I first encountered the Anglican Church Congress in my academic salad days. For me, it was a fabulous source of both lay and clerical perspectives, from across the whole spectrum of the Church and its parties, on a whole range of issues affecting the Church of England and its supporters in the long nineteenth century. As I encountered it, it was located firmly in the sphere of nascent moves towards representative church government. In particular, it was identified as one of the earlier expressions or realisations of the representation of lay voices alongside clerical ones within church councils, albeit on an informal basis. In this way, it formed part of the trajectory towards the creation of the Houses of Laity in Convocations, and eventually the Church Assembly – recognition of the importance of the voluntary effort and agency of the laity in the changed social and constitutional circumstances of the Victorian Church.

As I engaged with the Church Congress in this context, and as I mined its proceedings for information and juicy quotes concerning clergy discipline and church–state relations, I barely noticed the presence of women. They rarely intruded upon my awareness. Instead, my attention was absorbed by the usual run of august churchmen. This book, however, proves how blind I was, as it brings the women of the Church Congress onto centre stage. Leaving behind the more mainstream history of Congress as an expression of lay agency, it instead focuses on its history as a space within which women could participate in public discussion and debates in ways that enabled them to articulate, negotiate and construct their roles, place and contribution to the life and mission of the Church of England, society, and the professions. The authors tap into the significance of religion as a location for the articulation, formation and defence of gender roles, identity, and aspirations, and recognise the power of Church Congress as a forum in which women could participate, be seen and be heard. Doing so, they use Church Congress as a lens or crucible through which, or in which, to explore issues or debates affecting women’s role and place in the Church, society, and the professions. They explore it, too, as a medium through which women advanced their own agendas and ambitions.

Here, then, we see much that is familiar to the student of the Church of the long nineteenth century. There is a chapter considering women’s spiritual aspirations and vocations – as expressed in the diverse movements for deaconesses, sisterhoods, and home and overseas missions. Another explores the formation of Anglican women’s organisations – run not only for women but by women – most obviously the Mothers’ Union and the Girls Friendly Society. The ways in which the women of Congress were networked, and how this fed into their roles in debates about empire, suffrage, and politics in general, is considered in another chapter. Still another examines developments in women’s education, sport, and leisure activities. A later chapter, reflecting upon the role of Church Congress as both a place where women’s rights were protected and advocated for, and as a place where women could raise their own voices, charts the shift in women’s place and activities – from amateur and voluntary, to coordinated, expert, and professional. The book as a whole uses the proceedings of Church Congress to explore how women navigated the move into professional spheres, and at the evolution of attitudes reflected in their changing agendas and activities – from paternalism and traditional class-based approaches to Christian Socialism and social justice.

Despite what are undoubtedly familiar themes and subjects, there is much which is fresh in the account rendered. It is not that the familiar men, and their attitudes, are absent. Church Congress was a place of female agency, but it was a space hedged about by traditional assumptions about gender roles, female subordination, and male dominance. Women could, and did, speak there, but they were always, as speakers at least, in a minority. Moreover, the women who used the Congress platform often came there as clergy wives, sisters, and daughters, whose social capital and connections derived, in some measure at least, from the position and standing of their male relatives. Yet, herein lies part of the attraction of Congress, and of this book. It brings to our attention the views, experiences, and contributions of women who are more usually consigned to the domestic shadows. We know of them, and we may even recognise the significance of their roles in supporting the efforts and achievements of their more famous male relatives, but we rarely focus upon their own distinctive contributions to history. This book, correcting that tendency towards neglect, gives them their own voice. In doing so, it tells familiar stories in less than familiar ways.

The authors of this book had a lot of ground to cover. The world of the Church of England, and of its efforts to reach out to the nation, and to articulate and rationalise its place in the world, changed drastically in the lifetime of the Church Congress. The world itself changed dramatically around the Church in this period, and the proceedings of Church Congress reflect this. Inevitably, there are times when it would have been wonderful to delve in a deeper and more sustained manner into particular topics or tropes. It might, for example, have been interesting to explore the biographies of the women of Congress in a more consistent and sustained way. Equally, there were times when it felt like the authors’ grasp of ‘women’s history’ was rather better than their ‘feel’ for the warp and weft of Anglicanism in the long nineteenth century. Yet it feels almost churlish to say this. They have done something which few to date have done – bringing to the fore the voice of Anglican women who are so often, even now, missing from mainstream accounts of church history.