Speech
Mary Sumner Lecture 2009
May I begin by greeting everyone in the languages of the realm of New Zealand, in English, Māori, Cook Island Māori, Niuean, Tokelauan and New Zealand Sign Language.
Greetings, Kia Ora, Kia Orana, Fakalofa Lahi Atu, Taloha Ni and as it is the morning (Sign)
May I then specifically greet you: Very Reverend Ross Bay, Dean of the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity; Rosemary Bent, Provincial President of the Mother’s Union in the Province of Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia; Emilie Aldwinckle, Auckland Diocesan President; Distinguished Guests otherwise; Ladies and Gentlemen.
Thank you for inviting my wife Susan and I to the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity here in Auckland this morning and for me to contribute the 2009 Mary Sumner Lecture. I am pleased to continue the tradition of Governors-General being invited to do this.
I would like to take an opportunity to speak about Mary Sumner and the legacy she has bequeathed to us. As may be well known to this audience, it was Mary’s daughter Margaret giving birth to her first child in 1876 that proved to be the catalyst for Mary, then a new grandmother, forming the Mothers’ Union.
As Susan and I can observe, having happily become first-time grandparents twice in the last six months, it was no doubt a time of great joy for the Sumner family. Becoming a grandparent inevitably causes reflections on one’s own experiences as a first-time parent. It also refocuses one’s view of the world into which the grandchildren are entering.
And so it was with Mary Sumner. The birth of her grandchild reminded her of her own struggles as a new mother, and the responsibilities that went with being a parent. From that reflection and recollection came the idea for the Mothers’ Union, which she established at Old Alresford parish near Winchester in Hampshire –south west of London, where her husband, Charles, was the vicar.
It is possible that the Mothers’ Union might have remained a local initiative had she not attended the Portsmouth Church Congress in 1885. The Bishop of Newcastle had been asked to address a gathering of women but believing he had little to say to them, he asked Mary to speak instead.
It is said that while she was very nervous, she gave a passionate speech about the importance of the mother’s role in changing and improving society. At the conclusion she received a rousing ovation and so inspired the audience that many returned home and established similar mothers’ gatherings. The Bishop of Winchester gave his own seal of approval by accrediting the Mothers’ Union as a diocesan organisation. Mary Sumner is held in such esteem that the day of her death in 1921, the 9th August, is commemorated in liturgical calendars in many provinces of the Church of England.
So what is the importance of the Mary Sumner legacy? In a strict sense, she emphasised the need to support and nurture marriage and family within a Christian framework, as well as supporting and assisting those families that were struggling.
But if one was to look more widely at her example, one can see a number of important themes. First, whilst Christian prayer was undoubtedly an important part of Union gatherings, it was more than that. I am sure that right from the beginning it was a time when women meeting in a social setting could also share problems and seek advice. They would be seeking the advice and wisdom of God as revealed in prayer, but also the advice and wisdom of each other through a social gathering. It was in many ways a new way to reflect Christ’s word as recorded in the well known passage from St Matthew’s Gospel that goes: “Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”
Secondly, Mothers’ Union gatherings were not restricted to what can be respectfully called the parish elite, but it was open to all mothers, regardless of social standing. This was more than just a sense of noblesse oblige on Mary’s part as the vicar’s wife and she clearly saw that all mothers, regardless of their class or background, had a role to play in changing society for the better. Again, in the late 19th century, when British society was becoming increasingly stratified with socio-economic and class boundaries, this was a very different approach.
Thirdly, and probably most radical of all, was the idea of the Mothers’ Union as a women’s organisation. Whilst firmly grounded within the prevailing view of the role of women being firmly within the home, within the Anglican Church, Mary had effectively created an organisation of women, for women. Again, for its time, this was a novel approach.
These three facets, neighbourly help; widespread membership; and women’s organisation speak of an organisation, infused with Christian charity and born of local community initiatives to support the key unit of our society—the family, and particularly of women and children.
It goes almost without saying that the world into which Mary Sumner was born 181 years ago is very different from today. In 1828, George IV was King and Britain was experiencing the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, which was transforming both the economy and society. New Zealand’s absorption into the British Empire as a colony was still some 12 years away. It was still a hundred years before women in Britain would be granted the right to vote.
Approaching 200 years after Mary’s birth, the sun has set on the British Empire and we are now experiencing another revolution - the Information Revolution, which is transforming our society and economy, for example in email and cellphone use in ways not considered even 20 years ago.
New Zealand now is an independent constitutional monarchy where George’s IV great-great-great-great niece, Elizabeth II is Queen of New Zealand. Women not only have the vote, but have careers that, in our nation’s case for example, have seen them undertaking the senior-most roles in our political, judicial and business worlds.
Increased migration has seen many nations become culturally, religiously and ethnically diverse. The structure of families and of personal relationships has become equally diverse, with increased levels of divorce, single-parent families and blended families. Not all couples choose to marry. Some remain in de facto relationships and others, including same-sex couples, have chosen to enter civil unions.
These new forms of relationships challenge traditional norms. While the love and support of my wife Susan in almost 40 years of marriage has been a key factor in the road I have travelled in my personal and professional life, I am not blinded to the fact that others have taken different paths. While I perceive marriage as the “gold standard,” I am very conscious that it is the quality of the relationship, and the love that infuses it, rather than its legal form, that should always be paramount.
Likewise, relationships are also occurring increasingly across ethnic, cultural and religious divides that once kept people apart - my own marriage being a case in point. It was not until a year after Mary Sumner’s birth in 1828 that legal restrictions on people holding the Catholic faith were lifted by the Catholic Relief Act 1829.
The Mothers’ Union has had to change to meet these kinds of challenges. I doubt that Mary Sumner ever predicted that the organisation she founded would grow to have more than 3.6 million members in more than 75 nations. That the organisation’s chief executive is a man speaks more than a little of the societal changes I have just referred to!
In preparing for this address, I reviewed the Mothers’ Union annual reviews for 2007-2008 and 2008-2009. I was struck by the array of initiatives, both in the developing and developed world, in which the organisation is involved. Whilst the core principles of the Union remain, a wide range of activities take place to meet the needs of the 21st Century. In the developing world, there are literacy and development programmes in Africa, which assist women in gaining skills in health, hygiene, HIV/AIDS and poverty alleviation, through to income generation programmes in India.
In developed nations such as Britain there are programmes to unite families where a parent may be in prison, through to resources that address parenting, relationships and sexuality in a modern age. The Union is also involved in international campaigning and lobbying on issues such as parents rights, international debt relief and child poverty.
From a prayer gathering for women in a small semi-rural parish near Winchester, Mothers’ Union has adapted and grown into an international Christian charity committed to supporting not only marriage, but also parents, families and children in the widest sense. As the 2007-8 Annual Review noted, Mothers’ Union members “share a vision of a world where God’s love is shown through loving, respectful and flourishing relationships: reaching out to communities, they change lives and bring hope.”
Against this backdrop are the current economic circumstances that our nation and the world currently faces. According to many economists, New Zealand and the world are entering one of the most difficult economic periods since the time of the Great Depression of the 1930s. A malaise that was originally centred on the financial sector has spread far further. A report by the World Bank earlier this year suggested that the world economy as a whole would shrink for the first time since the end of the Second World War.
The ramifications of these troubles affect all nations. As our former Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Helen Clark, recently told the Executive Board of the United Nations Development Programme in her first speech as that organisation’s Administrator at the end of May 2009, those least responsible for the crisis stand to bear the brunt in the long-term. Helen Clark said:
“These global problems reflect our interdependence, and they require global solutions … Developed countries have been impacted, some severely, but for the most part they have had tools at their disposal to address the crisis. The longer term effect of the recession on developing countries is potentially much more devastating.”
If one takes Helen Clark’s line of reasoning about “bearing the brunt” further, it also seems inevitable the stresses and tensions of these troubling times will be played out as well in homes and families throughout the world. Many of the issues that already confronted our world—poverty, conflict, domestic violence, family breakdown, economic injustice, the exploitation of women and children, depression, diseases such as HIV-Aids and malaria—will be magnified a number of times over.
It is into this fray that Mothers’ Union has the potential to play an important role. The wider legacy of Mary Sumner - of community initiatives and community solutions centred on helping families will be critical. In any economic slowdown, it is those on the bottom rungs of a nation’s economy who will more likely suffer the most. In both developed and developing nations, these are often women, particularly mothers, and their children.
In my New Year Governor-General message at the beginning of this year, I called on all New Zealanders to offer voluntary service to the community. I offered the view that the spirit of volunteerism is the glue that holds our society and economy together and that our health, education and social service sectors would grind to a halt without the countless hours of voluntary work many people provide.
I suspect that the next few years will test that "glue" in a way that few will previously recall. There is a current cliché that says in difficult times, people should work "smarter, not harder." I suspect that organisations such as Mothers’ Union will not get off lightly. You will probably have to work smarter as well as harder!
I am very conscious, however, that in difficult times such as these, that donations, the “normal” means by which members support organisations such as Mothers’ Union, will be harder to come by and charities will be competing against each for the dollar. It will require all charities to think of new ways of assisting those in need.
Working more smartly will mean looking beyond Mothers’ Union’s own resources to the community as a whole. Initiatives to assist those in need will be magnified and all the more stronger and resilient, if they are done collaboratively with other organisations, regardless of whether they are Christian or not and whether they are religious or not. As the Union has shown through its history, those initiatives work best when they have their genesis in adversity and need.
The collaborative spirit, and its ability to deliver more than the sum of individual parts, is well described in the apposite Māori proverb: Ko koe ki tēnā, ko ahau ki tēnei kīwai o te kete, which translates in English as saying, "You at that handle and I at this handle of the basket."
The days ahead will challenge the Church as they will challenge us all. Given the challenge, I cannot think of a more appropriate comment, with which to conclude, than one of Abraham Lincoln who, at the height of the American Civil War, spoke to Congress using the following words:
"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves."
And on a note of respect for your organisation and anticipation of what lies ahead, I will close in New Zealand’s first language, Māori, offering everyone greetings and wishing you all good health and fortitude in your endeavours.
No reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, kia ora, kia kaha, tēnā koutou katoa.