When Courage Calls

When Courage Calls

Josephine Butler

And the radical pursuit of

Justice for Women

Sarah C Williams

I love reading books and enjoy it even more when reading the same book with others. @passionforevangelism are starting the season off with this one When Courage Calls by Sarah C Williams. It is the story of Josephine Butler and to be honest not my usual read but here goes. We are reading the introduction and opening chapters today.

So who was Josephine Butler? She led a 16 year campaign to repeal the Contagious Diseases Acts. She raised awareness of the plight of destitute women caught in the sex trade and campaigned to establish legal protection for minors against sexual violence. This campaign led to the passing of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885.

Josephine Butler was a spiritual power whose influence was not bounded by the narrow span of her own life or by the limits of her country. Her influence goes on and lives and grows.

Josephine Butler's love for God and her radical pursuit of justice for women, her faith and her feminism were one and the same thing and it was this she was remembered for.

If I am honest I do not like  the notes sections in books but they show the research undertaken by the author. Sarah Williams includes a list of the various academic literature available on Josephine Butler and it is phenomenal! However Josephine remains little known beyond the academy.  Yet when you consider her deep faith and the amount of campaigning she did it is astonishing. A real wake up call to me personally!

Josephine Butler was born 9 years before Victoria came to the throne and died 5 years after Victoria was buried. Why is this important? This was a nation that understood itself to be Christian while expanding its military power across the globe. She challenged the prevailing power structures of the day. She challenged the prevailing power structures of the day. She confronted the hypocrisy of the military authorities, the affluent selfishness of the middle class, the apathy of institutionalised religion and the entitled indifference of the entrenched social elites. She exposed the sexual exploitation of the establishment and revealed its complex relationship with the prevailing economic structures of the day with the consumerism, materialism and elitism that shaped the social imagination of Church and state. In her writing, in her approaches to relief and rescue work amongst women, in her political practices, she consistently and explicitly rejected any allegiance other than to Christ.

"As I began to study Butler, I quickly realised that at every stage of her life the radical pursuit of justice was undertaken in prayer and through prayer." Sarah C Williams

Love this understanding of prayer that Josephine Butler had - something to really think about, is my prayer life like this?

"Prayer is a direct and intimate dialogue with Christ through which the individual is drawn into union with God and into a deep and transformative engagement with society. This encompasses the body as well as the soul, the material as well as the spiritual life, the present moment in time as well as the future life after death."

Butler insisted that Christ not only welcomed the outcast as friend but he also became the outcast, submitting to shame and exclusion in order to conquer it.

Surely this is the gospel in a nutshell!

I have only read the Introduction and have been challenged already to read on. What has challenged me already is Josephine's understanding of prayer. But it was not just in her head, it was also embodied in her life.

"People embrace a theory, a doctrine respecting 'salvation by faith' and then expect to feel love in their hearts. Now I never yet knew a heart which was constituted to feel a deep human love for a doctrine. Every heart must learn to love a Person." Josephine Butler 'Private Thoughts'

In the opening chapter Josephine uses the story of Jacob and his wrestling with God (Genesis 32) to describe her own longing, desire and urgency to know God intimately. This is an intimate struggle with an outcome of  deeper knowledge of God. This reflects her desire to constantly bring everything to the feet of the Saviour - a lesson I have personally learned repeatedly in my own life.  What a reminder today!

The influences on Josephine's early years are clearly recorded - from her father, mother and nurse. It reminded me so much of that verse "from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures which are able to make thee wise unto salvation." (2 Timothy 3 verse 15) I have heard it said that you should surround yourself with people who know you - these people in Josephine's life surrounded her with a love that came from Christ himself.

"Later the conflict was renewed, as there dawned upon me the realities of those earthly miseries which I had realised only in a measure of intuition, but later still came the outward and active conflict with, thanks be to God, the light and hope and guidance which He never denies to them who seek and ask and know, and which become for them as 'an anchor to the soul, sure and steadfast.'"

Josephine also uses the story in Luke 7 of the 'outcast' woman kissing Jesus' feet to describe her own prayers as an act of ceaseless 'kissing', delight and worship. She sees her need of God and as an intercessor stands alongside a compromised woman from an entirely different strata of society, not as a Pharisee blind to her own sin; but as a fellow sinner in equal need of salvation.

"Without this direct intimate relationship of wrestling and kissing all that is left are outward codes, religious behaviours and inherited beliefs."

Sadly for many today this is all that personal faith in Christ as Saviour and Lord is!

"We have one Source, approachable by us all, of undying spiritual life - the Holy Spirit poured forth upon his waiting disciples on the day of Pentecost, and who now waits each moment at the door of every heart, to be admitted and to bring light, life and peace."

Josephine Butler, Catharine of Siena, 1878

I am working through reading chapter 2 of When Courage Calls by Sarah C Williams. This chapter starts by describing Josephine and her husband's early years of marriage. They both shared a rich intellectual and spiritual life. They would read the bible and pray together. I loved the reference to how George, Josephine's husband is inspired by female exemplars - Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus in Luke 10 sitting at the feet of Christ learning directly from him. The Butlers learn to pray against the proud city of the intellect. They lived together as "perfect equals" in a city where men lived alone in colleges, not homes. They sat together reading scripture in a city full of libraries where women were not allowed to read for degrees. They learned directly from Jesus, and they prayed for a holy revolution on the earth.

Reading this book alongside the story of Lot in Genesis has made me realise so many similarities in both situations and I am starting to see the temptations that were available in Sodom and Oxford England in the 1820's. I am so grateful for this realisation - that God can open up his word to me and shake me out of my comfort to realise what it means to compromise as Lot did and many of those who lived in Oxford during Josephine Butler's lifetime.

As Solomon later declared "there is nothing new under the sun."

"Prayer moves to the centre. Human power to 'reach' and 'remedy' is contrasted with the power of God to hear and answer prayer. And I resolved to speak little with men but much with God."

This is so like what happened with Abraham when he met his visitors and pleaded to save his nephew from Sodom.

Took me 2 hours but I read chapters 4 and 5 of When Courage Calls by Sarah C Williams today. The one word that repeats itself constantly in these pages is prayer. Her life was so focused on its necessity, source and application in all she did.