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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Three.Word.Dogmatics

I posted something about happenstance felicities of What.Three.Words addresses on FB, and Phil challenged me to write a three word theology. It’s been in my mind driving and walking around Northumbria on holiday this week, and this is I think my best attempt. I’ve used blank lines as additional punctuation, and there are some run-ons, which may be cheating. I’ve not checked whether any of these map to actual locations. Three.Word.Dogmatics God.Is.One God.Is.Three Father.Son.Spirit God.Is.Good God.Is.Love Many.Other.Perfections God.Creates.All Out.Of.Nothing God.Oversees.All End.Is.Coming Creation.Was.Good Humans.Did.Bad Creation.Is.Broken Humans.Need.Help God.Calls.Abraham Stories.About.Israel Exodus.Temple.Exile Return.Longing.Hope God’s.Son.Comes Born.As.Human Born.Of.Mary God.And.Human Lives.And.Loves Teaches.And.Heals Dies.To.Save Rises.To.Life Sends.God’s.Spirit Spirit.Is.God Spirit.Proceeds.From Father.And.Son Spirit.Brings.Life Spirit.Gives.Gifts Spirit.Grows.Goodness God.Calls.Church Body.Of.Christ Temple.Of.Spirit To.Father’s.Praise Church.Is.Sent Ends.Of.Earth To.Declare.Gospel End.Will.Come Jesus.Will.Return Dead.Will.Rise Jesus.Will.Reign Justice.Be.Established Joy.Will.Overflow Four.Last.Things Death.Judgement.Heaven… (OK, the Three.Word.Limit tripped me up at the end there, and it fell into universalism. There are worse errors.)...

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Communion cups and individualism

Picking up from one or two comments in different places on my previous post: does the use of individual communion cups imply, or support, or strengthen, individualism? My short answer would be: not in British Baptist practice; I simply do not know elsewhere. This answer is based on a couple of convictions. One is that practices are not meaningfully narratable without properly thick description; the other is that I want to interrogate hard what ‘individualism’ means. I will deal with the first here; I might return to the second at some point. On the first: ‘thick description’ (for those who do not know) is a term coined by the anthropologist Clifford Geertz. He argued (roughly) that symbols are only intelligible specifically. That is, to take the case in point, the use of individual communion cups means nothing until you have (ideally exhaustively) described in detail how they are used in a particular community. I suppose I might have received communion in a hundred or so different British Baptist congregations; I have celebrated it in approaching fifty, each time interrogating the church about their own practices so that I could both conform to what they expected, and celebrate appropriately reverently by my own lights. On this basis, I think I can speak about the general practices of this tradition–and on this same basis, I make no claim about any other tradition. As I mentioned before, my own congregation presently uses (or pre-Covid used) several communal cups and intinction in our morning Eucharists; we use individual cups when we celebrate in the evening. This is however very unusual. I struggle to remember any other British Baptist celebration I have been a part of that used shared cups. British Baptist celebrations of the Eucharist, however, are (in my experience) focused determinedly on the shared life of the gathered, covenanted, church. In some Scottish churches in which I have celebrated this is first emphasised by a separation of the communion service from the main service. The sermon is preached, a hymn is sung, a benediction is offered, and some people leave: those who wish to affirm their belonging to each other remain, to receive the Eucharist (albeit from individual cups). This tradition, once common, is passing—to my mind with good reason—but the symbolism is surely clear: all may come to hear the Word preached, but only saints covenanted together may received the bread and wine. Outsiders are excluded to emphasise the belonging of insiders. The large majority of churches I have celebrated or received communion in will follow the reception of the Eucharist with a pastoral prayer; a significant minority will take up an offering around the table specifically for pastoral needs within the fellowship. Both practices insist that here, around the table, more than anywhere else, we are one body, in community, joined to each other, and so here we pray for the needs of the fellowship, not just those of the world; here we give to support our own sisters and brothers, not just charitable causes generally. Every Baptist church I know will receive new members, and appoint new officers (elders/deacons), at the communion table. This practice insists that here, around the table, is where we are family together, and so this is where we do our family business. Against all these practices, even if the use of the individual cup might in abstract be perceived as promoting individualism, it is hard to see it as anything other than bound into a profoundly communal set of ritual practices in concrete. The rite it is a part of is a communal rite that emphasises community at every moment; the mere adoption of individual cups cannot effectively challenge that, even if the practice were to be assumed to be inherently individualistic (& of course no liturgical practice is inherently anything; context and narration defines all meaning). To emphasise this I, and I know that I am not alone, use the individuality of the cups to emphasise the community of the church when celebrating the Eucharist. I instruct congregants to keep hold of the cup having been served it, and then, when everyone has been served, state that we will all drink together ‘as a sign of our unity in the Lord’. The shared act of drinking together reinforces all the other signs given to emphasise the community-based, and community-forming, act of sharing the Eucharist. I am not claiming any combination of these practices as perfect: I said in the previous post that I would rather we shared one cup, because that is what Jesus did in the upper room. That preference, however, is based on a Baptist commitment to...

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On the use of individual communion cups

There is evidently a fight going on within the Church of England on the potential use of individual communion cups as a Covid-safe way to celebrate the Eucharist. It’s not my fight, and I don’t want to say much about it. But in the last couple of days a new argument has emerged: that the use of individual communion cups is, historically, racist. That does bother me. Each of the five churches I have been a member of have used individual communion cups as a regular part of their sacramental life. This is hardly uncommon in either the English Free Churches, or Scottish evangelicalism—I don’t actually recall the last time I celebrated or received the Eucharist at a church that did not use individual cups (although our collegiate celebrations use a single cup and intinction). So the suggestion that the use of individual cups is pandering to racism worries me—or it would worry me if there were any plausibility to it; fortunately, there is not, or none that I can discover. As far as I can see, there are two sources for this suggestion: a blogpost by Peter Anthony, which cites a podcast by Barak Wright, which in turn cites (unhappily without reference) the investigations of an American Methodist leader, James Buckley, in the 1890s; and a paper by Hilary M. Bogert-Winkler, which relies entirely (for this point) on Daniel Sack’s 2002 monograph, Whitebread Protestants: Food and Religion in American Culture. Both sources are agreed that the presenting reason for the adoption of individual cups is the C19th sanitary reform movement. With the discovery that diseases were transmitted through ‘germs’ (at the time a rather unspecific term), ways of altering behaviour to prevent transmission were investigated and recommended. There was a general awareness that fluids were important in transmission, and so a concern about a shared cup where potentially, the saliva of the first recipient can enter the mouth of a later recipient. The charge in both sources is that, in the USA, sanitary reform became entangled with racial prejudice, and so that in certain contexts the shared cup was given to whites first, so that they would not be contaminated by African-Americans, and then individual cups were introduced for the same reason. Let us for the moment simply accept this. All that is then demonstrated is entanglement. But that is uninteresting. Suppose I were to campaign against a particular industrial development both because I believed that it would be damaging to the environment, and because I believed that there was a faerie castle that would be destroyed by it; the ridiculousness of the latter belief does not damage the cogency of the former one. Just so, someone who genuinely believes that it is unhygienic to share a single cup, and that non-whites are more likely to spread disease, cannot be criticised for the former belief just because the latter one is appallingly racist. (Were there a demonstration that the former, sanitary, belief was not sincerely held, but merely a cover for the latter, racist, belief, then of course the criticism would stand. Sack is careful to avoid that implication in his monograph; in the absence of references I cannot be sure of all Buckley claimed, but from what I have been able to read, it does not appear that he essayed the stronger argument either.) It is of course easy to survey the arguments around 1900—the material is all out of copyright, and so generally on the Web. What is striking is how much Buckley is an outlier—one can, for example, read through article after article opposing the use of individual communion cups in the old Lutheran Church Review and find no hint at all that there is any concern other than tradition and symbolism. (See, e.g., Drach, ‘Have Individual Communion Cups Any Historical Justification?’ vol. 26 (1907), pp. 567-574; Schuchard, ‘Individual Communion Cup Questions’ vol. 29 (1910), pp. 567-577; Michler, ‘Individual Communion Cups’ vol. 34 (1915), pp. 395-402). (Similar series are easily found in other denominational journals of the time.) There is a second point, however: even if Anthony and Wright are simply correct in everything they assert, they only establish the point for North America. The introduction of individual communion cups in the UK is a separate history, and, as far as I can see, there has never been a single scholarly suggestion that this history has been driven by racism. The medical point is of course to the fore; Dennis raised it in his System of Surgery (iii.803), and it was discussed repeatedly in The Lancet in the first decade of the twentieth century. A remarkable article, ‘The Patience of...

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