Would Catherine Booth Have Been a Suffragette?

By Ingrid Barratt. Reprinted from 23 January 2016.

The audience burst into spontaneous applause as the credits rolled to the movie Suffragette and New Zealand’s name appeared first on the list of countries that had given women the vote. Since we’re not a whoopin’ and a hollerin’ culture, this hints at the depth of pride we take from being the first country in the world to give women the vote. It struck me at that moment: people want to be on the right side of history.

What if I was one of the naysayers of history, I thought. Sadly, as Christians, we often fall into this trap.

I did not grow up in a feminist household. In fact, I grew up in a conservative church that didn’t believe women should speak. Despite this, the suffragettes were my first real heroes. When I was 11, our (male) teacher gave all the girls in our class a novel about the British suffragettes to read (no, the boys didn’t have to read it, but it was the ’80s, so still an inspired move). I was totally riveted by the tales of women going on hunger strikes, chaining themselves to fences and, in one case, even dying for their cause. I always remembered the name of suffrage leader Emmeline Pankhurst … even as it faded against Princess Di and Madonna. You can teach a girl not to fight, but you can’t take the fight out of the girl. Even if you have been steeped in the art of submission, there is something so completely irresistible about a just cause that it makes you want to rise up like an avenging angel.

It’s so easy to look back a hundred years and say, ‘Yeah, of course I would have fought that cause.’ Yet there are many injustices happening right now, before our very eyes, and it begs the question: am I on the right side of history? Who needs an avenging angel at this particular moment in time?

The Salvation Army was founded in 1846, just a few years after a law was passed that banned women from voting in the UK. Both movements seem so compatible it’s strange to think that the powerhouse that was Catherine Booth would never have had the right to vote. It’s impossible to say whether Catherine would have been a suffragette. But equally impossible to think that she would not have been.

Both causes were deeply entrenched in social justice. The movie’s main character, Maud Watts, has worked in an East London laundry since she was seven. Her mother died from scalding water at the laundry, and Maud herself is covered in scars from the boiling water. The film hints at a relationship of abuse with her boss—one she has no power to stop, since all the shame and consequence is on her. At one point in the film, Maud saves a young girl from a similar fate.

It reminded me of the young Salvation Army’s campaign against under-age prostitutes and the dire conditions in match factories. In New Zealand, the links were even closer. Our beloved Kate Sheppard became the leader of the suffrage movement because she wanted the prohibition of alcohol.

One hundred and fifty years later we can rightly be proud of The Salvation Army’s place in history—its compassion for the alcoholic and drug addict, and its care for the poor. But just as in the Booths’ day, Christianity tends towards conservatism—and we have now become part of the ‘establishment’. We enjoy a status quo that can blind us to injustices happening before our very eyes. Are we still radical enough to stand up for what’s right, even at the risk of being ostracised by our peers?

Each one of us is tainted by the injustices that surround us—the destruction of our planet, the exclusion of the LGBTIQ community, the idolisation of the body beautiful, the denial of spirituality, the tendency to put money before people … to name a few. But we all have a call to justice within us—it is the Holy Spirit.

The heart of our Christian faith is that we bring redemption to broken places. The Salvation Army is still doing that so well in the areas of addiction and social services. But the justice that the Spirit is calling you towards is your own, and will not look like anyone else’s.

Don’t stifle that call to justice. Let us be able to say with Paul: ‘I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith’ (2 Timothy 4:7). Let us be on the right side of history!