Elizabeth Cady Stanton 
Speeches & Writings File  
Article: "An Honored Place for the Bible in English Literature" New York
America and Journal Oct. 5, 1902

NEW YORK AMERICAN AND
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1902
An Honored Place for the Bible in English Literature
BY ELIZABETH CADY STANTON
Recent writers in our metropolitan
press 
have asked some
questions in regard
to the Christian religion
and the Bible
which are worthy of
the serious consideration 
of all thinking 
people.  One
writer laments the
fact that the Bible
no longer holds the
honored place in
English literature it
once did, and asks
what can be done for it restoration.
I would suggest that we place all its
grand declarations, moral lessons, poetry,
science and philosophy in one volume.  In
another put all its mythologies, contradictions, 
wars, absurdities and abominations,
all that degrades the mothers of the race
and makes the Creator of the Universe responsible 
for the wanderings and brutalities 
of the children of Israel.
Thus, the first volume we might safely
place in the schools and in the hands of 
our children, and the second volume might 
be preserved for those who would value it
as a specimen of ancient literature.
The great block to-day in the way of
women's complete emancipation is the 
canon law, church discipline and so-called
"sacred literature."  The time has come
for her to demand the same equality in the
church as she has achieved in the State 
during the last half century.
Women may consider their battle for
political equality now fairly fought; with
full suffrage in four Western States (Utah,
Idaho, Colorado and Wyoming) municipal
suffrage in Kansas, school suffrage in 
twenty-five States, full suffrage in Australia, 
New Zealand and the Isle of Man,
and municipal suffrage in England and all
her colonies, they must now begin the
same battle with the church and demand
the same changes in the canon laws as
they have obtained in the civil laws.
     It is often said that woman is indebted
to Christianity for the freedom she now 
enjoys, but this is a grave mistake, as the 
facts of history and the assertions of
many distinguished men fully prove.
     The "Grand Old Man" of England said
not many years ago in addressing a class
of young lady graduates:
     "Enormous changes have taken place in 
your positions as members of society.  It
is almost terrible (I should call it wholly
terrible) to look back upon the state of
women sixty years ago, upon the manner 
in which they were viewed by the law,




the scanty provision made for their welfare
and the gross injustice, the flagrant injustice, 
to which they were subjected."
     This from Gladstone, a devout Christian,
the teachings of which doctrine placed women 
in a position he deplored.  And yet,
we are taught the paradox that Christianity
 elevates woman.
     Sir Charles Kingsley, a canon of the English 
Church, declared that "from the 
third to the fifteenth century Christianity
had been swamped by hysteria in the practice 
of all those nameless orgies which
made a byword of Corinth during the first
century, and every evil was traced to 
woman."
     This distinguished canon also says:  "This 
will never be a good world for woman until
the last remnant of the Canon law is civilized
from the face of the earth."
     Lord Brougham, equally distinguished in
the State, said long ago:  "Our civil laws
for women are a disgrace to the Christianity 
and civilization of the nineteenth 
century."
     John Stewart Mill, a member of Parliament
at the time England emancipated her
slaves in the island of Jamaica, said:
"Marriage for woman is now the only form
of slavery sanctioned by law."
     Bebel says:  "Woman is held in greater
contempt by church law and dogma than in 
any of the older systems." 
     As many distinguished liberal men and 
women will come from the Old World to 
attend the St. Louis Exposition, It would
be a good time to hold a grand convocation
to get out an expurgated edition of 
Bible.
     It is one of the mysteries that woman,
who has suffered so intensely from the rule
of the church, still worships her destroyer
and "licks the hand that's raised to shed
her blood."

Transcribed and reviewed by volunteers participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.