n these religiously conservative times, it is hard to comprehend the strength of the attack on organized Christianity by women’s rights advocates a hundred years ago in this country. “When women refuse to enter churches that do not recognize them as equal candidates for the joys of earth and heaven, equal in the sight of man and God, we shall have a glorious revival of liberty and justice everywhere,” the editors of the History of Woman Suffrage challenged in 1881. (I:342)   

Charles Kingsley echoed the sentiment, writing “…there will never be a good world for women till the last monk, and therewith the last remnant of the monastic idea of, and legislation, for woman, i.e., the canon law, is civilized off the earth.”¹ 

It was a time when Christianity was held accountable for its long history of opposition to liberty of thought and action. Colonel Robert Ingersoll, the best-known but hardly the most radical of agnostics, advised parents to keep their children out of church and Sunday School. “Nothing is more outrageous than to take advantage of the helplessness of children to sow in the brain the seeds of error,” he cautioned.² 

Those “seeds of error,” taking root in adulthood, resulted in a conservative rigidity and intolerance. “The deadliest opponents to the recognition of the equal rights of women have ever been among the orthodox clergy as a class,” stated the History of Woman Suffrage. (I:152)  

One of the most outspoken critics of the church during this period was Parker Pillsbury, Congregational minister who broke from the church over its silent acceptance of slavery. Co-editor with Elizabeth Cady Stanton of the Revolution, a feminist paper published by Susan B. Anthony, he gave the longest service of a career devoted to social change to the cause of justice to women.  

Early on he spoke against the silence required of women in the church. An 1843 decree of a New Hampshire Association of Congregational Divines, his peers, affirmed the right of women to sing during church services, and to take part in Bible class “with perfect freedom of speech, in answering the questions which their pastors, leaders, or catechists put to them,” but then the Divines went on to dictate: 

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 many 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!”³

“Do you ever wonder,” Pillsbury wrote in 1891, “that the ruling element in the Protestant religion is always male? God a Father, Christ a Son, and the Holy Ghost male and even the father of Christ, if we accept the whole record as true! –  visiting the Virgin Mary in person to that very end! Even the heavenly angels from of old appear to have kept bachelor’s hall – not one woman named of them all!”⁵  

He found the sacraments to be barbaric: “Christians have sacrament, or Lord’s supper, on baker’s bread and grocer’s wine, which they call, and which Roman Catholics declare is, when consecrated, the veritable flesh and blood of their Christ! A type of cannibalism, is it not, too terrible to contemplate?!⁶ Even the positive beliefs of Christianity were not practiced, according to Pillsbury. “Christians have cathedrals, churches, chapels, temples, costly as millions of money can rear, magnificent as pride can desire, though their own poor often wander houseless, homeless in the streets; and though their own scriptures, both Old Testament and New, declare ‘The Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands’.” 

Poverty and war were condoned by Christianity but not by Christ, Pillsbury contended: “And then hosts of ministers are needed for chaplains; because, bad as governments become, they never seem to think themselves past praying for, especially when in war. And the army and navy must have chaplains, – every battalion, every war vessel; for how should we dare go to war without a priesthood to pray to God for success in the butchery of each other? No matter though Christ was predicted as ‘Prince of Peace’, and when he came verified the prophecy and declared his kingdom was not of this world, and that his followers could not fight; no matter that he taught ‘Love your enemies’, not butcher them, – the government provides for chaplains, pays them, and ranks them in the army as captains of cavalry; and in every war we have waged, no matter how unjust or disgraceful, there have always been an abundance of chaplains.”⁷  

Religion was a political institution, Pillsbury insisted. “Religion and worship always follow, never lead, in the growth and unfolding of the human race. Men make their gods more than their gods make them, and it is no satire to day, ‘An honest god’s the noblest work of man’.”⁸  

“While as a nation and government we held slaves, even bred them for market like colts and cattle, we made a god like ourselves, and held him, not as accomplice, but as principal in all the guild and shame of slavery, an almighty slave-holder! So, too, as soldiers, we adore a god of battle, butcheries, blood and destruction.” 

“When the church is sovereign, it rules the state… But when the state is uppermost the church is all submission, and solemnly sanctifies whatever slavery, war, or other outrage the government decrees, desires, or tolerates… It has not elevated morality and virtue more than it has enlightened the understanding of mankind. Before the giant evils of slavery, intemperance, war, oppression of labor by capital and by caste, oppression of woman by everybody – that sublimination and ‘high art’ of all slavery; before these and other similar scourges of humanity Christianity has trembled and bowed, has often become chief of sinners, or denied that such were sins at all.”¹⁰  

Pillsbury said in 1891, “…we are not much nearer a government of the whole people than when one-sixth of us were chattel slaves. We have partially, though reluctantly, liberated and enfranchised the black male slave – man we now call him; but what of the black woman? Indeed, what of any woman, white woman or black? Is ours a government of the people, with one half (and morally the better half, as all prison records prove) serfs, slaves, by reason of their sex?”¹¹  

The church, and the state which enforced its double standard, enslaved the body of woman and ensured the despotic control of men, Pillsbury believed. “In some cities there are, or have been, laws licensing and regulating houses of prostitution. Women are often driven to those houses by actual starvation… Under these laws women have to be licensed by authority to enter the terrible calling, but men have to procure no license from lord mayor or governor to visit them… And motherhood outside of marriage is in woman the sin for which society has no forgiveness in this life, nor in any life. Her seducer may afterwards marry into the first families, – become a congressman, as we have seen and may see again… Probably no man in your town would, could, deliberately murder wife or child. And yet there are men everywhere, lawful husbands of lawful wives, who do by forced maternity, only to gratify unhallowed lust, murder often both wife and child, or make the life of wife only lingering death. But marriage rite sanctifies the awful deed; and so laws are silent, courts are silent, society is silent, churches are silent, everybody, everything is silent except the priesthoods, while they at the twofold funeral over the double coffin, or by the side of the double grave, solemnly mumble the monstrous falsehood, ‘It is the Lord, let him do what seemeth him good!’ “tell us, tell us, O ye saints and angels, could fiendish blasphemy farther go than this?”¹² 

Nor were the religious enemies of freedom content with the power they already had. An organization insidiously calling itself “The National Reform Association” was leading a “daring conspiracy” in 1891 to “subvert the Republic to a Theocracy more fearful than the world ever saw.” Their Attempt was to amend the preamble to the constitution to read: “We, the people of the United States, recognizing Almighty God as the source of all power and authority in civil government, our Lord Jesus Christ as the ruler of nations, and the Bible as the standard to decide all moral issues in political life, in order to form a Christian government, and in order to form a more perfect union…”¹³ 

Amazingly, this proposal had not “awakened both alarm and indignation among all intelligent people and lovers of liberty throughout the world,” Pillsbury worried, but rather, “the conspiracy moves on, almost unrebuked, working like gravitation, day and night,” and gathering converts. The Young Men’s and Young Women’s Christian Associations, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union “are already theirs,” along with “six or seven judges of the supreme court of the United States or its branches” as officers of the organization. “Even President Lincoln gave respectful audience to one of its delegations, and… assured the association that he ‘heartily approved of its general object and design!’ ”¹⁴ 

“God is in the constitution, and woman surely is not. God is there to stay, and woman will be kept out as long as possible; for the Bible declares that woman was made subject to man, was cursed in Eden as inferior and subject to man, and in the tenth commandment she is certainly scheduled with man’s house, ox, and ass, as part and parcel of his property. And to this hour most evangelical clergy practically add their amen to the curse!”¹⁵ 

He went on to say, “The evangelical church claims that it is yet to rule in the earth by right divine. That is why, in this country, it is seeking to put its God and Christ, trinitarian God and Christ, into the federal constitution, virtually casting man out, and keeping woman out forever. That is why the Bible, already canonized, must be compelled into the public schools until every teacher would be expelled who could not or would not teach it… That, too, is just what some old Connecticut colonists are said to have contemplated when passing their two memorable resolutions: 1. ‘Resolved that the earth is to be given to the saints,’ and, 2. ‘That we, being saints, do hereby take possession’. Then woe to all Indian or any other aboriginal claim! And we know what bloody work was made for the Indian afterwards, whatever might have been true or not true of the two resolutions.” “We should never forget,” he added, “that Jew and Christian alike hold heathen and all unbelievers as divinely committed to their charge, to be converted to their faith, or conquered or destroyed.”

Unbelievably, Pillsbury reminded his audience, these enemies of justice were exempt from taxation. “We call ourselves a free people, – and religiously, preeminently free. We presume, or we pretend, that the constitution secures to us untrammeled religious liberty, while our Christianity ruthlessly plunders the people of millions on millions of dollars every year for its own exclusive benefit. Nay, rather, we the people plunder ourselves, we voters, we males, dignified by the name of men, not the women. We pick our own pockets of all these millions by consenting to this tremendous felony, and framing law and constitution under which it is perpetrated. We forge the chains by which the churches thus drag us triumphantly at their chariot wheels, while they claim, moreover, that they have commission and authority divine to bind us in chains under darkness forever, if we dare despise their creeds or reject their catechisms.”¹⁶ 

Standing up to the tyranny of organized religion a hundred years ago was not limited to courageous individuals like Parker Pillsbury. Freethought organizations, like the National Liberal League, formed during the Centennial year of 1876, determined to fight the church at every turn in order to create freedom and liberty. Not surprisingly, the church enlisted the support of the state in suppressing the actions of these groups. And also not surprisingly, the battle was partly fought over the control of women’s bodies. At the National Liberal League’s convention in 1878 at Watkins Glen, New York, the following occurred, as written in their minutes:
 
“While the Liberals were courteously extending to Rev. Mr. Abbey [a Presbyterian minister who was attempting to prove the superiority of Christianity] the privilege of engaging the attention of the Liberal audience for the space of an hour, the legal and ecclesiastical dignitaries of Watkins were getting up a vile scheme to throw certain persons attending the Convention into prison. A constable and a police officer appeared upon the grounds and arrested D. M. Bennett, W. S. Bell, and Josephine S. Tilton, and took them before Justice A. C. Kingsbury upon the charge of selling obscene and indecent books, to wit: ‘Cupid’s Yokes’ and other similar works. [birth-control manuals] The movement was said to have been instigated by the ultraorthodox sentiment in the town, and especially in the person of Frederick Davis, Jr., a leading member of the Episcopal church. Persons were employed to buy copies of ‘Cupid’s Yokes’, upon which the complaint was made.”¹⁷  Bennett was eventually found guilty, and spent thirteen months in prison.

The battle was between faith and reason, Pillsbury argued, with “religion and Reason” worshipping “at widely different altars. God, or the bible in some form, is made authority from which there is no appeal. Pope, Prelate, or Presbytery, it is ever the same. Individual reason, conscience, common sense, are all sacrificed to books, or to priesthoods as their infallible interpreters.”

Pillsbury was not convinced that this war against women waged by the church and state could be settled peacefully; the lesson of slavery would suggest it couldn’t. “Were our law-makers, whatever their party name, such vassals to any foreign power as their wives, sister, mothers are to them, they would wage a warfare to be free, though it should deluge both hemispheres in human blood!”

“And human blood may yet be the price of woman’s emancipation,” he warned, “as it was of the slaves; yea, and of course, too, from the dominating despotism of a merciless church, and a ruthless, remorseless priesthood. And blood will continue to be lawful tender for liberty till tyrants temporal and despots spiritual shall learn and know that God made the human soul volcanic, and woe ever to him or them who dare uncap her fires!”¹⁸ 

Reading these warnings about Christianity from a century ago, one cannot help but think of how they apply today. Where would the rights of gay and lesbian people be without the constant pressure backwards of the religious Right? Would abortion even be an issue if it was not for Christianity? Among non-Christian “pagans,” indigenous people, women control(led) all aspects of reproduction, limiting it when and how they chose, without any interference from men. Birth control, abortion – these were (and are) the sphere of women and practiced without question. Among many native people, cross-gender and same-sex loving people were (still are) considered sacred.

Who leads, and funds, the attack on woman’s right to make her own choices about her body today? The still-untaxed churches, thumping the bibles they’ve been whacking for two thousand years to keep women in their inferior, church-ordained place. If Parker Pillsbury were alive today, one can only assume he would be in the forefront leading the attack on this new attempt by the orthodox church to merge church and state. For outlawing abortion, Pillsbury would surely argue, would make their particularly repressive brand of morality (not even a belief in keeping with mainstream Christianity) the law of the land, and further erode religious freedom.

Perhaps Pillsbury would further suggest that, with all this accumulated evidence, we should package bibles today with a warning label:

Note: The contents of this document have been demonstrated to be dangerous to human freedom.

Footnotes:

¹ Quoted in ECS to Robert G. Ingersoll, 10 February 1880, pp. 165-167, Edited Letters.  

² National Secular Society Leaflet #8.    London: n.d.  

³ Parker Pillsbury, The Church As It Is: Or the Forlorn Hope of Slavery, Concord, N.H. Republican Press Association, 1885, pp. 90-91.  

⁴ Parker Pillsbury, ibid.  

⁵ Parker Pillsbury, The Popular Religions, and What Shall Be Instead. Concord, N.H., Republican Press Association, 1891, p. 6.  

⁶ Ibid., p. 8.  

⁷ Ibid., pp. 9-10.  

⁸ Parker Pillsbury, Ecclesiastical vs. Civil Authority. God in the Federal Constitution: Man and Woman Out. Concord, N.H., Republican Press Association, 1894, p. 6.  

⁹ Ecclesiastical, p. 20.  

¹⁰ Ecclesiastical 6-7; Popular, p. 11.  

¹¹ Ecclesiastical, pp. 9-10.   

¹² Ecclesiastical, pp. 11-12; Popular, p. 20.  

¹³ Ecclesiastical, Introduction and p. 14.  

¹⁴ Ecclesiastical, p. 14.  

¹⁵ Pillsbury, Ecclesiastical, pp. 17-18.  

¹⁶ Ecclesiastical, pp. 19-29.  

¹⁷ The Watkins Convention, pp. 14-15. NYPL:ZEYA.  

¹⁸ Ecclesiastical, pp. 24-25.  

 
A feminist pioneer, Dr. Wagner has received national recognition for her work in women’s studies. She was a founder of one of the first college women’s studies programs. In addition to her research work, she tours the country as a lecturer and historical performer, giving dramatic recreations of the Matilda Joslyn Gage and Elizabeth Cady Stanton personas. A contributor to many newspapers and scholarly journals, she also has published books such as Daughters of Dakota: A Time of Protest: Suffragists Challenge the Republic (1992); Handbook of American Women’s History (1990); New York and the Union (19990); and the biographical introduction to Matilda Joslyn Gage’s Women, Church and State (1980 reprint). An earlier form of this article was published in Changing Men #23 (Fall/Winter 1991).