Woman, Church & State

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:

We, priests, who whatever our personal short comings, have a commission from above and a message to man from God, and are the mouthpiece of that church to which his hand-maidens belong, may be and ought to be able to help occasionally, by merely stating what the Bible and the church declare on certain great matters, on which many lower ones depend… What did Almighty God, the Creator, the wise Father of all, make woman for? What did he intend her to do? What did he not mean her to do or try to do?

He answered these questions in a lecture entitled, “A Mission for Woman,” of the same series.

Looking for a mission, for a work to do, this is the attitude of many women today… You hear of the education of women, of co-education of the sexes, of emancipation of woman from bonds – what bonds the Lord only knows! Here is a mission worthy of yourselves, it is of all works that could be rendered the fittest for a church woman, because she was at the beginning of all the trouble in the world… We believe the old story of the Bible re-affirmed by Christ and his apostles, that Adam was not deceived by the devil, but that the woman being deceived, was in the transgression. Now to her with whom the wrong began, we look for the beginning of the right. Remember that in the woman are the poles of the good and the evil in human nature.

When she is good she is the best of all that exists; when bad, the worst.

Another sermon of this Lenten series, expressed the views of the reverend gentleman upon the family relation, bearing of children and divorce, in which he expressed his hatred of modern development saying:

I feel great solicitude about the subject of this evening’s lecture; I had rather not touch it at all. You may think that its selection is an instance of that disrespect to which I have referred. Not so, oh, not so. I hold the old ideas. I abhor and detest the modern development; before any woman who fears God, does her duty, and gives us in her life and acts the picture of a true and beautiful womanliness, I rise up and bless her and do her reverent homage. It is thus in no spirit of assumption that I shall say what I have to say tonight. It is rather in a tone of remonstrance, of wonder, of expostulation. Why do women err as they do? Why lower themselves to men’s level? Why should the queens abdicate their thrones and go down to the ring and act unseemly parts and lay their honor in the dust? Let us think this evening of some things done by women which one would have said that no woman with a woman’s heart and a woman’s sense could, after due reflection, justify. Sins fall naturally into groups or classes, and if I speak this evening of only one class of sins it is because the time does not permit us to take a larger survey of the field. We shall limit ourselves, then, to these topics:

The lack of serious views of life and the habit of turning the thoughts exclusively to enjoyment. The degradation of the idea of matrimony, as shown by entering into that estate for low and unworthy motives. The deliberate determination of some married women to defeat the objects for which marriage was instituted; to have no real home; to avoid first the pains and next the cares and duties of maternity. The habit, where a home exists, of neglecting it by spending most of the time away from it, running up and down in pursuit of excitement and turning their children over to the care of servants. The growing indifference to the chief of all social abominations, divorce, and the toleration of lax notions about it.

These questions of most vital import to woman, to her material condition, intellectual development and place in the church, Rev. Dr. Dix and the great body of the church, deem themselves supremely competent to adjust without woman’s voice upon them. Wherever she has shown her views upon the subject of education, industries, the family, the church, to be in opposition to those of theologians, she has at once been told to remain in her old position of “inferiority” looking up to man as her divinely appointed master and spiritual head; Dr. Dix, in his lectures, but gave the views of priests of all denominations at the present day. Despite the advancing civilization of the age, and the fact that in so many avocations woman has shown her capacity for taking equal part with man, we find theology still unprogressive; a portion of the press, however, severely criticised these discourses.559 The “Lenten Pastoral” 1886, of Rev. A. Cleveland Coxe, bishop of Western New York, to the laity of his diocese, contained a middle-age reminder to women of the impurity of motherhood, in the demand made for church cleansing subsequent to her bringing an immortal being into life:

6. Christian women, active as they often are, above all comparison with men, are yet sometimes negligent of their immediate duties as wives and mothers and fail to exert that healthful influence over the family, which God has made it the high privilege of woman to exercise in this sphere of her duty and her glory. The office for “the Churching of Women” testifies against those who neglect it, as forgetting the dignity of motherhood and that gratitude to God which every woman owes to the Christian religion, for enthroning her in the household, and making the example of the “Blessed among Women” her peculiar lesson and incentive to piety.

Many portions of this advice is an open insult to woman, and could the divine but see it, is even from the Christian standard an imputation upon that being he professes to revere as the Creator of the universe.

A work was recently written by an English bishop, bearing upon the governmental effort for repeal of the law forbidding marriage with a deceased wife’s sister or brother. This work was written for the express purpose of proving that, while it is eminently improper and sinful for a woman to marry her deceased husband’s brother, it is eminently proper and right for a man to marry his deceased wife’s sister, and this upon the same principle that governed the disinheritance of woman under the Salic law; i.e., because by marriage a woman becomes merged into her husband’s family. He specifically declares that the sister of the wife is in no sense the sister of the husband, therefore it is permissible for a man to marry his wife’s sisters successively. But he affirms that to the contrary, the widow cannot marry her deceased husband’s brother, as by the act of her marriage she became a part of her husband’s family; a second marriage to such husband’s brother thereby becoming incestuous. This is the law of England, both religious and civil. A striking evidence of the incongruity of this law is found in the fact that the illegitimacy of such brother is held to destroy the relationship, as by law of both church and state an illegitimate child is not held as related to its father; he is the son of nobody. A woman can marry two brothers in succession, one the child of marriage, the other a child of the same father born outside of the marriage relation. The son of nobody, a being unfathered in the eye of the law, is the brother of nobody. A striking instance of the effect of this law occurred in England within the past few years, when a lady successively married two brothers, the first a natural son of the Earl of Waldegrave, the second his legitimate son. The father, although not recognized as such in law, left the bulk of his property to his natural son; the title, over which he had no power of alienation, descending to the son born under authority of the church. The first husband, dying, the lady afterward married the legitimate son, thus becoming first, “Mrs.” Waldegrave, and afterwards, “Lady” Waldegrave, securing both fortune and title by her marriage with the non-recognized and law-recognized sons of the same father, and breaking neither the law of state or church in so doing. American clergymen of the Episcopal church have expressed views in accordance with those of the English bishop. Rev. George Zabriskie Gray, D.D., dean of the Episcopal Theological School of Cambridge, Mass., published a work in 1885 entitled “Husband and Wife,” also suggested by the constantly debated English question of State, concerning the lawfulness of marriage with a deceased wife’s sister. Dr. Gray coincides with many of his reverend brethren in the declaration that with the wife no liberty of divorce is allowable, but his reasons present somewhat the freshness of novelty. As previously stated, the non-relationship of husband and wife was at one time the general Christian belief. While like the English bishop, Rev. Mr. Gray admits the relationship of the wife to the husband to such extent that becoming fully absorbed by him his relatives become hers; like the English bishop he further declares that in consequence of this absorption, the wife loses her former family relationship, her mother and father, her sister or brother no longer bearing relationship to her, but have become to her as strangers. He said:

The wife becomes a member of his family, while he does not become one of her own. The equilateral idea is a physiological560 and psychological impossibility. The unity is in the man. The woman by marriage becomes a member of the man, therefore she cannot put him away; for a member cannot put away the head; the impurity of the wife imperils the family, renders pedigree and all concerned therein uncertain, and so she may be put away. But the husband’s unchastity, while it may be as sinful, yet has no such effect. It does not render it doubtful who are rightful children of his stock, who are entitled to the name that he and his wife both bear, and therefore does not call for the severance of the marriage tie, that is, the dissolution of the family. That is, divorce so far as Scripture goes seems to be a measure for the protection of the family and of the rightful inheritance of whatever is to be transmitted to the children, and so a remedy open only to man. There seems to be no way of preventing the abuse of divorce, if any principle is admitted that will extend it to woman.

Under this form of reasoning, both Dr. Gray and the English bishop dispose with ease of the state obstacle to marriage with a deceased wife’s sister. Inasmuch as by marriage the husband forms no ties of consanguinity with the wife’s family, she having become a member of his family without his having become a member of hers, marriage with his deceased wife’s sister would be the same as marriage with an entire stranger, saying:

As the husband enters into no connection with the wife’s family, her sisters are no more his sisters than they had been before. Therefore he may marry one of them as freely as any one else, as far as any real principle involved in matrimony is concerned.

The Christian Register, of Boston, commenting upon Dr. Gray’s work, although itself a recognized organ of the Unitarian church, yet in a spirit more in accord with modern thought, carefully corrected the size of type in the word “wife” upon the title-page and outside of the book, thus: HUSBAND AND wife:561 also facetiously referring to the late Artemus Ward, who at time of the late civil war was ready to sacrifice all his wife’s relations.562 These two works of the English bishop and the American dean are consistent with the teaching of the Christian ages in reference to woman. Not held as belonging primarily to herself, but ever to some man, her very relationship to the mother who brought her into life destroyed by law, she once again through the church is presented to the world as a being without a birthright, not even receiving for it Esau’s mess of pottage, or a father’s shorn blessing, after its loss. She is held up to view as without father, mother, or individual existence. Rev. Knox-Little, a high church clergyman of England, traveled in the United States in the fall of 1880. During his stay in Philadelphia, he preached a “Sermon to Women,” in the large church of St. Clements. As reported in the Times of that city, its chief features were a representation of woman’s inferior intellect, her duty of unqualified obedience to her husband, however evil his life, the sinfulness of divorce and the blessedness of a large family of children. He said:

God made himself to be born of a woman to sanctify the virtue of endurance; loving submission is an attribute of woman; men are logical, but women lacking this quality, have an intricacy of thought. There are those who think woman can be taught logic; this is a mistake, they can never by any power of education arrive at the same mental status as that enjoyed by man, but they have a quickness of apprehension, which is usually called leaping at conclusions, that is astonishing. There, then, we have distinctive traits of a woman, namely: endurance, loving submission and quickness of apprehension. Wifehood is the crowning glory of a woman. In it she is bound for all time. To her husband she owes the duty of unqualified obedience. There is no crime which a man can commit which justifies his wife in leaving him or applying for that monstrous thing, divorce. It is her duty to subject herself to him always, and no crime that he can commit can justify her lack of obedience. If he be a bad or wicked man, she may gently remonstrate with him, but refuse him, never. Let divorce be anathema; curse it; curse this accursed thing, divorce; curse it, curse it! Think of the blessedness of having children. I am the father of many and there have been those who have ventured to pity me; “keep your pity for yourself,” I have replied. “They never cost me a single pang.” In this matter let women exercise that endurance and loving submission, which with intricacy of thought are their only characteristics.

Such a sermon as the above preached to women under the full blaze of nineteenth century civilization, needs few comments. In it woman’s inferiority and subordination are as openly asserted as at any time during the dark ages. According to Rev. Knox-Little, woman possesses no responsibility; she is deprived of conscience, intelligent thought, self-respect, and is simply an appendage to man, a thing. As the clergy in the Middle Ages divided rights into those of persons and things, themselves being the persons, the laity things, so the Rev. Knox-Little and his ilk of today, divide the world into persons and things, men being the persons, and woman the things. Rev. Dr. T. De Witt Talmage, of Brooklyn, New York, joins his brethren in preaching of “the first, fair, frail woman; her creation, her fall and her sorrow.” Speaking of the trials of housekeepers, he said:

Again, there is the trial of severe economy. Nine hundred and ninety-nine households out of the thousand are subject to it, some under more, and some under less stress of circumstances. Especially if a man smokes very expensive cigars and takes very costly dinners at the restaurants, he will be severe in demanding domestic economics. This is what kills thousands of women; attempting to make five dollars do the work of seven. How the bills come in. The woman is the banker of the household; she is the president, and cashier, and teller, discount clerk, and there is a panic every four weeks. This thirty years war against high prices; this perpetual study of economics, this lifelong attempt to keep the outgoes less than the income exhausts millions of housekeepers. O, my sister, this is part of divine discipline.

It should require but little thought upon woman’s part to see how closely her disabilities are interwoven with present religious belief and teaching as to her inferiority and pre-ordained subordination. If she needs aid to thought, the Cravens, the Knox-Littles, the Talmages, will help her. The spirit of the priesthood, Protestant equally with Catholic, is that of the early and middle ages. The foundation being the same, the teaching is of similar character. From the sermons referred to, we can justly declare they express the opinions of the priesthood as a body; we meet no protest against them. Not a single church has denied these degrading theories; no clergyman has preached against the doctrines mentioned, blasphemous as they are against the primal rights of the soul. These sermons stand as representatives, not only of high church theology in regard to woman, but as expressing the belief of all churches in her creation and existence as an inferior and appendage to man. All her suffering, material or spiritual, her restrictions, her sorrows, her deprivation of the right of unrestricted conscience are depicted as parts of her divine discipline, which she must accept with endurance and loving submission. Even from the criminal, she is not to free herself, or refuse him obedience. Scarcely a Protestant sect that has not within a few years, in some way, placed itself upon record as sustaining the doctrine of woman’s subordination. The Pan-Presbyterian Council that assembled in Edinburg a few years since refused to admit a woman even as a listener to its proceedings although women constitute at least two-thirds of the membership of that church. A solitary woman who persisted in remaining to listen to the discussions of this body was removed by force; “six stalwart Presbyterians” lending their ungentle aid to her ejection. The same Pan-Presbyterian body in session in Philadelphia, the summer of 1880, laughed to scorn the suggestion of a liberal member that the status to woman in that church should receive some consideration; referring to the work of the Sisters of Charity, in the Catholic church, and that of women among the Quakers. Although this question was twice introduced it was as often “met with derisive laughter,” and no action was taken upon it. But had this liberal member been wise enough to have brought before this body the fact that the Presbyterian church is losing its political influence because of the great preponderance of its women members without the ballot, he would have received more consideration. As all churches seek influence in politics, we may rest assured that when the church as a whole, or any sect thereof, shall be found sustaining the political rights of woman or her religious equality in the church, it will be from the worldly wisdom of a desire to retain fleeting political power. The life or the death of the church largely depends upon its political forethought.