LYDIA SHERMAN writes:

You once wrote on the topic of the charities that drain our personal resources. After recently attending an evening tea social gathering, (or what I had been told was a formal tea), I noticed that many of the women there were pushing charity-type ministries, and were rarely at home. Many of them were working for multiple charities and marketing several multi-level businesses at the same time.

The women made a point of informing me of their particular ministries and charities. I was cornered by a woman who insisted on relating her experiences leading up to being involved in a ministry. Her “testimony” lasted 20 minutes.

 When I returned home I looked up these ministries and found that they are motivational networking meetings that “empower” women. The ministries promote fundraisers for charities. They use phrases like “women of power,” and words such as “vision,” “mighty,” or “fire.”

 These ministries are also networking for personal enterprises and businesses in town owned by women. They use a religious marketing system to recruit thousands of women. Their websites show groups of unrelated women together; never mothers and daughters or whole families.

 The speeches during the tea were about empowering women in business and ministry and had nothing to do with women’s natural roles as wives, mothers and homemakers.

 The ministries claim to “help the hurting” by donating time, materials and money to organizations. I feel, and have observed, that where we are really hurting, is in the homes with marriage and with manners.

 Women can do a tremendous service to strengthen the family just by guiding and guarding the family: practicing hospitality and teaching common courtesy .

As a preacher’s wife, I can discern the needs of our times just by the type of phone calls we receive. The kind of help people are asking for is wisdom in their marriages and dealing with troubled relatives or raising children. More social services or religious marketing techniques in the churches will not help home life. The world needs women who will stay home and create a calm atmosphere where their families and visitors can feel a difference from the rest of the world.

 While I was researching the reasons these women run from one fundraiser to another, often arranging the events themselves, I ran across a Russian woman named Vera Figner, (1852-1942) who, feeling guilty in her privileged life as a successful forester’s daughter, decided to help the poor. For awhile she studied to be a doctor, then divorced her husband and joined the Communists, (who convinced her they wanted to help people and rescue them from poverty and inequality) and participated in planning to murder the Czar of Russia.

 No doubt she had extended her charity work into economic equality, and was convinced the Communists would extinguish poverty. Vera went from wanting to help the poor, to helping the communists.

Part of her biography states that she had “trouble reconciling her new political view of herself as a parasitic member of the gentry with her previous view of herself as a good, innocent, person.”

I have read that intimidating word “parasitic” referring to women who stay home and take care of their families. It is an accusation intended to produce guilt and mobilize women out of their roles as wives, mothers and homemakers. After all, no one wants to be considered a parasite or a burden on anyone. I often wonder why the same label is not applied to able-bodied people on welfare.

The account of Vera Figner can be a good reminder not to allow our self worth to be defined by others, especially if we grew up in good homes where our fathers were the breadwinners, and where we lived a life that others perceive as “privileged.” Women often get involved in charities because they feel pressured, or feel guilty that they have it so good and can be home. Many of these charities keep women even more frazzled and rushed than when they were working outside the home. These charities can be just as feministic. I have seen many marriageable young women saying their goal in life is to help the poor, and they spend years in these ministries, perhaps digging wells in Africa and never marrying. It is a religious form of feminism.

 To my knowledge, Vera Figner never raised children. She so wanted to help people but forfeited the chance to have a husband and children, which would have given her more fulfillment than any full time charity.

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