Tuesday, December 30, 2025

It is the 30th of December 2025. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

Today, we head back to 19th-century England- an era marked by both Victorian manners and morals, but also the deep social change affected by the Industrial Revolution. Those of us who have lived through the internet revolution and the social changes it has affected might have an insight into the dizzying speed with which it happened and the undesired social effects.

There is a laundry list of 19th-century Reformers- abolitionists, public health activists, and especially those dealing with the poor and enslaved by poverty and its corollaries.

This is the age of the Booths from the Salvation Army, Nightingale and nurses, and Wilberforce and the abolition of the slave trade. Amongst all of these names, there is one whom the reformer Millicent Fawcett called “the most distinguished gentlewoman of the 19th century”, and she was Josephine Butler.

She was born Josephine Grey to Hannah and John (John was a cousin of the reformer Earl Grey). Hannah was the descendant of French Huguenots who had fled to England, and as a young girl, she was given a blessing by an aged John Wesley. Josephine grew up in a family shaped by evangelical piety and social reform. She was educated in the classics and church history in preparation for a life of service.

As a young girl, she was deeply affected one day as she was riding her horse and came across a body hanging from a tree- it was a local valet who had recently been fired for fathering an illegitimate child. Her sensitivity to suffering would be an impetus for her life’s work.

In 1852, she married George Butler, a tutor at Oxford and member of the august Butler family. George was a classicist and an Anglican priest- the two reportedly had a very happy marriage and engaged in general reform movements.  

But another tragedy would inspire a deeper dive into the lives of the suffering. The couple had four children; the youngest, Eva, was 6 when, upon scrambling to meet her parents, she slipped and fell over a banister and fell to her death in front of them. She wrote “I became possessed with an irresistible desire to go forth, and find some pain keener than my own- to meet with people more unhappy than myself…. I had no clear idea beyond that, no plan for helping others; my sole wish was to plunge into the heart of some human misery as to say to afflicted people, “I understand, I too have suffered”. She would spend her life dipping below her own social status- affected by suffering, and in response to the Gospel.

Her first published articles came in defense of the education and employment of women. She helped to found the “Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts”- an organization dedicated to protecting fallen women- women affected by prostitution and human trafficking. In 1880, Josephine was contacted by Alfred Dyer, a Quaker who had heard of her work and who had exposed a conspiracy by the Belgian Chief of Special Police. Butler helped Dyer expose an illicit ring, and 12 officers were imprisoned.

She travelled the world, giving addresses and supporting other causes- she is said to have traveled almost 4000 miles and attended 99 meetings in the course of 1870 alone.

She would become known as the “Patron Saint of Prostitutes,” helping to found houses for women, teaching them trades, and rescuing them from what they believed to be their only recourse to make a living.

She would write dozens of popular works- from political tracts to biographies on her father, her husband (who predeceased her in 1890), the French pastor J.F. Oberlin, and perhaps most famously, Catherine of Sienna. The curious inclusion of a biography of a medieval female saint gives us some insight into how she may have seen herself- a crusading woman on behalf of the church trying to draw attention to those underserved or unseen by the church.

Her’s was an era marked by rapid change but also the challenge by Christians, of whom she was key, to balance concern for the poor.

Josephine Butler would die on this, the 30th of December in 1906, born in 1828, she was 78 years old.  

The Last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and 2 Corinthians

16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 30th of December 2025, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who is fine with Earl Grey- but knows there’s something a little stronger- he is Coffee by Gillespie’s Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man, apropos of coffee- finally got a new aeropress… consistent and easy… I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.