In conversation with Dr Ian Randall
In conversation with Dr Ian Randall about his recent biography Georgina Gollock (1861-1940) Pioneering Female Missiologist (Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide, 2023).
I see Dr Dana Roberts (Boston University) wrote in your Foreword that Georgina was one of the most influential women in the formative period of twentieth century Christianity.
I agree! And Dana is the authority. No one has written as much as she has on women in mission.
Dana also said that World Christianity is a women’s movement. I like that!
Counting both unmarried women like Georgina Gollock, and the wives of missionaries – who were missionaries, women have provided anywhere from a half to two thirds of the mission force. World Christianity happened because of women.
I find it unacceptable most historians still refer to married female missionaries as ‘missionary’s wives’.
There is a danger of being so immersed in the material that you speak the language of the material. We need to stand back and say that was the language then but I’m going to cast it in a different way. Wherever we can say that language is not acceptable, it is worth saying.
If World Christianity is a women’s movement, why is it that mainly men are written about?
There are more available sources on men. Georgina is a good example. John Mott, her contemporary, is everywhere. A bias is now needed towards finding women’s stories.
As Georgina understood, female missionaries did not receive as much recognition as their male counterparts. They were portrayed as second class in status and were rarely on missionary boards.
What about the sexism (or racism) implied in churches sending female missionaries ‘over there’ but not allowing female preachers at home?
There was a deep unwillingness to face up to that contradiction. Georgina wanted to see missionaries who were open to working under Chinese, Indian, or African leadership. Now churches in the Global South are so strong.
In your introduction you start with emphasising your wife, Janice, as co-researcher in your projects – and that it was she who was first struck with Georgina Gollock. Was a focus on Georgina an intentional choice to find women’s stories?
Janice is integral. What is natural is also intentional in the spiritual life.
You write you were drawn to ‘sing what had been unsung’. I love that.
Very poetic for me! When I wrote on the English Baptists in the twentieth century, I intentionally looked for women like the deaconesses in the Baptist Union.
My writing on Swiss missionary, Berthe Ryf, is another good example of an extremely significant woman in the East African Revival. She was in Switzerland by herself, getting Africans across to Switzerland. Hers is a phenomenal story and there are parallels with Georgina.
Joe Oldam said Georgina was someone you would want with you in a tight corner. There is massive book on Oldham, but Georgina is nowhere. Ruth Rouse, who she mentored, people know, but not Georgina.
You mention Dr R. Pierce Beaver wrote about women in mission as the first feminist movement in North America. Was Georgina a proto-feminist?
Was Catherine Booth a feminist when she said women should have an equal place in mission and history? Ruth Rouse argued that the spiritual forces behind the women’s movement were distinctly Christian in origin. Georgina gathered around her a group of female colleagues. She promoted other women all her life. It was said everybody felt better after being with her.
You have a section in your book labelled ‘Writing as a Calling’. Can you say more about this?
In 1820, only 5 of 385 members of Cork Library were women. Girls were made ready for marriage and men didn’t want them overeducated. Georgina’s writing was the beginning of her self-recognition she could influence people. She did a vast amount of writing for magazines, and writing her books must have taken so much time. Georgina wrote books to stir people up – often fictional accounts. She understood medicine as a ministry. Ministry was not just clergy. She wanted Africans to take up medicine when she wrote Heroes of Health.
Was there a female way of writing back then?
Georgina had a female audience to begin with. Her scientific material was no different to what a man might write. In Tamsin, she drew upon the adventure fiction most often associated with literature for boys.
When writing nonfiction or fiction, women characters were central. She had an ability to touch the feelings. I’m not saying men can’t do that. But she had something that appealed to her female audience. It can never be said she was a feely-touchy woman.
How did Georgina reach millions of women through her writing and speaking?
In the 1850s, the idea of praying for women around the world took hold and Prayer Unions were started. The awakening of women in the nineteenth century was associated with wider revival in the 1860s. By the 1880s, there were 8000 women in the Young Women’s Christian Association in Ireland alone. At the age of 23, Georgina was contributor and editor for the YWCA Our Own Gazette which reached 100,000 women (1884). She did the same for the Church Missionary Gleaner magazine which reached two and a half million (1890). She then became assistant editor for the strategic and influential International Review of Missions with Joe Oldham (1912).
Her life in public speaking also began in connection with the YWCA. When the CMS was finally convinced by Eugene Stock to hire a woman (only if she stayed away on the top floor of the building), Georgina began to represent it at events. By the 1890s she was giving much time to speaking and strategizing to inspire young college women to enter mission. At the large International Students’ Missionary Conference in Liverpool (1896), Georgina was the only woman who gave a major address from the main stage.
Alison M. Bucknall addressed the issue of a supposed feminization of faith in this period partly influenced by Keswick and the wider Holiness Movement. Women were being challenged to leave traditional female roles and were seen as in equal partnership with men. In the Holiness Movement there was a bigger space for women because they could testify. However, Keswick had no major female speakers.
Do you think we have lost something now single gender organisations are seen as patronising?
My instinct is that is not how the New Testament church operated. These single gender organisations allowed women to have their voice heard at a time when they needed it. There used to be minister’s wives conferences. As more and more women became ministers that didn’t survive.
Having said that, I could never have predicted the resurgence of male headship in some denominations, especially in America. It is absolutely there again. I didn’t think that’s what our future would look like. There are ways women can be subversive, active behind scenes. Georgina is a great model!
About Georgina Gollock
Georgina Gollock was a gifted writer, thinker, and organiser, a lynchpin in the Anglo-American missionary world. Yet her contribution has not been comprehensively studied until now. Ian Randall deftly brings to life the insight and skills she placed at the service of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), Church Missionary Society (CMS), Keswick, the World Missionary Conference 1910, and the International Review of Missions. This clear, carefully researched biography demonstrates the importance of a remarkable woman.
Prof. Emma Wild-Wood, Professor of African Religions and World Christianity, New College, University of Edinburgh.
About Ian Randall
Dr Ian Randall has taught church history and spirituality since the early 1990s. He was based for much of that time in London, at Spurgeon’s College, and in Prague, where he supervised post-graduate students from across Central and Eastern Europe. In 2008 he moved to Cambridge, where he has combined theological and pastoral involvements. Ian has had a long-term interest in the study of movements of spiritual renewal and of missional initiatives. He is the author of over twenty books and many essays and articles relating to these areas.