WOMAN IN THE PULPIT

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 53, 4 March 1922, Page 9

WOMAN IN THE PULPIT

i; THE REV. CONSTANCE M. COLT- ■ ' • ' MAN. (FROM OUR OWN COMSBPONBIJT.) , LONDON, 3rd January. 'On New Year's Day tho Rev. Cfnstance Coltman and the Rev. Claud I£. Coltinan entered upon a conjugal cure of souls at a Congregational Chapel in Maida Vale. The choice is believed to be the first official selection of the kind in this country. Mrs. Coltma'n is a graduate in divinity, a distinction seldom sought by women. She met her hus- | band when both were students at a theological cpllege, and their marriage followed upon her ordination as an assistant minister. It is recorded that ahe expects " to find the desire among women to exercise the ministry of the Church becoming more articulate in the future/ because the care of souls is women's work, and "you cannot have social and political equality without spiritual equality."

Whereupon the Daily Telegraph comments: "The reasoning is hard to follow. . Equality does, not consist in doing the same thing. It is no part; of the doctrine of those Churches which do not admit women to the priesthood that women are spiritually the inferiors of men. There is no - Church in Christendom which would deny that women may do noble work for religion, but very many of the women who are doing it to-day will certainly lack any desire to ' exercise the ministry.' It may be that in years to come more women will preach, more women seek ordination, whether alone or in a conjugal pastorate. But we cannot think that the chapel in Maida Vale, whfere ' these twain • sit side by side, full sum'd in all their powers, will persuade many congregations, to go and do likewise." • The Key. Constance Coltman, writes to put her vjew before the public. She finds that the appointment of a woman to the ministry of a Christian Church seems to have caused not only some passing interest but also a little shocked surprise. "Yet," she"says, '.'those who remember the origin and history of the Church have no ground for such surprise. The message of Christmas, which, moves all hearts to peace and goodwill, is just thai. God gavj. Himself, to oar world through a woman's motherhood; yet on Sunday last in ten thousand pulpits men .were speaking of that. \oh birth, and not one woman's voice was hewd. H077 many women rat ,in t-he. pews while men ministered at altars in adoration, of that babe whose first ministries were received from a woman's hand ? . The first Christian message was the Gospel of the Resurrection, ' ?.nd women, were the first to preach it. Mary, apostle of apostles, was gent to tell the Disciples tho joyful .news or the empty tomb. She was but the first of a nobin line <>f women preachero. Whenever the iAdss of spiritual life have risen high in the Church women he.ye roceived and premised the prophetic gift alongside ."T'b^. ; . . .If ever iho time was opI'Ofkine for tho welcoming of woman .info the fullest service of the Church it is surely now, vrhev. siie has successfully asserted her right of entry into almost every.other sphere of,.human, life. It would cc a disasW not only io Troman, Ivat tJflo to ih<i Church, if the highest «pner», and the riipihfwt alone, were still defied her. For. just ai Christianity ieei!s the mind of the East as well as of t'cA West for its full interpretation, so it needs women ao well as msn for its perfect embodiment. Humanity is not ;nale or female, but both."