I was exhorted today to encourage the starting of a Mothers’ Union branch. I won’t be offering any such encouragement. Like some other clergy I know, I’ve no great enthusiasm for the MU.
The odd thing is that one never gets asked why.
I know the reasons that I’m not really into the MU, but don’t know whether they are commonly held.
It isn’t just past experiences of MU folk which put me off, though I’m only human and that is inevitably a factor, as I think it might be for others too.
No, it is two quite specific things that the MU brand has come to mean to me, and both are issues which the wider church has struggled with, to its own detriment.
The first of these issues is divorce – it is still within living memory that if someone got divorced they got put out of the MU. The fact that an organisation committed to family life would abandon people at a time when they most needed fellowship and support caused untold hurt. I know that may not be the case now, but it lingers in the air and I’ve never been convinced that this has really been aired and dealt with.
The second is to do with the way the MU changed from being an organization which was really good at offering support to families where a gay child was coming out to being an organization which offered nothing. They used to offer a video which parents could watch if their child turned up at home saying that they thought they were gay. It was good, excellent family ministry. The video was withdrawn some years ago. At the time of the Jeffrey John/Oxford incident, I was told that the MU had changed its policy and could no longer offer such support to such families. Indeed, I was told that this had changed in order to keep the MU links between members in this country and Africa which would otherwise fail.
I thought at the time that this was disgraceful and once again, families who were most in need of help were being abandoned.
The MU come to the Cathedral several times a year for their festival services and they are most welcome to do so. On at least one occasion, I’ve joined in their worship. They do lots of good work, including that in prisons, contact centres and with folk who have recently lost a child. Notwithstanding all that goodness, whilst I associate the Mothers’ Union brand with those two issues above, I’m afraid it is difficult to muster any enthusiasm for encouraging things to start up locally.
It is one of those organizations which one would really like to be proved wrong about sometime.
Well done for speaking out on that Kelvin. I agree completely about the ugly subtext to so much self-described mother or “family” values Christian organisations.
Amen, sister. I’m with you. I have seen first-hand dreadful and cruel things threatened to a gay couple by the MU. I will never forget the hurt it caused.
Isn’t all of that to do with the paramilitary wing of the Mother’s Union?
On a slightly related topic, I was at a wedding reception last night, and in the company of people I had only just met. The conversation turned, as it does at weddings, to that of divorce, and I was asked what the SEC’s stance on divorcees marrying in church was. I confessed that I didn’t know, although I do remember in the past two friends of mine at St Mary’s being married in a registry office and having a blessing straight afterwards in the Cathedral, on the basis that it was his second marriage. That was mid 1980’s I guess.
Kelvin, are divorced people allowed to marry in St Mary’s? Is this the same in every SEC/Anglican church, or is it a matter of clergy conscience?
Sorry to go off topic slightly.
Have to say that every parish I’ve been in with an active MU group has been a positive experience for me. I used to be a bit “iffy” about them, but was converted in Glenrothes.
In my living memory, I was shocked when my recently divorced sister was refused Holy Communion by the then Bishop of G & G, and Primus. We’ve all moved on from these days, and the hard core MU folk have done so too, I believe.
Thanks for all comments – I’ll give a more details answer to Layclark later in a seperate post, but fundamentally, the answer is that I have quite often married people in church where for one or other of the couple they are doing it second time around.
When I was young, the MU was criticised for really being a wives union. They admitted married but childless women, but not unmarried mothers!
Has this changed?
Wow!
You really can put HTML punctuation into your comments!
Yes, Andrew. They even accept men as members these days, I understand!
Hello Kelvin,
I am sorry to read your recent comments on the Mothers’ Union. I really thought better of you.
The rules regarding divorced women in MU were changed in the early 70’s before much of the Anglican Communion changed their rules of membership. My own mother-in-law had left after her divorce in 1950 at the same time she was refused communion at the Lords table in her C of E Church. Praise God she was reunited with both the Church and the MU and continued to support and to receive support from both through out the rest of her life.
As to our opinions on the sexuality issues around the communion: I thought I had made my personal opinions clear when I was the leader of the MU in Scotland even though I know, as in any group/family, there are differing views around the Province. It was more difficult to advertise my rather liberal attitude when I became the World President. You are quite right in supposing that the three and a half million members in seventy eight different countries do have varying views.
Perhaps you should speak to those in your cathedral who are asking for a group there. See what they think.
In the meantime I send love to you and to my other friends in Glasgow and Galloway Diocese from my new home in Guildford Diocese!! Trish xx
Thanks for the comment Trish.
I’m pleased to hear that the rules about divorce changed in the MU in the 1970s. I’ve been ordained 10 years and have very clear memories of the shame that had been brought to bear on people by the lingering MU attitude to divorce. I should not, of course, confuse local things done in the name of the MU with the rules of the wider organization.
As to the sexuality issue Trish, I think you’ve just confirmed my accusation. The time of the Jeffrey John debacle was a time when those with private liberal views needed to make them public.
In the choices that the MU leadership made, gay clergy were regarded as dispensable and families with gay kids were let down.
Stigma associated with sexuality is one of the highest causes of teenage suicide. The MU let such families down by abandoning their support which had once been freely given. The choice was a clear one – families in need or preserving the unity of the MU.
I regret very much the choice that was made and still think it to have been an immoral one.
By the way, the exhortation to form an MU branch came from the Diocesan MU rather than anyone in the Cathedral.