“Famous Unitarian Women; The First in a Series – Anna Garlin Spencer”
a sermon by Rev. Kimi Riegel
Delivered October 16, 2005 at Northwest Unitarian Universalist Church

Today I begin an event I would like to repeat annually. I will preach about one famous Unitarian or Universalist woman a year. It’s a not simple matter to be a woman minister and choose to speak on women. There are those who think it is stereotypical of woman to speak on woman. There are those who hear you speaking on women even when you’re not – as if every time you speak your very voice, because its female, means you are speaking about women.

There are those who think we hear enough about women. Still, even given the grain of truth to some of these statements, its good to know those who came before. It’s inspiring for everyone to hear about women’s lives. It is interesting to hear the questions that were asked decades and even centuries ago. Some we have answers to and some remain questions today. It is particularly fascinating to hear of those who may have been forgotten or those whose ideas were precursors to our current movements.

I chose to start this tradition with Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer, in part because my first contact with her was not a positive one and illustrates an interesting twist that can happen with history and modern movements.

While I was in seminary a group of woman ministers-to-be decided the walls of the seminary common room needed some women. The walls were decorated with the requisite oil paintings of long gone white men. As with most change of this kind the conversations were wrought with much perturbation. First there was the issue of what was wrong with the men who were there. Next came the long discussion of who among women deserved to be there. Perhaps the most painful were the discussions in which wives of famous ministers were found unworthy because they were not “real” ministers. It was a difficult time. I stayed out of much of it, being too involved in being a new mother.

But one day there was an “open” meeting scheduled after a class I had so I was considering attending. During class I happened to mention I was attending the meeting to a male classmate. He wanted to know whether he was invited. I said, “Sure. The meeting is open - come ahead.” He and I, carefree and unknowing, walked into the meeting. Before we had a chance to find a seat he was summarily asked to turn right around and walk out. After he left I was publicly taken to task for asking a man into the room. “Open” meant open to all women in the seminary. And it was clear in the rather heated discussion that followed I didn’t understand the nature of my oppression. I never quite recovered. The women in that meeting still bring a me chill when I see them at gatherings. When Anna Garlin Spencer’s picture was chosen to hang on the wall I took no part in the instillation celebration. I have often cringed at the very mention of her name as it brings back unpleasant memories.

A while back I bought a book on Unitarian and Universalist Women of Social Reform. I had forgotten it until recently when I was looking at books to get rid of. As I held the book in my hand, whose biography should be the place the book fell open to but Anna Garlin Spencer. I decided it was time to face my personal demons and come to know this woman of note. She is little known now, though in her time she was part of many influential organizations and was co-worker with many influential people. Her obituary “characterized her as ‘certainly’ one of the top 10 most influential women in America, and ‘possibly’ one of the 5 most influential.” Although she associated with such greats as Jane Adams and Susan B. Anthony the general public probably doesn’t recognize her name.

One colleague called Rev. Spencer a “weaver”, someone who is involved with many organizations and people, keeping them all connected. She was not one on the top tier of most organizations but instead kept the connections that are essential to progress.

It's important to note that like many folks from her time, 1851 – 1931, she considered herself a unitarian with a small ‘u’. “Very early in her twenties, Spencer left her Congregational … origins and associated herself with what was then called Radical Religion, or Free Religion -- those who saw themselves as not really part of the Christian Church any longer, but instead continuing the work of the Transcendentalists of an earlier generation. She became active with an independent lecture league on [free religious] topics, and eventually helped found Bell Street Chapel in Rhode Island.
During Anna's time, Bell Street Chapel was an independent congregation -in other words, philosophically unitarian and universalist, but not associated with either denomination. Anna said at one point, "I am too radical for the theists and too theistic for the radicals." She was the first minister of Bell Street Chapel and was, in this role, the first woman ordained to the ministry in the state of Rhode Island. I use the version of the Christmas story she wrote while at Bell Street at our Christmas Eve service. Her rendition of the story is more humanist than most and fits well with our modern idea of celebrating the life of a Jesus.

In 1903 she left Bell St to become the first woman associated leader of the New York Society for Ethical culture … a post she was to have for 6 years. At the same time she was associate director and staff lecturer of the New York School of (Civics and) Philanthropy, and concurrently a special lecturer on social services and education at the University of Wisconsin.

At age 52 she left all that and became the first woman professor at the Theological School in Meadville, Pennsylvania (later named Meadville Theological Seminary). She was the professor of sociology and ethics. Her most powerful and visible work in sociology occurred during her years at Meadville. There she organized students into social service and sponsored lectures with the most noted thinkers of the day. She was so successful, that the more conservative faculty and administration increasingly opposed her work and influence. In 1914, she proposed abolishing the undergraduate program and moving the entire institution to Chicago (where it is today) to coordinate the seminary’s work with that done at the University of Chicago. As one author succinctly notes: “Her plan worked so well that by March of 1917 the trustees decided that a full time professor of social ethics was not longer needed.” Spencer was fired. “Clearly,” says Rev. Foli, in a sermon delivered at Bell St., there may be more to the story, probably rooted in Anna Garlin Spencer’s successful reorganization of the institution, her charismatic effect on the students, and her notoriety as a pacifist during wartime.

Her interests in justice issues were ones we still consider important today. Rev. Jone Johnson writes, “Spencer was interested, from a very early age, in racial justice. Frederick Douglas, another Free Religious Association leader, spoke at Spencer's church in Rhode Island. At Meadville, she organized a course with outside speakers contrasting the approaches of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois. She was one of the founders of the NAACP.”
One of the books she edited is titled The Care of Dependent, Neglected and Wayward Children. She believed that society had a responsibility towards children. Her analysis of the structure and dynamics of the family was one of her most important contributions. She emphasized the family as the basic unit of the democratic society and saw it as the critical element in teaching democratic ideals. She believed a family that was not democratic in its dynamics could not fulfill its responsibilities to the country. She held the “fundamental belief in the worth and dignity of every human being and the equal right of each and all to personality.” No one was to be solely in the service of another or to have their value estimated along such lines; instead each person should seek perfection as an individual by making a contribution to the common life. According to Spencer, “the essence of democracy” began and was put to the test in the family unit.

A strong voice for all women’s issues, Rev. Spencer was active in the National American Women Suffrage Association, the Women’s Council of the USA, and the National Institute of Social Sciences. She opposed the Women’s Suffrage Association’s support of U.S. entry into World War I and challenged adoption of “The Star Spangled Banner” as the national anthem because of its warlike setting. After the war, Spencer was a charter member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and served at one time as its president. (Her vice president was Eleanor Roosevelt.)

Unlike other radicals of her time she was not ready to do away with the institution of marriage and the family. She agreed with many that the economic dependency of women often wrongly channeled their energy, aborted human growth and generally prevented creative and transcending work. But she sensed that in order to change the working and home conditions of women, a higher value had to be placed on both women and the family.

One could make a career of researching all the organizations she belonged to and the connections she made. But she was not uncritical of those organizations. As was evident in the reading this morning. She was one to see the need for not only individuals, but also organizations to be watchful of their growth and development.

In these last few minutes I would like to concentrate on the words of her address to the World’s Congress of Representative Women. With this address, as Rev. Boroush notes in Standing Before Us, Anna “struck a critical note concerning the relationships between the individual and society. She commended the development of women’s organizations as evidence of a woman’s growing awareness of her ‘right and duty to interpret her own nature and grow according to the law written in her own being.’ Yet she raised the question of whether it was time for women to join with men in organizations to continue the work of improving society together.” She says that a “great majority of….women need the separate drill by themselves for many years before they can take a balanced part in the associated effort of men and women” But she worries that the “gulf between women and …men will be as hurtful to both as older forms of sex separation” She suggests that in 1893 it is “high time that the most clear-eyed women should cease to spend themselves chiefly in women’s things and should press wider open the doors now ajar which lead to channels of high commerce of mind and heart transcending sex limits”

Over one hundred years ago Rev. Spencer was clear there is a place for woman and men to work separately and a place and time for them to work together and most importantly one should not neglect the work together. She holds up the Woman Suffrage Association as an example of a good organization that was inclusive yet focused and “in which men and women have always worked side by side.” It is an issue that remains with us today. As lawsuits are filed about women only or men only space, as professors are forced into retirement for their women only classes, we are no nearer answering the question then we were 100+ years ago. Perhaps the wisdom of Anna Garlin Spencer could help us today. We are wise, she implies, if we keep an eye on the gulf between the sexes. Of course I find all this highly ironic given my earlier being taken to task for not excluding men in a discussion seeking to honor the very woman who suggested we should work together. Perhaps as she suggests there is a place and time for both men’s organizations and women’s organizations and organizations that welcome both working side by side to better the world for us all.