The Strain of Other Blood: The Life of the Reverend Mother Ruth from Harlem (Patricia Allen) - Review
There continues to be significant
resistance to women taking leading roles in the life of the church, and it is even
more challenging if you are a woman of color. Roman Catholics and, to the
surprise of many, the Episcopal/Anglican Churches have long provided a place
for women’s leadership in the church even if that place is not always the priesthood.
Women’s monastic orders may utilize priests as chaplains and overseers, but
daily life is overseen by women leaders. Often these women have been involved in
educational and health care ministries. Except for the saintliest members of
such orders, we rarely hear very much about individual members. So, having a
biography of an Episcopal Church nun, especially an African American Episcopal
nun, is worth taking note of. We have such a biography in Patricia Allen’s The
Strain of Other Blood: The Life of the Reverend Mother Ruth from Harlem.
While Mother Ruth may be an obscure
person to most contemporary readers, she was once an important leader in the
Episcopal Church, especially in New York. The author of this study of Mother
Ruth’s life, Patricia Allen, is a journalist and writer who has worked for a
variety of institutions including the CDC, New York University, and Princeton
University. While Mother Ruth, born Ruth Elaine Younger, may not be a well-known
figure, she represents women, especially women of color, who overcame great
odds to become a figure of importance. The title of the book speaks to those odds,
for she was, in her own words, having “the strain of other blood.” In other
words, she was Black in a predominantly white church. Because she understood
what it meant to have this “strain of other blood,” she sought to cover up that
reality and pass as white. Even as she dealt with these challenges, she was
driven to succeed by overcoming her origins and creating something of great
value that would address the racial conflicts that separate people. That drive
to succeed was complicated by her struggle to deal with her own identity as a
Black woman from Harlem, who could pass as white. I will note that Patricia
Allen not only researched and wrote this biography of Mother Ruth, but she
integrates her own story into the journey to discover who Mother Ruth really
was.
The title of the book references Mother
Ruth’s ethnic identity and her autobiography, which describes how she went from
growing up in Harlem in poverty to founding a women's monastic order in the
Episcopal Church, the Community of the Holy Spirit. Feeling called to the
religious life, she was at first rejected by the major Episcopal houses
primarily because she was Black. It is this idea that she had a "strain of
other blood," that is, African ancestry, that drove her desire to
accomplish something of importance. Allen concludes the biography’s first
chapter, titled "Strain of Other Blood," noting that these four words
"revealed the single most-defining biographical and personality trait I
first associated with Mother Ruth. There was no doubt in my mind that Ruth's
Blackness was a strain on her life, especially in a mainline church of the
early twentieth century" (p. 8).
In Chapter 2, titled "Ruth
Awakening," Allen reveals how she came into contact with Mother Ruth's
community, contact that led her to write her story. This included spending time
at a house connected to the Community of the Holy Spirit. In fact, throughout
the book, Allen reveals how she researched Mother Ruth's story, including her
conversations with members of the order along with her attempts to track down
members of the family (Chapter 3). What we learn along the way is that not only
was Mother Ruth driven to succeed, she also had an abrasive personality, such
that she did not even treat those closest to her well.
After the two chapters that set out
the author’s path of discovery, Allen begins to speak to the life of Ruth
Younger, starting in Chapter 4, titled "1897-1918, The Death of Ruth
Elaine Younger." By death, Allen is speaking of Mother Ruth’s life from
her birth in 1897 in Harlem to what Mother Ruth considered to be her first
death, the death of her old life, which coincided with the death of her mother
and her entrance into monastic life. In this chapter, we learn of the death of
her father in 1914 along with the challenges the family faced as their mother
struggled with depression. Mother Ruth’s decision to depart from the family to
enter monastic life ends up being a significant point of division within the
family. Her entrance into monastic life also
required her to move from Harlem to Toronto due to the unwillingness of the
local monastic order to accept her into membership.
In a chapter titled "Little
Nun on the Prairie" (Chapter 5), we learn that after Mother Ruth entered
religious life with the Sisters of St John the Divine in Toronto, she received
her degree in education from the Ontario College of Education. After receiving
her degree, the order sent her to Regina, Saskatchewan, where she taught at the
diocesan school. By 1935, Sister Ruth had come to believe that she had been
commissioned by God to return to the United States and address the racism at
home. Thus, Chapter 6 discusses "A Monastic Manifesto," which she
drew up, hoping her order would embrace her calling, though first she was sent
to teach in the slums of Montreal. Finally, in 1936, the order allowed her to
return to the States. Chapter 7, titled "Repatriation I—Detroit,"
tells the story of her years in the United States, where she often pushed
against boundaries set by her order. However, from 1936 to 1941, she oversaw the
Church Literature Department for her Order. Then in 1946, she returned to the
United States, where she served as the youth minister of St. Cyprian Episcopal
Church in Detroit, an African American congregation. But she was not enthused
by her responsibilities, despite success, because she still wanted to do
something about racial relations. So, she continued to pursue other ventures,
often without her order's knowledge. Again, we discover why she struggled with
her relationships. She had a defiant streak about her that would eventually
lead the order to consider expelling her, as we see in Chapter 8: "A
Veiled Threat—Expelling Sister Ruth." Despite the threats of expulsion,
Sister Ruth continued to defy her superiors, traveling to various places
seeking support for her vision. Thus, we have the chapter "She Said, She
Said—Sister Ruth on Trial." Things came to a head in 1949, as Ruth engaged
in a dispute with the leader of her order. Ultimately, the order decided to
allow Ruth the freedom to explore her vision of racial reconciliation in New
York.
Chapter 10, "The Bishop's
Move," discusses a move toward establishing a religious community in
Detroit that included the local bishop and the head of her house. That effort
was short-lived and eventually, as discussed in Chapter 11, "Repatriation
II—White Saviors, White Saboteurs," Sister Ruth finally made her way back
to New York, where she was allowed to begin a ministry in partnership with
another nun from her order. They established what became St. Hilda's School in
1950 as a kindergarten, to which more grades were added in the years to come.
But Ruth still had the urge to start a religious community of her own, and the
mission she had outlined in her 1935 manifesto had finally come to fruition.
Then in 1952, as described in Chapter 12, we have "Becoming the Reverend
Mother Ruth, CHS. It was in 1952, with St. Hilda's having grown to a school of
125 students, that Sister Ruth was permitted to establish the Community of the
Holy Spirit. Here she was, aged fifty-four, a doctoral student in education,
and she was ready to leave behind her old order and, with Sister Edith
Margaret, establish this new order. At which point, supported by Bishop
Donegan, she became Reverend Mother Ruth, head of the Community of the Holy
Spirit and headmistress of St. Hilda's School, while also becoming a well-known
figure in the community. But we also begin to see trouble brewing as she came
into conflict with the board of trustees of her school. We also see the
beginnings of her personality traits that would lead to further trouble. She survived
her first fight, but more were to come. Chapter 13, "A Dream Deferred or
Mission Aborted," discusses her attempts to recruit members of her order
and the struggles that she experienced. We see here both her vision of
education, which was largely successful, and the personality conflicts that
began to emerge with members of her order, other teachers, parents, and
supporters. We also see revealed how she largely hid her African heritage,
though many of the nuns knew she was black. Chapter 14, "The Kids of St.
Hilda's & St. Hugh's," takes us into the 1960s, and Mother Ruth's
struggles to deal with students who were now teenagers. While she attempted to
understand the new music and views, she also resisted changing clothing and
hairstyles.
Chapter 15 is intriguing because,
as the chapter title indicates, Mother Ruth had a long-standing relationship
with the well-known Christian author Madeline L'Engle, who placed her children
in the school and taught for a time at the school. While Mother Ruth might not
be as well-known today, she had a close relationship with the famous author,
and her husband suggests that Mother Ruth, in her day, was a very influential
figure in New York Episcopalian circles. As noted earlier in the review, Mother
Ruth was African American but tended to pass as white. While desiring to pursue
racial reconciliation, her order was largely white, as was the school. Thus,
chapter 16, titled "The Nice Black Families," is instructive. She was
concerned about respectability, which led her to be cautious about admitting
Black families to the school. It is possible that this concern was a product of
traumatic experiences of racism earlier in life.
As time passed, Mother Ruth began
to display more authoritarian tendencies, alienating members of her order and
parents. Chapter 17, titled "Runaway Nun," reveals that while from
the outside everything looked fine with the order and the school, internally
things were very different. Allen writes that Mother Ruth's "caustic,
ingrained stubbornness, and an ever worse mental and physical antagonist—aging—brought
Mother Ruth to a new level of ugly tyranny that would traumatize some of her
school students, but most notably and with more lasting effects, demoralize the
sisters of her community" (p. 179). We see this play out in the life of
one of the nuns who eventually ran away. Titled "Middle Sister—Along Comes
Mary," Chapter 18 tells the story of Sister Mary, who became Mother Ruth's
personal assistant at a very trying time in Mother Ruth's life, which included
conflicts with the parents of the students attending the school. Sister Mary
would play an important role in the last years of Mother Ruth's life. She would
also become an important source of information for Patricia Allen's attempt to
tell the story of this very complicated woman. Chapter 19, "Resistance—Challenging
a Ruthless Regime," begins with the story of an African American woman who
joined the order in 1968; we learn from Sister Regina about the way she
experienced Mother Ruth and the dysfunction of the order. Regina wished to
engage in social justice work but discovered that Mother Ruth was not
interested. She suggested other reforms, all of which Mother Ruth resisted.
Nevertheless, she lived in the community for sixteen years before leaving. We
also learn about Sister Julian, who struggled to deal with Mother Ruth’s
authoritarian leadership style. These stories reveal a woman who was driven to
succeed, in part due to the trauma of her early years, but also reveal that she
learned the wrong lessons from her own attempts to pursue her dreams by not
allowing others to thrive.
One of the threads that runs
through the book is Mother Ruth's struggle to integrate her ethnicity/race with
her faith. To succeed in a largely White denomination, she suppressed/hid her
Blackness. Thus, Chapter 20 deals with this struggle in a chapter titled
"The Incognegro and Black Episcopalians. We learn something about these
realities in the story of Brother Reginald, who applied to serve as a teacher
at the school but was rejected by Mother Ruth largely because, in her view, he
was "too Black." She was also opposed to all groups that were all
Black, including gatherings of Black clergy. There is a lot of sadness in these
chapters as we watch a woman deal with the vagaries of her past.
By the time that the above story
took place, it was the late 1970s, and Mother Ruth was now in her 80s, her time
on earth drawing to a close. Chapter 21, "The Beginning of the End,"
describes the change of leadership that took place in the 1980s, as Mother Ruth
was essentially forced, against her will, to let go of leadership to one of her
longest-serving members of the community. While Mother Mary Cristabel was
elected as the order's Mother General, Mother Ruth continued to exert or try to
exert influence, especially on the school. It is a sad picture of someone who has
reached great heights of influence beginning to fade into the background. She
would die on December 22, 1986, with Sister Mary at her bedside, ending a life
of great accomplishment but perhaps also with much regret.
The final chapter is titled
"Elegy" (Chapter 22). In this chapter, Patricia Allen offers her own
take on the life of Mother Ruth. Although the book offers a critical appraisal
of Mother Ruth's life, including her rather caustic personality and authoritarian
tendencies, Allen expresses her own admiration, even love for this woman. She
writes of Mother Ruth that she was "an iconic archetype of a strong Black
woman, who I realized wasn't just familiar to me, but to many" (p. 227).
As Patricia Allen’s The Strain of Other Blood: The Life of the Reverend Mother Ruth from Harlem draws to a close, we’re
left with a feeling of sadness, wondering whether, if she could have fully
embraced her own identity and not hide behind a veil of silence, her influence
could have been even greater.
Copies of The Strain of Other Blood may be purchased at your favorite retailer, including my Amazon affiliate bookstore.
Comments