Women at Canterbury

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6844, 23 February 1929, Page 13

Women at Canterbury

“ Why Not Petticoated Archbishop ? ” Asks Miss Maude Royden

IN an interview with Flora Merrill in an English paper, I Miss Maude Royden, the evangelist recAtly in New Zealand, discusses the problems of Christianit®and asks why a woman should not be Archbishop of Canerbury.

AM thankful to say that

the practice of putting the younger son into what is called the ‘family living’ is rapidly decreasing,” said

Miss Royden. “Largely, however, because the younger son shows an obstinate dislike very often to the idea of taking holy orders. Men must have some heart in their work. This applies not only to difference of class, but also to difference of sex? \Vhy shouldn’t a working man become Archbishop of Canterbury? Why shouldn’t a woman? It looks as though it would be a very long time before the established church even ordain women, let alone make them bishops, but I am afraid to prophesy any more. We obtained the vote with such extraordinary suddenness in England, which seemed so remote when I was young that now I never dare to abandon hope of anything.” “What is it that is standing in the way of the practice of Christian ideals,” the preacher was asked. “When it comes to the point, the practice of them is too difficult,” she answered. “It is rather hard for human nature. Gilbert R. Chesterton said, ‘lt is not true to say that Christianity has been tried and failed; Christianity has been tried and given up because it was too difficult’—and

I think that is true. We have to live on quite a different plane if we want to be Christians than we ordinarily do. The nearer that I got to an understanding of His teaching, the more I see how absolutely it would revolutionise all our standards of life if we adopted it. We read the parables aloud in church, but we don’t see at all how very different they are from our ideas.

“I suppose if some great spiritual leader should arise and make us

understand what our Lord felt about wealth, about self-righteousness, about intolerance, we should be simply staggered,” Miss Royden added. “Perhaps we should then begin to try to face about. But lam sure we would find it terribly difficult. I don’t suppose that anyone really understands— I am sure I don’t—exactly what our Lord meant us to do with our property, or what His attitude toward wealth really implies. It is quite clear that He enjoyed life, and had no aesthetic hatred of beautiful things or social functions like eating and drinking; but it also seems to me quite clear that his attitude toward them was not the same as ours. If I could find out what that difference is, I would be a better Christian than I am.

"For my own part, having been preached to, and not a preacher for forty years of my life, and a preacher only for eleven, I grew very restive myself. When I stepped into the pulpit of the City Temple and saw my congregation silent in rows before me, thinking I know not what, but very much wanted to know, I very soon asked permission to hold what Americans call an open forum at the close of the service. Since then ' I have rarely preached without giving the congregation the chance of asking questions afterward, and not only asking questions, but, if they wish it, of saying something on their own account, and helping us all with their spiritual experience. This is supposed to be a help to the congregation, and I think It is; but it is far more a help to the preacher, who is then obliged to realise the weak places in his own position, confused patches in his thinking, and the ignorance, in which he necessarily is of many kinds of life, well knowu to his congregation."