Injustice to Women.
I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide because it has degraded woman.
The holy offices of wife and mother it covers with reproach. Its teachings carried out, as they were during the centuries of Christian rule, leave woman but two paths in which to tread—the one leading into slavery, the other into exile. Servitude in the house of a husband, or self-banishment into a convent—these are the sad alternatives presented for her choice.
“Thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee” (Gen. iii, 16).
“Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands” (Col. iii, 18).
“As the church is subject unto Christ so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything” (Eph. v, 24).
“Let your women keep silence in the churches, for it is not permitted unto them to speak, but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home; for it is a shame for a woman to speak in the church” (1 Cor. xiv, 34, 35).
“Ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands.... For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection to their own husbands; even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord” (1 Peter iii, 1–6).
“Let woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression” (1 Tim. ii, 11–14).
Oh! the unspeakable outrage that woman has suffered because of that old Jewish fable!
The teachings of the Bible respecting marriage are an insult to every married woman. Christ discouraged marriage (Matt. xix, 10–12), while a more despicable dissertation on marriage than Paul gives in the seventh chapter of 1 Corinthians was never penned.
In contracting matrimonial alliances, woman’s rights and choice are not consulted. The father does his daughter’s courting, and sells or gives her to whom he pleases. A father is even allowed to sell his daughter for a slave (Ex. xxi, 7). In the Decalogue the wife is classed with slaves and cattle as a mere chattel.
Kidnapping is commanded for the purpose of obtaining wives.
“Therefore they [God’s priests] commanded the children of Benjamin, saying, Go and lie in wait in the vineyards; and see, and, behold, if the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in dances, then come ye out of the vineyards, and catch you every man his wife of the daughters of Shiloh, and go to the land of Benjamin.... And the children of Benjamin did so, and took them wives according to their number of them that danced whom they caught” (Jud. xxi, 20–23).
The Levitical law makes motherhood a sin that can be expiated only by offering a sin offering at the birth of every child. The degree of sinfulness depends upon the sex of the child; giving birth to a daughter being esteemed a greater sin than giving birth to a son (Lev. xii).
The laws of the Bible in regard to divorce are most unjust. A husband is permitted to divorce his wife if she displease him, while a wife is not allowed to obtain a divorce for any cause whatever.
“When a man hath taken a wife, and marries her, and it come to pass that she find no favor in his eyes, ... then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house” (Deut. xxiv, 1).
“When thou goest forth to war against thine enemies, and the Lord thy God hath delivered them into thine hands, and thou hast taken them captive, and seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire unto her, that thou wouldst have her to thy wife; then thou shalt bring her home to thine house.... And it shall be, if thou have no delight in her, then thou shalt let her go whither she will” (Deut. xxi, 10–14).
Wives were compelled to suffer outrage for the sins of their husbands.
“Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house, and I will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give them unto thy neighbor, and he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this sun” (2 Sam. xii, 11).
“Their houses shall be spoiled and their wives ravished” (Is. xiii, 16).
“I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished” (Zech. xiv, 2).
“Let their wives be bereaved of their children and be widows” (Jer. xviii, 21).
The teachings of the Bible have been used by the church to keep woman in a subordinate position.
“There is not a more cruel chapter in history,” says Dr. Moncure D. Conway, “than that which records the arrest by Christianity of the natural growth of European civilization regarding woman. In Germany it found woman participating in the legislative assembly, and sharing the interests and counsels of man, and drove her out and away.... Even more fatal was the overthrow of woman’s position in Rome. Read the terrible facts as stated by Gibbon, by Milman, and Sir Henry Maine; read and ponder them, and you will see the tremendous wrong that Christianity did to woman.”
Even the priceless virtue of chastity, in the name of law and in the name of the Bible, was trampled under foot. Mrs. Gage, in “Woman, Church, and State,” says:
“Women were taught by the church and state alike that the feudal lord, or seigneur, had a right to them, not only against themselves, but as against any claim of husband or father. The law known as Marchetta, or Marquette, compelled newly-married women to a most dishonorable servitude. They were regarded as the rightful prey of the feudal lord from one to three days after their marriage.... France, Germany, Prussia, England, Scotland, and all Christian countries where feudalism existed, held to the enforcement of Marquette.”
Respecting this law, Michelet writes: “The lords spiritual had this right no less than the lords temporal. The parson, being a lord, expressly claimed the first fruits of the bride” (La Sorcerie, page 62).
In this country, while the most illiterate and depraved man is clothed with the rights of a sovereign, the noblest woman is held in a subordinate position; and from the Bible, priests and politicians have procured the chains that hold her in subjection.
Referring to the Bible, America’s greatest woman, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, says: “I know of no other books that so fully teach the subjection and degradation of woman” (Eighty Years and More).
Brave Helen Gardener says: “Every injustice that has ever been fastened upon women in a Christian country has been ‘authorized by the Bible’ and riveted and perpetuated by the pulpit” (Men, Women, and Gods, page 14).
“Women are indebted to-day for their emancipation from a position of hopeless degradation, not to their religion nor to Jehovah, but to the justice and honor of the men who have defied his commandments. That she does not crouch to-day where St. Paul tried to bind her, she owes to the men who are grand and brave enough to ignore St. Paul, and rise superior to his God” (Ibid, page 30).
George W. Foote of England says it will yet be the proud boast of woman that she never contributed a line to the Bible.