Extremely rare anti-Suffrage Broadside published for distribution in Tennessee and North Carolina opposing Ratification of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote.
Editor Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Carrie Chapman Catt, President of the National Suffrage Association, one of the Revising Committee.
In the early nineties a group of leading Suffragists decided that the "Christian Bible, the Christian religion and the Christian ministry were the greatest obstacles to the spread of woman suffrage."
They concluded that the Bible should be rewritten from the woman's standpoint, but they could not persuade any scholars to make the desired changes in the translation, and so they were compelled to take the English version as it stood, and say how it should have been written. (See preface to Woman's Bible.)
A Committee of "women of liberal ideas" was selected, and a portion of the Bible assigned to each one for revision. Mrs. C. C. Catt, the president of the National Suffrage Association ; Miss Alice Blackwell, now editor of the leading suf-frage magazine; Mrs. Robert Ingersoll, and other well known suffragists, were on this Committee. Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton acted as editor and the book was copyrighted in her name. (See title page.)
The first volume was issued in 1896, the second in 1898, and two more editions have been printed. This Woman's Bible was distributed as a suffrage tract.
In their comments the Committee claim that the Bible is not Inspired, that Christ is not divine, that the keeping of Sunday has done harm, and that the Christian Church and the Christian ministry have been agents of evil.
The Woman Suffrage Association is the only political body to hold its convention meetings on Sunday. At the conven-tion in Chicago in February, 1920, the social reception to the delegates was held on Sunday evening. In May, 1920, the women who invaded Connecticut to try to force Governor IIolcomb to call a special session, met in New York on Sun-day and had a big political dinner on that day. Thus the party today lives up to the theory "that much injury has been done to the world" by the keeping holy the seventh day. (Page 68.)
The following quotations will be enough to show why the book was written and what it teaches. "That even the most enlightened nations are not yet out of barbarisin is due to the teachings of the Bible." (Page 209.)
"The truth of the matter is that whatever progress woman has made in any department of effort, she has accomplished in opposition to the so-called inspired 'Word of God'; and this Book has been of more injury to woman than any other Look which has ever been written." (Page 203.)
"It does not need a knowledge of Greek or Hebrew to show that the Bible degrades women. We have made a fetich of the Bible long enough. The Bible has been the great block in the way of civilization." (Preface Volume 2.)
"The Bible has been and will continue to be a stumbling block in the way of the truest civilization." (Page 187.)
"The Bible always has been, and is at present, one of the greatest obstacles in the way of the emancipation and advancement of the sex." (Page 201.)
"Women especially need enlightenment as to the true nature of the Bible. Their religious nature is warped and twisted, which fact is the greatest stumbling block in the path of equal suffrage today." (Page 143.)
"Priestly power has done more to block woman's way to freedom than all other earthly influences combined." (Page 11.)
The attacks on ministers are too numerous and long to quote, but again and again women are urged to throw off these old: superstitions, to free themselves from• the authority of the churches, "to leave the priestly mendicants who demand their' devotion and their dollars" and to stop giving their time' and money to support that man-made religion, Christiamity. The Divinity of Christ is denied and the statement made: That thousands of people have lived since the time of Jesus; as good, as tender, as loving, as true, as faithful as He. (Page 115)
They say that "The widow should have been blamed and not commended for casting in her mite, for 'self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice should be woman's motto.' " (Volume 2, Page 131.)
"No institution in modern civilization is so tyrannical and so unjust to woman as is the Christian Church." (Page 205.)
"Christianity feeds and fattens on the sentiment and credulity of women." (Page 207.)
"Why should women obey a man's religion?" "Our religion is the real source of women's disabilities." (Page 79.)
"The Episcopal Church is most demoralizing. Whole congregations of educated men and women, day after day, confessing themselves miserable sinners." (Page 99.)
"The struggle of today among the advanced of our sex is to regain what has been lost since the establishment of Christianity." (Volume 2, Page 22.)
"The civilization of Moslem Spain far surpassed that of Christian Europe." (Page 206.)
Saint Paul is spoken of as the most stultifying influence in the history of civilization, and the following couplet is often quoted: "This doctrine of Jesus as set forth by Paul, If believed in its fullness would ruin us all." The future woman suffragists are thus described : "A countless host of women will move in majesty down the centuries. These are the mothers of the coming race who have locked the door of the Temple of Faith and thrown the key away." (Page 198.)
This is the teaching of National Suffrage Leaders. Are you willing for women who hold these views to become political powers in our country ?