Commontide
Liturgical Color: White/Gold
The 6th Sunday of Easter (Rogation Sunday)
O God, you have prepared for those who love you such good things as surpass our understanding: Pour into our hearts such love towards you, that we, loving you in all things and above all things, may obtain your promises, which exceed all that we can desire; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Easter
But chiefly are we bound to praise you for the glorious resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; for he is the true Paschal Lamb, who was offered for us, and has taken away the sin of the world; who by his death has destroyed death, and by his rising to life again has won for us everlasting life.
Most liturgical texts are from the Book of Common Prayer (2019) of the Anglican Church in North America.
The New Coverdale Psalter, © 2019 by the Anglican Church in North America. Used by permission.
Psalms 144, 145, 146
Psalms 147, 148, 149, 150
The 6th of Easter (Rogation Sunday)
Social Reformer
Anglican Commemoration
Josephine Butler (1828-1906) was an Englishwoman who spent seventeen years campaigning against laws that subjected women suspected of prostitution to compulsory medical examination. She began the work in Liverpool in 1866, in the year after her only daughter died. She is commemorated in the Church of England on 30 May, the day of her baptism.
Josephine Grey Butler was born in 1828 to a prominent English family and educated at home with exceptional rigor. In 1852, she married George Butler, an Anglican cleric and reformer. After the death of their young daughter in 1863, Josephine experienced a spiritual crisis that redirected her energies toward the plight of vulnerable women. When Parliament passed the Contagious Diseases Acts (1864, 1866, 1869)—legislation authorizing police to forcibly examine women suspected of prostitution—Butler became the leading voice against this institutional violation. She organized meetings, published exposés (The Constitution Violated, Woman's Work and Woman's Culture), corresponded with international reformers, and mobilized working-class women as advocates for their own dignity. Her theology grounded this activism in Christological conviction: the Incarnation affirms the worth of every human body and spirit. Butler's rescue homes offered practical hospitality and spiritual formation to women exiting prostitution. She worked across denominational and class boundaries, building alliances with Quakers, Methodists, and working-class activists. The repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts in 1886 vindicated her decade-long campaign. Butler continued lecturing and writing on Christian ethics, human dignity, and women's spiritual authority until her death in 1906.
Josephine Butler exemplifies the prophetic Anglican voice grounded in incarnational theology and committed to defending the dignity of the most vulnerable. Her work pioneered a distinctively Christian feminism and established a model of faithful activism in which theological conviction drives social transformation. She is venerated in contemporary Christian feminism and in the witness of those defending exploited and marginalized persons.