A Mighty Woman of God

This week our church honors Frances Perkins.  Public Servant.  Prophetic Witness.  Winner of the 2013 Lent Madness Golden Halo.  A mighty woman. 

Born in Maine in 1880, Frances Perkins studied at Mount Holyoke College and completed a masters degree in economics and sociology at Columbia. While working as a young woman in Chicago, she was drawn to the Episcopal Church and confirmed in 1905. Some time later, while working for the Factory Investigation Commission in New York, she witnessed the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, which killed 146 people, primarily young women factory workers. She said later that the New Deal was born for her on that day in 1911. The experience galvanized her advocacy for workers. At a time when few women enjoyed a professional career after marriage and children, Perkins was spurred in her career by the emergence of her husband’s mental illness. As the mother of a young daughter, she came to know on a personal level the importance of work and the urgency of supporting her family. She served in the administration of two New York governors:  first Al Smith, and later, under Governor Franklin Roosevelt, she was named Commissioner of Labor. When he became president in 1932, Roosevelt asked her to serve as Secretary of Labor, and so she was the first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet and the longest-serving cabinet member in U.S. history. Roosevelt called her “the cornerstone of his administration” for her tireless work in gaining passage of the Social Security Act, and the Fair Labor Standards of 1938, which established the minimum wage and prohibited child labor in most workplaces. Other New Deal efforts she championed included the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), unemployment insurance, a shorter work week, and worker safety regulations.  She remained active in teaching, social justice advocacy, and in the mission of the Episcopal Church until her death in 1965. 
 

Image (c) Robert Shetterly. The faint writing on the image reads: "Very slowly there evolved...certain basic facts, none of them new, but all of them seen in a new light. It was no new thing for America to refuse to let its people starve, nor was it a new idea that man should live by his own labor, but it had not been generally realized that on the ability of the common man to support himself hung the prosperity of everyone in the country."

God is love, it says in John's first letter--and (in 1 John 4:9): "God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sen his only Son into the world so that we might live through him." So that we might live through love. This God of love is the master of whom Jesus spoke in today's Gospel (John 13:16): "Very truly I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them." 

I find myself at the edge of tears when I read of Frances Perkins’ great gifts to us, and I realize they contain a mix of inspiration and despair. We are at a time, sadly, when our public life seems utterly bereft of love. And when we have reason to be suspicious of those in government who might be called “overtly religious,” which is how Donn Mitchell described Perkins in his biography of her. It was not meant disparagingly--he went on to call her “theologically articulate.” Throughout her 12 years as Secretary of Labor, Perkins took a monthly retreat with the Episcopal order of All Saints’ Sisters of the Poor, with whom she was a lay associate. Her work and her faith were woven together in love—and so her gifts and calling met the great hunger of society—and things were indeed made new.

God is love---and, as William Temple said, “The primary form of love in social organization is justice.” Justice was how God’s love was poured out in the life of Frances Perkins.  Jesus said: “If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.” Frances Perkins knew these things, and she did them—because she was a servant of the God of love, and because she could not unsee injustice, or un-hear the clear call of Christ in the world around her to lift up working people. Indeed she once said, “It is there to be done—and so I do it.” And so must we, who have been blessed by her, be servants and messengers for the God of love in our own time—a time of great hunger and brokenness.

Let us pray.

Loving God, we bless your Name for Frances Perkins, who lived out her belief that the special vocation of the laity is to conduct the secular affairs of society that all may be maintained in health and decency. Help us, following her example, to contend tirelessly for justice and for the protection of all in need, that we may be faithful followers of Jesus Christ; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

--Homily at Cornerstone Community Gathering, Trinity Cathedral, Portland, OR, May 11, 2017. 

Bio material and prayer adapted from Holy Women, Holy Men. 

Read more about Frances Perkins here:

Frances Perkins Center webpage

Robert Shetterly's Americans Who Tell the Truth website

Eloquent Woman blog. 

Lent Madness bio (beneath that of MLK, Jr.)