Mrs Attaway: (almost certainly not) the first female Baptist Preacher/Minister

I reference Mrs Attaway (her first name is lost to us, as far as I am aware) fairly often, and each time end up going back to the original sources. I wanted to do it again this afternoon, on nothing more erudite than a Facebook thread, and thought I really should write up a few notes and leave them somewhere I could find them, and could point other people to them easily. We have a detailed, if hostile, reference to Mrs Attaway preaching in December 1645, in Thomas Lambe’s church on Bell’s Alley, in London. (I’ve recently argued that there is good reason to suppose this was the continuation of Helwys’s original Baptist congregation–available Open Access here.) The evidence is found in Thomas Edwards’s Gangraena, published in 1646 (pp. 116-119 of the 1646 Ralph Smith edition, Wing E229). She and at least one other woman were preaching regularly, every Tuesday, in the church, and Edwards suggests that they sometimes drew congregations of a thousand or more. (He tells us that the other woman was married to a Major in the army, and gives us some details of her clothing and jewellery, but omits to mention her name; no doubt he thought we had what was important.) Edwards is perhaps best compared to the sort of modern-day media commentator who makes a career out of being regularly outraged. The book is a breathless catena of letters and reports, with details emphasising those aspects which he judges will most shock his intended reader (who is a Presbyterian minister or parliamentarian who sees the replacement of an episcopal national church with a presbyterian national church as the only way forward for England in the 1640s). Criticising the Scottish establishment repeatedly draws his ire–this is the perfection he strives towards. He detests Arminianism, which he sees as the gateway drug to every heresy, and is very concerned to have his readers understand that the leaders of the various communities he criticises are obviously not people who should lead churches–rude mechanicals, who lack breeding, social standing, and university education. (The Major’s wife may escape public ridicule because she is at least of the right social class; Mrs Attaway is in trade (horror!) selling lace in Cheapside.) Edwards seems to have a particular objection to any activity undertaken by a woman. The way he lingers on (very scant) reports of women being baptised nude in rivers at midnight really does invite a Freudian analysis, but the fact that he was roundly trounced in an exchange of pamphlets with the remarkable Independent (i.e., Congregationalist) leader and church planter Katherine Chidley over the first half of the 1640s may not have been irrelevant to this focus (he fails to mention Chidley in Gangraena, which silence is fairly eloquent testimony to how he felt their debate had gone). Already in the ‘Epistle Dedicatory’ we have a passing swipe at ‘Jezebel’ (A4v; you knew it was coming, right?) and a rising crescendo of outrage, culminating with ‘what swarms are there of all sorts of illiterate mechanik Preachers, yea of Women and Boy Preachers!’ (a1v) In his introductory catalogue of the errors of the various sectaries, the 124th entry reads ‘That tis lawfull for women to preach, and why should they not, having gifts as well as men? and some of them do actually preach…’ (30) When he comes to his evidence, the account of Mrs Attaway and her colleague is the bulk of the material. According to Edwards, Mrs Attaway first referenced the classic justificatory text, ‘I will pour out my Spirit on all people … your sons and your daughters shall prophesy’. She then prayed, for ‘almost halfe an hour’ and then preached for about 45 minutes on the text ‘If you love me you will obey my commandments’. Later, in the face of some resistance to the ministry of the Major’s wife, she identified them both in prayer as ‘Ambassadors and Ministers of God’. Lambe’s church is not the only place women are preaching, according to Edwards. He claims in briefer compass to have evidence of female preachers in Southampton, Holland in Lincolnshire, Ely in Cambridgeshire, several in Hertfordshire, and (possibly several) in Brasted in Kent. Of these, he identifies the woman in Southampton as a Baptist (she was ‘dreamt [!] into Anabaptisme‘; p. 84) and claims the woman in Lincolnshire ‘baptizeth’, at least strongly implying she is a Baptist. Ely was at the time home to Henry Denne, associate of Lambe and significant General Baptist leader, and not a large town, so it is very hard not to assume some Baptist influence there, and of course Mrs Attaway and her colleague...

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Another C17th Charismatic Baptist!

After my post on Caffyn, David Lytle on Twitter alerted me to similar sentiments in Thomas Grantham; his only responsibility for the comments below is sending me back to the text to look at it, but that was very fruitful: Grantham argues at length against the idea that the gifts of the Spirit have ceased, and claims to have witnessed in various ways, not shying from the word ‘miracle’, the gifts at work.Thomas Grantham was certainly the most productive General Baptist of the seventeenth century, in terms of published output; it is hard to dispute the claim that he was also the most influential. Christianismus Primitivus was his most lengthy work by some distance, and probably his most important. The basic argument of the book is that the General Baptists are recovering apostolic (‘primitive’) Christianity, and so all should join them in that.In Book II Part II of CP, he discusses church ordinances. The third chapter is devoted to the laying on of hands, which, on the basis of Heb. 6:1-2, had become a required practice for General Baptists. Grantham argues that the laying on of hands is the Biblical way of asking God to fulfil the pentecostal promise to pour out the Spirit on this disciple, too.The first section of the chapter considers what it means to receive the Spirit; the second insists that the Spirit is poured out on women and men indifferently.The title of the third section announces a desire to offer ‘…a more ample disquisition of the nature of the promise of the Spirit …’. This is to be fulfilled by exegesis of 1Cor.12:1 ‘Now I do not want you to be ignorant about spiritual gifts, sisters and brothers.’ The text discussed is more expansive—chh. 12-14—but his prospectus of the discussion includes the intention to show ‘that the Church hath a perpetual right to (though not alwayes a like necessity of) all these spiritual gifts’A subsection is headed ‘That the Gifts of the Spirit … belongs [sic] to the Church of Christ, as her right, to the end of the World.’; there are various exegetical arguments, but the point he returns to is that God calls the church of today to the same duties and ministries as the apostolic church was called to, so it is not credible that God will not give the church of today the same gifts that the apostolic church found necessary to fulfil its calling.He then suggests another exegetical argument: ‘That the gifts and graces intended by the Apostle, are a portion of the right belonging to the Church in every age, appeareth from the nature and extent of the exhortations which she is under to ask or seek for them’ (referencing, inter alia, Lk. 11:13, but also extensively 1Cor. 12-14).He turns next to an argument from experience: he suggests that the only reason anyone doubts the continuation of the gifts is that they have not seen them. But there are many examples in church history, and he himself has seen gifts like words of knowledge and prophecy evident in the ministry of preachers, and miraculous healings—and other miracles. And he has testimony from people whose word he cannot doubt that they have seen similar. It’s not a project for me, at least for the next couple of years, but there’s some work to be done here, surely? Two significant national leaders insisting the gifts have not ceased, with one insisting on personal and reported testimony to miraculous...

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A C17th Charismatic Baptist?

The paragraph below was published by an English Baptist leader in 1660. I first noticed it (I had read the book before) about a year ago, and noted to myself that it sounded very much like a repudiation of (what now gets called) cessationism, and a suggestion that he and his readers should seek a renewal of the Pentecostal gifts of the Spirit. Nothing else in the (admittedly fairly sketchy) narrative we have of his life shows any hint in this direction, and, despite his eminence as a national leader, there is no evidence I know of that anyone acted on this suggestion. As a result, at the time I filed it under ‘puzzling’, with a note to myself to think more about it. I’d be interested to know if others can see an alternative reading–or did a C17th Baptist pre-empt Edward Irving and Azusa Street, at least in exegesis and desire? The paragraph (square brackets are my editorial notes; otherwise exactly as published, with the sort of interesting orthography that is common to the age): Together with these things, let it not be thought a needless work, or besides the business in hand, to consider whether Saints are not now (in these latter dayes wherein ’tis evil, as appears by the Apostle, to depart from the Faith professed in former Apostolical dayes, I Tim. 4.1.) whether Saints (I say) are not now to seek for, and in Faith to wait whereby to receive the Spirit, with the same particular gifts and operations which Saints formerly enjoyed, in order to their carrying on the great Work of the Gospel, both among themselves and others? Since God in his making Promise of pouring out the Spirit upon his People, (which Promise we in these latter dayes flye unto as the ground of our Faith) makes mention also of several gifts of the same Spirit, John 2.28,29. [rd Joel 2: 28-29—or just possibly Jn. 12:28-29??] And withal considering, that the Apostles exhorted the Churches ‘earnestly to covet, and follow after the several gifts of the Spirit,’ I Cor. 12. 28, 29,30, 31. 14. 1, 39. Which exhortations, if they reach us, and speak to us, as much as any other Scripture-exhortations (which for any to deny is hard) then, Oh then! great need have all to pray, Lord, increase our Faith. Matthew Caffyn, Faith in God’s Promises, the Saints best weapon… (London: S. Dover for F. Smith, 1660; Wing2 C207), p....

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On not having closed our churches

Language matters. It matters more in how it is heard than in how it is meant. If we want to communicate certain things, then disciplined use of language can help us, because it will improve the chances of what we want to say being heard, rather than being misunderstood. There was a time when we British Baptists would not have thought of calling the building we met in for worship a ‘church’. We knew that the church was the congregation, gathered together by God, covenanted to each other before God. If the church habitually met in a particular building, we called that a ‘chapel’. ‘Church,’ we once understood, meant people, saved by grace, making expansive vows to each other because God has called us together. ‘Chapel,’ we used to know, meant a building, where the church can conveniently congregate. [This is for us Baptists—and of course for others, although I do not presume to identify those traditions that would be happy to be defined by this point—other faithful followers of our King Jesus will disagree, and so will define things differently.] This old, almost lost, tradition, seems important just now. Our chapels are closed, but our churches are alive and active, and doing wonderful Kingdom work, spreading the gospel and doing justice. Perhaps this present strange season will teach us that there was value in the old language: we should not identify ‘chapel’ and ‘church’ because the former is incidental to us, the latter the definitive core of who we are. Our chapels are closed—and, on Sundays in particular, that is a great sadness to us, because we long to gather together for worship. Our chapels are closed, but our churches are open and active. Announcing the gospel, however they can; serving the needy; comforting those who mourn; praying for the needs of the fellowship, the community, and the world; living out the call of the Kingdom. For us Baptists, our chapels are closed, but our churches are open and alive and active; the one is an inconvenience; the other a vital gospel...

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On ‘Kitchen Table Eucharists’: a plea to my Anglican friends

It is, to my regret, nearly ten years since I last joined in worship with the small fellowship at Hawkshead Hill Baptist Church in Cumbria. My memories of the fellowship are warm; my memories of the building in which they meet, and of the garden behind it, are vivid. The building is an ancient cottage, registered for worship in 1709. There is no historical record of what changes were made as it was registered for worship, but very probably the kitchen table was the only table, and so became the place where the Eucharist was celebrated for those people. The Baptists had begun in Hawkshead in 1678, at a time when the Church of England was aggressively devoted to persecuting anyone who would not worship according to its formularies (even though then, as now, it could not agree on what its formularies actually meant). I know the Baptist stories; others will tell the Presbyterian, Congregationalist, Quaker, Catholic tales—and the stories that do not fit into any of these denominations. In my tradition, John Bunyan was famously imprisoned for his Baptist faith; Elizabeth Gaunt was burnt at the stake in public for hers, denied the customary ‘kindness’ of a quick death by strangulation before the spectacle. I could add scores of other names from my own memory, people who I have read and studied, whose faith and courage I have learnt from, whose piety has formed my own; people who are my mothers and fathers in the faith. I could add tens of thousands of names if I had reference to books. The persecution was savage and widespread. It was also systematically prosecuted and vocally encouraged by Anglican clergy and bishops. Although a measure of toleration came with the Glorious Revolution in 1689, the Clarendon Code (which, inter alia, forbade meetings for prayer of more than five people unless they were reciting forms from the 1662 BCP) was not fully repealed until well into the nineteenth century. When William Dennyson of Hawkshead registered his cottage as a meeting place in 1709, it seems clear that memories of persecution were still fresh. The building carefully appeared, from the street, to be still a cottage, and did so until 1876, when the present ecclesial-looking windows were installed. In the garden a baptistry was created by a clever damming of a stream, and then shrubs were grown to conceal its site, and the path that led to it. When we were last there—and today, I assume—you could walk the garden completely unaware of the baptismal pool, until someone showed you the carefully-pruned branches that needed to be pushed aside to open the path down. Hidden sacramental spaces are a common theme of Christian persecution; normal domestic paraphernalia are repurposed to allow worship to happen. For one example, a kitchen table often becomes the site of eucharistic celebration. The phrase ’kitchen table Eucharists’ seems to have become, in the last few weeks, the chosen sneer of a number of Anglicans angry at their Bishops’ guidance, revised yesterday, on clergy not entering their churches. I have no view at all on that guidance; I know that my understanding of ‘church’, and ‘sacred space’ is simply different from my Anglican sisters and brothers. I am concerned, as others have been, about the denigration of domestic space implied by this sneer, and by the gendered implications of that. I am at least as much concerned by the implied criticism of the faith and practice of our persecuted sisters and brothers around the world right now, who find the kitchen table the only eucharistic site available to them. Most seriously, however, I remember William Dennyson, John Bunyan, Elizabeth Gaunt, scores of others I could name, tens of thousands whose names I could discover—and at least as many again who are nameless. For nearly three decades they celebrated the Eucharist on kitchen tables, in Hawkshead and across England, because Anglican bishops and Anglican priests were active and aggressive in having them thrown into jail, or even burnt alive at the stake, if they did it anywhere public. For over three centuries they, and their co-religionists, were prevented from celebrating the Eucharist as they might have wished by oppressive laws, pressed by the Anglican establishment. I am not an Anglican and I do not live in England; the policies of the Church of England are no business of mine. But for office-holders in that denomination to denigrate ‘kitchen table Eucharists’ is for them to trample once again on the faith and lives of people who, through reading, I have grown to know and love, people who, at their predecessors’ hands, were extensively persecuted, people of...

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