By Ronnie Mayanja | UNAA Times Online | On Sunday 25th April 2010, St. Peter’s Anglican Church of Boston formed a new Mother’s Union branch in an effort to strengthen fidelity in Marriage among their Boston Community. The function that was presided over by Rev. Mary Tusubira herself a member of the Mother’s Union institution for the past 30 years. She was assisted by Rev. Christine Nakyeyune who pastor’s the Church.
Women clad in their white and blue ‘busuutis’ also turned out in big numbers. The special guests at the occassion were the US Mother’s Union branch that sent in a delegation of women from Mattapan.
Below is a brief history of institution that was founded in 1876 as presented by Rev. Christine Nakyeyune.
The Mothers’ Union (hereinafter referred to as MU) is a worldwide movement of Anglican women, whose aim is to strengthen and preserve marriage and family life through Christianity. It has large membership
worldwide, said to be about 3.6 million in 78 countries. MU was founded by Lady Mary Elizabeth Sumner in 1876 in England. She was a wife to a priest.
The organization spread to other parts of the world including places like New Zealand, Australia, Tasmania, India, Ceylon, West Indies, Canada, Japan, Malta, South America, and many countries of Africa. MU was not introduced into the USA until 1986 when the first branch on USA soil was founded in Boston, Massachusetts by one Mazel Medley.
There are currently ten branches in the USA located in Florida, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Washington. MU was inaugurated in Uganda in 1908, and in 1914 it was officially
affiliated to the MU in England. It was introduced in Uganda by Mrs. Weatherhead, wife of the then Headmaster of Kings College Budo.
The initial membership was made up of 22 women who were wives to students at Budo. Mrs Weatherhead aimed at giving those wives a pattern for Christian marriage as opposed to the non-Christian pattern characterized by polygamy and other non-Christian values.
The Church of Uganda celebrated a hundred years of the existence of MU in Uganda in August 2008.
MU as a whole is involved in a range of programs covering literacy, development, trauma counseling, and family life issues. It has been acclaimed as one of the Church institutions that are effective in the
sensitization of women in the areas of primary healthcare, post-trauma counseling, micro-finance, education, and economic advancement. The role of MU as a change agent was publicly acclaimed by the granting of a Royal Charter by His Majesty, King George V. This was the first time such a charter had been granted to a women’s organization.
In Uganda, MU is a platform from which issues affecting women can be addressed to the government. For example in 1960, MU joined hands with the Young Wives group, the Uganda Council of Women, and the Young Women Christian Association (YWCA) and caused change in national laws regarding the status of women in society but more so in the marriage relationship. Issues of inheritance, divorce, and property possession were addressed in such laws. Rhoda Kalema and Joyce Mpanga are good references on these matters. Again in Uganda, MU has helped a great deal in the building of the nation. In 2008, during the MU centurial celebrations, Prof. Apollo Nsibambi, the Hon. Prime Minister of Uganda, attested to this. He congratulated MU upon their contribution to nation building and said
that mothers are leaders and role models in homes and families, and that society depends on them for both formal and informal education of children. He reminded his hearers of the saying that when you train a mother, you train the nation.
MU has helped women to know and appreciate their place and role in society as mothers. MU has built the spiritual, moral, and social life of people, its members and consequently the general population.
MU’s major activities in Uganda include the following: weekly prayer meetings where they study the Scriptures and/or discuss marriage issues; visitations to hospitals and prisons; self-help projects such
as crop and animal farming and general small scale trading, and vocational trainings, to mention but a few.
Today we inaugurate MU at St. Peter’s Anglican Church of Uganda, Boston. As women of MU at St. Peter’s we purpose to uphold the goals of MU as outlined in the five aims and objectives of the organization.
Members are called upon to be individually committed from the heart to the cause of MU and to live by it for the growth of God’s Kingdom. We pray that God blesses our efforts.
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