SUNDAY (Radio 4) used the Archbishop of Canterbury’s visit to West Africa, including a meeting with Mothers’ Union (MU) members in Ghana (News, 7 August), as a hook for a feature presented by Rosie Dawson on the movement’s 150th anniversary (Feature, 12 June). With four million members in 83 countries, the MU has never been so influential worldwide, especially in Africa.
A “quietly radical” history included being “on the lines with the suffragettes”, and campaigning for the minimum age of marriage to be raised. The movement spread internationally through the wives of imperial officials, and from them into the local population as Anglicanism grew.
Described by a previous Cantuar as the “Anglican Communion’s best-kept secret”, the MU is highly visible in Antigua, where it demonstrates publicly against domestic violence, and in Mozambique, where it works to help schoolgirls to stay in education.
Although there are reports of younger members joining cathedral groups, the MU has faced the same headwinds in these islands as every voluntary membership organisation, and its membership has declined to just 35,000.
Might a vibe shift in attitudes to Christianity bring renewal? Heart and Soul (World Service, Friday 7 August) suggested that it might.
Rugile Daujotaite is one of Lithuania’s most successful singers. Her mother and grandmother were among those who began to experiment with esotericism during Soviet rule, then a safer outlet for spiritual energies than the country’s traditionally devout Roman Catholicism. When freedom of religion returned in 1991, there was a boom in Lithuania of New Age and occult beliefs, which she grew into naturally.
She moved west to make her name in her twenties, like so many of her compatriots. A burgeoning musical career in the Netherlands was accompanied by increasing devotion to Santo Daime, the Brazilian syncretic sect, and regular use of the powerful psychoactive drug Daime — ayahuasca — to enter trances. Success and Santo Daime continued when she returned to Lithuania. She sought the country’s Eurovision nomination with a song about the thunder god.
Even so, Ms Daujotaite “felt tortured emotionally . . . strange influences in my physical and spiritual body, like maybe I was possessed”.
She began leading retreats where she cooked ayahuasca, despite the stiff sentences that this risks in Lithuania. Prospering, but deeply depressed, she began reading the Bible. A conversion experience occurred while leading a Santo Daime retreat in Tenerife.
Challenged by the presenter, Colm Flynn, who put it to her that many find New Age practices positive, she referred to the Second Vatican Council to acknowledge that the beliefs contained some good, but that she found the long-term effect on people was negative. She had come home to Rome, and was happier for it.