) a
non-compensated worker but also an officer in her own right?
And, once a couple has left the model of the shared leadership
of corps officership, how can Salvation Army decision-makers
appoint married women officers commensurate with their gifts
and abilities?
While there are a number of problems/opportunities surrounding
the married woman officer role, these comments (in this
article and a subsequent one in the next edition of JAC) will
address the question of our Maria problem. How can the
Salvation Army appropriately appoint its married women
officers when they are no longer in shared ministry with their
husbands on the corps level? Can/should appointments for
married women officers be given as much priority and prayer as
those for married men officers? Of course, the
gender-inclusive question would be, how can appointments for
both husband and wife be given the same priority, for a
cursory glance at the current practice in the Eastern
territory of the US indicates that the male officer is
predominantly in the more prominent position on the leadership
chart.
Questions like these are not new. First exposed to the
Salvation Army as a teen-ager. I liked what I saw in the
ministry of the married women officers in the corps, yet when
I worked at camp the summer after high school graduation, I
was surprised and a bit offended to recognize that one of the
headquarters officer women had the responsibility of
supervising the laundry for the summer. Was folding hundreds
of sheets the best use of her time and talents? She was an
ordained minister, an officer of many years experience, and
she was watching the dryer spin around. Oh, she gave good
counsel to the teen-age laundresses, but was that it? If I
chose officership, was that what I had to look forward to?
I have in my possession an article written for
The Officer in 1931
entitled “Opportunities and Responsibilities of Wives of
Headquarters Officers.” In it, Mrs. General Higgins recognizes
the same concern.
Unfortunately, her first conclusion (more than eighty years
ago) was that it was inevitable, given the structure in place
at the time.
Now this condition, which can hardly be avoided, produces
peculiar and delicate situations. In the years that have gone
it may be we held a front-rank place, and led and controlled
others; people looked to us, obeyed us and in most things we
had the privilege and responsibility of the last word . . .
Now everything is changed. To those of us who from the
beginning, in obedience to a clear and definite call, took up
our cross to follow the Master in becoming Officers, and
appreciated the high calling as the greatest honour of life,
the experience I have described carries with it a great trial.[1]
Her conclusion at that time was that those married women
officers needed to accept their assigned role, determining
that “God shall still guide and control,” and suggesting that
they look for opportunities to serve as the Home League
treasurer or “just as ordinary Soldiers.” “But if in all the
sweetness and gentleness of Christ we go to the Corps, showing
the spirit of ‘I am among you as one that serveth,’ I am sure
we shall find more open doors than we can enter, as well as an
increased measure of love, sympathy, and blessing in our own
spiritual life.”
I’m guessing that Catherine (Price) Higgins didn’t write this
article in a vacuum – nor, at that time, was she serving as
just an “ordinary soldier.” Even eighty years ago, it’s likely
that married women officers in a variety of positions were
finding those positions uncomfortable if not untenable.
Apparently their concerns were known to the wife of the
international leader (as she probably had experienced them
herself), and her response is preserved for history through
the written word.
Would it have been possible for her to work towards finding
some kind of solution to the appointment dilemma rather than
accepting it as a condition that could hardly be avoided? Was
the only answer to the dilemma found by presenting a spiritual
rationale to accept it as it stood? Perhaps even then some
women questioned the reasoning of her guidance, but it came
from the General’s wife so had to be accepted, didn’t it?
Is Higgins’ argument a theologically sound response in 2015?
Are certain sacrifices expected of people because they are
female and married? Or is that simply a rationalization that
excuses the gender-specific selection of leadership once there
is a wedding ring upon the finger of the woman? Elizabeth
Janeway describes it this way: “When our mythology instructs
any class of adults that it is their role to be gentler and
more virtuous or humbler than the powerful, it operates as a
form of social control…“[2]
What do we believe theologically about marriage and
officership? Do we believe, as determined through the eyes of
the Wesleyan quadrilateral – the primacy of the Scriptures,
the tradition as found through the two millennia history of
the Church (and, I’d suggest, in the one hundred fifty years
of Salvation Army history), reason (rational thinking and
sensible interpretation), and the experience of the Christian
in their personal and communal journey
[3]
in
Christ – that women are to be subservient to their husbands in
their work? If so, then the current appointment paradigm makes
sense.
Perhaps we, as a denomination, do believe that the woman is
the weaker vessel, incapable of serving in the same way that a
man does. If that truly is our theological position, backed up
by solid Biblical interpretation, then folding sheets may be
an acceptable assignment for a married woman officer – or
perhaps she should be freed to pursue other opportunities for
service outside the Army.
But . . . the Salvation Army has a
foundational commitment to gender equality based upon the
strongly-held beliefs of its founders. Christine Parkins
explains that while “Catherine Booth accepted that the Fall
had put women into subjection as a consequence of sin and that
submission to the male was God’s judgment upon her
disobedience,” Booth argued that “to leave it there is to
reject the good news of the gospel.”[i].
William was in agreement: “I insist on the equality of women
with men. Every officer and soldier should insist upon the
truth that woman is as important, as valuable, as capable and
as necessary to the progress and happiness of the world as a
man.”[4].
While
he may have had a theological acceptance of gender equality,
Booth’s position was also a pragmatic one, as soldiers of both
genders were needed for the salvation war. However, William
also understood the cultural dynamics, and refused his
daughter Evangeline permission to marry, as he recognized that
marriage for her would limit her leadership role in the
Salvation Army.
“But
she really doesn’t want to be in leadership. She really wants
to fold sheets all summer.” There may be a bit of truth in
what some say behind closed doors. There are issues of small
children and elderly parents, of marital dynamics and of low
expectations, and, as I’ve so happily discovered, grandmother
days. But there are many married women officers who are
willing to give “every passion, every skill, every dream” to
the work of the Kingdom as expressed through the Salvation
Army but find that the job assigned is folding sheets, even if
those sheets are figurative rather than literal.
So how to sort it out? We can’t really look to models
elsewhere in the history of the church or even in our
contemporary culture because the required dual clergy role has
no cultural equivalent that I’m aware of. The US military
offers no help unless we are willing to have separate
deployments, with one spouse in Iraq and the other in Texas.
So we are left to address this ‘issue’ ourselves through
prayer, theological considerations, and the hard work of
talking about it from the grassroots to the appointment
consultations. It is time for the Aksah’s of our day to get
down off our donkeys and tell those who hold the power what we
want and need (see Judges 1:12-15).
The nuns solved their problem of Maria by setting her free to
serve outside the convent so that she could “climb every
mountain.” I don’t believe that’s what the majority of married
Salvation Army women want. I’ll take a stab at what we do want
and how to get there in the next edition of JAC.
[1]
Catherine Price Higgins. The Officer. 1931.
[2]
Elizabeth Janeway, Powers of the Weak.
1980, 158-159)
[3]
Christine Parkin, “A Woman’s Place,” in
Catherine
Booth, Her Continuing Relevance, Clifford Kews,
ed., (St. Albans, VT: The Campfield Press, 1990)
11-12.
[4]
William Booth.
Messages to
Soldiers (London; The Salvation Army, 1908)
referenced on the Salvation Army international
website, www.salvationarmy.org
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