Tucker Prophetic Sisterhood

I actually have less to say about this book than its length would presume.   I am grateful, mostly for the introduction, with the rest of the book serving to fill in the gaps.

I suppose I had not considered how exactly we had transitioned from a male-dominated clergy to an evenly balanced clergy of both men and women. Theologically, this makes sense to read here as it a natural progression from Channing, through Emerson and to Parker that softens the domination of imperial religion and makes it more personal.  The need for ministers in areas no "civil" person would like to go (e.g.…not New England) created an opportunity for women amongst open-minded westerners who, experiencing life closer to the ground, saw in their daily lives the formality of culture and empire stripped away and were probably more open to things that would not have been considered appropriate in New England.  Also, they didn't have any money and the women were willing to work for less than the men, thus allowing them, along with the support of Jenkin Lloyd Jones (someone I think I need to learn more about) for them to prosper.

Part One is biographical and shows the interconnectedness of this sorority of missional ministers.

Part Two is about the notion of the church as extended family and the metaphorical role as female minister as an extension of motherhood. This chapter draws lines connecting people by relationship (marriage and "special relationships" and even through the changes in architecture started by Jones, but engaged by these newer, familial communities.

I read this part with particular interest as one of the things I (possibly romantically) envision about parish ministry is the localness of it.  I travel quite a bit for a living, which means that my relationships are not very local.  I look forward, if given the opportunity one day, to the localness of pastoral, prophetic and parish work.

Part Three detailed the conflict, which even the smallest dose of prescience could see coming.  Of course, it eventually got down to theology because otherwise they would have had to have admitted that it was all about money and authority, both of with Boston did not want to give up and the West had already assumed.

Part Four walks through the post-Parker, post-Christian feminist interpretation and exterpretation of theology that these women lived.  Steeped in social gospel, social justice, this is not a surprise and in my experience, our churches which hold a better balance between head, heart, mouth and hands are our stronger churches - strong than those who focus must on head and mouth.  Those churches have something to latch onto when times go rough, as it certainly did for these people.

Epilogue  This last chapter left me remembering how moved I was at GA one year to hear the plea for the ministerial retirement fund.  This is a fund set up to aid ministers who are having financial trouble in retirement.  As this women's league aged and through social engineering of Boston (read:  men) pushed them with an abrupt "thanks, we got it from here", I considered whether we, as a community treated them as fairly in real life as we would have in academic discourse.  To me, it was like when someone tries to open a jar, but can't and then the next person pops it open, it was a joint effort, but the victory goes to the opener.

It is not a testament to our lives to say that we have succeeded, because religion (despite the masculine admonition to the contrary) is not a business in which there are winners and losers, but religion is about the trying, not about the succeeding.  The only sure way to fail is to never try, but success is incumbent upon our own efforts not in a vacuum, but in an atmosphere in which multiple contributions to success, some small and unnamable hold up the attempt and give it a head start.  Absent that head start, failure after effort is frowned upon, thus diminishing the value of the effort itself.  This imposition of economic measurement on religion is one of our greatest failings and here laid bare for the world to witness.