The Lionesses' joy goes way further back than women's football
The England team's celebrations are joyous rather than aggressive, writes George Pitcher. That has its roots in the New Jerusalem
There was something different about the Lionesses’ goal celebrations in the Women’s Euros. Not just different from the men’s game – different from other competing women’s football teams too.
Note the way scorers such as Beth Mead and Georgia Stanway wheeled away after scoring. They’re grinning, not gurning, and their hands are raised but open – not the ubiquitous clenched fists of typical sporting winners. They are fiercely competitive, but the emotion is overwhelmingly joyous rather than aggressive.
Then there’s Chloe Kelly’s winner in extra-time at Wembley. The sheer shirt-swirling joy of it. The author, Lucy Ward, nailed it with a tweet that went viral:
“This image of a woman shirtless in a sports bra - hugely significant. This is a woman’s body – not for sex or show – just for the sheer joy of what she can do and the power and skill she has.”
There’s that word “joy” again. But check out some of the fan-shot footage too, which shows more of the pitch. In midfield, there are two players simply and quietly hugging each other. Another is seeing to her team-mate’s cramp – knowing they’re minutes from triumph, but still looking out for each other.
Much, if not all, of this mental attitude must be down to their coach, Sarina Wiegman. It really is quite unusual in sport and it’s the women’s football game that seems to have brought it centre-stage – an unbridled joy in each other’s ability and power, the equal of anyone, not just in sport, but in the world.
Other than Wiegman, where does it come from? Funnily enough, I’m put in mind of a Carly Simon rock-gospel anthem, the soundtrack for the 1989 movie Working Girl:
Let the river run
Let all the dreamers
Wake the nation
Come, the New Jerusalem
The idea of the New Jerusalem is traced from the old testament prophet Ezekiel, through the new testament’s Book of Revelation, through to William Blake’s 1804 poem, which provided the words for our hymn Jerusalem. The idea, throughout history, that there is a new kind of City of God, a New Jerusalem, built on joy and love rather than aggression and subjugation.
Sexual revolution
Ward’s tweet (I respectfully presume) didn’t intend this meaning, but in the ancient world in which the New Jerusalem was first predicated, a woman’s body was very much exclusively for “sex or show”. It’s all too easy to overlook the social and sexual revolution that the early Christian movement was unleashing – largely because the Church that it spawned did its very best to stamp it out for centuries.
When, for instance, the first followers of the Christ are holed up in their safe-house in Bethany, just outside Jerusalem, we are told the story of Mary and Martha, who live there. Martha complains that she is doing all the work, while Mary listens to the Nazarene. Jesus tells Martha to let Mary be.
This is still widely told as evidence that Bible study is more important than housework. Well, duh. The far more significant issue, to my mind, is that Mary is in the room with the men, unheard of in those days when there was man’s work, such as theology, to be done.
The gender-equality of joy runs throughout the gospels for those who look for it – from the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well to the woman taken “in adultery” (most likely a euphemism for prostitution), from the Syro-Phoenician woman at the men’s table to Mary Magdalene as first witness to the risen Christ. And that’s before we get to the liberated, powerful women of the epistles and Acts, such as Lydia and Phoebe.
Tears to the eyes
These are women’s stories that bring tears to the eyes, not least because they were buried under the temple stones of patriarchy. And it’s this depth of history that may, albeit subconsciously, have in part contributed to the sheer emotion that accompanied the Lionesses’ victory, surely so much more than just a football game. Tears were abundant and their source may not be such a mystery.
England’s captain, Jill Scott, movingly said that all the hands that had gone before in the women’s game would be on their trophy. I suggest that, in sharing their joy, there are even more hands on it than that. The Christian story doesn’t own that, but it’s a recognisable source of it.
There are other, more recent sources of the emotion that accompanies the Lionesses’ achievement. After two covid-wracked years, which put women back in a domestic role again, and the heart-breaking horrors of violence on women, such as the abduction, rape and murder of Sarah Everard, the well of tears is all too easily breached by such images of all-female joy.
But, again, we’re entitled to point to our ancient and recurrent sources of joy too. Back to Carly Simon’s song:
We're coming to the edge
Running on the water
Coming through the fog
Your sons and daughters
It’s the daughters we’re celebrating right now, thanks to the Lionesses. So let the river run – it’s a river of tears of joy.
George Pitcher is a visiting fellow at the LSE and an Anglican priest
A version of this column appeared on PremierChristianity