Winnifred Wygal

Winnifred Wygal
Winnifred Wygal, a young white woman wearing glasses, in an oval frame
Winnifred Wygal, from the 1913 yearbook of the University of Nevada
Born
Winnifred Crane Wygal

August 25, 1884
Springfield, Missouri, U.S.
DiedJuly 8, 1972 (age 87)
New York, New York, U.S.
OccupationsReligious lecturer, writer

Winnifred Crane Wygal (August 25, 1884 – July 8, 1972) was an American theologian, writer, and YWCA national staff member from 1919 to 1944.

Early life and education

Wygal was born in Springfield, Missouri, the daughter of Frank Wygal and Katie A. Bigelow Wygal. Her father was a wagon maker. She graduated from Drury College in 1906, and pursued further studies at Columbia University and the University of Chicago Divinity School; she completed a master's degree in history and economics in 1912. She studied with Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich at Union Theological Seminary.[1]

Career

Wygal was a founding member of the Fellowship of Socialist Christians, along with her YWCA colleague Rose Terlin.[2] She worked for the YWCA from 1911 to 1944, and was a member of the YWCA's national professional staff from 1918, when she joined the War Work Council.[3][4] She was national executive of the YWCA's Student Council[5] from 1922 to 1935. In 1935 she joined the Laboratory Division,[6] and co-chaired the Fletcher Farm Seminar on Religion with Gregory Vlastos.[7] From 1939 to 1944, she was Secretary for Religious Resources in the Division of Community YWCAs.[8][9] She toured as a lecturer and community organizer in her retirement,[10][11] and chaired the editorial board of The Intercollegian, the national magazine of the YWCA's Student Council.[12]

Wygal traveled across the United States and internationally in her work.[2][13] She met Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore in India, and was a delegate to the World Student Federation Conference in Mysore,[14] during a year of sabbatical travels in 1927 and 1928.[15][16] In 1928 she was in the Middle East, and in 1937 she went to England to attend a World Council of Churches conference at Oxford.[1] "You intoxicate yourselves when you keep saying how busy you are," she told an audience of Canadian clubwomen in 1949.[17] Traveling was very important to her, as it was a way for her to "broaden the psychological space around" her. Fertig and Perry both appeared frequently in Wygal’s diaries. [18]

Authorship of the Serenity Prayer

While the well-known Serenity Prayer is often attributed to theologian Reinhold Niebuhr,[19] it has also been attributed to Wygal. In 2014, Fred R. Shapiro wrote an essay crediting Wygal as "a highly plausible disseminator" of the prayer's gist in the 1930s.[20][21] By 2021, Shapiro concluded in The New Yale Book of Quotations that "The demonstrable facts point to Winnifred Wygal as the coiner who combined pieces apparently drawn from Niebuhr with important other pieces of her own devising."[22]

Publications

  • "Bapuge" (1928)[23]
  • "Christmas Eve" (1934)[24]
  • "The Discipline of the Cross and the Beloved Community" (1936)[25]
  • "What it Means to Live" (1937)[26]
  • Our Religious Vocabulary: A Glossary of Terms in Current Use (1939)[27]
  • We plan our own worship services: Business girls practice the act and the art of group worship (1940)[28]
  • "The Act and the Art of Worship" (1940)[29]
  • "Registration of Women: I Expect to Register" (1943)[30]
  • "These Tackled Problems" (1945)[31]
  • "We Declare Our Faith in God" (1946, with A. T. Mollegen)[32]
  • Reflections of the Spirit (1948)[33]
  • We the Peoples of the Ecumenical Church (1949)[34]
  • "Fears in an Age of Anxiety" (1951)[35]
  • How to Plan Informal Worship (1955)[36]
  • "What Shall We Do with Lent?" (1955)[37]

Personal life

Wygal maintained a life deeply entwined with her Christian faith, her work with the YWCA, and relationships with women. Her diaries describe a lifelong effort to try and understand her own spiritual and emotional commitments, with her romantic relationships being grounded in her theological belief in God’s boundless love. Wygal had romantic relationships with women, including her travel companion Ruth Fertig, Helen Price, Jane, Leslie, and a longterm but not exclusive connection with Frances Perry.[18][38] Her relationship with Frances Perry was one of closeness and tension. She described her connection with Perry as “nothing abnormally erotic but natural, spontaneous, tender.”[18][1] However, at times Perry’s belief in celibacy conflicted with Wygal’s belief that deep spiritual connections between women could involve physical contact. Despite this, Perry was still seen as an emotional anchor in Wygal’s life.[18]

Wygal referred to her circle of romantic and emotional connections with other women as her “fold,” emphasizing her belief that loving multiple women didn’t contradict Christian principles. Wygal drew on biblical imagery to articulate her nonmonogamous affection and love towards women. She used imagery such as the Parable of the Lost Sheep, to emphasize her love, describing Perry as her “precious lamb” while also acknowledging her care for “other sheep not of this fold.”[18][1]

Additionally, Wygal’s travels shaped her emotionally. Her trips abroad created physical distance from her partners in the United States, which gave her space to reflect on her relationships. On her 1927 trip to India, she traveled with Ruth Fertig, a younger YWCA colleague. Fertig had previously accompanied Wygal in Hawaii, Japan, China, and the Philippines. Wygal considered her an intimate friend, and their companionship was central to her experience abroad, her presence offering her stability. Wygal often wrote about her in her diary, especially when contemplating connection, spirituality, and beauty. One night lying beneath the Taj Mahal, Wygal questioned the nature of their relationship: “Am I making it with Ruth? O not in the usual sense. We are very devoted.” She also writes of Frances Perry, “a Taj Mahal of life to me is Frances–always I adore her, remote Frances, who shows me my place.”[18][1]

Wygal died of a heart attack in 1972,[7] at the age of 87, at her home in New York City.[39] Her papers and diaries are in the Schlesinger Library,[1] and at Smith College.[7]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f "Wygal, Winnifred Diaries and Other Materials". LGBTQ Religious Archives Network. Retrieved 2024-06-21.
  2. ^ a b Izzo, Amanda (2018). Liberal Christianity and Women's Global Activism: The YWCA of the USA and the Maryknoll Sisters. Rutgers University Press. pp. 109–110. ISBN 978-0-8135-8850-6.
  3. ^ "Miss Winnifred Wygal Home from East". The Junction City Weekly Union. 1918-11-07. p. 2. Retrieved 2024-06-21 – via Newspapers.com.
  4. ^ "War Work Council Active at Funston". The Colony Free Press 1921–1924. 1917-11-22. p. 1. Retrieved 2024-06-21 – via Newspapers.com.
  5. ^ "Miss Wygal, National Executive of Student Council, Sends Message" (PDF). The Colonnade. December 15, 1928. p. 1.
  6. ^ "Miss WInnifred Wygal, of National 'Y.W.' Staff, Will Address Bible Class Thurday". The Sentinel. 1935-11-20. p. 6. Retrieved 2024-06-21 – via Newspapers.com.
  7. ^ a b c "Collection: Winnifred Wygal papers". Smith College Finding Aids. Retrieved 2024-06-21.
  8. ^ "Member of National Board to be in City for Conferences on Local Organization". Palladium-Item. 1939-11-05. p. 4. Retrieved 2024-06-21 – via Newspapers.com.
  9. ^ "National Y.W.C.A. Official Meets at Lunch with Board". Winston-Salem Journal. 1944-02-24. p. 2. Retrieved 2024-06-21 – via Newspapers.com.
  10. ^ "Wygal Will Speak on Campus March 28" The Rotunda (March 14, 1945): 1.
  11. ^ "Fellowship Day is Set". The Courier-News. 1952-05-01. p. 4. Retrieved 2024-06-21 – via Newspapers.com.
  12. ^ "Masthead". The Intercollegian. 68 (5): 2. January 1951 – via Internet Archive.
  13. ^ "Y.W.C.A. Conference to be Held Here May 13–14". The Industrial Collegian. May 9, 1922. p. 1.
  14. ^ Quinton Hosford Dixie (2011). Visions of a better world. Internet Archive. Beacon Press. p. 66. ISBN 978-0-8070-0045-8.
  15. ^ Phoenix, Karen (April 2014). "A Social Gospel for India". The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. 13 (2): 200–222. doi:10.1017/S1537781414000073. ISSN 1537-7814.
  16. ^ "A Year of Study". The Laclede County Republican. 1927-09-28. p. 4. Retrieved 2024-06-21 – via Newspapers.com.
  17. ^ "Dinner Honors Miss W. Wygal". Star-Phoenix. 1949-04-09. p. 8. Retrieved 2024-06-21 – via Newspapers.com.
  18. ^ a b c d e f Kern, Kathi, "Winnifred Wygal's Flock: Same-Sex Desire and Christian Faith in the 1920s" in Gillian Frank, Bethany Moreton, and Heather R. White, eds., Devotions and Desires: Histories of Sexuality and Religion in the Twentieth-Century United States (Oxford University Press 2018): 17–33.
  19. ^ Wyatt, Christopher Scott; DeVoss, Dànielle Nicole (2017). Type Matters: The Rhetoricity of Letterforms. Parlor Press LLC. p. 284. ISBN 978-1-60235-978-9.
  20. ^ Shapiro, Fred. "Commentary: How I discovered I was wrong about the origin of the Serenity Prayer". U.S. Catholic. Retrieved 2024-06-21.
  21. ^ Sweden, Jim Van (2015-03-03). "Prayer Provenance". News and Events. Retrieved 2024-06-21.
  22. ^ Shapiro, Fred R. (2021). The New Yale Book of Quotations. Yale University Press. p. 908. ISBN 978-0-300-26278-0.
  23. ^ Wygal, Winnifred (November 1928). "Bapuge". The Intercollegian. 46 (2): 41–43 – via Internet Archive.
  24. ^ Wygal, Winnifred (December 1934). "Christmas Eve". The Crisis: 358.
  25. ^ Wygal, Winnifred. "The Discipline of the Cross and the Beloved Community" Fellowship 2(8)(October 1936): 8.
  26. ^ Wygal, Winnifred (October 1937). "What it Means to Live". The Intercollegian. 55 (1): 5–6, 16 – via Internet Archive.
  27. ^ Wygal, Winnifred. Our Religious Vocabulary: A Glossary of Terms in Current Use (Womans Press, 1939).
  28. ^ Wygal, Winnifred. We plan our own worship services: Business girls practice the act and the art of group worship. Woman's Press, 1940.
  29. ^ Wygal, Winnifred (February 1940). "The Act and the Art of Worship". The Intercollegian. 57 (4): 95–96 – via Internet Archive.
  30. ^ Wygal, Winnifred. "Registration of Women: I Expect to Register" Fellowship 9(2) (February 1943): 28.
  31. ^ Wygal, Winnifred (April 1945). "These Tackled Problems". The Intercollegian. 62 (7): 8–9 – via Internet Archive.
  32. ^ Mollegen, A. T.; Wygal, Winnifred (November 1946). "We Declare Our Faith in God". The Intercollegian. 64 (3): 9 – via Internet Archive.
  33. ^ Wygal, Winnifred (1948). Reflections of the Spirit: Resources for Personal and Group Worship. Internet Archive. New York: The Woman's Press.
  34. ^ Wygal, Winnifred (1949). We the peoples of the ecumenical church. Internet Archive. Cincinnati : Woman's Division of Christian Service, Board of Missions and Church Extension, the Methodist Church.
  35. ^ Wygal, Winnifred (November 1951). "Fears in an Age of Anxiety". The Intercollegian. 69 (3): 13–14 – via Internet Archive.
  36. ^ Wygal, Winnifred. How to Plan Informal Worship (Association Press, 1955).
  37. ^ Wygal, Winnifred (February 1955). "What Shall We Do with Lent?". The Intercollegian. 72 (6): 17–18 – via Internet Archive.
  38. ^ Rosenzweig, Linda W. (1999). Another Self: Middle-class American Women and Their Friends in the Twentieth Century. NYU Press. p. 139. ISBN 978-0-8147-7486-1.
  39. ^ "Miss Winnifred Wygal". Springfield Leader and Press. 1972-07-14. p. 24. Retrieved 2024-06-21 – via Newspapers.com.
allikas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnifred_Wygal