Cross-Hanson -- page 3

However, when asked by an interviewer what part Anthony had played, if any, in the creation of the Woman’s Bible, she responded:

"No, I did not contribute to it, though I knew of its preparation. My own relations to or ideas of the Bible always have been peculiar, owing to my Quaker training. The Friends consider the book as historical, made up of traditions, but not as a plenary inspiration. Of course people say these women are impious and presumptuous for daring to interpret the Scriptures as they understand them, but I think women have just as good a right to interpret and twist the Bible to their own advantage as men have always twisted it and turned it to theirs." 36

Lucretia’s sister, Martha Coffin Wright, was a Hicksite activist in her own right, particularly active in the struggles for women’s rights and for abolition. 37 A visiting student from Auburn Theological Seminary came to Wright’s home to proselytize and hand out tracts and asked her, "Didn’t [she] consider the Bible the only rule of faith and practice?" Her response:

"By no means! I considered the old testament a very unfit book for children to read. He began to speak as if there were to be sure some indelicate passages. I told him I had no reference to that, but that revenge and all the evil passions were encouraged by some parts of that book, that while Christ commanded forgiveness to enemies, David said, ‘I hate thy enemies, O Lord,’ with perfect hatred. ‘O’, said he, ‘he meant that he hated their evil actions.’ ‘Then he should have said so, said I.’" 38

On the infallibility of the Bible, Wright said:

"No living mortal knows any more than you or I know. As to the teachings of the pulpit or the Bible, they come only from fallible mortals like ourselves, & their opinion is worth just as much as yours & mine neither more nor less less if it seems less rational...." 39

In contrast, the Orthodox female Quaker reformers I have studied usually espoused a more traditional theological stance toward the Bible. New England Orthodox abolitionist Lucy Buffum Lovell wrote in her diary describing her own religious teachings to her daughter Caroline:

"She one day said to me, ‘Mother, you said that our Saviour was God, and the Son of God too. But no! That can’t be, it is not so.’ I told her she must not say so, it was a mystery. I could not understand it, and there were a great many things which I could not understand, but we must believe that it was so, because the Bible says so. She said nothing more against it, but seemed to receive it by faith, and implicit confidence in my word." 40

An examination of the addresses of orthodox activists Angelina and Sarah Grimke, shows that the Bible was key to their arguments and that they worked extensively to remain within a Biblical context of argument. Angelina Grimke, in her Appeal to the Christian Women of the South, opened her speech with a quotation from the book of Esther, and discussed the importance of the Bible relative to her own beliefs:

"...it may be said [that]...the Bible sanctions Slavery, and that is the highest authority. Now the Bible is my ultimate appeal in all matters of faith and practice, and it is to this test I am anxious to bring the subject at issue between us. Let us then begin with Adam and examine the charter of privileges which was given to him. ‘Have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air’....In this charter, although the different kinds of irrational beings are so particularly enumerated, and supreme dominion over all of them is granted, yet man is never vested with this dominion over his fellow man; he was never told that any of the human species were put under his feet...." 41

Grimke went to great lengths to describe the status of slaves among the Biblical foreparents of the Old Testament, finally concluding :

"Shall I ask you now my friends, to draw the parallel between Jewish servitude and American slavery? No! For there is no likeness in the two systems; I ask you rather to mark the contrast. The laws of Moses protected servants in their rights as men and women, guarded them from oppression and defended them from wrong. The Code Noir of the South robs the slave of all his rights as a man, reduces him to a chattel personal, and defends the master in the exercise of the most unnatural and unwarantable power over his slave." 42

She translated the Biblical reference to the word "servant", from the original Greek and compared its uses in its various appearances in the Bible. 43

Then, after summarizing her arguments, Biblical and otherwise, Grimke entreated her women listeners to realize that abolition was their task and responsibility, and in the process named a multitude of female activists in the Bible, by name and by Biblical reference.... 44

Similar tactics are employed by Sarah Grimke, in her Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman. She titled her first letter The Original Equality of Woman, and noted:

"in examining this important subject, I shall depend solely on the Bible to designate the sphere of woman, because I believe almost every thing that has been written on this subject, has been the result of a misconception of the simple truths revealed in the Scriptures, in consequence of the false translation of many passages of Holy Writ...." 45

She titled her second letter Woman Subject Only to God, and returned to the stories of Genesis:

"As I am unable to learn from sacred writ when woman was deprived by God of her equality with man, I shall touch upon a few points in the Scriptures, which demonstrate that no supremacy was granted to me. When God had destroyed the world, except Noah and his family, by the deluge, he renewed the grant formerly made to man, and again gave him dominion over every beast of the earth, every fowl of the air....But was woman, bearing the image of her God, placed under the dominion of her fellow man? Never! Jehovah could not surrender his authority to govern his own immortal creatures into the hands of a being, whom he knew, and whom his whole history proved, to be unworthy of a trust so sacred and important....we find the commands of God invariably the same to man and woman; and not the slightest intimation is given in a single passage of the Bible, that God designed to point woman to man as her instructor...."46

Sarah Grimke wrote a letter in response to criticism by the General Association of Congregational Ministers of Massachusetts. Grimke began by quoting the ministers’ letter to her:

" ‘ The appropriate duties and influence of women are clearly stated in the New Testament. Those duties are unobtrusive and private, but the sources of mighty power. When the mild, dependent softening influence of woman upon the sternness of man’s’‘ opinions is fully exercised, society feels the effects of it in a thousand ways.’"

Her response:

"No one can desire more earnestly than I do, that woman may move exactly in the sphere which her Creator has assigned her; and I believe her having been displaced from that sphere has introduced confusion in the world. It is, therefore, of vast importance to herself and to all the rational creation, that she should ascertain what are her duties and her privileges as a responsible and immortal being. The New Testament has been referred to, and I am willing to abide by its decision, but must enter my protest against the false translation of some passages by the MEN who did that work, and against the perverted interpretation by the MEN who understood to write commentaries thereon. I am inclined to think, when we are admitted to the honor of studying Greek and Hebrew, we shall produce some various readings of the Bible a little different from those we now have "

In conclusion, and on a personal and political note:

As a contemporary member of the Methodist clergy struggling with the issue of inclusion of gay members in the Methodist body of Christ, I have found the Hicksite debate over the place of scripture not only a very interesting one historically, but one which may have contemporary implications for other religious bodies and questions as well. As my own denomination argues over the ordination of gay pastors and the marriage of gay church members, I believe that we, too, will need to place the Bible and its clear scriptural prohibitions against homosexuality into "proper perspective".

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