Below is a reading followed by the Sunday, March 9, 2025, sermon by Rev. F. Vernon Wright V
Reading
Stand by this faith. Work for it and sacrifice for it. There is nothing in all the world so important as to be loyal to this faith which has placed before us the loftiest ideals, which has comforted us in sorrow, strengthened us for noble duty and made the world beautiful. Do not demand immediate results but rejoice that we are worthy to be entrusted with this great message, that you are strong enough to work for a great true principle without counting the cost. Go on finding ever new applications of these truths and new enjoyments in their contemplation, always trusting in the one God which ever lives and loves.
No. 569 Singing the Living Tradition Rev. Olympia Brown
Where the Women Are Strong
Good morning! For those of you who might have been scratching your heads about the cave-man lingo on the marquee sign this morning “Where Women Strong” Groc say… -You have to look at it this way- maybe next week the sign all say where men r good lkn, and the following week, the children are +average… Yes those are Prairie Home Companion reference that will fit our sign character limit! Just as a quick aside, I always felt a certain strange delight in listening to that radio show with my family as we huddled around the Aiwa battery operated boom-box, under the kerosene lamp- a show that was a spoof on an old timey radio show broadcast to an actual old time no electricity kitchen. Yes we loved the prairie home companion!
Its true I though, just as frontier Lutheran women of Minnesota have their virtues, the women of this Church really are strong! The elders here are of the sixties generation. You had to deal with a huge level of prejudice: you battled against “the women’s place is at home” mind-set. Many of you were the first women of your family to have college educations, most of you did not have reproductive freedom when you were growing up.
My own generation basked in these hard won freedoms. While wage equity is still lacking, we found more parity. In my generation slightly more women would graduate from college and receive advanced degrees than men.
Yet, here we are in 2025. For the first time in my lifetime, federal places of employment won’t be able to make reference to Women’s History Month. Roe V. Wade has been reversed. Huge numbers of women in this country want to be “trad wives”, and vote as they are told by their husbands. Now a GOP voting bill aimed at immigrants requiring everyone to show a passport or birth certificate before voting (that is hugely problematic in itself), will have consequences for any women who may have changed their name after marriage. Out of pure love for the women of my life and the tradition of this pulpit, we must say something.
What are we doing as a nation? What strange madness! Let’s all take one step forward and three steps back shall we? If you’re as exasperated as I am, I just thought it might be helpful on this day to look back on a strong woman and find some inspiration in her persistence and courage.
Olympia Brown: Born 1835 in rural Michigan, her parents highly valued education and encouraged everyone in the family to learn as much as possible. They purchased books on all subjects and soon Brown was a learned young woman. She attended Mt. Holyoke, but was upset when a science professor told her class that women didn’t have to actually learn the science, they just had to know about it enough to engage in interesting conversation. When told by another professor that she should not deliver speeches from memory like men, but simply read from a report from the written word, she broke the rules, committed her treatise to memory and delivered it orally.
Later when she applied to seminary, which at that time was St. Lawrence Theological School- an early Unitarian divinity school that would later become St. Lawrence University- (a school I happened to attend for two and a half years myself before transferring to the University of Colorado) the president told her that he would let her in, even though he doubted that anyone would ever let her become a minister.
She was a diligent, serious student with an independent streak. She refused to wear the full length skirts and dresses of her era and wore bloomers instead. Her bare ankles were revealed to the world! Though they admired her writing ability, her male fellow students mocked her for the way she dressed and for her thin-reedy voice. They would deliver their own sermons with falsettos outside her window. I can picture the stately granite dorm- the only building from that era when I went to St. Lawrence in my minds eye when I attended there so many years ago myself now!
As a result of this mockery, Olympia took voice lessons! She learned to speak from her diaphragm- and soon she was respected as the best female orator of her era. Now she was an accomplished Unitarian theologian, writer, and speaker and had finished her studies. She went before the ordination committee of St. Lawrence and guess what happened. She was denied!
Now this would have been the end of many young aspiring Unitarian ministers, but not Olympia! She met with the Northern Region of Unitarian churches of New York and convinced them all that she was indeed fit for ordination. They determined that St. Lawrence had been prejudicial, and she became the first woman to be ordained by a wider denominational network in the history of the the world.
Of course, even open minded progressive folk of her era like Unitarians, were still patriarchal enough to not want a woman to serve them as their minister. As a result she was only able to serve a string of churches that were barely functioning and no men wanted to serve. While serving her first church in Weymouth Landing MA, however she met Susan B. Anthony and became inspired to work for the women’s suffrage movement while she ministered to her congregations. Soon after she also raised two children from her marriage to Henry Willis. She did by the way, in a moment of prescience to where we are today, bucked the norms and refused to take his last name! The last struggling church she served became very healthy and grew by leaps and bounds.
When she was 52, she left full time ministry to serve the cause of women’s suffrage full time. Her public speaking ability helped the movement eventually become a reality. After the 19th amendment passed she was one of the only early pioneers left alive to celebrate the victory.
What do we take away from this profound witness? I was moved by the following phrase: “Do not demand immediate results but rejoice that we are worthy to be entrusted with this great message, that you are strong enough to work for a great true principle without counting the cost.”
I don’t know about you but when I encountered these words, something in me just kind of relaxed. It took so very long for women to win the right to vote. And of course many activists were forced into asylums, force fed when they went on hunger strikes, ridiculed and maligned. It reminded me of something greatly important. Like Olympia before us, it may be helpful to remember that, no matter what, we are worthy to be entrusted with message our central UU values of justice, equity, inclusion, and pluralism, that we are strong enough to work for our principles without counting the cost. This is, in religious terminology, our faith. In non- religious terms, this is our conviction. We will, no matter what, bear the message.
Yesterday morning when I joined your incredible witness, counter protesting the protesters at the women’s health clinic, and I held those signs you made (I can’t tell you what they all said here- but some of them were hilarious), and raised up chants, I encountered something I did not expect at six a.m. in the freezing weather on my precious Saturday: Joy! To stand proudly, even ridiculously, for what I believe, is absolutely worth it! Even if was just for a moment, to face the icon of the Virgin Mary and the throng of believers grasping their rosaries, praying their “Our Fathers”, and to shout “Thank God for the freedom of choice, thank God for reason, thank god for the freedom of choice, thank God for condoms!”, really it was the best therapy I could have ever dreamed of! But beyond the therapy and the laughter, (I mean Evan… Evan! He’s a genius!), just to encounter the truth, and to stand for it, and to join others also standing for it- what a gift! As Brown herself said, “He who never sacrificed a present to a future good or a personal to a general one can speak of happiness only as the blind do of colors.”
Let Murray be where the women are strong. Let all who drive by our doors know. While men may war and rage, the women work long and patiently shaping generations. I am so thankful to be a part of the tradition of Olympia Brown. Blessed Be!
