![](https://wordandway.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/2-Shaina-Taub-as-Alice-Paul-scaled-1-1200x800.webp)
I recently went to see the new musical “Suffs” with my family on Broadway. It begins with female suffragists working together to organize the first Women’s March on Washington in 1913 and continues through the ratification of 19th Amendment giving women the constitutional right to vote. This musical has been called the “Hamilton” of the women’s suffrage movement; the incredibly talented Shania Taub wrote the book, lyrics, and starred in the production. It centers around Alice Paul and her lifelong commitment to equal rights including her drafting of and continued lobbying for the Equal Rights Amendment, which she did not see ratified in her lifetime. The musical shows the tensions between the various leaders in the movement and how they navigated different means to the same goal. In the musical, Alice Paul sings:
I won’t live to see the future that I fight for
Maybe no one gets to reach that perfect day
If the work is never over
Then how do you keep marching anyway?
Alice Paul made great sacrifices in her personal life to put this call first and marched forward knowing that she would never see the fulfillment of all she was fighting for. In the musical, her character sings an incredibly moving song called “Worth It” where she questions the sacrifices in her personal life that she must make. She asks, “What would my life look like if it was not so consumed by this?” Intrigued by this historical figure, I spent some time researching what made Alice Paul live out this unconventional path for a woman of the early 20th century so boldly.
![](https://wordandway.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/IMG_2191.jpg)
Sarah Blackwell
I came to find out that she had been raised in the Quaker tradition (and attended a Quaker university) in which one of the central tenets comes from Genesis 1:27: all are created in the image of God, male and female. Her motivation to fight for equality derived from her faith background and her theological understanding propelled her to devote her life to bending the arc a little further toward justice, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would say.
As we move into a new year with a mix of emotions, I have been thinking about how we can continue to bring the kingdom of heaven to earth through justice and the restoration of the hope of creation. It seems overwhelming and heavy; how do we continue forward when equality, respect, and truth seem like they are evaporating in front of us? The musical’s lyrics continue to resonate in my head, though:
The gains will feel small and the losses too large
Keep marching, keep marching
You’ll rarely agree with whoever’s in charge
Keep marching, keep marching
‘Cause your ancestors are all the proof you need
That progress is possible, not guaranteed
It will only be made if we keep marching, keep marching on
Looking backward, we can see great progress in our country when it comes to voting rights, employment opportunities, and leadership roles for all Americans. Women continue to pursue higher education at higher rates than men. We have had a woman serve as Vice President. However, we have not yet achieved the vision that Alice Paul and her peers had. Highly qualified and capable women continued to be overlooked, discounted, and even demonized (look no farther than recent headlines).
In addition, Suffs captured an amazing story in American History and yet, 90% or more of the audience was women. Why are women’s stories only for women? How can we change the scarcity mindset and explain that equality and freedom serve us as all? How can we help people learn by listening to the stories of those who are different from them? Do the small actions we take really make a difference? How do we keep marching in our daily lives?
Do you carry your banner as far as you can?
Rewriting the world with your imperfect pen?
‘Til the next stubborn girl picks it up in a picket line over and over again?
And you join in the chorus of centuries chanting to her
The path will be twisted and risky and slow
But keep marching, keep marching
Will you fail or prevail? Well, you may never know
But keep marching, keep marching
For me, one of the ways that I am marching on is by answering God’s call on my life to become an ordained minister. My primary area of service is to shepherd students to faith formation through theological education. Throughout my own theological education, I have been on a path of discernment that has led me to lean into my strengths in teaching and work on completing a doctorate. It is clear in my life that this is what I should be doing. I want those who come after me to see that ministry can happen in non-traditional ways. In addition, part of my ordination is saying “yes” for all those women who have gone before me that did not even have the opportunity to consider the question.
I think about the women featured in the Baptist Women in Ministry’s documentary Midwives of a Movement who tried faithfully to follow their call to ministry in the 1980s in Southern Baptist churches, only to be met with great opposition. These women could have given up; however, they continued to meet and push for the simple right for all Christians to follow the call that God has placed on their life. From this struggle, Baptist organizations like the Alliance of Baptists and Cooperative Baptist Fellowship were formed that specifically endorsed and supported women in all types of ministry roles. Because of these women marching on, I went before a Baptist ordination council (in a Southern city) where my gender was essentially a non-issue; it was simply a piece of who I am and not a determining factor in my qualifications.
We did not end injustice and neither will you
But still, we made strides, so we know you can too
Make peace with our incomplete power and use it for good
‘Cause there’s so much to do
Keep marching on
We know in our hearts that we cannot tackle every problem on our own, but somewhere in our little wedge of influence we can find something that we are passionate about. In fact, if we feel like we must solve everything, we can become so despondent that we end up doing nothing. We should look to our communities to bolster us and join in the work together. For example, I have friends that volunteer at our church as tutors for ESL students. One of my former middle school teaching colleagues was just sworn into the North Carolina House of Representatives, and she will be a remarkable advocate for all the people in her district. My sister and her family work with an organization that rescues and rehomes cats. My mom visits church members in the hospital and homebound. Anonymous church members endowed a scholarship for first-generation college students that literally change the life of one of my students after his funding fell through. He was able to stay in college and pursue his STEM degree because of their generosity. We need community to keep us moving forward.
![](https://wordandway.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/2-Shaina-Taub-as-Alice-Paul-scaled-1-500x333.webp)
Shaina Taub as Alice Paul in the Broadway priduction “Suffs: The Musical.” (photo courtesy of Joan Marcus)
We are also tasked with using the talents we have to focus on areas that are of great concern to us. People I know personally are doing amazing things in the corner of the world they live in and feel the most passionately about. My classmate, Sara Robb-Scott, utilizes her writing skills on her “Embodied Resistance” Substack where she creates a “Weekly Resistance Menu” of daily activities to help us learn, connect with God, and take action toward justice. Don Gordon’s love for creation is evident; he leads Christians Caring for Creation which encourages Christians to address critical environmental issues. Carrie Christian was disheartened to hear that her hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina, was the major metropolitan area where it was most difficult to achieve social mobility, so she started an organization, Families Forward Charlotte, to come alongside those living in poverty to supply mentors and the resources they needed to achieve their educational and financial goals. Before my father passed away, he worked to secure grants to provide more affordable housing in his hometown where a tornado had destroyed many homes. The non-profit, Transformational Housing, not only aided families, but it also started a conversation in the community about how to respond to a lack of suitable housing. Is there a local organization that you can support with your time and resources?
Perhaps you do not know what area you feel passionate about. Maybe you can simply better inform yourself this year. Will you listen to the new series by the “Bible for Normal People” podcast called “All the Buried Women” which will address the stories of women that have been lost to the Southern Baptist Church archives? Could you watch Baptist Women in Ministry’s Midwives of a Movement documentary? Might you read a book like Be the Bridge: Pursuing God’s Heart for Racial Reconciliation by Latasha Morrison or The Hundred Story Home: A Journey of Homelessness, Hope and Healing by Kathy Izard? My brother hopes to continue wider community conversations on true love and justice in his book released this past fall entitled To Love Our Neighbors: Radical Practices in Solidarity, Sufficiency, and Sustainability. Whose life is so different from yours that you need to stop and listen to their voice for a while?
In the end, we can choose to shut out the world and believe all is hopeless, or we can be inspired by Alice Paul and keep marching.
In one of her last acts as Vice President, Kamala Harris reiterated the need for the Equal Rights Amendment to be added to the Constitution since it has been ratified in the necessary number of states (even though it happened beyond the 1982 deadline Congress established for states to consider it). Alice Paul’s legacy continues as the next generation of women have picked up the banner and march it forward. What will you march for this year?
Yes, the world can be changed, ’cause we’ve done it before
So keep marching, keep marching
We’re always behind you, so bang down the door
And keep marching, keep marching
And let history sound the alarm of how
The future demands that we fight for it now
Sarah Blackwell is a contributing writer at Word&Way and a graduate of the Gardner-Webb School of Divinity. She teaches in the Religion and Philosophy Department at Wingate University and is a D.Min. student at McAfee School of Theology. Her intergenerational faith formation book, God is Here is available through Amazon and other online book retailers. Follow her writings at proximitytolove.org.
Lyrics to the song “Keep Marching” from the Broadway “Musical Suffs” are written by Shania Taub (2024).