'When Courage Calls: Josephine Butler and the Radical Pursuit of Justice for Women' by Sarah Williams

Event details

Date: Monday 28 October 2024

Time: 5:15 pm

Venue: Wycliffe Hall, 52-54 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6PW

The event includes:

• A Welcome from Revd Dr Michael Lloyd, Principal of Wycliffe Hall
• Bethan Willis interviewing Sarah Williams
• Audience Q&A with Sarah
• Refreshments
• Book signing and sales

Getting here: Wycliffe Hall is on major bus routes. Limited parking may be available on site (please contact us by email if you have any special access requirements) and pay-and-display on-street parking is available close by in Norham Gardens. 

All are welcome: the event is free to attend and booking is not required. 

About Sarah Williams

Sarah C. Williams BA, MA, DPhil (Oxford) is a highly respected social historian. A specialist in 19th and 20th-century cultural and religious history, she has taught on josephine Butler in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the US and UK.

Having trained in history at the University of Oxford, she subsequently taught as Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at Harris Manchester College, Lecturer at Trinity College and Praelector at Lincoln College.

After 17 years at Oxford, she moved to Regent College, Vancouver, Canada, to teach History of Christianity to graduate students from all over the world. Having now returned to England, she remains a research Professor at Regent College.

Sarah Williams has written and edited numerous articles and books, including the acclaimed monograph Religious Belief and Popular Culture; 1880-1939 (OUP).

Other work includes The Spirituality of Time, two historical novels and a widely read spiritual autobiography entitled The Shaming of the Strong (Kingsway, 2006), recently re-released as Perfectly Human: Nine Months with Cerian (Plough Publishing, 2018), in which she reflects theologically on contemporary debates surrounding identity and personhood.

She serves on editorial boards for a number of history journals and academic publishing houses.

About the book

Millicent Fawcett, the leader of the British suffragist movement, described Josephine Butler as ‘the most distinguished English woman of the nineteenth century’. Among the first feminist activists, Butler raised public awareness of the plight of destitute women, worked to address human trafficking and led a vigorous campaign to secure equal rights for women before the law. In her pursuit of justice, Butler did as much for women as William Wilberforce did for African slaves within the British Empire, and yet, while Wilberforce remains a household name, Butler is forgotten.

Social historian Sarah C. Williams presents a re-examined biography of the radical political activist Josephine Butler. From the beauty of her childhood in Northumbria, to the stifling intellectual environment of mid-Victorian Oxford; from the impoverished streets of Liverpool and the brothels of London, Brussels and Paris, to the offices of Westminster and the Houses of Parliament. Butler’s relentless drive to secure rights for women against the sexual double standard of her day captures a remarkable woman with deeply held values for equality.

Underpinning Butler’s public life of political activism lies the full corpus of her writing and the spirituality that grounded her activism. When Courage Calls offers a profound examination of Butler’s inner life of prayer, defined by her radical sense of justice that was able to transform Victorian society. Such conviction offers us a taste of the possibility for our time and culture.

This biography presents a fresh interpretation of the relationship between Josephine Butler’s public leadership, her political activism and her spirituality.

Text source: Hachette UK