Woman, Church & State

Chapter Nine

The Church of Today

While under advancing civilization, a recognition of the religious rights of woman is steadily progressing among people at large, it requires but slight investigation to prove that olden church theories regarding her not only came into the reformation, but largely remain the same today. The Christianity of the ages having taught the existence of a superior and an inferior sex possessing different rights in the Christian Church, held accountable to different codes of morals, it is not strange that we do not find morality to have been more of a fundamental principle among the pastors of early Protestant churches than in the Catholic priesthood. The doctrine of “Once in grace, always in grace,” carries with it a plea for vice, and the early experience of strict Calvinistic Scotland was much that of mediaeval Catholic Europe. The Presbyterian Conventicles543 early bore an extremely evil reputation. The fact that ministers of the reformed church were permitted marriage did not change priestly teaching that woman was created solely for man, and they found apologies in the Bible for illicit conduct. These Protestant clergymen taught, as had the Catholic, that a priest was incapable of sinning; and from the Sermon on the Mount, “To the pure all things are pure,” was quoted in proof of this assertion. Even when under circumstances of great personal peril and danger to life, the trust of parishioners in the morality of their shepherds was often abused; of this, Rev. David Williamson, one of the most eminent Presbyterian ministers of Edinburgh, was a conspicuous example. In defense of his immorality Mr. Williamson said, “Verily, I do not deny that with St. Paul I have a law in my members warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity unto the love of sin which is in my members.” The strangest sermons, most insulting to woman and too indecorous for quotation, were constantly preached; while her inferiority and incapacity for understanding even the gospel was also as constantly declared from the pulpit. An old Presbyterian preacher, Rev. David Douglas, discovering a woman weeping in the kirk, pointed toward her, crying, “Wife, what makes you weep? I am sure thou understandeth not what I am saying; my discourse is directed to the brethren and not to the like of you.” The present century, with all its enlightenment does not cease to give us glimpses of that favorite mediaeval doctrine that “sin can be killed with sin as the best way of becoming innocent again,” and its concomitant, that it is impossible for a person in grace to commit sin.544 The doctrines of holiness and entire sanctification, taught by some sects today, and the theory that all experience is necessary in order to a full development of character, are of the same nature. Eastern “Wisdom Religion” declares that a person can become neither God nor deva without passing through all experience, returning again and again to earth for this purpose.

The departure of the soul-atom from the bosom of the Divinity is a radiation from the life of the Great All, who expends his strength in order that he may grow again and live by its return. God thereby acquires new vital force, provided by all the transformation that the soul-atom has undergone. Its return is its final reward. Such is the secret of the evolution of the Great Being and of the Supreme Soul.545

Directions for seeking out the way:

Seek it not by any one road, to each temperament there is one road which seems the most desirable. But the way is not found by devotion alone, by religious contemplation alone, by ardent progress, by self-sacrificing labor, by studious observation of life. None can take the disciple more than one step onward. All steps are necessary to make up the ladder, one by one, as they are surmounted. The virtues of men are steps indeed, necessary – not by any means to be dispensed with. Yet, though they create a fine atmosphere and happy future, they are useless if they stand alone. The whole nature of man must be used wisely by the one who desires to enter the way. Each man is to himself absolutely the way, the truth and the life. Seek it by plunging into the mysterious and glorious depths of your own inmost being. Seek it by testing all experience, by utilizing the senses in order to understand the growth and meaning of individuality and the beauty and obscurity of those other divine fragments which are struggling side by side with you, and form the race to which you belong.546

The Catholic and Calvinistic doctrines of woman’s inferiority of position and intellect taught from the pulpit, are by no means relegated to past centuries, but continue to be publicly taught by the Protestant clergy of every sect, as fully as by their Catholic and Greek brethren. The first National Woman Suffrage Convention which assembled in Washington, 1869, having invited Rev. Chaplain Gray, of the House, to open its proceedings with prayer, he referred in this petition to woman as an after-thought of the Creator, an inferior and secondary being, called into existence for the special benefit of man. The noble old Quakeress, Lucretia Mott, sitting in an attitude of devout attention, suddenly raised her head, and at close of the prayer, Bible in hand, she read aloud the account of the creation, Genesis I. 27-28, woman and man equals, both having been given dominion over nature. The thirtieth anniversary of the first public demand of woman for the recognition of her equality of right with man, held in Rochester, N.Y., July 18, 1878, passed a series of resolutions547 asserting woman’s equality and religious rights with man. Three of these proved especially obnoxious to the clergy of the country, in declaring the first duty of every individual to be self development; the duty of every woman to be guided by her own reason rather than the authority of another; and that it was owing to the perversion of the religious element in woman that she had been so completely subjugated to priestcraft and superstition.

Resolved: That as the first duty of every individual is self-development, the lessons of self-sacrifice and obedience taught to woman by the Christian church have been fatal, not only to her own vital interests, but through her, to those of the race.

Resolved: That the great principle of the Protestant Reformation, the right of individual conscience and judgment heretofore exercised by men alone, should now be claimed by woman; that, in the interpretation of Scripture, she should be guided by her own reason, and not by the authority of the church.

Resolved: That it is through the perversion of the religious element in woman – playing upon her hopes and fears of the future, holding this life with all its high duties in abeyance to that which is to come – that she and the children she has borne have been wrongfully subjugated by priestcraft and superstition.

These resolutions immediately called forth a sermon in opposition from the Rev. A. H. Strong, D.D., president of the Rochester Theological Seminary (Baptist) in which he said:

She is subordinate to man in office, she is to be helper, not principal. Therefore man has precedence in the order of creation, woman is made of man, and to supply the felt need of man. The race, therefore, is called the race of man and not the race of woman. For this office of subordination and whether they assert it or not, women are fitted by their very constitution, and in the very creation of mankind in the garden of beauty undefiled by the slimy track of the serpent as it was, God ordained the subordination of woman and the differences of nature that makes her subordination inevitable. The power of rule seems to me to have been invested in the head of the family that he may act for them, or rather that they may act through him.

The assertion of this theologian that “the race therefore is called the race of man and not the race of woman,” is of the same character as that of Inquisitor Sprenger in regard to the word femina, as applied to woman, showing the intellectual calibre of both inquisitor and theologian to be the same. But in their assertion of woman’s inferiority and subordination, neither Chaplain Gray nor President Strong proceeded quite as far as an opposing speaker at the Philadelphia Woman Suffrage Convention of 1854, who said, “Let woman first prove that she has a soul, both the Bible and the Church deny it.” Here we are set back to the Macon Council of the sixth century, which debated the question of woman’s humanity.

That the church of the nineteenth century possesses the same character as that of the fourteenth, the twelfth, and fifth, was forcibly illustrated during the early days of the anti-slavery struggle, especially in its persecution of the women who took part in that reform. Lucretia Mott and Esther Moore were integral members of the American Anti-slavery Society, having assisted in the convention which organized this society in 1833. Shortly afterward the Grimke sisters of South Carolina, Sarah and Angelina, convinced of the sinfulness of slavery, left their delightful home in Charleston, and coming North, spoke eloquently through Massachusetts against those wrongs of which they themselves had been witnesses. The church, becoming frightened at woman’s increasing power and influence, determined to crush her work. Its action began with the Orthodox Congregational, at that time the largest and most influential ecclesiastical body of Massachusetts, and in 1837 the General Association of Massachusetts issued a pastoral letter calling upon all “churches under their care” to defend themselves by closing their doors against the abolitionists, who had set aside the laws of God by welcoming women to their platforms and allowing them to speak in public;548 section third was the most significant portion of this pastoral letter.

III. We invite your attention to the dangers which at present seem to threaten the female character with wide spread and permanent injury.

The appropriate duties and influence of woman are clearly stated in the New Testament. Those duties and that influence are unobtrusive and private, but the source of mighty power. When the mild, dependent, softening influence of woman under the sternness of man’s opinions is fully exercised, society feels the effects of it in a thousand forms. The power of woman is her dependence, flowing from the consciousness of that weakness which God has given her for her protection, and which keeps her in those departments of life that form the character of individuals and of the nation. There are social influences which females use in promoting piety and the great objects of Christian benevolence which we cannot too highly commend. We appreciate the unostentatious prayers and efforts of woman in advancing the cause of religion at home and abroad; in Sabbath schools; in leading religious inquirers to the pastors for instruction; and in all such associated effort as becomes the modesty of her sex; and earnestly hope that she may abound more and more in these labors of piety and love.

But when she assumes the place and tone of man as a public reformer, our care and protection of her seem unnecessary; we put ourselves in self-defense against her; she yields the power which God has given her for her protection, and her character becomes unnatural. If the vine whose strength and beauty is to lean upon the trellis work, and half conceal its clusters, thinks to assume the independence and the overshadowing nature of the elm, it will not only cease to bear fruit, but fall in shame and dishonor into the dust. We cannot, therefore, but regret the mistaken conduct of those who encourage females to bear an obtrusive and ostentatious part in measures of reform, and countenance any of that sex who so far forget themselves as to itinerate in the character of public lecturers and teachers. We especially deplore the intimate acquaintance and promiscuous conversation of females with regard to things which ought not to be named; by which that modesty and delicacy which is the charm of domestic life, and which constitutes the true influence of woman in society is consumed, and the way opened, as we apprehend, for degeneracy and ruin.

We say these things not to discourage proper influences against sin, but to secure such reformation as we believe is scriptural, and will be permanent.

That we may rightly judge the character of this pastoral letter, it must be remembered, that no discussion upon what is known as “the woman question” took place at those meetings, which were entirely devoted to the southern slave. This letter was written by men, emanating from a body of christian people that sustained colored slavery as an institution upon which God had as equally placed his sanction, as upon the subordination of woman. To such extent have the conscience and will been under the bondage of the priesthood, that the more timid members of the anti-slavery society became frightened, even some of those who believed in woman’s equality advising these speakers to yield their rights in the meetings, lest the ministers who had joined them should withdraw, taking others with them. Thus priestly intolerance and the timidity of anti-slavery men, had the effect of silencing the philanthropic and eloquent Grimke sisters,549 in their efforts for the freedom of the slave. After ten months work, their voices were heard no more. These sisters were not only persecuted in the North, under ban of the church, but in the South the State united with the Church, and by a decree of the city of Charleston they were rendered permanent exiles from home, and informed that should they return despite this, they would not be able to escape personal violence from a mob. With one noble exception, this mandate of the church and clergy had effect for a time in silencing woman’s plea for the slave. For seven long years the voice of but one woman, that of Abby Kelly,550 was heard upon the anti-slavery platform, and the persecutions of the church made her life one long martyrdom; her appeals for the slave were met by mob violence, furious howls, cries, and the vilest language being supplemented by more material efforts for silencing her voice. Were these proceedings not so thoroughly substantiated, the time so shortly past, credence could not be given as to the means used against this noble woman to prevent her pleading for those so greatly wronged.551 Ministers of high standing assailed her from the pulpit, a favorite text being, “Revelations” 2-20. I “have a few things against thee, because thou suffereth that woman, Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce my servants to commit fornication.” Not alone the Congregational body, but all Christian sects, were imbued with the same persecuting spirit, a Methodist presiding elder characterizing the Garrisonian societies, as no longer anti-slavery, but “no-government, no-sabbath, no-church, no-bible, no-marriage, woman’s rights societies.”

That woman had assumed the right to speak in public for the oppressed was the origin of all this vituperation. Its real cause was of the same nature as that which laid 30,000 heads low, at St. Bartholomew, that woman’s voice had been heard in public contrary to the teaching of the church. It was perhaps foreseen that she might, as really at a later period was done, draw a vivid illustration of the similitude between the condition of the white wife and the black slave.552 The unity and peace of the World’s Anti-slavery Convention, London, 1840, was disturbed by the hostility of several clergymen, and a few bigoted laymen of the same spirit, who objected to the recognition of the women delegates sent by several American societies, among whom were Lucretia Mott and Esther Moore, members of the parent organization. After a spirited discussion their admission was decided to be a violation of the ordinances of Almighty God, and their credentials were rejected.553

In 1843, the Hopkinson Association of Congregational Divines, of New Hampshire, unanimously enacted a statute in opposition to women opening their lips in church, even to “sigh” or “groan” in contrition; doubtless agreeing with Minister Douglas, that they were incapable of understanding a discourse directed to the brethren, who alone were allowed to shout “Amen,” “Bless the Lord,” and “Glory.” By a strange inconsistency women were still allowed to sing “under men as leaders.” This statute of restriction declared:

But, as to leading men, either in instruction or devotion, and as to any interruption or disorder in religious meetings, “Let your women keep silence in the churches;” not merely let them be silent, but let them keep or preserve silence. Not that they may not preach, or pray, or exhort merely, but they may not open their lips to utter any sounds audibly. Let not your women in promiscuous religious meetings preach or pray audibly, or exhort audibly, or sigh, or groan, or say Amen, or utter the precious words, “Bless the Lord,” or the enchanting sounds, “Glory! Glory!”

In 1888, forty-five years after this statute, Rev. Dr. Theodore L. Cuyler in the New York Evangelist, gave his opinion in regard to woman’s action in reform work and her demand for a share in making the laws which govern her, in this wise:

We can say frankly to our temperance brethren, that if they attempt to lash the wise project of prohibition of saloons, and the foolish project of female suffrage inseparably together, they will encounter fatal opposition. They will repel tenfold more sensible voters than they will win. Their most eloquent and logical advocate, Dr. Herrick Johnson, is intensely opposed to the Lucy Stone and Elizabeth Cady Stanton doctrines of woman suffrage, as I am. Nineteen-twentieths of our Presbyterian ministers will never cast a vote which is nominally only for prohibition, and yet is really a vote for burdening womanhood with civil government. What is true of our church is true of the Episcopal, Reformed, Baptist, Congregationalist, and the most influential portion of the Methodist church.

The same year of President Strong’s opposing sermon, 1878, the United Presbyterian Assembly passed a resolution to the effect that they found no sufficient authority in Scripture to warrant the ordination of women as deacons, yet they might with profit to themselves, and great advantage to the cause of suffering humanity, and for Christ, be allowed to act as assistants to deacons, thus emphasizing the dominant church teaching of woman’s irresponsibility and secondary position to man. The same year, however, an advance step was taken in Europe, the Synod of Born (Old Catholic), following the example of Pere Hyacinth, adopted a resolution in favor of the marriage of the clergy by a vote of 76 to 22. At the same time the Old Catholics were taking this advance step, the Protestant Episcopal Diocesan Convention of South Carolina forbade woman’s voting upon church matters, although it was proven during the discussion that in some parishes that were but five male members. The Southern Baptist Convention, held in Savannah, Georgia, 1885, appointed a committee with title of, and whose business was to decide upon “Representation by Women” in church affairs. This committee reported in favor of the word “brethren” instead of “members” being incorporated in the constitution, thus confirming the right of man alone to take part in church councils. Having thus effectively closed the lips of women on discussion of church questions, the convention introduced a resolution on divorce554 followed by a speech declaring that but one cause could exist. The convention having shut off all chance for woman’s opinion upon this question of equal and even of more vital interest to her, “applaudingly and overwhelmingly adopted the resolution.” At the annual election for officers of Christ Church, New Haven, Connecticut, April 1886, a discussion arose upon the right of women to become members of the society and consequently voted it in. Several ladies having signified a desire to unite with the society, Bishop Williams was consulted as to their admission; he decided the Canon was clearly against them, and on motion of the clerk their application was rejected, only one member speaking in favor.

The title of the sermons still preached upon woman, illustrate priestly thought regarding her. Among those of recent date are found, “Blighted Women;” “Sins of Women;” “Women and Divorce;” “Women and Skepticism;” “Woman’s Place and Work;” “Our Common Mother;” “The Relation of Husband and Wife;” “Marriage and Divorce;” “The Sphere of Woman;” “Husband and Wife;” “A Mission for Women;” “The Church and the Family;” “The Duties of Wives to Husbands;” these sermons all subordinating woman to man in every relation of life; all designed to repress woman’s growing tendency towards freedom, and her claim for the same opportunities in life conceded to man. That the clerical teaching of woman’s subordination to man was not alone a doctrine of the dark ages, is proven by the most abundant testimony of today. The famous See trial of 1876, which shook not only the Presbytery of Newark, but the whole Synod of New Jersey, and finally the General Presbyterian Assembly of the United States, was based upon the doctrine of the divinely appointed subordination of woman to man, and arose simply because Rev. Dr. Isaac See admitted two ladies to his pulpit to speak upon temperance; Rev. Dr. Craven, the prosecutor, declared this act to have been “an indecency in the sight of Jehovah.” He expressed the general clinical and church view, when he said: