Church Ladies
20. Continue along Gower Street past the Anglican Cathedral on your left, and Gower Street United Church on your right. Stop at the intersection of Church Hill and Gower Street.
The work of women's voluntary church organizations, regardless of denomination, has played a vital role in the development and sustenance of congregations and communities in Newfoundland. The Ladies Aid, the Women's Missionary Society, Presbyterian, Anglican, Methodist, and finally, United Church, women have been active contributors to the life of their congregations.
This work has been ongoing since the founding of the various congregations between 1699 and the early 1800s. For example, Gower Street United Church was established in 1815 as a Methodist church, but joined in the union of Methodist, Presbyterian, and Congregational churches in 1925 to form the United Church of Canada.
The present Anglican Cathedral of St. John the Baptist was re-constructed in 1892 after the last devastating fire to engulf the town, but a church has been on this site since the late 1600s.
Church congregations have taken up their spiritual and community work in a range of ways. Women members of congregations worked together to create social programs for church members, and religious services in the absence of a minister. They collected clothing donations for the poor, especially in the absence of any government support programs. Women worked with other community women, youth, children and families as a whole to improve their lives. They shared tea and friendship - in short, filled the on-going and changing needs of their parish members.
Crucially, women raised funds for church building projects, especially in light of the many destructive fires in St. John's. This work was not without contradictions, however, as women did not have a strong voice in the administration of the churches or dispersal of money.
In 1904, Armine Gosling and a group of women raised $5,600 for the rebuilding of the Anglican Cathedral after the 1892 fire. Gosling observed that women "loyally support an institution that encourages us to work and takes with eagerness all the money we can earn, but denies us any voice in its expenditure, and relegates us to outer darkness as far as having any share in formulating its policies is concerned..."
Women had a place in church hierarchies, but it was not at the top. Nevertheless, these organizations offered women a social and political space to address the needs of their communities and acted as a site of connecting and socializing with other women.
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