M. Godin, manufacturer, founder of Familistere, and Madame Marie Godin, nee Moret, his secretary and co-laborer in the work of the Familistere, and in the propagation of social reform, have the honor of announcing to you the purely civil marriage which they contracted at Guise, the 14th day of July, 1886, that they might manifest to all their union, and the common purpose of all the efforts of their lives.
Civil marriage, where the church is supreme, is followed by excommunication and odious insults. In 1885 a remarkable instance of this kind occurred in the city of Concepcion, Chili. A young couple were married with consent of their parents, according to the civil law. Their social and political prominence made the occasion conspicuous, as it was the first wedding among the aristocracy in that country, dispensing with the aid of a priest. The church paper edited by a Jesuit priest thus commented:
The “Libertad” calls this “a happy union,” but it should remember that “happy unions” of this sort have hitherto existed only in the animal kingdom.
The bride, groom, and all their families suffered excommunication from the church. But it is not alone the Catholic church which desires to retain its hold upon marriage. Less than two years since certain clergymen of the Anglican church agreed to officiate at marriage without a fee, for the purpose of retaining control of this relation; and so strong has been the influence of the church during the ages, that few people look upon a ceremony under the civil law with the same respect as one performed by a priest, even of a Protestant denomination. The control of marriage by the church while throwing wealth into its own coffers, has ever had a prejudicial effect upon morals, as impediments to marriage of whatever character increase immorality. In the city of Concepcion referred to, of 200,000 inhabitants, there are two thousand children of unknown parentage. In 1884, statistics showed sixty-two per cent of the children to be illegitimate. The parents of those little ones were mostly known, being persons too poor to pay the cost of a church marriage, twenty-five dollars, its price, being quite beyond the means of the humbler classes. The Liberal party, in establishing civil marriage as legitimate, authorized any magistrate to perform the ceremony, and furnish a certificate for twenty-five cents. This assault upon the ancient prerogative of the church depriving priests of the largest source of their revenue, at once made a religious-political issue of the question, the church taking strenuous action against all connected with framing the law, and its repeal became the prominent political issue, to aid which all the faithful were called. Using its old weapons, the church through the Archbishop issued an edict excommunicating the president of the republic, the members of his cabinet and the members of congress who voted for the statute; directing that a similar penalty should fall upon every communicant who obeyed it and neglected to recognize the church as the only authority competent to solemnize the marriage rite.
A correspondent of the New York Sun, in Chili, wrote:
This brought matters to a crisis. On the one hand, the State declared all marriages not under the civil law illegal, and their issue illegitimate, refusing to recognize rites performed by the priests. On the other, those who obey the law are excommunicated from the church, and their cohabitation forbidden by the highest ecclesiastical authority. Thus matrimony is practically forbidden, and those who choose to enter it have their choice between arrest and excommunication. A young member of Congress, a man of gifts and influence, who stands as one of the leaders of the Liberal party, and who voted and argued for civil marriage, is engaged to the daughter of a wealthy merchant with proud lineage and aristocratic connections. He is willing to accept the civil authority, which he helped to create, and she and her father are also willing, but her mother is a devout church woman and cannot regard marriage as sacred without the blessing of a priest. She favors the alliance, but insists that the Church shall be recognized. The bishop declines to permit the ceremony unless the young man shall go to the confessional and retract his political record, with a vow to hereafter remain steadfast to the church. This he refuses to do. The couple will go to Europe or the States and there have the ceremony performed.
This action of the Chilian republic in substituting a civil for a religious ceremony in marriage and declaring the latter to be illegal, is a most important step in civilization, of which freedom for woman is such an essential factor; and its results in that country must be left in woman’s every relation of life, promoting self-respect, self-reliance and security in place of the degradation, self-distrust and fear to which its church has so long condemned her.
Chapter Seven
Polygamy
It is of indisputed historic record that both the Christian Church and the Christian State in different centuries and under a number of differing circumstances gave their influence in favor of polygamy. The Roman emperor, Valentinian I, in the fourth century, authorized christians to take two wives; in the eighth century the great Charlemagne holding power over both church and state, in his own person practiced polygamy, having six, or according to some authorities, nine wives. With the Reformation this system entered Protestantism. As the first synod in North America was called for the purpose of trying a woman for heresy, so the first synod of the reformation was assembled for the purpose of sustaining polygamy, thus farther debasing woman in the marital relation. The great German reformer, Luther, although perhaps himself free from the lasciviousness of the old priesthood was not strictly monogamic in principle. When applied to by Philip, Landgrave of Hesse Cassel, for permission to marry a second wife while his first wife, Margaret of Savoy, was still living, he called together a synod of six of the principal reformers – Melancthon and Bucer among them – who in joint consultation decided “that as the Bible nowhere condemns polygamy, and as it has been invariably practiced by the highest dignitaries of the church,” such marriage was legitimate, and the required permission was given. Luther himself with both the Old and the New Testaments in hand, saying, “I confess for my part that if a man wishes to marry two or more wives, I cannot forbid him, nor is his conduct repugnant to the Holy Scriptures.” Thus we have the degrading proof that the doctrine of polygamy was brought into reformation by its earliest promoters under assertion that it was not inconsistent with the Bible or the principles of the Gospel. The whole course of Luther during the reformation proved his disbelief in the equality of woman with man; when he left the Catholic church he took with him the old theory of her created subordination. It was his maxim that “No gown or garment worse becomes a woman than that she will be wise,” thus giving the weight of his influence against woman’s intellectual freedom and independent thought. Although he opposed monastic life, the home for woman under the reformation was governed by many of its rules.
First: She was to be under obedience to man as head of the house.
Second: She was to be constantly employed for his benefit.
Third: Her society was strictly chosen for her by this master and head.
Fourth: This “head” was a general-father confessor, to whom she was held accountable in word and deed.
Fifth: Neither genius nor talent could free her from his control without his consent.
Luther’s views regarding polygamy have been endorsed and sanctioned since that period by men eminent in church and state. Lord Seldon known as “The Light of England” in the seventeenth century, published a work under title of “Uxor Haebraica” for the purpose of proving that polygamy was permitted to the Hebrews. His arguments were accepted by the church as indisputable. Bishop Burnet, who while holding the great Protestant Episcopal See of Salisbury, so successfully opposed the plan inaugurated by Queen Anne for the establishment of a woman’s college in England, added to his infamy by writing a tract entitled “Is a Plurality of Wives in any case Lawful under the Gospel?” This question he answered in the affirmative sustaining the rightfulness of polygamy under the Christian dispensation. Quoting the words of Christ upon divorce, he said:
We must not by a consequence condemn a plurality of wives since it seems not to have fallen within the scope of what our Lord does there disapprove. Therefore I see nothing so strong against a plurality of wives as to balance the great and visible imminent hazards that hang over so many thousands if it be not allowed.
The famous Puritan Poet of England, John Milton, known in the University as “The Lady of Christ College,” writing upon “The Special Government of Man,” says:
I have not said the marriage of one man with one woman lest I should by implication charge the holy patriarchs and pillars of our faith, Abraham and others who had more than one wife, at the same time, with habitual sin; and lest I should be forced to exclude from the sanctuary of God as spurious, the whole offspring which sprang from them, yea, the whole of the sons of Israel, for whom the sanctuary itself was made. For it is said in Deuteronomy (xxii. 2,) “A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of Jehovah even to the tenth generation.” Either, therefore polygamy is a true marriage, or all children born in that state are spurious, which would include the whole race of Jacob, the twelve tribes chosen by God. But as such an assertion would be absurd in the extreme, not to say impious, and as it is the height of injustice as well as an example of the most dangerous tendency in religion, to account as sins what is not such in reality it appears to me that so far from the question respecting the lawfulness of polygamy being trivial, it is of the highest importance that it should be decided. Not a trace appears of the interdiction of polygamy throughout the whole law, not even in any of the prophets.
The Paradise Lost of Milton is responsible among English speaking people for many existing views that are inimical to woman, and while his essays upon liberty have been of general beneficial influence upon the world, his particular teachings in regard to woman have seriously injured civilization. This man of polygamous beliefs, this tyrant over his own household who could not gain the love of either wives – of whom he had three – or of daughters, did much to popularize the idea of woman’s subordination to man. “He for God; she for God in him” as expressed by the lips of Eve and so often quoted as proclaiming the true relationship between husband and wife in the line, “God thy law; thou mine.”
While the record of Milton’s life shows him to have been an intolerable domestic tyrant, yet for the wife who could not live with him, the daughters whom social conditions and lack of education deprived of the necessary means for their support, thus compelling them to remain his victims looking forward to his death as their only means of release, the world has as yet exhibited but little sympathy. His genius, undisputed as its record must be in many directions, has made his views of overpowering influence upon the world since his day. But above all, more than all that created and sustained this influence were his views as to the polygamous rights of man, his depictment of Eve as looking upward to Adam as her God, and his general maintenance of the teaching of the church in regard to woman. Although it has been affirmed that after his blindness he dictated his great epic to his daughter and a Scotch artist has painted a scene (a picture owned by the Lenox Library), yet this is one of the myths men call history and amuse themselves in believing. Voltaire declared history to be only a parcel of tricks we play with the dead; and this tale of blind Milton dictating Paradise Lost to his daughters is a trick designed to play upon our sympathies. Old Dr. Johnson is authority for the statement that Milton would not allow his daughters to learn to write and it is quite certain that he did not permit them a knowledge of any language except the English, saying “one tongue is enough for a woman.” Between Milton and his family it is known there was tyranny upon one side, hatred upon the other.525
The number of eminent Protestants both lay and clerical who have sanctioned polygamy has not been small. In the sixteenth century a former Capuchin monk, a general of that order who had been converted to the Protestant faith, published a work entitled “Dialogues in favor of Polygamy.” In the latter part of the seventeenth century, John Lyser, another divine of the reformed church strongly defended it in a work entitled “Polygamia Triumphatrix” or the triumphant defense of polygamy. Rev. Dr. Madden, still another Protestant divine, in a treatise called “Thalypthora,” maintained that Paul’s injunction that bishops should be the husbands of one wife, signified that laymen were permitted to marry more than one. The scholarly William Ellery Channing could find no prohibition of polygamy in the New Testament. In his “Remarks on the Character and Writings of John Milton” he says, “We believe it to be an indisputable fact that although Christianity was first preached in Asia which had been from the earliest days the seat of polygamy, the apostles never denounced it as a crime and never required their converts to put away all wives but one. No express prohibition of polygamy is found in the New Testament.” That eminent American divine, Henry Ward Beecher, the influence of whose opinions over all classes was for many years so great as to constitute him a veritable Protestant pope in the United States, a few years before his death was selected to reply at a New England dinner to a toast upon the Mormon question, the subject of polygamy then being under discussion by Congress. He not only deprecated the use of force in its suppression, but quoted Milton in seeming approval. We can therefore consistently rank Mr. Beecher as among the number of Protestant divines who believed there was scriptural warrant for this degradation of woman.
But it is not alone to the action of Christian monarchs or the opinion of jurists and ministers that we must solely look, but also to the action of the church as a body during different periods of its history. In the year 1846, the question of polygamy came up before the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in the United States. Through a committee, of which the eminent Chancellor Walworth, of New York, was chairman, this body reported against instructing missionaries to exclude polygamists from the church. This report was adopted without a dissenting voice.526 This discussion brought out some interesting facts having especial bearing upon the views of those churches which numbered polygamists among their communicants. It was shown that the secretaries of the board appeared to consider the existence of polygamy in the churches as so entirely a frivolous question that even after it was especially brought to their notice they forbore to make inquiries and even when polygamists had actually been admitted into the Mission churches, no taint of disapproval had been made by the Prudential Committee.527 The whole subject was left to the decision of the missionaries themselves, one of whom published his views in the Boston Recorder. After prevising that the Bible was their rule of faith, he asks:
Is it not evident from Paul’s instruction respecting the qualifications of a bishop, viz., that he “should be the husband of one wife” that polygamy was permitted in the primitive church under the apostles, and that too in circumstances precisely similar to those in which churches are gathered among the heathen at the present day. If so, why should a different standard be set up than that set up by the apostles?
That polygamy is not regarded as contrary to the principles of Christianity was again most forcibly shown in its endorsement by missionaries located in those countries where this custom prevails. One of the most notable instances of recent church action in recognizing polygamy as sustained by Christianity, occurred a few years since in Calcutta during a Conference upon the question. This body was convened by the missionaries of England and America located in India. Its immediate cause was the application of Indian converts, the husbands of several wives, for admission to the church. A missionary conference of the several Christian denominations was therefore called for the purpose of deciding upon this grave request. It included representatives of the Episcopal, Baptist, Presbyterian and Congregationalist churches. Taking the Bible as authority full consideration was given to the subject. Quotations from that “holy book” proved to the satisfaction of the conference that not alone did the Bible favor polygamy, but that God himself endorsed, regulated and sustained the institution. In addition it was declared that these converted polygamists “had given credible evidence of their personal piety.” The conference therefore unanimously rendered favorable decision for retention of the polygamous members within the respective churches to which they belonged, upon the ground that as both the Jews and the early Christians had practiced polygamy, it was allowable to the new converts.
If a convert before becoming a Christian, has married more wives than one, in accordance with the practice of the Jewish and primitive Christian churches, he shall be permitted to keep them all.
Yet apparently as a concession to the somewhat altruistic civilization of the present age, which outside of the church does not look upon polygamous marriages with favor, such persons were declared ineligible to any office in the church. Rev. David O. Allen, D.D., missionary of the American Board in India for twenty-five years and from whose report of the action of the missionary conference the above facts were gained, said:
If polygamy was unlawful, then Leah was the only wife of Jacob and none but her children were legitimate. Rachel as well as Bilhah and Zilpah were merely mistresses and their children, six in number were bastards, the offspring of adulterous connection. And yet there is no intimation of any such views and feelings in Laban’s family, or in Jacob’s family or in Jewish history. Bilhah and Zilpah are called Jacob’s wives (Genesis xxxvii: 2.). God honored the sons of Rachael, Bilhah and Zilpah equally with the sons of Leah, made them patriarchs of seven of the tribes of the nation and gave them equal inheritances in Canaan.
Thus the endorsement of polygamy as not contrary to the Bible, or to Christianity, is shown by action of Christian churches both in the United States and India within the present century; and we can readily understand why a gentleman from the New England states traveling in Utah said: “Mormonism seems a very devout sect of the Christian church, differing but little from the great body of Christian people.”528 Nor is this judgment at all strange as we find polygamy endorsed by the majority of Christian sects. Nor can we be surprised that the Mormons of Utah and the adjoining states should look upon the opposition of the United States to their practice of polygamy, as an unjust interference with an established custom of the Christian church, recognized and indorsed through the ages, as not alone part of the Jewish and early christian practice, but permitted as allowable at the present day. President Eliot of Harvard, speaking in Salt Lake City, compared the Mormons to the Puritans, thus throwing the weight of his statement as to the harmony between Mormonism and other Christian sects.
The Rochester, N.Y., Herald, in forgetfulness of early puritan history, says “It would be interesting to know from what point of view President Eliot took his observation,” and refers to “Mormon Contempt and debasement of Womanhood; Mormon discouragement of intelligence and education among its dupes and victims,” etc. The Herald has apparently forgotten the trial of women for heresy by the Puritans; their imprisonment, heavily ironed in airless jails, for the crime of religious free thought; the flogging of naked women on Boston Common by the Puritans for free speech and their being executed as witches, in the Puritan colony of Massachusetts. The Herald has apparently forgotten that although the first money given for the foundation of Harvard itself was by a woman, her sex, “dupe and victim,” is still denied the full advantage of education in that institution. It forgets that although the first plot of ground for a free school in the Puritan colony of Massachusetts was given by a woman, girls were denied education even in common schools until it became necessary to permit their attendance during the summer months while the boys were engaged in fishing, in order to retain possession of school moneys. The Herald seems unaware of the vigorous letter of Mrs. Hannah Adams, wife of the second president of the United States, to her husband, John Adams, when he was a member of the first Congress, in reference to the need of education for women. Should the Herald pursue its investigations still farther, it will find the Puritans connected with the most serious “crimes” against humanity; it will discover priestly and governmental “usurpation,” Puritan “fanaticism and bigotry”; even Puritan “disloyalty.” When President Eliott[PP: typo? “Eliot” on.png186] favorably compared the Christian Puritans and the Christian Mormons, he spoke both as a close reader of Puritan history and a close observer of Mormon history; his declaration of their similarity to each other cannot be denied by the candid historian. Building upon the same common foundation, acknowledging the same common origin, the doctrines of the two systems necessarily bear close resemblance to each other.529 Under the Christian theory regarding woman, her origin and her duties, it should not be regarded as at all strange that polygamy should find defenders in the christian world. Nor is it to be looked upon as at all as surprising that the Mormons, the most recent Protestant sect, should teach polygamy as a divinely organized institution, nor that their arguments in its favor should be drawn from the Bible and not from the book of Mormon. That polygamy was not an original Mormon tenet is well known; it was derived from a professed revelation to Joseph Smith, sustained by biblical authority. The polygamous Mahommedans regard Christ as a prophet, the same as the Mormons respect the authority of the Bible. The Mormon marriage formula directs the man to look to God, but enjoins the woman to look toward her husband as God, rendering him the same unquestioning obedience that has been demanded from all Christian wives through the ages; the priest, as customary with the hierarchal class, declaring himself endowed with an authority from on high to bind or to loose on earth, seals the union of the pair for time and eternity. Although the marriage ceremony of the Mormon church is more complex, in many respects it parallels that of the Presbyterians of Scotland during the early day of the Reformation, authority for woman’s degradation in each case being derived from the Bible, the language in each instance being unfit for publication.530
An epistle of the First Presidency to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, in General Conference, said:
“The Gospel of the Son of God, brings life and immortality to light.” We believe in Jerusalems, such as the one which John saw when banished as a slave to the Isle of Patmos because of his religion, where promises made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are to be fulfilled; “which had a wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels” – and the twelve gates were twelve pearls; every several gate was one pearl.” Its walls were of jasper, its streets and the city were pure gold. The foundations of the wall were garnished with all manner of precious stones, and the glory of God did lighten it, “and the Lamb is the light thereof.” Its pearly gates had written upon them the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel and the foundations of its walls, “the names of the Twelve Apostles of the Lamb.” “The throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and His servants shall serve Him; and they shall see His face; and His name shall be in their foreheads. The porters of its gates were angels and its light the glory of God.” What was written on those pearly gates? The names of the twelve tribes of Israel. Who was Israel? Jacob. From whom did the twelve tribes descend? From Jacob. What were their names? The names of the sons of Jacob, which he had by four wives. Jacob, then, was a polygamist? Yes; he was one of those barbarians of which the Judge of the Third Judicial District says: “These practices might have been proper in a barbarous and primitive time – in crude times – but they won’t do now. Civilization has thrown them away. It won’t do to gather up these old customs and practices out of the by-gone barbarism and by-gone ages, and attempt to palm them upon a free and intelligent and civilized people in these days.”
How free the people are in Utah today needs no discussion. If the judge cannot stand these things it would seem God and the Lamb can, for He is the light of the city, on the gates of which are written the names of twelve men, the sons of one man by four women – a polygamist. Had Jacob lived now, the judges would have sent spies, spotters and deputy marshals after him, and if caught would have sent him to the penitentiary.
This epistle boldly challenges christian belief in the New Jerusalem as based upon polygamy; upon its gates the names of twelve polygamous children are inscribed, sons of one man, children of four mothers, two wives and two concubines. Of Solomon, this epistle could likewise have spoken, whom the Bible represents as the wisest man that lived; his wives numbering three hundred, his concubines seven hundred. Nor are Jacob and Solomon two isolated instances of Jewish polygamy; Mormons, in common with the lay and clerical authorities previously referred to, find abundant proof for their sanction of polygamy both in the revelations of the Old and the New Testaments. But each human being entering the world is a revelation to himself, to herself, and the revelation inherently abiding in all women, declares against such degradation of herself and her sex.
Brigham Young, the first Mormon president, husband of nineteen wives, father of forty-two children, possessed great natural fascination; was a man of wonderful magnetism. Of him a daughter said: “his slightest touch was a caress.” His seventh wife, an elegant and fashionable woman, was said by her daughter to worship the ground that he walked upon and never to have been herself since his death. From this favorite daughter of Young who after his death apostatized from the Mormon religion, much has been learned in regard to the real feeling of these polygamous wives toward each other, which she characterized as “an outward semblance of good will, but in reality a condition of deadly hatred.” Such outward semblance of goodwill, such real condition of deadly hatred is the result of all forms of religion which subjugate the many to the caprice of the few, even though done under assumption of divine authority. That envy, jealousy and hatred should be among the dire results of woman’s religious degradation, cannot be a subject of surprise to the student of human nature; and it is supreme proof of the bondage of the human will under fancied authority from God, that such minds as those of Luther, Milton, Seldon, Beecher, Walworth and others like them should uphold a system so degrading in character alike to the men and the women who practice it. Young’s daughter Dora with five of her sisters, was expelled a few years since from the Mormon church for having gone to law with certain of the Mormon brethren who attempted to rob them of their patrimony. The elders realizing the injury these women might do for the church, sent a couple of teachers to interview Dora, invoking her father’s name to influence her dropping the suit531 and return to the church. Dora had been aroused by a sense of the iniquity of the church, through hearing its elders declare upon oath that they knew nothing of polygamous marriage ceremonies being performed, while the same day of this denial no less than fourteen such marriages had taken place at the Endowment House. Referring to the conscientious belief held by many women of the necessity of polygamous marriage in order to secure the sanctification requisite for their salvation, Dora said:
Since my eyes have been opened I sometimes ask myself how I could ever possibly have regarded the horrible and licentious practices of which I was aware, and the terrible things I have witnessed with anything but horror? And yet I was brought up to consider these things right and I thought nothing about them – just as I suppose children brought up where human sacrifices are offered, learn to regard such sacrifice as right and to look upon them with indifference.
Experience taught Dora that the natural character of the human mind soon accommodates itself to circumstances, becomes in accord with its environment, and regards as right whatever law or custom teaches is right. This, called the conservative tendency of the human mind, is merely the result of habitude of thought induced by authoritative teaching. Both church and state have availed themselves of the influence of authoritative custom for the perpetuation of power. In this way despotism has gained its chief victories. The beliefs to which persons have been habituated from childhood, are, without investigation, deemed truths by the majority of the world. No step so great in its far-reaching results as that of independent thought; none so greatly feared by priestly and civil power; and among women during the Christian ages, none has met with such swift rebuke, no sin has been characterized as its equal in malignancy. Therefore while the world has possessed full knowledge of man’s opinions regarding polygamy, not until the present century and in the United States have the views of women been attainable. Until the present age there has been no escape from bondage for the polygamous wife, no opportunity for learning its effects upon her own inner self. From the daughter of its chief prophet, the man whose fame in connection with polygamy has gone throughout the world, we have learned something of its evils as seen and felt by woman. Yet other and still stronger testimony is not lacking. A private letter written in Salt Lake City a few years since, published in the Boston Transcript under head of “The Silent Woes of Mormonism” depicts one phase in its influence upon the unborn.