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': Woman's Rights and the Politics of Church and State in Antebellum America

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': Woman's Rights and the Politics of Church and State in Antebellum America "Pillars in the Same Temple and Priests of the Same Worship"': Woman's Rights and the Politics of Church and State in Antebellum America Nancy Isenberg In 1853 the editor oS. Harper's Magazine condemned "Woman's Rights—or the movement that goes by that name." No other movement was "so deddedly infidel," he daimed, opposed as it was to divine revelation, time-honored propdeties, and biblical authority. At stake was a fragile but socially vital alliance between church and state, becatise, the editor contended, the "Chdsdan ecdesia" bound dvil society together by preserving sexual differences. Three well-known biblical verses supplied the basis for the editor's scathing aitique of woman's rights. The Pauline injuncdon "I suffer a woman not to teach" reinforced the prohibidon against women speaking, preaching, or engaging in "the life of the forum." The bridal relation between the "Church and her Spiritual Lord and Head" signified male governance through a masculine godhead. Lasdy, the editor quoted the most significant verse: "Let Them leam in Silence; Adam was first formed, then Eve." This verse, which cast man closer to the divine and woman as man's etemal pupil, reflected the principle that hus- band and minister were joint guardians of the church and family, both vested with earthly and sacred authodty over women.' The editor's charges did not go tmanswered. In three sequendal ardcles— "Harper's Editor and the Women"—published in theZi/y, the fim significant peri- odical to herald the woman's movement, the New "Vferk lawyer and woman's rights supporter Anson Bingham challenged what he claimed was an absurd view of the Chxisdan ecclesia. The term itself, like the dispute in which it figured, litiked the political and religious realms. Originally, the Greek word ekklesia referred to an assembly of free citizens ofa town. The early Chrisdans borrowed it to name their religious assemblies, suggesdng that the church consdtuted a social order. By the Nancy Isenberg is associate professor rf histoty at the University rf Northem Iowa. I would like to thank Andrew Bucstein and Earl Muldednk for their suggesdons in preparing this ardcle, and David Thelen, Susan Armeny, and the outside readers for their helpful editorial advice. ' "Editor's Table," Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 7 (Nov. 1853), 838-41; 1 Cor. 14:34, 35 King James; ibid., 11:3; 1 Tim. 2^1-13. Woman's Rights and the Polidcs of Church and State 99 nineteenth century, Protestants had grown comfortable with the idea that the church and state had similar ways to legitimate masculine authodty in public fomms. Bingham thus rejected the contendon that by "divine appointment" man acquired "dominadon" as his "prerogadve," while woman acquired a piace of "sub- ordinadon." If marded couples commingled in the temple ofthe home, then man and woman likewise could establish a "co-equality in all that concems their com- mon interests" in the res foras or the life of the forum. The additional argument that "ecdesia" vested "pantalootis" with "divine authority," combined with expres- sions of fear that woman might "appropriate to herself man's peculiar garment," suggested a man-made scale of religious justice that led opponents of woman's rights to worry lest "leveling up woman, levels down man." Bingham argued that the appeal to "apostolic" succession implied an itiheritance of vested power that upheld the despodc "mle ofthe few over the many." By appropriating all the preach- ing and episcopal offices, men used the "Chrisdan ecdesia" to elevate their earthly status, rather than to glorify God. Classes and castes, he assened, had justified their divine privileges through the ages with the authority derived from "sacerdotal sanc- tion" and "blind and thoughtless submission to pdests and aeeds."* A similar debate had occtirred in 1848, in a public exchange of letters, published in newspapers in Seneca Rlls and Rochester, New \brk, between a clergyman and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Elizabeth McClintock. The dispute had been sparked by the first woman's dghts convention, held in July, in Seneca Falls, in which Stanton and McClintock had assumed prominent public roles. In the afrennath of the Seneca Falls convention and during a meedng in Rochester the following month, Stanton and McClintock felt obliged to defend their gatherings against the combined charges of religious and polidcal infidelity made by religious opponents—pardcularly Protestant ministers. They responded to a vociferous at- tack from a Seneca Falls minister who asserted that the existing govemment was "established by God" and that woman's rights mocked both Christianity and democracy. McClintock and Stanton claimed that woman's Hghts were founded on a religious liberty that rejeaed "fetters that bind the spidt of woman." They also called for ministers to engage in open and public debate on woman's rights.' At 2 Senex [Anson Bingham], "Harper's Editor and the Women, No. IV," Lily, June 1. 1854, p. 75; Senex [Anson Bingham], "Harper's Editor and the W>men, No. V," ibid., July 15, 1854, p. 102; Senex [Anson Bingham], "Harper's Editor and the Wjmen, No. VII," ihid., Dec. 1, 1854, pp. 171-72. Anson Bingham wrote numerous legal pieces fot the LMy. He pracdced law in Nassau and in 1856 moved to Albany, wbere he worked for the firm of Hugh W. McClennan and Hon. Andrew J. Colvin. As a member rf the New York Assembly in 1859 and I860, he was prominent on the Judiciary Comminee. Fat the identificadon of Bingham as "Senex," see Hliabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, eds.. History of Woman Suffrage (1881; 6 vols., Salem, N.H., 1986), I, 688. On Bingham, see Tbeodore A. Bingham, The Bingham Family in the United States: Especially the State of Connecticut (2 vols., Easton, Pa., 1930), II, 88. 312; and William D. Murphy, Biographical Sketches of the State Officers and Members ofthe Legislature ofthe State of New York in 1861 (New York, 1861), 158-60. On the connecdon between Bingham and the woman's dghts movement, see Ann D. Gordon, ed.. The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, vol. I: In the School of Anti-Slavery, 1840 to 1866 (New Brunswick, 1997), 304. I would like to thank Ano D. Gordon, editor, and lamara Miller, assistant editor, at the Stanton and Anthony Papers for providing me with this informadon. » See Elizabeth Wilson McClintock and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, "Woman's Rights," Rochester National Reformer, Sept 21, 1848; and Elijabedi Cady Stanton and Elizabeth W. McQintock, "To the Editots," Seneca County Courier, n.d., Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers (Manuscdpt Division, library rf Congres, Washington, 100 The Joumal of American History June 1998 the Rochester convendon Stanton asked any unsympathedc dergy who might be present to speak out at that moment, rather than "as at Seneca Falls, [to] keep silent through all our deliberadons, and afrerwards, on the Sabbath day, use the ptilpit throughout the town to denounce [woman's rights acdvists], where they could not, of course, be allowed to reply."* In this ardde, I argue that the church must be viewed as a polidcal insdtudon and that when scholarship treats religion as purely a moral acdvity, it obscures key historical developments. Religion involves not otily moral values but also theories about caste hierarchy, ecdesiasdcal power, and disciplinary pracdces that define be- havior and reinforce polidcal ideologies. The debates between the Harper's editor and Bingham and between Stanton and McClintock and the local minister demon- strated that the church couid not be reduced to a moral terrain separate and distinct from the res foras or the polidcal sphere; on the contrary, the model of the church, or ecclesia, provided guidelines for gender reladons appropriated by the state. An alliance between church and state, then, contdbuted significandy to culmral and legal percepdons of women's civil sutus. Throughout the nineteenth century in the United States, as Carol Weisbrod has argued, "a special role for Christianity was at dmes conceded by the state," and the "systems of authodty [of church and state] were sometimes cooperadve, and even overlapping."' For this reason, early woman's rights acdvists recognized the connecdon between the "life of the fomm" in the church and the state; they recognized, that is, how politicians, lawyers, min- isters, and newspaper editors routinely used religious analogies to descdbe the legal standing and rights of women as dtizens. Because nineteenth-century woman's rights advocates and their opponents used a polidcal and legal vocabtilary infused with religious meaning, modem distincdons between religious and private moral- ity, on the one hand, and polidcal and public representation, on the other, distort our understanding of how religion shaped gendered nodons of constitudonal and polidcal dghts. Antebellum Amedcans employed concepts of representadon and public opin- ion that bonowed heavily from both polidcai and religiotis understandings of the public forum. Nineteenth-century jurists and consdtudonal theorists derived the prindples of polidcal and cledcal representadon from the covenant framework. In Scdpture covenant designated the formal agreement between Gtxi and the people of Israel, the aa of incorporating the nadon as a "kingdom of priests," and the ree- ognidon of a reciprocal pledge between the pardes to form an organic, even D.C). Both letten are available on microfilm. See Patdcia G. Holland and Ann D. Gordon, eds.. The Papers of Elizabeth Cady Startton and Susan B. Anthony (microfilm, 45 reels. Scholarly Resources, 1991), reel 6, games 773, 779-81.1 would like to thank Ann D. Gordon and Patricia G. Holland for allowing me to use the Stanton and Anthony P^ien when the editing project was located at the University rf Massachusetts. * Proceedings ofthe Woman's Rights Convention, held at the Unitarian Church, Rochester, NY, August 2, 1848, Tb Consider the Rights of Wbman, Politically, Religiously, and Industrially (1870), in Woman's Rights Con- ventions, Seneca Bills & Rochester, 1848 (New Yock, 1969), 4-5.
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