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:

I believe the subject involves the honor of my God. I believe the subject involves the headship and crown of Jesus. Woman was made for man and became first in the transgression. My argument is that subordination is natural, the subordination of sex. Dr. See has admitted marital subordination, but this is not enough; there exists a created subordination; a divinely arranged and appointed subordination of woman as woman to man as man. Woman was made for man and became first in the transgression. The proper condition of the adult female is marriage; the general rule for ladies is marriage. Women without children, it might be said, could preach, but they are under the general rule of subordination. It is not allowed woman to speak in the church. Man’s place is on the platform. It is positively base for a woman to speak in the pulpit; it is base in the sight of Jehovah. The whole question is one of subordination.⁵⁵⁵

Thus before a vast audience largely composed of women, Dr. Craven stood and with denunciatory manner, frequently bringing his fists on his Bible emphatically down, devoted a four hours speech to proving that the Bible taught woman’s subordination to man. His arguments were the same as those of the church in the past and were based upon the same theory, viz. that woman was created inferior to man, for man, and was the first in sin. He referred to the fashions as aid in his argument, saying, “In every country, under every clime, from the peasant woman of Naples, with a handkerchief over her hair, to the women before me with bonnets, every one wears something upon her head in token of subordination.” Dr. Craven made this statement in direct contradiction to historical facts which prove that the head covering is always removed in presence of a superior. To remain bareheaded is an act of deference to a higher authority. Even the Quaker custom of men’s wearing the hat in meeting, originated as an act of defiance to the Anglican Church. Dr. Craven also forgot to state that flowing hair has always been regarded as an emblem of superiority and freedom; clipped hair that of a slave or prisoner. Thus Dr. Craven’s appeal to fashion reacted against him in the minds of all historically informed persons, yet together with his other statements it was fully endorsed by most of his brother clergymen present, some of whom enthusiastically shouted, “Amen!” At the close of his speech several other clergymen gave their views. Dr. Ballentine considered the subject too simple for an argument. Dr. Few Smith, although he “admired Miss Smiley, more than almost any orator he had ever listened to, did not want her or any other woman to permanently occupy the Presbyterian pulpit.” Dr. Wilson rejoiced to see so many women crowding in the lecture room; but Brother See should not take all the glory to himself. He was glad to see the women take so deep an interest in the subject under discussion; but as he looked at them he asked himself: “What will all the children do while these women are away from home?” A decision of censure against Dr. See, was agreed in by the Synod of New Jersey, and confirmed by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of the United States, in session at Pittsburg.

Thus we find that the Christianity of today continues to teach the existence of a superior and an inferior sex in the church, possessing different rights and held accountable to a different code of morals. Not alone did Dr. Craven express the idea that woman’s very dress was typical of her inferiority, but the Right Rev. Dr. Coxe, Bishop of the Western (Episcopal) Diocese of New York refused the sacrament in 1868 to the lady patients of the Clifton Springs sanitarium whose heads were uncovered, although the chapel was under the same roof and on the same floor with the patients’ rooms. This same Right Rev. Dr. Coxe, in a speech at his installation as first president of the Ingham Seminary for young ladies, declared “the laws of God to be plainly Salic.” Rev. W. W. Patten, D.D., president of Howard University, Washington, D.C., in a sermon preached at the Congregational church, upon “Woman and Skepticism,” January, 1885, advanced the proposition that as soon as they (women) depart from their natural sphere, they become atheistical and immoral.⁵⁵⁶ In March, 1891, a half column editorial in the “Presbyterian” discussed the ethics and aesthetics of woman’s dress at communions, not precisely in line with Dr. Coxe, yet of the same general character as to regulating woman’s dress, in, “Should women receive the elements at communion with gloved hands?” Some authorities objected to the practice upon the ground “that nothing might come between the recipient and the mystic power contained in the bread and wine after consecration by the priest.” But while, as the editor remarks, “It is after all a very small matter,” it is in a historical aspect, a great one, showing such pronounced change from the church teaching of but a few centuries since, when women were forbidden to take the eucharist in their naked hands because of their impurity. Rev. Mr. Denhurst, member of the Connecticut Legislature (House), during a hearing before a committee upon that question March 10, 1886, while speaking favorably of woman suffrage still betrayed his belief in the old theological idea that women brought sin into the world, through which her subordination to man ensued. But like Dr. See he limited this subordination to married women, saying:

As a minister of the gospel, I deny that you can find anywhere in the Bible, woman’s subordination till she sent the curse of sin upon the world, and that relates only to married women, and marriage is a matter of choice.

The spiritual and temporal superiority of man over woman is affirmed by clergymen of the present day as strongly as by those of the dark ages, and sermons in opposition to her equality of rights are as frequently preached. The entrance of woman into remunerative industries is as energetically opposed as is her demand for governmental and religious freedom. Rev. Morgan Dix, rector of Trinity church, New York, in a series of “Lenten Lectures”⁵⁵⁷ a few years since, made woman the subject of violent attacks as an inferior and subordinate being, now attempting to pass beyond the bounds set by God for her restraint.

There is a more emphatic, a more hopeless degradation for her. It is seen when she seeks to reverse the laws of her nature and upset the economy of the universe, pushing her way out of her own sphere into a rivalry with men in their sphere and in their proper pursuits. On that must follow a degradation, greatly to be feared. When the claim for rights seems to be taking the form of a competition with man, on a field which God has reserved for man only, in a work not suited to the woman, and in professions already overstocked that must end, not in enhancing the merit of woman in his eye but in making her offensive and detestable. There is a point beyond which patience will not hold out; and of this let the woman be sure: that if she go too far the end will arise; and man having long borne her manners and finding that she is becoming a social nuisance and a general tormentor, will finally lose all respect for her and thrust her away with loathing and disgust and bid her behave herself and go back to her old inferiority.

In this series of lectures, Dr. Dix emphatically declared man’s spiritual supremacy even in the household.

The father is by God’s law, priest over his household; to him should they look as a witness for that God who gave him his rank and title.⁵⁵⁸

The sects agree in their teachings regarding woman; Rev. A. Sherman, at one time president of Bacon College, Kentucky, declaring that woman was first in transgression, that she beguiled man and was therefore put in bondage under his authority, said:

The wide spreading contempt for this truth exhibited by the political-religious fashion and infidelity of the age, is one of the most alarming symptoms of approaching anarchy and the overthrow of our liberties. The attempt which is being made in these United States to elevate the wife to a perfect equality with the husband, or to change in any respect the relation between them, established by God himself, is rank infidelity, no matter what specious disguise it may assume.

In a sermon of his Lenten series, entitled “The Calling of a Christian Woman, and her Training to Fulfill it,” Dr. Dix said: