Josephine Butler, Women's Rights, and Low Church Anglicanism

Abstract

Josephine Butler, Women's Rights, and Low Church Anglicanism Timothy Larsen (bio) It was an article in the Edinburgh Review (October 1853) on "Church Parties" that crystalized the assumption that members of the Church of England could be sorted into three basic ways of being Anglican. The author, W.J. Conybeare—opting for spatial reasoning—called them High, Low, and Broad (Burns). By "Broad," he meant an openness to liberal theology and a desire for inclusiveness rather than the dogmatic policing of boundaries. Many, both at the time and to this day, have considered F.D. Maurice to be the most important theological voice for the Broad Church in the second half of the nineteenth century. By "High," Conybeare meant an emphasis on the Catholic nature of the Church. In the Victorian age, this tradition was transformed and dominated by the Tractarian, or Oxford Movement. One of its leaders, E.B. Pusey, was so important that many referred to these Anglicans as "Puseyites." "Low Church" meant an emphasis on the Church of England's Protestant identity. Therefore, strictly speaking, Victorian Broad Church Anglicans were also Low Church. Conybeare, however, was clear that he was using the term to refer only to those who also were marked by the evangelical movement. Low Church Anglicans who were neither Broad Church nor evangelical tended to think of themselves as just garden-variety or generic Anglicans and therefore did not found journals or societies or otherwise make themselves visible through organizing as a distinct group. It is Conybeare's evangelical, Low Church Anglicans that are our focus. In the Church of England Calendar today, leaders of all three traditions are celebrated. Pusey is commemorated on 16 September. One wonders, however, if a bit of party mischief was behind F.D. Maurice being commemorated on April Fool's Day (maybe the day of his birth would have been a better choice than that of his death). More important than either of these, however—not a mere "commemoration" but a "lesser festival"—is the observance on 30 May for the evangelical, Low Church Anglican Josephine Butler (1828–1906). Butler is famous for her deep commitment to the rights of women. Although the term was not in general use at the time, scholars often identity some Victorians as "feminists," with Butler being a prime example (Caine). Indeed, in 1866, Butler was a prominent supporter of the first attempt in Britain to legislate for women's suffrage (Jordan). Her first publication was in support of the opening up of higher education to women: The Education and Employment of Women (1868). She is best known, however, for defending women who were sex workers—or who were suspected of being so. The Contagious Diseases Acts of the 1860s empowered authorities in areas with concentrations of military personnel to inspect women thought to be [End Page 146] prostitutes for venereal diseases. Butler was outraged. Why were the men not inspected? (She even used the phrase "double standard.") Why were women not presumed innocent, as men were? And many more such arguments. She fought the good fight until, in 1883, Parliament finally gave in. In his landmark study, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s, D.W. Bebbington formulated what has become the standard definition of evangelicalism. The Bebbington Quadrilateral identifies four distinguishing marks of evangelicals: conversionism, activism, biblicism, and crucicentrism (Bebbington 2–17). Butler exemplified all these traits. Her entire career was a manifestation of evangelical activism. It was in conscious succession to an eminent evangelical Anglican from earlier in the century, William Wilberforce, and his campaign to end the slave trade. Butler was clear that sex trafficking was a form of slavery and that therefore she too was an abolitionist. As to crucicentrism (a focus on Christ's atoning sacrifice on the cross), Butler could even end a pamphlet written to rally women's rights activists with this conclusion: "We are learning now more deeply than ever the power of Christ's Crucifixion and Death" (Truth Before Everything 23). By the late nineteenth century, even many self-described evangelicals had become squeamish in regards to the old articulation of the Atonement and had turned...