MOTHERS OF THE KIRK

 

Mothers of the Kirk

by Thomas H. Leonard

                                                                     

Anne Hepburn (1925-2016) was a COS missionary and a teacher, feminist and social justice advocate, wife of Rev. James Hepburn and mother of three children. During the 1950s, she served as headmistress of a mission primary school for girls in Nyasaland.

Anne was attending the COS’s annual Women’s Guild meeting in April 1982, as National President of the Guild, when God was addressed as Mother.

There followed angry reactions from the next COS General Assembly, and a small study group was appointed to consult with the Panel of Doctrine on the theological implications of the Motherhood of God.

The study group worked amid ‘volcanic controversy and feverish media interest’ during the subsequent media frenzy, and some COS members asserted that the whole matter was striking at the very foundations of the Christian faith.

Other members rejected the need to address and envisage God in ways that respect Christian understanding of personhood rather than suggest male superiority. Anne Hepburn was quite frightened by the authoritarian view of the patriarchal leadership of the COS. While the study group’s report was shelved, the issues surrounding the Motherhood of God were taken up with relish around the world. Indeed, we now feel at ease calling God either Mother or Father.

But my understanding, upon talking to a senior COS senior during February 2023, is that the report is still among the far too many shelved by COS. Indeed, the elder was surprised that I’d even bothered to ask.

Lesley Orr Macdonald composed and read the eulogy at Anne Hepburn’s2016 funeral in STAGS. Lesley is a celebrated historian, theologian and activist for gender and social justice. She has considerable experience in the public sector in relation to challenging gender inequality, violence and abuse in faith communities and wider society.

In a report published by the University of Edinburgh Centre for Theology and Public Issues in 2001, Lesley found that out of a sample of 25, 14 of whom had attended the COS, of the abused Christian women in Scotland, 19 had been in abusive marriages (of these eight had been married to clergyman),and 6 had suffered mistreatment, assault, sexual abuse or exploitation at the hands of church workers.

Lesley Orr was very peacefully married to Rev. Peter MacDonald, highly non-conformist minister of BSM until his tragic death in February2020.