Today, in honor of Women’s History Month, I want to tell you a story about how women, and “woman’s work” played an important role in the history of our faith tradition. Not just our own Unitarian Universalist tradition, but many of the radical movements that were part of the protestant reformation. I first heard this story from my colleague Rev. Barbara Meyers 20 years ago, and am so grateful she was able to send me a copy of her paper on which much of this reflection is largely based.
If you look down at whatever you are wearing today, you can see that most of it is probably made of thread or yarn, whether it was woven on a loom or knit with knitting needles, most clothing starts out as thread. And to make thread, (back before polyester was invented) you take the plant materials, like cotton or linen, or the wool that comes from the hair of a sheep. The fibers are cleaned and prepared, and then someone needs to spin all those fibers into thread. Before the spinning wheel was invented, this was done by hand with a spindle. You can imagine if every thread in your clothing had to be spun by hand with a spindle, most people would not have very much clothing, and it would be passed carefully from one person to another.
It might take a 40 hour week just to spin the thread for a pair of pants[i] It took about 4-20 people spinning to provide thread for one weaver, so one of the first ways society moved from feudalism to early capitalism, was to set up systems to move raw fiber through spinning and weaving to finished cloth. Now in some areas, the whole process was done in one community, but in the verlag system we are talking about today different communities would specialize in different parts of the process. Growing and spinning the fibers would be done in the country, and the thread brought to weavers in the city. Mercantilists convinced women and girls to do this spinning at home as one of the first “cottage industries” Spinning brought a little money to women, who had few other ways of making money, and it gave a bit of freedom to unmarried women, hence the term “spinster.” (Not a living wage, mind you, spinners never made enough to move out of poverty).
Women began gathering in community to spin together, since it’s nice to spin and talk at the same time, in fact this is how communities like the Beguines began, as communities of unmarried women who spun to provide their own living. And so it was natural that ideas spread among the women spinning together.
This system also required someone to go among small farms to pick up wool (this was literally called “wool gathering[ii]”) and to go from spinner to spinner pickup up the completed thread and then take the thread to the weavers in the city. And all along the way news and ideas were passed as well.
What kind of radical ideas? Well even though Universalism itself didn’t form until the mid-18th century, the idea of universal salvation was one such idea. A group called the Familia Caritatis or “Family of Love” believed in Universal Salvation back in the 16th century, and they were unitarian- that is they didn’t believe in the trinity. They didn’t believe folks should be put to death for their beliefs, Scholar Mike Betrand writes “the Family's emphasis on tolerance in matters of belief strikes a modern chord, also their insistence on the necessity for every person to find their own way to God in an ongoing, lifelong process… Much Family doctrine has a curiously modern feel — principled tolerance for all faiths, cultivation of the Christ within, the necessity to love all one's neighbors, the allegorical nature of scripture (and no less powerful for that).”[iv] The Lollards were another such movement, driven underground in the 1400s, Barbara tells us “The Lollards were fiercely anti-authoritarian, anti-aristocratic, and rejected the ruling class and its law.” The Levelers believed in democracy, and expanding the vote. The Diggers believed regular people should have the right to own and farm their own land. The Friends, or Quakers, were a later movement born in the 1600s but influenced by some of these radical sects, Meyers writes: “The Friend’s beliefs stress the guidance of the Holy Spirit, … and have a long tradition of actively working for peace and opposing war. They have also supported the equal gifts of women to preach and witness for their faith.”
I love to think of those spinners long ago, women who did not have many of the rights we modern women have today -- the right to vote, the right to own property, the right to speak in church, the right to choose whether or not they would have children. How proud I am to know that ordinary women bravely played a role in passing on the ideas that mean so much to us today, ideas about each and every person having worth and dignity, opposing war and valuing peace, anti-authoritarian ideas, a belief that even ordinary people needed a say in their governance, and belief that the land belonged to everyone, and not just the ruling class. These are indeed dangerous ideas that lead to things like democracy, and women’s suffrage, and female preachers, and Universalism. I’m proud that these women, who had most likely been taught that they should not think for themselves, should not have their own ideas, discerned for themselves was true and passed on that wisdom to others..
I think fondly also of the women in our own congregation who knit and crocheted the pocket hugs we shared today, who had quilting bees and made bandages for the war effort, who passed on the teachings of universal love, and a social gospel that respected the most vulnerable, in keeping with the teachings of Jesus and the wisdom traditions of the world.
Rev. Meyer writes: “It goes without saying that complete and accurate records of what were underground religious activities do not exist; heretics needed to be circumspect and not draw attention to themselves. As Christopher Hill says, ‘A successful underground leaves no traces.’ Thus, many important events and trends were doubtless not recorded and remain lost to us.” Just as we have no records of the Cortland Congregation’s role in the underground railroad, but we remember how our congregation bravely lived our values and faith even when it was dangerous to do so. Perhaps it was because they were so quiet and unassuming that their mission was successful.
It’s heartening to consider that the small, quiet things we do have their own power to change the world for the better, to tilt the moral arc of the universe towards love and justice.
[i] https://herhalfofhistory.com/2025/08/14/15-4-the-spindle-the-spinning-wheel-and-the-spinning-jenny/
[ii] https://historyofeconomicthought.mcmaster.ca/power/WoolTrade.pdf
[iii] such ideas were also spread by traveling pedlers, and the leather trade.
[iv] https://nonagon.org/ExLibris/sites/default/files/pdf/English-Family-of-Love.pdf
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