8 Women You Should Know

Stephen Nichols (SN): Today we have a good friend of mine who is a fellow church historian. We have on our program Dr. Michael Haykin. Dr. Haykin, welcome to our program.

Michael Haykin (MH): Good to be here.

SN: Dr. Haykin is professor of church history and biblical spirituality at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. But you live in Toronto.

MH: Yes, I do. It’s a long commute.

SN: I want to talk to you about one of your more recent books. You are very prolific, so it is very hard to keep up with you, actually. But this is one of your recent books. It is titled 8 Women of Faith and it’s published by Crossway. So, among others, you write on Jane Grey and Margaret Baxter. Who is Margaret Baxter?

MH: She was the wife of the Puritan Richard Baxter.

SN: You also write on Anne Steele.

MH: Yes, Anne Steele was a Baptist hymn writer.

SN: You write on Esther Edwards Burr. She was the daughter of Jonathan Edwards. And of course, if you are writing on the daughter of Jonathan Edwards, you need to write on . . .

MH: Sarah, the wife of Jonathan Edwards.

SN: So, we have Sarah. We have Anne Dutton in this book. We have Anne Judson. She is the wife of Adoniram Judson. And then we also have a novelist.

MH: Yeah, Jane Austen.

SN: Jane Austen.

MH: She was a believer.

SN: And there she is. So, of these women, let’s pick one in particular that we can talk a little bit about.

MH: Let’s talk about Jane Grey. She was a remarkable young woman, fifteen or sixteen when she was martyred. Born in a very tumultuous time, the time of the Reformation in England. She was born in 1537 and died in 1554. And you’ve got Henry VIII and all his wives and his break with the church of Rome, and in the midst of this, you have this young woman Jane Grey. Her parents sent her to Henry’s court in hopes that she will somehow get linked up with the future king, Edward VI, who would be a significant force for Reformation. John Calvin called Edward “the young Josiah.” Jane’s parents were hopeful that somehow marriage bells would soon ring, but that didn’t happen. But at Henry’s court, Jane was exposed to the gospel. It was probably Catherine Parr—Henry VIII’s last wife—who was instrumental in her awakening faith. By the early 1530s, she was definitely a believer and was corresponding with Reformers on the Continent. When Edward died in 1553, he was very aware that the line of succession would run to his eldest sister, Mary, who was a diehard Roman Catholic. He didn’t want that. His other sister, Elizabeth, though she would later go on to be a remarkable Protestant queen, was considered illegitimate and therefore unfit to reign. So, Edward latched onto the idea of having Jane succeed him. He changed the order of succession in his will, and Jane was declared queen at his death in 1553. She was queen for about nine days.

SN: And then Mary did come to the throne.

MH: Mary was not going to take this. She raised an army in eastern England and marched on London and took the capital. She imprisoned Jane, and in subsequent months, she became aware that she needed to remove Jane, partly for political reasons but also because of Jane’s faith. And a very significant dialogue took place a few days before Jane’s death, in which Mary sent her chaplain, John Feckenham, to convince Jane to renounce Protestantism—her evangelical convictions—and embrace Rome. And they debated the key issues of the Reformation. Here’s a young woman, fifteen years old . . .

SN: On trial for her life.

MH: Exactly.

SN: And she’s debating theology.

MH: You know, things like the nature of the Lord’s Supper, the authority of the Scriptures, the nature of the church, and how we are saved, and she emphasized how we are saved by faith alone. It’s just a tremendous little dialogue.

SN: Well, there you go—Jane Grey. And she’s joined by seven other women from the pages of church history that you need to get to know. Dr. Haykin, thanks for being with us and thank you for this book.