To allow the character of Christ to consume/fill/overtake our present deficiencies…what ought to be.

The 12^th century abbesses Hildegard of Bingen and Heloise of the Paraclete could not have been less alike. Hildegard, a virginal[1] visionary[2], as a “tithe”[3] child spent most of her life enclosed and unexposed to the world. Her rise to position in her cloistered community came gradually, growing into the “age of perfect strength”[4] by “forty-two years and seven months.”[5] Heloise, on the other hand, prior to her forced and hasty entrance into monastic life,[6] had lived as a well-educated woman of the world who “enjoyed a great reputation for her knowledge of letters.”[7] As the hungry lover (though reluctant wife[8]) of master dialectician Peter Abelard, her sexual passion, a close ally in her younger years would later become her chief adversary.[9] It was not wisdom cultivated through the years but rather additional adversity[10] that brought the young nun quickly to a position of authority. Yet, by comparing self-disclosing documents written by these female authorities we uncover a common bond. In the midst of great pain and suffering they capitulated, surrendering to the will of “another.”  And in each case, this surrender, instead of emphasizing their status as “poor little females,”[11] led to greater productivity and personal empowerment.

First, I will investigate the preface to Scivias:  “Declaration: these are true visions flowing from God” in order to show that Hildegard of Bingen, “distressed in mind and sense and endur[ing] great pain of the body,” was compelled by others to “set [her] hand to writing” the “admirable visions” she had been receiving since childhood.[12] According to Flanagan, after Hildegard made that painstaking decision to write “the things [she would] see and hear,”[13] her “written works not only surpassed those of most of her male contemporaries in the range of their subject matter (from natural history, medicine, and cosmology, to music, poetry, and theology), but also outshone them in visionary beauty and intellectual power.”[14] Secondly, I will look at a letter written by[15] Heloise to Peter Abelard, referred to by the translator as “Letter 6…Letter of Direction”[16] in which we discover both the “unbounded grief” [17] that Heloise continued to experience from the loss of her intimate relationship with Abelard, as well as the new “direction” her mind took toward “more worthy…subjects”[18] after her capitulation.

Hildegard: Declaration

The “Declaration” is the preface to a large work that took “ten years”[19] to complete. In this preamble Hildegard puts forth the reasons why she was “compelled” to begin to write out the “secret and admirable visions” that she had been receiving “from the age of five” which she had formally kept “in quiet silence.”[20] She tells of four separate influences: two of a compelling nature and two by those who bore “witness”[21] to her need to write down what the “Living Light”[22] was revealing to her.

The first compelling influence was, indeed, this “Living Light, Who illuminates the darkness”[23] and, addressing Hildegard, says: “O fragile human, ashes of ashes, and filth of filth! Say and write what you see and hear…and write them not by yourself or any other human being, but by the will of Him Who knows, sees and disposes all things in the secrets of His mysteries.”[24] This “voice from Heaven”[25] goes on to tell Hildegard that she must write a certain way because she is “timid in speaking, and simple in expounding, and untaught in writing.”[26] Dronke suggests that this is the “prophet” [Hildegard] seeing “herself as timid in her own right” and therefore basing the claim to speak as “Sapientia’s mouthpiece.”[27] Hildegard assures that she writes “not by the invention of my heart or that of any other person, but as by the secret mysteries of God I heard and received…in the heavenly places.”[28]

The second compelling influence was an unknown physical malady: “Laid low by the scourge of God, I fell upon a bed of sickness; then, compelled at last by many illnesses…I set my hand to writing.”[29] Even if, as Sacks has suggested, the illness suffered by Hildegard was caused by migraines, I concur with Boyce-Tillman[30] that this explanation for her sufferings does not negate the validity of the prophetic visions, nor undermine her compulsion to write them down.

The two “witnesses” that spurred Hildegard on were “a certain noble maiden of good conduct” and “that man whom I had secretly sought and found.”[31] The maiden was Richardis of Stade, Hildegard’s favorite nun and personal assistant. [32] Such was Hildegard’s love for the young nun that, when Richardis was offered the prestigious position of abbess at Bassum sometime after the writing of Scivias, Hildegard vehemently opposed the promotion including “pleas made to the highest authority in Christendom, the Pope himself.”[33] Failing to persuade the pontiff, Hildegard wrote directly to Richardis of her deep despair at losing her: “Why have you forsaken me like an orphan? I so loved the nobility of your character, your wisdom, your chastity, your spirit, and indeed every aspect of your life that many people have said to me: ‘What are you doing?’”[34]

“That man” is a reference to her secretary, Volmar of Disibodenberg, a monk that she “found” and “loved…knowing that he was a faithful man, working like herself.”[35] Volmar remained her secretary and friend until his death in 1173.[36] To Volmar, Hildegard was his “sweetest mother” even though they were close in age.[37]

Motivated by these four influences, Hildegard, having “reached the age of full maturity”[38] relinquished her “fear and timidity” to become the mouthpiece of one who “chose” her and by whom she was “miraculously stricken…and placed among great wonders, beyond the measure of the ancient people…[having] closed up the cracks in her heart that her mind may not exalt itself in pride and vainglory, but may feel fear and grief rather than joy and wantonness.”[39] Many years later Guibert of Gembloux would report that Hildegard had “gained such fame that multitudes flocked to her convent.”[40] After meeting her himself he argued that “no woman since the Virgin Mary” was gifted as she was, having “transcended female subjection by a lofty height…equal to the eminence, not just of any men, but of the very highest.”[41]

It is important to try and understand why Hildegard “refused to write for a long time through doubt and bad opinion and the diversity of human words.”[42] She herself says that it was not “stubbornness but in the exercise of humility.”[43] Thompson[44] argues that it was Hildegard’s own understanding of the priesthood, including the interpretation and expounding of scripture, as the sole right of the male which caused her to delay. In the “Declaration” Hildegard reveals that she “immediately…knew the meaning of the exposition of the Scriptures, namely the Psalter, the Gospel and the other catholic volumes of both the Old and the New Testaments…I had sensed in myself the power and mystery of secret and admirable visions from my childhood…”[45] This knowledge from “above” may have caused cognitive dissonance which the female prophet needed time to reconcile. Flanagan suggests that in addition to the issue of being a female, Hildegard may have been intimidated by her lack of the formal education[46] deemed necessary at the time to the writer’s craft. Also, due to the mid-life timing of Hildegard’s capitulation to write, Flanagan suggests that Hildegard’s mistress Jutta (who had died not long before Hildegard began writing) may have, herself, been an “inhibiting factor to Hildegard’s self-expression.”[47]

Heloise: Letter 6

While Hildegard attended to several influential voices in coming to terms with her calling to write, Heloise could hear but one: that of Peter Abelard. In a prior letter to Abelard Heloise laments:

At every stage of my life up to now, as God knows, I have feared to offend you rather than God, and tried to please you more than him. It was your command, not love of God, which made me take the veil. Look at the unhappy life I lead, pitiable beyond any other, if in this world I must endure so much in vain, with no hope of future reward.[48]

Addressing this letter to her “only love,”[49] the response from Abelard addressed simply “To the bride of Christ, from His servant”[50] must have been painful for Heloise. The first, curt line of the letter even more so: “The whole of your last letter is given up to a recital of your misery over the wrongs you suffer…”[51] After reading his detailed, logical explanations as to why she should not “presume to blame God for the manner of our entry into religion” but instead to “glorify him as you justly should,” Heloise’s despair must have deepened. Yet, Abelard – perhaps unwittingly- had also thrown her a lifeline:

The more dangerous such bitterness is to you in wearing out body and soul alike, the more pitiful it is and distressing to me. If you are anxious to please me in everything, as you claim…you must rid yourself of it. If it persists you can neither please me nor attain bliss with me.[52]

These interactions now bring us to Letter 6: Heloise’s reply. It is in this missive that we observe the capitulation and consequent change of direction in Heloise. Radice reflects on this “turning point of the correspondence” observing that “we are never to know if [Heloise] was able to achieve a change of heart and reorientation of herself towards God.”[53] Heloise begins her letter with her motivation to surrender to Abelard’s will: “I would not want to give you cause for finding me disobedient in anything, so I have set the bridle of your injunction on the words which issue from my unbounded grief…”[54] She continues that, while Abelard has not offered to “entirely remove” her grief, hope for a “remedy”[55] was hidden between the lines:

As one nail drives out another hammered in, a new thought expels an old, when the mind is intent on other things and forced to dismiss or interrupt its recollection of the past. But the more fully any thought occupies the mind and distracts it from other things, the more worthy should be the subject of such a thought and the more important it is where we direct our minds.

And so all we handmaids in Christ, who are your daughters in Christ, come as suppliants to demand of your paternal interest…[56]

And here is the brilliance of her reluctant, but resultant acquiescence! Rather than continuing to demand that Abelard be “singularly”[57] hers in the same way that she is devoted to him, or taking other drastic and self-absorbed measures (such as threatening suicide and her consequent eternal damnation) Heloise demands instead that he pay the paternal interest due both herself and all of the nuns at the Paraclete.

Heloise goes on to ask of Abelard two things: that he instruct them as to “how the order of nuns began” and that he “prescribe…a Rule which shall be suitable for women.”[58] This letter mark’s the beginning of many requests that she makes of Abelard, each one replete with intelligent and convincing arguments as to the practical merit of their being done by him. Mews suggests that Heloise “forced Abelard to extend his interest to topics to which he had not previously given much attention.”[59] In addition to the history of the nuns and the Rule for the Paraclete, Heloise convinced Abelard to write a new hymnal and even a new liturgy for the Paraclete that “was not only interesting for the range of influences it absorbed but also for its articulation of a distinct theological identity.”[60] Indeed, Heloise essentially “forced”[61] her brilliant husband/now father to “explore a new type of writing and to harness his poetic gifts [which he had formally used to seduce her through his “troubadourian” love songs[62]] to new ends.”[63]

Flanagan argues that Heloise, having the educational advantage over Hildegard should have been more prolific.[64] She also further suggests that “such a low opinion of her own worth [as a female] may partly explain why Heloise did not do more with her talents.”[65] Yet Hildegard, too, perceived herself as a “poor little female.”[66] But (and here is an important difference) Hildegard’s “style [of writing] clearly proclaims her prophetic self-awareness.”[67] Heloise, on the other hand, remained to her last days, the devoted wife of Peter Abelard.[68] None-the less, despite their differences (and their sisterhood of suffering), each of these women made the difficult decision to surrender their own predilections to advance the greater good of their communities.

Bingen, Hildegard of. Scivias. Translated by Mother Columba Hart and Jane Bishop. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1990.

Boyce-Tillman, June. “Hildegard of Bingen:A Woman of Our Time.” Feminist Theology 8, no. 25 (1999).

Burge, James. Heloise and Abelard. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2003.

Dronke, Peter. Women Writers of the Middle Ages : A Critical Study of Texts from Perpetua (¬203) to Marguerite Porete (¬1310). New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

Flanagan, S. Hildegard of Bingen, 1098-1179: A Visionary Life: Routledge, 1998.

Gilson, Etienne. Heloise and Abelard. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1963.

Hart, C, B Newman, and J Bishop. Scivias: Paulist Pr, 1990.

The Letters of Abelard and Heloise. Translated by Betty Radice and M.T. Clanchy. London: Penguin Group, 1974.

Maddocks, F. Hildegard of Bingen: The Woman of Her Age: Image, 2003.

Mews, CJ. Abelard and Heloise: Oxford University Press, USA, 2005.

Newman, Barbara. “Hildegard of Bingen: Visions and Validations.” Church History 54, no. 2 (1985).

———. Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard’s Theology of the Feminine. Berkley: University of California Press, 1998.

Thompson, Augustine. “Hildegard of Bingen on Gender and the Priesthood.” Church History (1999): 349-64.

[2] C Hart, B Newman, and J Bishop, Scivias (Paulist Pr, 1990).

[3] F Maddocks, Hildegard of Bingen: The Woman of Her Age (Image, 2003). 17

[4] S Flanagan, Hildegard of Bingen, 1098-1179: A Visionary Life (Routledge, 1998). 41

[5] Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, trans. Mother Columba Hart and Jane Bishop (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1990). 59

[6] After her uncle had her husband castrated…for one version of this story see James Burge, Heloise and Abelard (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2003). 132-135

[7] CJ Mews, Abelard and Heloise (Oxford University Press, USA, 2005). 59

[8] Etienne Gilson, Heloise and Abelard (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1963). 34

[9] The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, trans. Betty Radice and M.T. Clanchy (London: Penguin Group, 1974). 54 Heloise, in her first letter to Abelard says, “While I enjoyed with you the pleasures of the flesh, many were uncertain whether I was prompted by love or lust…” and; 68, in her second “The pleasures of lovers which we shared have been too sweet…wherever I turn they are always there before my eyes, bringing with them awakened longings and fantasies which will not even let me sleep.”

[10] Burge, Heloise and Abelard. Here I am referring to the expulsion of the nuns from Argenteuil by Suger of St.-Denis and their consequent placement at Abelard’s Oratory of the Paraclete, at which Heloise took up the responsibility of Abbess.

[11] Newman, Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard’s Theology of the Feminine. 2

[12] Bingen, Scivias. 60

[13] Ibid.

[14] Flanagan, Hildegard of Bingen, 1098-1179: A Visionary Life. xi

[15] Based on the argument presented (140-143) by Peter Dronke in Women Writers of the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1984), I choose to reject the assertion of Abelardian authorship for this letter as claimed by Benton and others.

[16] The Letters of Abelard and Heloise. Table of Contents.

[17] Ibid. 93

[18] Ibid.

[19] Hart, Newman, and Bishop, Scivias. 61

[20] Ibid. 59-60

[21] Ibid. 60

[22] Ibid. 60

[23] Ibid. 60

[24] Ibid. 59

[25] Ibid.

[26] Ibid.

[27] Peter Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages : A Critical Study of Texts from Perpetua (¬203) to Marguerite Porete (¬1310) (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984). 146

[28] Hart, Newman, and Bishop, Scivias. 61

[29] Bingen, Scivias. 60

[30] June Boyce-Tillman, “Hildegard of Bingen:A Woman of Our Time,” Feminist Theology 8, no. 25 (1999).

[31] Hart, Newman, and Bishop, Scivias. 60

[32] Maddocks, Hildegard of Bingen: The Woman of Her Age. 114

[33] Ibid. 108

[34] Ibid. 115

[35] Hart, Newman, and Bishop, Scivias. 60

[36] Maddocks, Hildegard of Bingen: The Woman of Her Age. 106 There was one brief interruption caused by Abbot Cuno who “initially refused to release him to join her” when she moved from Disibodenberg to Rupertsberg.

[37] Ibid.

[38] Hart, Newman, and Bishop, Scivias. 60

[39] Ibid.

[40] Barbara Newman, “Hildegard of Bingen: Visions and Validations,” Church History 54, no. 2 (1985).

[41] Ibid.

[42] Hart, Newman, and Bishop, Scivias. 60

[43] Ibid.

[44] Augustine Thompson, “Hildegard of Bingen on Gender and the Priesthood,” Church History (1999).

[45] Bingen, Scivias. 59

[46] Flanagan, Hildegard of Bingen, 1098-1179: A Visionary Life. In particular, Hildegard did not receive education in the “seven liberal arts, the basis of the medieval cuuriculum.” 45

[47] Ibid. 42

[48] The Letters of Abelard and Heloise. 69

[49] Ibid. 63

[50] Ibid. 72

[51] Ibid.

[52] Ibid. 79

[53] The Letters of Abelard and Heloise. xxxii

[54] Ibid. 93

[55] Ibid.

[56] The Letters of Abelard and Heloise.. 95

[57] Ibid.

[58] Ibid. 94

[59] Mews, Abelard and Heloise. 159

[60] Ibid. 165

[61] Ibid.

[62] The Letters of Abelard and Heloise. 52 Heloise, in her first letter to Abelard writes, “In you…there were two things especially, with which you could immediately win the heart of any woman- the gift of composing and the gift of singing.”

[63] Ibid.

[64] Flanagan, Hildegard of Bingen, 1098-1179: A Visionary Life. 48

[65] Ibid.

[66] Newman, Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard’s Theology of the Feminine. 27

[67] Ibid.

[68] The Letters of Abelard and Heloise. 224 Referencing her last extant letter requesting Abelard’s letter of absolution from Peter the Venerable

The October 14, 2009 cover story of Time magazine proclaimed that American women were “more powerful” but “less happy.”[1] If this is so, perhaps our aim has been too low. Perhaps we have been settling for corner offices and company cars, PhDs and personal parking spaces when we should be chomping at the bit for “real”[2] power. Janet Hagberg states that “personal power is the extent to which one is able to link the outer capacity for action (external power) with the inner capacity for reflection (internal power).”[3] Catching sight of a calling beyond credentials, Hagberg beckons us to journey toward becoming “Stage 6: Power by Gestalt”[4] women who “lead from the soul.”[5] According to Hagberg, Stage Six women are “a wonder to behold.”[6] How do we spot these wonder women? Hagberg says, “They have peace even in chaos, they are clear and undiluted, they are compassionate, they are courageous, and they listen to their calling.”[7] This description fit perfectly a 19^th century reformer that I have only recently had the pleasure of discovering: Helen Barrett Montgomery.

Helen Barrett Montgomery (1861-1934) was a college-educated social reformer, prolific author, and woman of many firsts in the world of education and missions. She held public positions of authority, including being the first female elected to the Rochester Board of Education[8] and the first female President of a major Protestant denomination.[9] Her fervent efforts toward “progressive Christianization of culture”[10] had a global impact.[11] Furthermore her husband, William Montgomery, was a man ahead of his time. Egalitarian in perspective, when asked if he would approve of and financially support his wife’s proposed “trip around the world” Mr. Montgomery replied, “When I married Helen Barrett I realized that she had ability and training to do what I could never do. I resolved, therefore, never to interfere with any call that might come to her. If Helen cares to go, I will help her in every possible way.”[12]

As we examine the life of Helen Barrett Montgomery with an eye to discovering evidence of each of Hagberg’s six stages of personal power, trail markers emerge – moments of decision and crisis in which Helen’s high “emotional intelligence”[13] and Spirit-led[14] decision-making drew her continually upward to the higher ground of “leading from the soul.”[15]

“Stage One: Powerlessness”

Even in her earliest childhood days of complete dependence, Helen “Nellie”[16] Barrett was being readied to rise to higher stages of power. According to Mobley, “From her parents, especially from her father, [Helen] gained an early appreciation for education…Helen never wanted to emulate her mother. That honor went to her father.” [17] In her autobiographical reflections on childhood, Helen wrote: “I loved both my parents with all the affection within me. But I am not quite sure that my mother’s authority [power] was completely successful.”[18] In these childhood reflections, Helen reveals her admiration for her father- “he entered the University of Rochester as a sophomore, taught during his junior year, and kept up classes at the same time…he…graduated with high standing…he was a principal of [several] academies…he [studied] at Rochester Theological Seminary…For thirteen years, until his death, he was [a] pastor.”[19] Of her mother, Helen remarks, “My mother was Emily B. Barrows of Trenton, New York” who was “obeyed because she belonged.”[20] Mobley indicates that Helen’s mother was “the epitome of the True Woman – self-sacrificial, subordinate, pious, pure, and domestic.”[21] This did not necessarily mean that Emily Barrett was unhappy. Indeed, Hagberg offers that “many married women are examples of powerless but happy people, secure and dependent, with their own interests and busy lives.”[22] But Helen did not aim to become a “True [powerless] Woman.”[23] She aspired to “New Womanhood.”[24]

It is worth underscoring the significance of the encouragement to pursue higher education for a female in the 19^th century. Reflecting in a book that would become the hottest selling book on missions in the history of the movement, Helen remarked: “Startling is the change which the [19^th] century has wrought in the ideas of the world in regard to women’s education.”[25] Startling indeed! Colleges for women were few and far between. According to Helen, “Mary Lyon [in 1837]…succeeded by sheer force of determination and superb initiative in founding Mount Holyoke [Female] Seminary.”[26] That women should receive an education equal to that of men was an issue hotly debated during Helen’s girlhood. One popular and prolific Christian writer of the time, J.G.Holland, wrote concerning “Women in the Colleges,” in his book Every Day Topics (1876):

The facts still remain, that men are not women, that women are not men, and that for their differing spheres of life and labor they need a widely different training. It certainly is not an object for society to make women more like men than they are, or in any way to divert them from a full and fine development of their womanhood.[27]

In this article Holland was not arguing that women be allowed an education, but rather what kind of education they should receive. The power to decide concerning their own higher education, along with the power to vote had yet to be secured for women.

Helen’s own alma mater, Wellesley College (founded in 1875), had opened its doors just five short years before Helen enrolled at the age of nineteen.[28] Her enrollment would not have been secured without the dedicated encouragement and assistance of her father: “I wanted to go to Wellesley, and in the spring of 1880 my father gave his consent. Before I was fifteen I had read the required Latin, but my preparation needed to be rounded out and my father saw to it himself.”[29] In this reflection, Helen articulates both of the “key personal qualities [which] will ultimately precipitate the…movement to Stage Two: self-esteem and skills.”[30] According to Hagberg, “People have to start feeling good about themselves, and they have to have saleable skills.”[31] As a consequence of her father’s active support and “sympathy,” Helen was able to move on to Stage Two: Power by Association.”[32]

“Stage Two: Power by Association”

Hagberg states that “people at Stage Two usually want to be like someone else. They frequently have a role model or at least identify themselves with other more powerful people.”[33] Helen Barrett’s role model was none other than the president of Wellesley College, Alice Freeman. In many ways, Alice Freeman provided Helen with a female version of the man she “adored:”[34] her father. In a letter home from college during her sophomore year Helen wrote, “Miss Freeman is progressive and is jogging things out of the ruts. She does so magnificently as President. She reminds me of Papa so much in her way of handling the girls…After one of her lectures we go out feeling that we are “moral agents” and not naughty children who have been scolded.”[35]

The role of Alice Freeman in Helen’s life was less that of teacher-administrator and more that of a Stage Two “mentor.”[36] In the fall of her sophomore year, Helen and two of her classmates were assigned to eat at the President’s table. In a letter home Helen wrote, “Three of us, hugging ourselves with joy, sat at Miss Freeman’s table…she was a brilliant talker, and those were the days. Never would there be such days again.”[37] Indeed, Alice Freeman was a brilliant talker. A contemporary[38] wrote of her: “The charm of her personality and the wisdom of her methods have won all hearts; her own enthusiasm is contagious and every student regards her as a personal sympathetic friend to whom she may go at all hours for council and comfort.”[39] In her letters home, Helen referred to her own “long talk[s]”[40] with Miss Freeman concerning future aspirations: “There are so many ways of doing good in the world and so much need in every direction that I feel bewildered in trying to decide in which way to turn my attention.”[41]

This sentiment reflects the “self-exploration” that Hagberg discusses of “Stage Twos.” “A lot of people at this stage,” Hagberg continues, “take the advice of other people rather than trust themselves.”[42] It is also during this stage that Helen Barrett began to appropriate the calling to “New Womanhood.”[43] This model embraced the coupled-calling of public AND private lives for women. Referred to as “domestic feminism”[44] by Mobley, Helen Barrett Montgomery would write in a 1903 tribute to Alice Freeman Palmer, “She was the ideal woman [who] made real to us the possibility of a rounded and symmetrical womanhood. To add to one’s attainment in scholarship, culture; to culture, social tact; to conjoin high enthusiasm with a sense of proportion; it was this that we believed should belong to the ideal of every college woman.”[45]

“The crisis that people experience in moving to Stage Three is one of confidence.”[46] Just moments before receiving the first of what would be many “symbols of personal power,”[47] Helen Barrett confidently delivered her “class-day speech.”[48] What should have been a moment of great personal pride became, instead, a shameful “misfortune:”

We appeared in full glory of cap and gown- the first time that any class [from Wellesley College] had soared to such academic heights. There was a tragedy. My speech was to have included a tribute to our beloved honorary member, President Freeman, but I forgot it. As soon as I sat down I realized from the horrified faces of my classmates that something had gone wrong, and I arose and delivered some kind of an impromptu. For years I could never think of this misfortune without a sick sense of shame.[49]

“Stage Three: Power by Symbols”

Though Helen Barrett showed a strong distaste for many of those things that would be perceived as symbols of power,[50] she clearly exhibited what Hagberg refers to as “Stage Three Leadership” which involves “guiding others by personal persuasion and charisma.”[51] Remarked one lifelong friend, “There was in Mrs. Montgomery an intimacy with others that won over her audiences…Her persuasiveness on the platform was in harmony with her habitual attitude towards people whom she met. She valued the individual.”[52] Though this “personal persuasiveness and charisma” would remain with Helen throughout her life, it would not take long for her to move into what Hagberg refers to as “True Leadership.”[53] According to Hagberg, “Moving to Stage Four is more of an event than it is an achievement… To move to Stage Four, women have to reconfirm themselves, their sense of the balance between the masculine and the feminine.”[54] This event for Helen Barrett came in the form of a marriage proposal. Mobley sums up this transformational event in this way:

At the time of their engagement, William Montgomery did not want to deter Helen from her dreams and goals. When he proposed marriage, he offered to lengthen their engagement five years so that Helen would have time to pursue her career.[55] Helen decided no delay was necessary. In William’s attitude toward her talent and ambition, she found the tension between domesticity and professionalism adequately resolved. William, she discovered, would help her and sympathize with her “in every high aspiration and unselfish purpose.’ She wrote, “I am growing more and more anxious that my life may be given without reserve to God’s service.” After he visited her in Philadelphia before their marriage, she wrote to her family, “he knelt down with me and we consecrated our lives to God’s work in the world, promising to make this work our first thought and asking for His strength to keep us unspotted from the world.”[56]

“Stage Four: Power by Reflection”

Helen was twenty-six years old when she became “Mrs. William Montgomery.”[57] Reflecting on her new estate, Helen wrote:

How wonderfully good God has been to me! First, he put my passionate, wayward little feet into the dearest home where wise and tender hands slowly guided me into a happy life. I can see how otherwise I might have been a most unhappy and unlovely woman. Then He gave me the very best educational advantages, letting me come into contact with great men and women. Then I have had such beautiful friends and so much kindness shown to me, and last of all God has led my heart where I shall be helped and sympathized with in every high aspiration and unselfish purpose. I’d like to preach a sermon on “The winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth and the time of the singing of birds is here.[58]

Yet, amidst this wedded bliss, Helen also left behind fragments of that “battle that goes on within [Stage] Fours.”[59] It is during this stage, asserts Hagberg, that “the true self is beginning to emerge:”[60]

I tell you this Christian faith of ours is all shopworn being handled over the counter and mussed and creased and discussed…My own soul is sick with theory – I’m getting so I don’t care how or when or where or whether the Pentateuch wrote Moses or Moses, the Pentateuch. There is good news, the gospel, the love of God, the life of Jesus, and here am I, sinful and selfish and blind as a bat- for the secret of the Lord is with them that fear him. I know enough things now to make me a saint if I lived ‘em. I’m going to live more and talk less.[61]

Hagberg also suggests that Stage “Fours are perceived as strong, nearly invulnerable people.”[62] An example of this behavior can be seen during this season in Helen’s life when, “in respectable Victorian fashion,”[63] she rose to the challenge of providing much-needed income[64] for the couple.

According to Hagberg, “the goal of moving to Stage Five is to let go of control, of having to know, of planning all the time.”[65] And- she adds for those wishing to move ahead in the stages-“prepare for a sense of loss.”[66]

“Stage Five: Power by Purpose”

Shortly after her wedding day, Helen Barrett Montgomery mused, “If I ever have children, I wonder if they will grow beyond and away from me. I’d want to be the one they’d soonest be with.”[67] Eight years later, despite a loving and affection marriage, Helen was still without the one ingredient necessary to that calling which she would later refer to as “the one absolutely essential profession.”[68] Helen had no children.

Hagberg, speaking of people in Stage Five: Power by Purpose states that, “Fives have a life purpose that extends beyond themselves. This has resulted from a deep, inner churning, a long, slow, or painful evolution in which the old rules have dropped away…these people have encountered themselves head on.”[69] It is difficult to believe that Helen Barrett Montgomery, a champion of the “profession of motherhood,” who viewed it as the “highest in the world” and referred to mothers as “brave soldiers of the kingdom who, turning their backs on fame and glory…find in a humble home their sphere of service,”[70] would choose, “like many female college graduates of her generation,”[71] to intentionally delay or avoid pregnancy and childbirth. The strong connection between marriage and children for Helen can be seen in her recommendation that “Perhaps not all women should marry. I am quite sure that those who plan to shift the burden of responsibility for the care of their children onto others should not marry.”[72] I would offer instead, that this “thorn”[73] of barrenness and its resultant “sense of loss,” may have been the very “process item”[74] used to draw her up to a “life purpose that extend[ed] beyond [herself.”[75] For it is during the early years of this stage that Helen Barrett Montgomery begins to bloom as a public figure and social reformer.[76] And, it is during this stage that she and her husband decide to reach out and adopt a five-year-old little girl, Edith.[77]

“Stage Six: Power by Gestalt”

Reflecting back to that Time magazine cover referenced earlier in this paper, I am reminded that, while in America today it may “no longer [be] a man’s world,”[78] the equality enjoyed by women in our 21^st century marketplace is still not necessarily offered in contemporary local Christian fellowships…or, for that matter, Christian homes. Johanna W.H. van Wijk-Bos[79] states that the Galatians 3:28 assertion that “there is no longer…male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus,”[80] “remains in many ways an unfulfilled call to freedom in the Christian household.”[81] According to Lorry Lutz, while equality for all may be the “non-traditional” interpretation of this Galatians text, most “traditional” Christians would believe that the verse implied “spiritual equality” only:[82]

Probably one of the saddest accounts of how the attitude of church leaders limited and affected women’s roles in ministry is the story of twentieth-century missions in North America…by 1929, 67 percent of all foreign missionaries from the United States were women and over forty women’s mission boards had been formed. Women recruited single missionaries, sent them out to work primarily with women and children, financed them and organized national prayer movements. The World Day of Prayer was founded by the Federation of Women’s Boards and Councils of Women for Home Missions in 1919.

But leaders of the mainline churches resisted this movement, opposing the appearance of women in public meetings, and their assumption of leadership roles in churches on the mission fields… R. Pierce Beaver writes, ‘The church has always been the bastion on male arrogance and power, and the men were most reluctant to share control and ministry with the women.’

The mainline mission boards began increasing pressure on the women’s organizations to merge. The chief spokesperson for the women’s missionary boards, Mrs. Helen Montgomery asked, ‘Are men ready for it – are they emancipated from the caste of sex so that they can work easily with women, unless they be the head and women clearly subordinate?[83]

By the time Helen Barrett Montgomery asked this probing question – a question answered by a resounding, “No!”[84]- she had published several books on missions,[85] published an original translation of the New Testament from Greek to English,[86] and had been granted “the degrees of Doctor of Laws by Denison University, Doctor of Humane Letters by Franklin College, and Doctor of Laws by Wellesley.”[87] When exactly did she move from being a Stage Five: Power by Purpose leader to a Stage Six: Power by Gestalt? I am not sure when. But evidence suggests that she did.

Hagberg describes a Stage Six as a “sage” whose “energy…comes from a source beyond themselves.”[88] At seventy-one years old, with rapidly declining health, Helen Barrett Montgomery at last laid down her enormous responsibilities with her resignation as chairman of the Committee on Christian Literature for Women and Children in Mission Fields.[89] Hagberg also suggests that “the main reason people won’t move to the most developed stage of personal power is usually a lack of faith.”[90] Faith is clearly evidenced in so much of what Helen Barrett Montgomery was about. Lucy Peabody, her global traveling companion and co-laborer in Christ remarked in a tribute to Helen:

She accepted leadership. Her profound conviction was that the Leader appointed for mankind is Jesus Christ. His leadership, so she believed, is most clearly expressed in the Bible…in the highest sense she was a woman of the world, God’s world, which today cannot be limited to the isolationist conception. God’s Son stressed the scope of the message to every nation, kindred, tribe, and tongue, and Helen accepted His Divine plan.[91]

This aspect of Helen also lines up well with Hagberg’s assertion that “Stage Six people…have a larger understanding of the world and the universe than most people.”[92]

Hagberg also remarks that “sixes are the kind of people whose advice rings in the back of our minds over the years.”[93] Less than two years after resigning her last appointment, Helen Barrett Montgomery passed from this world into her eternal rest. Six years later, the president of the Woman’s Baptist Foreign Mission Society at that time, Carolin H. Smith expressed in appreciation of Helen a “tribute of sincere affection to a never-to-be-forgotten leader and cherished friend…we wish that she were still with us, and are led by thought of her to Him Whose she was, Whom she served, with Whom her strong and gracious being is forever glorified.”[94]

Personal Relection

Reading about the life of Helen Barrett Montgomery was at the same time humbling and infuriating. She lived such a balanced life, like a surgeon skillfully cutting away the cancers of inequality. I admire her “persistent optimism.”[95] And the sheer volume of evidence left of her global efforts is inspiring. But, why hadn’t I heard of her before? I grew up in an American Baptist Church and I had never heard her name mentioned! As a woman seeking to move forward in my understanding and apprehension of “real power” in Christ, I have found female mentors few and far between. As an evangelical Christian woman who can “speak acceptably on the platform”[96] like Helen could, I have met with great resistance from many of my brothers and sisters in the Lord specifically because I am “a woman.” Yet, I take great encouragement from Helen’s example to walk boldly in proclaiming the gospel in my own “womanly” way. Like Helen, I am blessed in an egalitarian marriage. Therefore, I should rejoice in this freedom and persistently seek and accept opportunities to speak. And, like Helen, I truly want to “finish well.”[97] Her “vibrant relationship with God,” her “sense of destiny” and her “lasting legacy” are all qualities I want to emulate.[98]

I am grateful to have spent the last several months in the company of such a Godly Christian leader. I have learned so much about “true leadership”[99] and “real power”[100] from her example. And I am learning to wield that careful scalpel of discernment, being emboldened by her example to effectively and fervently “minister” the gospel. In the words of Helen Barrett Montgomery,

The Gospel is the most tremendous engine of democracy ever forged. It is destined to break into pieces all castes, privileges, and oppressions. Perhaps the last cast to be destroyed will be that of sex…there is a wider adumbration of the spirit of Christ than we dream. He being lifted up, even as he said, is drawing the whole world unto his perfect charity, justice, friendliness, democracy, to that redeemed humanity in which there shall be no male or female, bond nor free, but only free men and free women, whose lives, like His, are given them not to be ministered to, but to minister.[101]

Barna, George. 1997. Leaders on Leadership. Ventura, CA: Regal.

Bolton, Sarah K. 1888. Successful Women. Boston: Lothrop Publishing Company.

Cattan, Louise Armstrong. 1972. Lamps are for Lighting: The Story of Helen Barrett Montgomery and Lucy Waterbury. Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s.

Ellison, Edgar J. 1992. Home Grown Leaders. Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library.

Gibbs, Nancy. 2009. What Women Want Now. Time.

Goleman, Daniel. 1996. Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. London: Bloomsbury.

Hagberg, Janet O. 1994. Real Power: Stages of Personal Power in Organizations. Salem, WI: Sheffield Publishing.

Holland, J.G. 1876. Every Day Topics. New York: Scribner, Armstrong and Company.

Lutz, Lorry. 1997. Women as Risk-Takers for God. Grand Rapids: BakerBooks.

Mobley, Kendal P. 2009. Helen Barrett Montgomery: The Global Mission of Domestic Feminism. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press.

Montgomery, Helen Barrett. 1910. Western Women in Eastern Lands: An Outline Study of Fifty Years of Woman’s Work in Foreign Missions. New York: The MacMillan Company.

———. 1915. The King’s Highway. West Medford, MA: The Central Committee on the United Study of Foreign Missions.

———. 1924. The New Testament in Modern English. Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press.

———. 1940. Helen Barrett Montgomery: From Campus to World Citizenship. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company.

Wijk-Bos, Johanna W.H. van. 2005. Making Wise the Simple: the Torah in Christian Faith and Practice. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans.

[2] (Hagberg 1994) 149

[3] Ibid. xxi

[4] Ibid. 129

[5] Ibid. 227

[6] Ibid. 204

[7] (Hagberg 1994) 259

[8] (Montgomery 1940) 89

[9] (Mobley 2009) 2. Northern Baptist Conference.

[10] Ibid. 261

[11] (Montgomery 1915)

[12] (Cattan 1972) 66

[13] (Goleman 1996) For example, addressing the “master aptitude” of “emotional intelligence” (optimism) Goleman states that “Optimism, like hope, means having a strong expectation that, in general, things will turn out all right in life, despite setbacks and frustrations”(88). In a letter Helen wrote to her family during her freshman year at Wellesley, Helen already exhibits this perspective when she offers advice to her brother, “By the way, I have a little preachment for you. I have deduced from Anne’s [their sister] and Frankie’s letters that you have withdrawn yourself from their literary diet. Is it so? I think I can see your dear old face with its “this world is hollow expression” and hear you say as sometimes of old, ‘they don’t want me, they never listen to what I say.’…I do so hope that you will not get into your shell and shut yourself in. I can’t tell you how much I want my brother to be a man of power and to become this you must forget yourself. Just go into all the little enjoyments that come in your way and don’t feel for pins in the carpet of your life” (Montgomery 1940, 45).

[14] (Ellison 1992) 95

[15] (Hagberg 1994) 231

[16] (Montgomery 1940) 28

[17] (Mobley 2009) 11, 15.

[18] (Montgomery 1940) 22 Addition of [power] my own.

[19] Ibid. 28

[20] Ibid. 21-22

[21] (Mobley 2009) 15

[22] (Hagberg 1994) 3

[23] Note: Helen did grow to appreciate her mother more. In her reflections on her marriage to William Montgomery, she wrote, “As I grow older I enter more and more deeply into your [her mother’s] life, yours and papa’s. It is such a different love – the child’s and the woman’s. It was a very beautiful thought to me when I first noticed the character of my dear little mother and began to love her not merely because she was Mama but because Mama was lovely. So many years this conception of my mother as a person has been growing within me and every year I find it sweeter and better and dearer.” (Montgomery 1940) 73.

[24] (Mobley 2009) 71 (Note: This concept will be developed more fully in the section on Stage Two: Power by Association.)

[25] (Montgomery 1910) 6

[26] Ibid. 7

[27] (Holland 1876) 239-240

[28] (Montgomery 1940) 31

[29] Ibid.

[30] (Hagberg 1994) 11

[31] Ibid.

[32] (Hagberg 1994) 10. Personal note: In reflecting on my own childhood, I realized that, while I possessed the academic “skills,” I did not have the “self-esteem” necessary to advance my education after graduating from college. Though I applied and was accepted into five different schools, the fear that I would “waste” my father’s money was ever on my mind. After all, I was only a girl “waiting” for marriage and children. I did not end up pursuing an undergraduate degree until I had- through prayer and earnest encouragement on the part of friends, my children and my (second) husband- the self-esteem to believe I was worth the investment.

[33] (Hagberg 1994) 19

[34] (Montgomery 1940) 22

[35] Ibid. 56

[36] (Hagberg 1994) 21

[37] (Montgomery 1940) 34

[38] (Bolton 1888)

[39] Ibid. 231-232

[40] (Montgomery 1940) 62

[41] Ibid. 55

[42] (Hagberg 1994) 24-25

[43] (Mobley 2009) 47

[44] Ibid. 73

[45] Ibid. 41

[46] (Hagberg 1994) 35

[47] Ibid. 45

[48] (Montgomery 1940) 69

[49] Ibid.

[50] Ibid. For example, while working as a co-principal in Philadelphia, she made the following observations: “In the fashionable parts of Fairmount Park we met a stream of carriages which, without exaggeration, followed each other so closely as to be continuous. There were all shapes and styles and sizes…English-looking dog-carts with footmen perched up behind-elegant carriages with horses glittering with silver, coachmen and footmen resplendent in livery and people gorgeous in costume…they seemed absurd to me…the people in these carriages- the majestic mamas with large arms and very tight sleeves, the elegant young ladies so gracefully posed, the grave looking men whose money had purchased all this folly and whose expression seemed to say that this riding out was a duty they owed their families- with hardly an exception these people seemed to be board and unhappy.” 70-71

[51] (Hagberg 1994) 160

[52] (Montgomery 1940) 98-99

[53] (Hagberg 1994) 149

[54] Ibid. 66

[55](Montgomery 1940) Montgomery wrote, “My chosen career was teaching, and there was an idea that I might return to Wellesley as a member of the faculty. Trustees of two women’s colleges were considering my name for presidencies about to fall vacant, and I found that I could speak acceptably on the platform. My parents were anxious that I should proceed along these lines…[they] were in great doubt whether our contemplated marriage would be a success.” 72

[56] (Mobley 2009) 59

[57] Ibid. 60

[58] (Montgomery 1940) 76

[59] (Hagberg 1994) 77

[60] Ibid.

[61] (Montgomery 1940) 78

[62] (Hagberg 1994) 79

[63] (Mobley 2009) 60

[64] Ibid. When William Montgomery’s Rochester, NY factory was destroyed by fire, Helen gladly offered her services as a private tutor and lecturer to the community, earning as much as $5/week for tutoring and up to $75 for a series of six lectures.

[65] (Hagberg 1994) 96

[66] Ibid.

[67] (Montgomery 1940) 77

[68] (Mobley 2009) 1

[69] (Hagberg 1994) 103

[70] (Mobley 2009) 2

[71] Ibid. 61

[72] Ibid.

[73] NRSV 2 Cor 12:7-10

[74] (Lesson One Lecture on Clinton’s Leadership Emergence Theory)

[75] (Hagberg 1994) 103

[76] (Mobley 2009) 77 For example, in 1893 Helen was chosen as the first president of the Rochester Women’s Educational Industrial Union; in 1896, Helen was elected president of the New York State Federation of Women’s Clubs; and, in 1899, Helen was elected to the Rochester School Board, becoming the first woman ever to be elected to public office in the city.

[77] Ibid. 61

[78] (Gibbs 2009)

[79] (Wijk-Bos 2005)

[80] NRSV

[81] Ibid. 299

[82] (Lutz 1997)

[83] (Lutz 1997) 35. (italics mine) Lutz’s response to Mrs. Montgomery’s question is “Evidently not,” going on to give examples and outcomes that “took all the initiative and power from the women.” “By 1920,” continues Lutz, “all but a handful of the women’s mission boards had disappeared.”

[84] Ibid.

[85] In addition to Western Women in Eastern Lands (1910) and The King’s Highway (1915), others of her missions works included: Christus Redemptor (1906), Empire of the East (1909), Following the Sunrise (1913), The Bible and Missions (1920), and Prayer and Missions (1924).

[86] (Montgomery 1924)

[87] (Montgomery 1940) frontpiece

[88] (Hagberg 1994) 129

[89] (Mobley 2009) 259

[90] (Hagberg 1994) 126

[91] (Montgomery 1940) 134-135

[92] (Hagberg 1994) 143

[93] Ibid. 142

[94] (Montgomery 1940) 139

[95] (Mobley 2009) 264

[96] (Montgomery 1940) 72

[97] (Barna 1997) 152-153

[98] Ibid.

[99] (Hagberg 1994) 149

[100] Ibid.

[101] (Mobley 2009) 3

Helen Barrett Montgomery (1861-1934) was a college-educated social reformer, prolific author, and woman of many firsts in the world of education and missions. She held public positions of authority, including being the first female elected to the Rochester Board of Education[1] and the first female President of a major Protestant denomination.[2] Her fervent efforts toward “progressive Christianization of culture”[3] had a global impact.[4] Yet, to Mrs. Montgomery the “absolutely essential profession,” the one which she deemed the “highest in the world” was modeled by those who “turning their backs on fame and glory” found “in a humble home their sphere of service” as mothers.[5]

Where did this “both and” thinking come from? During this Victorian era, hard battle lines were being drawn between the “professional”[6] woman and the “Queen of the home.”[7] While fledgling women’s colleges like Bryn Mawr strongly dissuaded students from choosing “suffocating marriage,”[8] biologists, like Herbert Spencer, were arguing that “in the highest societies” women are “restricted to domestic duties and rearing children.”[9] Women, these biologists asserted, who sought a “public” life, including “work” and the “vote” were “moving society…a step backwards toward savagery.”[10] Yet Helen Barrett Montgomery seemed to follow a third path, one that included both high regard for the domestic sphere and motherhood coupled with a compulsion toward the public life of a social reformer. It is the purpose of this paper to show that she discovered her “New Woman”[11] calling, to a great measure, while under the tutelage of her “favorite role model,”[12] Wellesley College President Alice E. Freeman.

Reflecting on her years as a student at Wellesley, Helen wrote:

During the Fall term of my second year, three of us, hugging ourselves with joy, sat at Miss Freeman’s table, and I can still see her, merry brown eyes smiling, softly curling brown hair waving from her brow, gay laughter bubbling through the conversation. She was a brilliant talker, and those were the days. Never would there be such days again.[13]

Indeed, Alice Freeman was a brilliant talker. A contemporary[14] wrote of her: “The charm of her personality and the wisdom of her methods have won all hearts; her own enthusiasm is contagious and every student regards her as a personal sympathetic friend to whom she may go at all hours for council and comfort.”[15] In her letters home, Helen referred to her own “long talk(s)”[16] with Miss Freeman concerning future aspirations: “There are so many ways of doing good in the world and so much need in every direction that I feel bewildered in trying to decide in which way to turn my attention.”[17]

In her reflections on her childhood,[18] Helen often referred to the admirable undertakings of her father, first in his years as a college student, then as a school principal and ultimately as the senior pastor of Lake Avenue Baptist Church.[19] “The way I like to think of you… my dear Papa, is standing out among the flowers utterly lost in thought, but with such a warm and appreciative smile on your face that the buds start out and every plant blossoms just because it is so sure of your sympathy.”[20] Of her mother she had less to say: “I loved both my parents with all the affection within me. But I am not quite sure that my mother’s authority was completely successful. She was obeyed because she belonged.”[21] In Alice Freeman, co-ed Helen discovered a “new” model for womanhood:

Miss Freeman is progressive and is jogging things out of the ruts. She does so magnificently as President. She reminds me of Papa so much in her way of handling the girls. She can be severe, but in her chapel talks she never uses sarcasm and never comes at us with the meat ax, but she makes the girls feel just as she wants them to feel, and if she but suggests anything most of the girls are eager to do just as she wishes. After one of her lectures we go out feeling that we are “moral agents” and not naughty children who have been scolded.[22]

But exactly how did Miss Freeman want the Wellesley girls to “feel?”

Edson and Saunders observe that, “although a forerunner in educational advancements for women, [Alice Freeman] Palmer reflected conventional gender doctrines of her times, believing that women’s character was ‘so delicately organized as to be fitted peculiarly for the graces and domesticities of life.’”[23] Mobley concurs: “Alice Freeman regarded motherhood as ‘the most sacred work of women, and dearest to them, of every class” adding that Freeman “believed college education could make women better wives and mothers.”[24]

It has been argued[25] that “as early as 1887” Wellesley faculty were teaching a radical “Symmetrical Womanhood,” which held that a woman could be “healthy, emotionally well-balanced, educated, and able to be happy without marriage.”[26] This same year (1887) Columbia University conferred the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters on Wellesley President Alice Freeman[27] and Harvard professor George Herbert Palmer proposed marriage.[28] When Freeman tendered her resignation from the “public service” of the presidency of the college in exchange for the “private fulfillment” of marriage, some colleagues were unkind, remarking, “Especially base is it for one who had proved her power to win an unwilling public to look with favor on the education of women now to snatch at the selfish seclusion of home, and so confirm the popular fancy that a woman will drop the weightiest charge if enticed with a bit of sentiment.”[29] On December 23, 1887, after a six month delay due to the difficulty the Wellesley Trustees experienced in replacing her,[30] Alice Freeman and George Herbert Palmer married. September of this same year (1887) Wellesley graduate (Class of 1884) Helen Barrett Montgomery- with offers of women’s college presidencies and a faculty position at Wellesley on the table- also stepped into the “other” role of the New Woman, turning down various job offers for one of marriage.[31] Years later, in a 1903 tribute to Alice Freeman Palmer for Wellesley Magazine, Helen Barrett Montgomery would connect the two concepts of sphere and symmetry remarking that Palmer was “the ideal woman [who] made real to us the possibility of a rounded and symmetrical womanhood. To add to one’s attainment in scholarship, culture; to culture, social tact; to conjoin high enthusiasm with a sense of proportion; it was this that we believed should belong to the ideal of every college woman.”[32]

Prolific is so many other ways, neither Alice Freeman Palmer nor Helen Barrett Montgomery bore any children of their own. To fill this void, Alice took in strays here and there. Reflecting on this nurturing aspect of his wife, George Palmer wrote,

Naturally, having created so beautiful a home, [Alice] used it liberally for entertainment… Three children of friends were with us for more than a year each, and almost every meal had also its interesting guest…college students…young women whose opening fortunes required an assisting hand…poor people, whose only reason for coming was hopelessness…and Harvard[33] students…already counting themselves her children, and easily getting their slender claims acknowledged…[34]

William and Helen Montgomery, after eight years of marriage, adopted a five-year-old daughter named Edith. Edith, herself, would, in 1913, become a graduate of Wellesley College. [35] Believing children to be a mother’s “first responsibility and greatest legacy,”[36] Montgomery reflected in a 1922,

Perhaps not all women should marry. I am quite sure that those who plan to shift the burden of responsibility for the care of their children onto others should not marry. It is a harder thing to build a good child than to paint a picture or write a book or carve a statue. It requires absolute devotion of self; but the task is worthwhile. A group of beautiful, good, and clever children is the best work that a woman can contribute to her own generation.[37]

The role of Alice Freeman Palmer as a model of New Womanhood to Helen Barrett Montgomery did not stop the year they each entered into marriage. Though the public struggle for suffrage as well as full political and financial emancipation of women were battles yet to be won, Palmer and Montgomery each married generous and supportive men. Palmer, in his biography of his beloved, departed wife reported, “Both she and I were members of the Equal Suffrage Association.”[38] In discussing her decision to resign from Wellesley, Palmer defends, “I had no idea of closing her career. Those who protested against this were quite right. Talents so obviously meant for mankind no one had a right to seize for himself.”[39] And, when the Central Committee on the United Study of Missions needed another book, William Montgomery was called upon to give his consent (and financial provision) for his wife (and bestselling author[40]) to take a mission trip around the world. Mr. Montgomery responded, “When I married Helen Barrett I realized that she had ability and training to do what I could never do. I resolved, therefore, never to interfere with any call that might come to her. If Helen cares to go, I will help her in every possible way.”[41] This spousal empowerment flowed through Alice Freeman Palmer and Helen Barrett Montgomery and out into the waiting world of social reform.[42]

Certainly there were other powerful women influencing the life choices of Helen Barrett Montgomery. Yet, in many instances, it was the impression that she had made on them that inspired their relationships. For example, when the formidable feminine forces of Susan B. Anthony, Dr. Sarah R. Adamson and Mrs. Mary T.L. Gannett joined to create the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union of Rochester, NY in 1893, it was Helen Barrett Montgomery whom they called upon to serve as its first president.[43] Helen had been so influential in motivating the women of Rochester toward an “educated motherhood”[44] through her lectures and leadership in various social clubs and Sunday school classes, her selection was manifest.[45]

She followed no woman into some of the “firsts” in her life. Nor did she model her behavior after men. While running for what would become the first female-occupied seat on the Rochester Board of Education Helen defended her feminine perspective: “I am set to represent the mothers and homes of Rochester. We ask not that women be dragged into politics; but that the schools be lifted out of politics…I do not represent women who wish to do the work of men. I wish to do a woman’s work in a woman’s way.”[46] Though some have argued that Helen modeled her social efforts on the “social gospel” championed by her fellow Rochesterite, Walter Rauschenbusch, both Mobley[47] and Warner[48] suggest otherwise. In fact, Rauschenbusch chaired a committee against many of the reforms supported by Montgomery while she served on the Rochester Board of Education.[49] Helen Barrett Montgomery would go on to employ the phrase “women’s work for women”[50] to advance other causes as well. And Helen’s election to the presidency of the Northern Baptist Convention in 1921, another female first, required no campaigning on her part. Rather, it was a response to Helen’s extraordinary success in another traditionally masculine role: fund-raising.[51]

Though Helen Barrett Montgomery out-published[52] and out-lectured[53] her superior, the impetus for Helen’s successful balancing act as a “New Woman” can be traced back to her “lovely…and gifted…Miss Freeman.”[54] In writing Helen’s recommendation letter after graduation, Alice Freeman wrote, “Her reputation for blameless character and fine scholarship and Christian womanliness is so long and well established here that I recommend her without reserve…her instructors in Wellesley will congratulate that school which secures her services and watch her work with constant interest and support.”[55] In a tribute to Helen written by a classmate we read:

Helen Barrett – like Alice Freeman Palmer, who was the inspiring leader of the Wellesley of our day- made it seem easy to do things, and with her nothing appeared to be beyond the reach of possibility. Her gift of enthusiastic imagination, her confidence in herself and in the strength of right, her faith in God and calm dependence upon His help, gave her courage to undertake tasks of great magnitude and the power to carry them to successful completion.[56]

Similarly, Mr. Palmer spoke these words in tribute to his dear wife, Alice: “In the public interest or in helping those she loved she never faltered. No difficulty, risk, or misconception stopped her serene advance…wherever there was human need she turned without measuring powers or preferences.”[57]

And in the “domestic” personalities of their New Womanhood, both women drew deep contentment. Of Helen, Lucy Waterbury- close friend and co-activist in women’s mission efforts- wrote that “no one really knew Helen Barrett Montgomery…who did not know her in her home…as daughter, sister, wife, daughter-in-law, mother, and in later years as grandmother, she was at her best.”[58] Alice Freeman Palmer left her own impression of wedded bliss when she penned this verse on what would be her “Last Anniversary:”[59]

Fifteen years ago, dear,

Fifteen years to-day!

Let us walk our fields together

While we may.

Shall we find the roses, dear,

Still beside the Run,

As that morning when beside them

Life begun?

Will the brook sing on, dear,

The same song to-night

As that evening when our darkness

Turned to light?

One third of my life, dear,

Since I heard you call,

And put by my work and, rising,

Gave you all.

Lay your hand in mine, dear,

Let me hear you say

I have made you gladder always

Since that day!

Bolton, Sarah K. 1888. Successful Women. Boston: Lothrop Publishing Company.

Cattan, Louise Armstrong. 1972. Lamps are for Lighting: The Story of Helen Barrett Montgomery and Lucy Waterbury. Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s.

Holland, J.G. 1876. Every Day Topics. New York: Scribner, Armstrong and Company.

Mobley, Kendal P. 2009. Helen Barrett Montgomery: The Global Mission of Domestic Feminism. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press.

Montgomery, Helen Barrett. 1940. Helen Barrett Montgomery: From Campus to World Citizenship. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company.

Montgomery, Helen Barrett. 1915. The King’s Highway. West Medford, MA: The Central Committee on the United Study of Foreign Missions.

Montgomery, Helen Barrett. 1910. Western Women in Eastern Lands: An Outline Study of Fifty Years of Woman’s Work in Foreign Missions. New York: The MacMillan Company.

Palmer, Alice Freeman. 1915. A Marriage Cycle. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Palmer, George Herbert. 1908. The Life of Alice Freeman Palmer. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Russett, Cynthia Eagle. 1989. Sexual Science: The Victorian Construction of Womanhood. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Seller, Maxine Schwartz, ed. 1994. Women educators in the United States: 1820-1993: a bio-bibliographic sourcebook. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Warner, Laceye. 2004. Kingdom Witness and Helen Barrett Montgomery’s Biblical Theology. Review and Expositor 101 (Summer):22.

[2] Mobley, Kendal P. 2009. Helen Barrett Montgomery: The Global Mission of Domestic Feminism. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press. 2

[3] Ibid. 261

[4] Montgomery, Helen Barrett. 1915. The King’s Highway. West Medford, MA: The Central Committee on the United Study of Foreign Missions. Preface

[5] (Mobley 2009) 1-2

[6] (Mobley 2009) 40

[7] Holland, J.G. 1876. Every Day Topics. New York: Scribner, Armstrong and Company. 254

[8] (Mobley 2009) 40

[9] Russett, Cynthia Eagle. 1989. Sexual Science: The Victorian Construction of Womanhood. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 148

[10] (Russett 1989) 149

[11] (Mobley 2009) 41

[12] Ibid. 34

[13] (Montgomery 1940) 34

[14] Bolton, Sarah K. 1888. Successful Women. Boston: Lothrop Publishing Company.

[15] Ibid. 231-232

[16] (Montgomery 1940) 62

[17] Ibid. 55

[18] Ibid. 19-71

[19] Ibid. 20-28

[20] (Montgomery 1940) 52-53

[21] (Montgomery 1940) 22

[22] (Montgomery 1940) 56

[23] Seller, Maxine Schwartz, ed. 1994. Women Educators in the United States, 1820-1993. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. 357

[24] (Mobley 2009) 40

[25] Ibid. 41 Mobley referencing Palmieri’s focus on the radical Vida Scudder, who began her teaching and writing career at Wellesley College in 1887.

[26] Ibid. 41

[27] Palmer, George Herbert. 1908. The Life of Alice Freeman Palmer. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 153

[28] Ibid. 170

[29] (Palmer 1908) 172-173

[30] Charles William Eliot, longest running president of Harvard College (1869-1909), said of Alice Freeman, “After six years of masterly work at Wellesley College, in which she exhibited the keenest intelligence, large executive ability, and a remarkable capacity for winning affection and respect, she laid down these functions, married at the age of thirty-two, and apparently entered on a wholly new career. Alice Freeman thus gave the most striking testimony she could give of her faith in the fundamental social principle that love between man and woman, and the family life which results therefrom, afford for each sex the conditions of its greatest usefulness and honor, and of its supreme happiness. The opponents of the higher education of women had always argued that such education would tend to prevent marriage and to dispossess the family as the cornerstone of society. Alice Freeman gave the whole force of her conspicuous example to disprove that objection. She illustrated in her own case the supremacy of love and of family life in the heart of both man and woman.” (Palmer 1908) 177-178

[31] Helen and her sister, Anne, had become quite close to Alice Freeman during their years as Wellesley students. Remarked Helen in a letter home dated Dec 1882, “We feel that we really know her [Alice Freeman] for herself and not merely as President of Wellesley. She was delighted with her little [Christmas] gift – a flashlight- and told us she took a “spark” every night to light her to bed, and she called us her little “sparks of light.” Anne’s bright, impulsive loving little ways just rest Miss Freeman, and Anne is never so happy as when she can be near her in some way.”(64) Alice Freeman and Helen Montgomery were, little doubt, in contact during the year of their marriages (1887). Alice certainly would have known of the offer of the faculty position to Helen, and Helen’s fiancé, William Montgomery had provided funds for Helen’s sister, Anne, to “spend the holidays with Miss Freeman” that year, as well.  (Montgomery 1940) 74

[32] (Mobley 2009) 41

[33] At this time, George Herbert Palmer was a professor of philosophy at Harvard.

[34] (Palmer 1908) 226-227

[35] Cattan, Louise Armstrong. 1972. Lamps are for Lighting: The Story of Helen Barrett Montgomery and Lucy Waterbury. Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s. 67 That same year, Helen and Edith went on a six month “global mission tour” with another mother-daughter team, Lucy and Norma Waterbury.

[36] (Mobley 2009) 61

[37] Ibid. 61

[38] (Palmer 1908) 241

[39] (Palmer 1908) 176-177

[40] Helen Barrett Montgomery’s book, written on occasion of the Committee’s Golden Jubilee, Western Women in Eastern Lands, had broken “all records for a mission study book.” (Cattan 1972) 66

[41] Ibid.

[42] For example, Palmer continued to serve on the Board of Trustees of Wellesley College as well as serving as the president of the Women’s Education Association of Boston. (Palmer 1908) 175 & 236 Montgomery served as the president of the Rochester WEIU and on the Rochester Board of Education. (Mobley 2009) 104 & 114.

[43] (Mobley 2009) 104

[44] Ibid. 84

[45] Helen served as president of the Union for twenty years. (Cattan 1972) 33.

[46] (Mobley 2009) 120

[47] Ibid. 155

[48] Warner, Laceye. 2004. Kingdom Witness and Helen Barrett Montgomery’s Biblical Theology. Review and Expositor 101 (Summer):22. 458

[49] (Mobley 2009) 168

[50] Montgomery, Helen Barrett. 1910. Western Women in Eastern Lands: An Outline Study of Fifty Years of Woman’s Work in Foreign Missions. New York: The MacMillan Company.

[51] (Mobley 2009) 245. During the Jubilee fund-raising campaign of the Woman’s American Baptist Foreign Missionary Society, Montgomery raised over $450,000 which she presented to the Northern Baptist Convention “as a gift” from the Society.

[52] Helen Barrett Montgomery published over a dozen books, including an original translation of the New Testament, The Centenary “Montgomery” New Testament; Alice Freeman Palmer published, but one address entitled “Why Go to College?” Her husband, George Herbert Palmer, published a collection of her poems posthumously (1916).

[53] Alice Freeman Palmer’s poor health greatly reduced her ability to accept speaking engagements and ultimately led to an early death (1855-1902).

[54] (Montgomery 1940) 51

[55] Ibid. 59-70

[56] Ibid. 137-138

[57] (Palmer 1908) 344

[58] (Cattan 1972) 35

[59] Palmer, Alice Freeman. 1915. A Marriage Cycle. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 67-68

“The way that I like to think of you on your birthday, my dear Papa, is standing out among the flowers utterly lost in thought, but with such a warm and appreciative smile on your face that the buds start out and every plant blossoms just because it is so sure of your sympathy.”

“…perhaps this ambition to be thought smart and to lead the class is not a good ambition after all. It’s hard though to be willing to take an average place when one longs to be first…Dear people, don’t please put all sorts of wonderful qualities to me which exist only in your dear fond hearts. I hate to disappoint you all but i know my own limitations. I can never be more than one of the average. Not that I would change it if I could for I know that there must be a beautiful dear thought in the Father’s heart for me and that He needs just me and no one else to fill some chink in His great building. I feel content if I can only so conquer myself as to be able to do some good to others ” (italics added).

With that kind of humility so young…no wonder God could do SO much good through her!

My classes this quarter will be

1) American Church History

2) Christian Ethics

3) Foundations of Leadership

American Church History will be my fourth class with Dr. Charles “Charlie” Scalise. He is, without a doubt, one of the best teachers i have ever taken a class with. Charlie is an expert in his subject matter, follows a clearly defined lecture format which allows for plenty of Q & A during which he references numerous authors and works for further investigation while deftly fielding questions spanning over 2,000 years of history. He also continually encourages students to let their own voices be heard with his now familiar, “Welcome to the conversation.” He is also a generous comments (generous as in “This essay could be improved by…”) but rigorous task-master concerning our written work, reminding we lowly seminarians that all our work should be “in the process of publication.”

Though all my life i have loved school, only a few teachers have stood out:

1) 3rd grade: Mrs. Evans, who would reward good behavior by reading to us from one of my favorite story books, Clematis by Earnest & Bertha Cobb.

2) 6th grade: Mrs. Slocum, Social Studies, who ran a summer “Social Studies Camp” on the history of Massachusetts with a field trip EVERY DAY!! Freedom Trail, Plimouth Plantation, Old Sturbridge Village,  etc…

3) Mrs. Balcomb, my piano teacher, who put up with me as a private student for 17 years!

4) Mr. Weisse, high school band and chorus, who we knicknamed “Joe Jazz.” He is a BIG reason i went into church music as my vocation for 25 years.

5) Consuelo Stewart, a math prof who made an 8am Statistics class super fun (and i am NOT a morning person…so that is saying something!).

6) George Hairston, whose gift of rhetoric could make a 4 hour class seem like 2 : Preach it, Prof!

7) And now, Charlie Scalise, who has cultivated in me a deeper love of listening to and learning from the voices of our Christian past. Thanks, Charlie!

1) Is it in our local public library? Yes = borrow it. No? Move to step 2.

2) Is it in the local college campus library? Yes = pay the paultry sum for an annual borrower’s card (at WWU it’s only $25 for the year!) and BORROW IT! No? Move to step 3.

3) Is it on paperbackswap.com and do we still have credits there? Yes? Order it free! No? Move to step 4.

4) Go to amazon or abe or barnes & noble. Is it available? Most likely it IS available…for a price. So, then apply the following criteria to our situation:

**a) Is it a required text for class and do we have time? Buy the cheapest “good condition” copy from a used book seller.  Is it required, but we don’t have time? Buy it expedited, but let that be a lesson! Don’t we know how many more books we COULD have had if we’d planned ahead!!

**b) Is it not required, but we have read it and believe that we should have our own personal copy to refer to periodically in our personal library? Yes? Buy the least expensive “very good” or “new” copy from a used book seller.

**c) Is it not required, and we have not read it, but it has come highly recommended? Yes? Put it on our wish list OR get work to pay for it!

**d) Is it not required, and we have not read it, and no one has personally recommended it to us…but it looks really cool? Yes? Put it on our wish list…look at it in a few weeks…the “shimmer” will probably have faded and we can then “delete” it!

Of course, there is always our other problem, which is that the borrowing privileges from our libraries are considerably generous (WWU allows 100 books out at a time!). This, of course, leads to the constant need for triage…does it go on the stack on the dining room table? Or on the end table by the couch? or the stack on the nightstand? So many books, so little time…