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Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village: and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus’s feet, and heard his word. But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me. And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her. — Luke 10:38-42 The inhabitants of the villages ceased, they ceased in Israel, until that I Deborah arose, that I arose a mother in Israel. — Judges 5:7 CHRISTIAN faith, if it is anything more than creedal assent, is expressed in life. Yet this lived faith takes many forms. Different religious traditions offer different opportunities for women to express their spirituality . In one, a woman might join an altar guild, while in another she might lead a revival. Women both accept and create roles that are congruent with the ethos of their denomination. These roles are, of course, not static. They change over time as the church develops, and as societal roles and expectations change. The religious roles of women evolve and devolve: new needs and opportunities are found, and old ones are lost, as times change. All this is not to say that women are passive recipients of tradition. They appropriate aspects of that tradition that are useful to them, and their actions further shape that tradition. Methodist women in Canada have developed many patterns for expressing their Christianity. Methodists often used the imagery of the Bible they knew so well in order to describe the women among them. Introduction: Something in the Atmosphere Notes to introduction start on page 245 1 Some women used their practical skills to provide food and shelter for the Methodist preachers who travelled through the newly settled countryside ; they followed in the footsteps of Martha of Bethany. Others demonstrated the heritage of her sister Mary, and retired to their prayer closets and read the Bible upon their knees. And there were women like Mary Pickering Woodill who cultivated both activity and the devotional life: “while she ministered like Martha, she learned like Mary.”1 Methodist women inspired other biblical images. Mrs. Joseph Bent died in 1860, at the age of eighty-seven. She had been converted nearly fifty years earlier after hearing a sermon preached by the pioneering Nova Scotia preacher William Black. Her obituary was filled with biblical language. The writer compared her to Deborah, the only woman listed among the judges of Israel: “Like Deborah she encouraged even the Leaders in the Spiritual Israel, strengthening the hands of the weak, and fearful, and courageously urging onward the armies of the Lord, in contending with their enemies, and many times had they to give thanks to the Lord of Hosts, for the victories that were won.”2 Furthermore Bent “laboured, prayed, and exercised her talents in various ways, and she was in this sense ‘a mother in Israel.’” This was the highest tribute paid to Methodist women. It was not the sentimental rhetoric of Victorian motherhood; this was much sterner stuff. In 1868, the editor of the Canada Christian Advocate, newspaper of the Methodist Episcopal Church, explained that it was a “Scripture term,” first found in Judges 5:7, in the song of Deborah.3 She “was at once prophetess and judge in Israel,” and “it fell to her to do a man’s work, to bear his responsibility, and win his honor” by delivering Israel from its enemies. The second biblical “Mother in Israel” appeared, unnamed, in 2 Samuel 20. “Here, again, a woman—a wise woman—appears to have been the leader, for she held the parley with Joab, and negotiated the terms on which he should withdraw from the siege.” The editor went on to give his opinion that this unnamed woman was not “ostentatious, or striving through long years ‘for fame and a name.’” He wrote, “The emergency pressed her into view as a public character, and on the subsidence of the emergency she retires from our sight as a public personage.” Nevertheless, as Catherine Brekus points out in her study of female preaching in America, those who borrowed the term “mother...

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