Fr Ben Garren

Dear Siblings in Christ,

On the streets of Strasbourg Katharina Zell joined the pamphleteers, often with tracts she had written herself, promoting the reformation of the church. It was 1530s and quite everyone was at a loss to whether she was the pastor’s wife or the pastor’s curate.

Clergy spouses were a new thing, she was one of the first, and Katherina Schütz Zell was a force to be reconned with. She stands in the ranks of the last women Christian authors of the medieval period, before such voices were stifled in the reformation. Luther and Zwingli read her tracts with all seriousness and held she combined “the grace of both Mary and Martha.” She would interject herself into every form of ministry traditionally taken up by women and the majority of those traditionally reserved for men… including preaching on the street if not from the pulpit.

As her husband, and that first generation of reformers, passed away the second generation of male clergy took power… and with that came a stifling of what was considered excesses. This small moment where the call to be the wife of a clergy was considered a call of near equal ministry as a theologian, evangelist, and provider of spiritual direction and pastoral care came to an end…and was quickly replaced with the idea of clergy wives being regulated away from equal ministry in the church. As Katherina and a few others complained about this change they were sanctioned as “disturbing the peace.”

Katherina, then widowed, responded to this next generation of clergy saying “Do you call this disturbing the peace that instead of spending my time in frivolous amusements I have visited the plague infested and carried out the dead? I have visited those in prison and under sentence of death. Often for three days and nights I have neither eaten or slept. I have never mounted the pulpit, but I have done more than any minister in visiting those in ministry. Is this disturbing the peace of the church? You young fellows tread on the graves of the first fathers of this church in Strasbourg and punish all who disagree with you.”

In remembering Katherina on this day I hope we remember to keep the revolution, the reformation, this zeal for a church that is greater than what we have come to expect alive. Too often we work to create a space that is transformative…only to want to then put that transformation in check. If Katherina was disturbing the peace of the church, then may we be such disruptors in her honor.

Pax,

—Ben