Mother's Day, Pacifism and the Resurrection

Mother’s Day, Pacifism and the Resurrection

The Rev. Timothy B. Safford

May 9, 2010

My guess is that if Julia Ward Howe is remembered at all, it is for writing the words for the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Less known about her is the role she played in the origins of Mother’s Day, which, even though the liturgical calendar reminds us that today is the Sixth Sunday of Easter, plays a prominent cultural role this second Sunday of May.

An early abolitionist, Julia Ward Howe became a committed pacifist after the Civil War, which is interesting considering how militaristic the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” seems. If I read the history correctly, she could not believe the carnage and destruction witnessed in those battles was necessary and unavoidable. She had a deep belief that men were willing to sacrifice too easily the lives of young men, and she believed that mother’s would not. Further, women could not even vote for the men who were sending their sons to war. To her, men seemed to relish war. If war were going to stop, the mothers would stop it.

In 1870, using her bully pulpit, she put forth a Mother’s Day proclamation, which read,

Arise, then, women of this day!

Arise, all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:

We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies.

Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.

Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.

So, Mother’s Day began as an organizing effort for civil rights, for pacifism and political action.

Her proclamation went on to describe the solidarity mothers in the United States would feel with mother’s in another country, even if at war:

We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.

From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after her own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

I never knew that Mother’s Day began as an effort to organize mothers to put an end to war, a movement for mothers to not accommodate the demands of political empires (Caesar) but to do the work that the Prince of Peace called each follower to.

Now, don’t get the wrong idea: I like Mother’s Day in all of its current reality. Yes, it’s commercial and sentimental, but the fact of the matter is, there is nothing wrong with giving Mom the attention she deserves. Why not?

But there is a lesson to be learned in how different Mother’s Day is than at its origin. What is now sweet was then confrontational; what is now sentimental was then very, very political. Now, Mom is on a pedestal, then, she was in the streets, organizing with other Mom’s against the purveyors and planners of war.

How did Mother’s Day change? That part of the history has a Philadelphia angle.

Julia Ward Howe, and the women’s suffrage movement, kept Mother’s day alive for many years, but enthusiasm faded. In 1907, a Philadelphian, Anna Jarvis, began a campaign to revive Mother’s Day. She worked to have a day of fitting tribute for all mothers on the second Sunday of May that began in church, or in a civic church-like service, in which mothers were all given carnations.

One of the factors that catapulted Mother’s Day onto the national stage was the support of Philadelphia über-merchant John Wanamaker. In Mother’s Day, he saw, in the words of the Pennsylvania Historical Society, “the opportunity to enhance his business.”

From that point forward, Mother’s Day was unstoppable. Wanamaker began to lobby the Congress to make Mother’s Day a national holiday. In May 1914, Woodrow Wilson signed the legislation.

Anna Marie Jarvis is buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery, not far from here. She died in poverty, having spent her family inheritance campaigning against what the Mother’s Day holiday had become. Her obituary ran in the New York Times, with this quote from her: “A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world. And candy! You take a box to Mother—and then eat most of it yourself. A pretty sentiment!”

What I like about her disgust is the reminder that our observances must be authentic and not empty. That is true of both Mother’s Day, and the event that first animated Julia Ward Howe to pursue her pacifist vision: the Resurrection of Christ. For as the Gospel reminds us this day, in the Resurrection, Christ would leave the world, but would leave behind the gift of peace. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you,” he told his disciples shortly before the first Easter. “I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”

In 1870, Julia Ward Howe wanted to bring the peace to the world that the world itself could not give. I mentioned that President Wilson made Mother’s Day a holiday in May of 1914. One month later, World War I would begin. More than 15 million of the sons for whom Julia Ward Howe had wanted Mother’s Day to protect died in that war. If she had succeeded in her attempts to create a global pacifist movement of mothers who refused to welcome home to bed their husbands “reeking of carnage,” seeking “caresses and applause,” and who refused to have their sons “be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience,” would the war had been prevented? To even ponder this question would seem naïve and idealistic to many. But, let us not forget that we are to bear the stamp, not of Caesar, but of God, and let us remember the raw political meaning of the resurrection.

Five weeks ago, we gathered on Easter Sunday to hear the story of a small group of women who early on the first day of the week went to a tomb where the body of Jesus, who had been crucified, had been laid. They found the stone sealing the tomb rolled away, and the tomb empty. These women, many mothers not that different than Julia and Anna, were trusted to carry back to the rather thick male disciples the truth of the resurrection: that it was true what Jesus preached, now proven in his risen self: that love was stronger than hate, hope more powerful than despair, and the promise of life triumphant over the curse of death. To the disciples, “these words seemed to them an idle tale.”

When she issued her Mother’s Day proclamation in 1870, Julia Ward Howe, like the women at the tomb, was preaching the resurrection, not as doctrine or dogma, but as a call to political action—political action that refused to allow the agents of death and war destroy the precious gift of life. But, for our culture, then and now, the belief we could overcome war seemed to the patriarchal world and idle tale. Within 50 years, that radical, Christ-like movement that was Mother’s Day became a commercial enterprise.

Friends, let us take up the work of Mother’s Day—of proclaiming the resurrection not only with our lips, but with our lives. Let us walk in the footsteps of Jesus and Julia and work to bring the peace that the world cannot give. God our mother gave her only Son so that no mother should have to give her child to the folly of war ever again.