Soc (2012) 49:313–316 DOI 10.1007/s12115-012-9551-y

SPECIAL FEATURE

Further Thoughts on Religion and Modernity

Peter L. Berger

Published online: 23 May 2012 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

In recent decades there has developed a veritable cottage place of religion in Europe. The counterculture on both sides industry of commentary, criticism and reiteration of so-called of the Atlantic, with its distinctively spiritual flavor. By the secularization theory. I will not delve here into the details of late 1980s I felt reasonably sure that the empirical evidence what has been a storm in the teapot of the sociology of religion. about religion in the contemporary world did not support Let me just restate what, when all is said and done, is the basic secularization theory. I most noisily ratified this opinion in proposition of the theory—namely, that modernity necessarily the introduction of a book I edited, The Desecularization of brings about a decline of religion. I think that this proposition the World (1999). I was not alone in this. By then most has been empirically falsified. It may be useful to summarize scholars in the field had reached the same conclusion. It had the steps which led me to this conclusion—not because my become clear that most of the world was intensely religious. trajectory is unusual, but precisely because it is not unusual at There were two exceptions to this generalization—one geo- all: Most observers have come to the same conclusion. graphical, western and central Europe—the other sociological, In my early years of my career I took the secularization an international secular intelligentsia. These exceptions had to proposition to be evidently correct, because just about ev- be explained, but that is not my topic here. eryone else in the field did so and because it seemed a How was secularization theory wrong? Basically, it was a coherent explanation of the religious scene. I resorted to very Eurocentric enterprise, an extrapolation from the Euro- this view in my early publications, including the one that pean situation. Theories are the products of intellectuals, for made me known as a sociologist of religion, The Sacred historical reasons a very secularized class: Members of any Canopy (1967). My subsequent change of mind in this class typically only talk to each other and thus reinforce matter occurred gradually, and it had nothing to do with their beliefs. Intellectuals think of themselves as children of any theological reconsiderations of my own (my own reli- the Enlightenment: For many of them, I suppose, seculari- gious position, that of a theologically liberal Lutheranism, zation theory was wishful thinking. But for others (including has not changed since my youth). The change was caused by myself—and, ironically, quite a few theologians) it was a a number of experiences and reflections about these, hap- matter of bravely facing up to what seemed to be facts. In pening sometime during the 1970s: Intensifying contacts retrospect, I think that we made a category mistake: We with what was then called the Third World, first in Latin confused secularization with pluralization, secularity with America, then in Africa and Asia—regions steeped in per- plurality. It turns out that modernity does not necessarily vasive religiosity. First encounters with Evangelical Protes- produce a decline of religion; it does necessarily produce a tantism in the United States and its role in the unfolding deepening process of pluralization—a historically unprece- culture wars, which sharply showed up the difference with the dented situation in which more and more people live amid competing beliefs, values and lifestyles. This situation has profound effects on religion, to which I will shortly return, P. L. Berger (*) but these are different from the effects of secularization. CURA, Thomas Kuhn, in his The Structure of Scientific Revolu- 10 Lenox Street, Brookline, MA 02246, USA tions (1978), has given us a blow by blow account of what e-mail: [email protected] happens to scientific paradigms when they are challenged 314 Soc (2012) 49:313–316 by empirical data. They are not given up right away, by while the preacher operates with very secular rationality in those who have worked with them for years and are natu- his dealings with the Scandinavian welfare state. rally attached to them. There are various attempts to modify Let me formulate a basic proposition: There is indeed a them, here and there. When all these attempts fail to account secular discourse resulting from modernity, but it can coex- for the data, paradigms will finally collapse. Only then does ist with religious discourses that are not secular at all. What a new paradigm come about, new questions have to be is more, this secular discourse has its roots in the science asked and new avenues of research open up. Secularization and technology which are the driving engine of modernity. theory is such a paradigm. I think an opening shot at the Most people are neither scientists nor engineers, but the paradigm was fired by David Martin, in the revisions of his immense success of the discourse of science and technology A General Theory of Secularization (1978), as he showed in transforming the circumstances of human life, as well as that there were significant differences even between Euro- the propagation of the same discourse through education, pean countries due to different historical developments. the media and the law, have given this secular discourse a There have been a number of modifications devised to save taken-for-granted status. But this fact has not driven out the paradigm. One was based on the commonsense notion religion, or even diminished its plausibility among very that the exception proves the rule: America may be an large numbers of people in most of the world. exception to secularization, but the general rule that moder- I have arrived at the above proposition through reflection nity equals secularity still holds. That defensive maneuver about some recent experiences, some of them due to projects was decisively shot out of the water by Grace Davie, who at the Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs showed that Europe, not America, was the important excep- (CURA) at Boston University, a research center which I tion (Europe: The Exceptional Case, 2002). Another mod- founded and with which I am still associated. For many ification was what I would call the “last gasp” theory of years CURA has been engaged in research on global Pen- religion: Secularization is the inexorable wave of the future, tecostalism, much of it in collaboration with David Martin, but there are some residual resistances, which will eventu- as a result of which I have become persuaded that Pente- ally crumble. To deal with that one, let me suggest that one costalism (along with the larger Evangelical community of look at just the two most explosive religious movements in which it is the most dynamic part) is a modernizing force— the contemporary world—the passionate resurgence of Is- contrary to the widespread view that it is a reactionary lam, which encompasses the entire Muslim world from counter-modern movement. CURA has now been preparing North Africa to Indonesia, as well as the Muslim diaspora two additional projects on the Evangelical community of in the west—and the huge expansion of Pentecostal or theologically conservative Protestantism: One on a fascinat- charismatic Christianity, according to survey data now num- ing American development—the emergence of a growing bering around 600 million adherents. Some last gasps! group of sophisticated, self-confident Evangelical intellec- But it is time now to discuss my further and very recent tuals—now moving into elite academia in a way curiously thoughts on religion in the modern world. These do not similar to what Jews did a few decades ago. There is even an constitute a retraction of my view that secularization theory increasingly vocal group of Pentecostal intellectuals, with is empirically untenable (as has been amiably suggested by their own association and journal. Let me just refer to an Steve Bruce, a very able defender of the theory). But they do intriguing recent work by James Smith, Thinking in amount to a new perspective on where the theory had it right Tongues: Pentecostal Contributions to Christian Philosophy after all. As often happens when one gets a new idea, it (2010). The other project is to deal with the robust super- seems obvious and one is surprised that one had not thought naturalism of Christianity in the Global South, which has of it before. I think that I held the misleading notion of some been mapped in ongoing publications by Philip Jenkins. But sort of unified consciousness, religious or secular. I had this is no longer an exotic phenomenon in backward overlooked the (in retrospect obvious) possibility that an regions: The demographic center of Christianity has shifted individual may be both religious and secular, in discrete from Europe and North America to the Global South, and compartments (what Alfred Schutz called “relevance struc- this new Christendom is strongly supernaturalist (and not tures”) of the mind. Let me evoke two stereotypes: There is only among Pentecostals). It is now spilling over into the a Swedish professor of sociology, who is calmly convinced more sedate churches of the Global North, partly through that all religion is an illusion, to the point where he can immigrants, also through missionaries seeking to evangelize afford to be patronizingly tolerant of the few religious the North. Thus not only do more people in Nigeria than in people who may cross his path. A few streets away from England attend Anglican services every week, but some of the professor’s office there is a Pentecostal congregation of the most dynamic Anglican churches in England have African asylum seekers, whose preacher performs miracles Nigerian clergy (not to mention the fact that the Archbishop of healing every week. On closer investigation we may find of York, the second highest individual in the hierarchy of the that the professor regularly practices Tantric meditation, Church of England is an African). Soc (2012) 49:313–316 315

On a more experiential level, for the last three years I have religious and other institutions, the decline of religious belief been periodically teaching at Baylor University in Texas, a and practice, and the privatization of religion. It is only recently sort of Baptist Harvard in the midst of the Bible Belt. I have that I was struck by something which, as an accredited propa- been impressed by its intellectual qualities, but also I have gator of the sociology of knowledge, I should have remem- developed an ear for Evangelical discourse. Some of its bered much earlier in connection with Casanova’s concept of phrases are instructive. There is a readiness to look for signals differentiation: All institutions have correlates in conscious- from God in occurrences that non-Evangelicals may take as ness. As religious institutions are differentiated from secular coincidences. The phrase is “I think we are being told some- ones (as, for example, church from state, theology from sci- thing here”—say, in a meeting where two seemingly unrelated ence, and so on), the same differentiations must necessarily statements by participants are taken as pointing to a specific occur in consciousness. Consequently, a space opens up for course of action. Another phrase is “to pray over”, as when secular discourse in the mind as well as in society. This process people are uncertain which way they should go. Recently I was took many centuries, particularly in Judaeo-Christian civiliza- in conversation with an academic who moved from a presti- tion, before it emerged as modern secularity—Eric Voegelin, in gious secular university to a less prestigious Christian institu- his magisterial series of works titled Order and History,de- tion. When I asked him why he did this, he said that he was at scribed the process as a movement from the “compactness” of first reluctant, but that he then “prayed over” the matter and the archaic cosmos to, precisely, the highly differentiated world became convinced that God wanted him to make the move. It of modernity. In this process “supernatural” reality is separated is important to point out that many people who operate within from the “natural”, until a separate secular order becomes this discourse are among the most economically successful in possible both in society and in consciousness. More recently, America, technologically up to date both in their personal lives Charles Taylor has traced the same process in his bulky A and in their churches, and in some ways more rational (for Secular Age (2007); he calls the secular discourse “an imma- example, in pursuing their political interests) than many secu- nent frame”. lar academics. In other words, they successfully alternate be- However one describes the history leading to this, there tween secular and religious definitions of reality. now exists a powerful discourse which operates without In this connection let me refer to a very recent book by recourse to religious definitions of reality. It relates to the Tanya Luhrmann—When God Talks Back: Understanding the latter differently in different parts of the world, but it is American Evangelical Experience with God (2012). Luhr- everywhere driven by modernization. I am not sure if this mann is an anthropologist at Stanford University. She pro- is the most felicitous phrase, but I would call it the default vides an excellent “thick description” of the world of members discourse: It is, as it were, the first call, made “naturally” of the Vineyard Christian Fellowship, a charismatic move- even by religious individuals before they deliberately switch ment with roots in the Californian counterculture of the 1960s. to their particular “supernatural” discourse. For example, if This side of Unitarianism (once described as a gathering of one of Luhrmann’s charismatic Christians falls ill, he will atheists who don’t play golf and therefore are at a loss on spontaneously call a doctor; later on, or even at the same Sunday morning), all Christians pray, in the belief that God time, he may also ask a prayer group in his church to hears them; many Evangelicals believe that, through inner arrange a service of spiritual healing on his behalf. This voices and sometimes outward signs, God talks back.Luhr- plurality of what Alfred Schutz called “relevance structures” man carefully describes how they manage to find this plausi- should not surprise us. It frequently occurs in everyday life. ble, despite doubts caused by the secular discourse in which For example, I am moved by the beauty of a painting they also operate. In one chapter she asks “Are they crazy?”. exhibited in an art gallery. Then I notice its price in the She asserts that they are definitely not, after an elaborate catalogue, and it occurs to me that buying it could be a good comparison of their experience with that of schizophrenics. investment. In that moment I will have switched from an In the best anthropological tradition, Luhrmann maintains a aesthetic to an economic relevance. A modern individual balance between empathy and distance, and she emphasizes acquires the ability to juggle a plurality of relevances. In the that in her anthropologist role she can make no statements book I wrote long ago with Brigitte Berger and Hansfried about the ultimate truth or illusion of her subjects’ experience. Kellner, The Homeless Mind: Modernization and Con- She apparently comes from a non-Evangelical, mainline Prot- sciousness (1973), we called this trait “multirelationality” estant background; she does not tell us to what extent she, like (not a great contribution to the language of Shakespeare and so many anthropologists, may have succumbed to the profes- Milton). We did not think of religion at this point. sional hazard of “going native”. If so, she certainly succeeds in If secularization theory, at least in its original version, is keeping the two discourses apart. no longer tenable, what should replace it in the sociology of Jose Casanova, one of the best sociologists of religion religion? I have for quite some time argued that the replace- around, has very usefully broken up the concept of seculariza- ment should be a theory of pluralization. This is not the tion into three discrete meanings—the differentiation between place to re-argue the main features of such a theory. It must 316 Soc (2012) 49:313–316 embrace both the societal and the mental dimensions of the Europe. Only slightly less urgent have been related questions enormous fact that (short of a radically totalitarian order) it elsewhere: What is the relation between secular democracy is very difficult under modern conditions to retain or restore and hindutva in India? Between democracy and halacha in a monopolistic worldview. In society, this means that the Israel? Can the Russian Orthodox Church make an adjustment normal institutional form of religion is the voluntary asso- with a secular state similar to the one made by the Roman ciation (no matter whether churches like this or grudgingly Catholic Church since the Second Vatican Council? How can accept it). The American term “denomination” denotes this religious freedom be accommodated within the “harmonious institutional type. In the mind, it means that religion, no society” proclaimed by the regime in China? And, last not longer taken for granted, becomes a matter of individual least, the current electoral season in the United States has decision. Again, the American language has an apt term for clearly demonstrated that religion continues to be a central this—“religious preference”. But religious plurality is not issue in the culture wars over the character of American only an American phenomenon (though, for well-known modernity. historical reasons, it has developed in a distinctive version The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 produced a compromise here); the phenomenon has been amply documented in which, at least for a while, ended the terrible wars of religion Europe and elsewhere. Put simply, modernity does not so that had killed millions of people across Europe. The compro- much change the what of religious faith, but the how. Much mise was embodied in the formula cuius regio eius religio— can be said about all of this, as I have done before. Here I the ruler decides on the religion of the state, and those who just want to propose a significant addendum to a theory of don’t like the decision will be allowed to leave. It was a pluralization: A default secular discourse co-exists with a territorial peace formula, certainly an improvement over the plurality of religious discourses, both in society and in massacre or forced conversion of religious minorities. Similar consciousness. solutions are more difficult under modern circumstances and, This proposition may be interesting to sociologists of where tried at all, have typically been accompanied by hor- religion. Should it interest anyone else? I think it should. It rendous atrocities, as for instance in the flight of Muslims out has far-reaching practical, indeed political implications. of India and of Hindus out of Pakistan in the wake of Partition. Some years ago Shmuel Eisenstadt suggested that there It seems to me that contemporary plurality requires a non- were multiple modernities. The term is polemical; it attacks territorial formula of peace. The peaceful co-existence of a the notion that there is only one form of modernity, that of secular discourse in the public sphere with a plurality of freely Europe and its overseas extensions. That notion was first chosen religious discourses suggests what such a formula of challenged successfully in Japan after the Meiji Restoration, peace may look like. It need not look like, say, a translation of as that country went through a radical process of modern- the first amendment to the US constitution into Arabic or ization while consciously avoiding westernization. Today Chinese. What it might look like will be determined by ideas the idea of alternative versions of modernity is of burning and events in one country after another. urgency in many parts of the world: What could be the shape of an Islamic modernity? That question has come to the fore with the Arab Spring, but for some time before that Peter L. Berger Senior Editor of Society, is Senior Research Fellow, Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs at Boston University. event it was urgently debated in Turkey, in Iran and Pakistan, His most recent book is Adventures of an Accidental Sociologist: How and with regard to the integration of Muslim immigrants in to Explain the World Without Becoming a Bore (2011). John Winthrop, "A Modell of Christian Charity"

New England's Puritans dissented not only from the Church of England, but from England's social and political order as well. Seeking alternatives to established institutions, they turned on the one hand to Scripture and on the other to their common experience for precedents. Of this extraordinarily learned and articulate group (the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the seventeenth century boasted more college graduates per capita than England itself), few gave more careful thought to the purposes of the Puritans' "errand into the wilderness" or to the proper foundations for the colony's institutions than, John Winthrop (1588-1649).

Winthrop was a representative of the new gentry that flourished under the Tudor regime. His grandfather, Adam Winthrop, was a country boy who went to London, made a fortune as a clothier, and then purchased a manor (one of the many properties seized by Henry VIII from the church). His son, also named Adam, trained as a lawyer, but spent his life farming and governing his estate in Suffolk. The habit of governing others came naturally to John Winthrop. After attending Trinity College, Cambridge for two years, he returned home, where he was appointed Justice of the Peace and, a few years later, steward -- in which capacity he acted as his father's chief financial and administrative officer.

Despite his privileged position, John Winthrop, like many other educated Englishmen of the period, became increasingly disenchanted with corrupt and oppressive Stuart monarchy. When Charles I decided in the spring of 1629 to rule without parliamentary consent, imprisoned Puritan parliamentary leaders, and banned Puritans from the practice of law, Winthrop decided to emigrate.

1 While en route to New England in 1630, on board the Arabella, Winthrop wrote an essay on charity (which he presumably preached as a sermon) which sought to apply scriptural virtues to the peculiar circumstances and challenges the colonists would face in creating their new social and political order. A number of themes which become central to American philanthropic traditions are first articulated here: 1) efforts to reconcile the problem of spiritual and political equality with economic inequality; 2) concerns about the relations between the good of individuals and the good of the community; 3) the conception of community as a voluntary -- contractual -- bond between individuals; 4) a focus on the particular obligations of the rich towards the poor; 4) the conception of mission as the basis for formulating specific institutional goals and objectives.

It is important to note that Winthrop does not mention private institutions: he, like many Puritans, rejected the diea of endowed institutions because of their association with Stuart corruption. For him, charity retains an interpersonal rather than an institutional emphasis. Further, he assumes that the work of society will be done by public institutions of church and State. Notably, Winthrop did not suggest that charity should extend beyond the convenanted group of believers. The notion of universal benevolence would have to wait until a more enlightened age.

2 A Modell of Christian Charity Written On board the Arrabella, On the Atlantic Ocean. By the Honorable JOHN WINTHROP Esquire. In his passage, (with a great Company of Religious People, of which Christian Tribes he was the Brave Leader and famous

Governor;) from the Island of Great Brittaine, to New England in North America. Anno 1630.

God Almightie in his most holy and wise prividence hath so disposed of the Condicion of mankinde, as in all times some must be rich some poore, some high and eminent in power and dignitie; others meane and in subjection.

THE REASON HEREOF. 1. Reas: First, to hold conformity with the rest of his works, being delighted to shewe forthe the glory of his wisdome in the variety and difference of the Creatures and the glory of his power, in ordering all these differences for the preservacion and good of the whole, and the glory of his greatnes that as it is the glory of princes to have many officers, soe this great King will have many Stewards counting himselfe more honored in dispenceing his guifts to man by man, than if he did it by his owne immediate hand.

2. Reas: Secondly, That he might have the more occasion to manifest the work of his Spirit: first, upon the wicked in moderateing and restraineing them; so that the

3 riche and mighty should not eate upp the poore, mor the poore, and dispised rise up against their superiours, and shake off theire yoake; 2ly in the regenerate in exerciseing his graces in them, as in the greate ones, their love mercy, gentlenes, temperance etc., in the poore and inferior sorte, theire faithe patience, obedience, etc. 3. Reas: Thirdly, That every man might have need of other, and from thence they might all be knitt more nearly together in the Bond of brotherly affeccion. . . .

The deffinition which the Scripture gives us of love is this Love is the bond of perfection. First, it is a bond, or ligament. 2ly, it makes the worke perfect. There is no body but consistes of partes and that which knitts these partes together gives the body its perfeccion, because it makes eache parte soe continguous to other as thereby doe mutually participate with eache other, both in strengthe and infirmity in pleasure and paine, to instance in the most perfect of all bodies, Christ and his church make one body: the severall partes of this body considered aparte before they were united were as disproportionate and as much disordering as so many contrary quallities or elements but when christ comes and by his spirit and love knitts all these partes to himselfe and each to other, it is become the most perfect and best proportioned body in the world. . . .

Herein are 4 things to be propounded: first the persons, 2ly, the worke, 3ly, the end, 4ly, the meanes.

1. For the persons, wee are a Company professiong our selves fellow members of Christ. In which respect onely though wee were absent from eache other many miles, and had our imploymentes as farre distant, yet wee ought to account ourselves knitt toether by this bond of love, and live in the

4 excercise of it, if wee would have the comforte of our being in Christ. . . .

2ly. for the worke wee have in hand, it is by mutuall consent through a speciall overruleing providence, and amore then an ordinary approbation of the Churches of Christ to seeke out a place of Cohabitation and Consorteshipp under a due forme of Government both civall and ecclesiasticall. In such cases as this the care of the publique must oversway all private respects, by which not onely conscience, but meare Civil pollicy doth binde us; for it is a true rule that perticuler estates cannott subsist in

the ruine of the publique.

3ly. The end is to improve our lives to doe more service to the Lord the comforte and encrease of the body of christe whereof wee are members that our selves and posterity may be the better preserved from the Common corrupcions of this evill world to serve the Lord and worke out our Salvacion under the power and purity of his holy Ordinances.

4ly. for the meanes whereby this must be effected, they are 2fold, a Conformity with the worke and end we aim at, these wee see are extraordinary, therefore wee must not content our selves with usuall ordinary meanes whatsoever wee did or ought to have done when wee lived in England, the same must we doe and more allsoe where we goe. . . .

. . . wee must be knitt together in this worke as one man, we must entertaine each other in brotherly Affeccion, we must be willing to abridge our selves of our superfluities, for the suppy of others necessities, we must uphold a familiar

5 Commerce together in meekenes, gentlenes, patience and liberallity, wee must delight in eache other, make others Condicions our owne rejoyce together, allwayes haveing before our eyes our Commission and Community in the worke. . . . for wee must Consider that wee shall be as a Citty upon a Hill, the eies of all people are uppon us; soe that if wee shall deale falsely with our god in this worke wee have undertaken and soe cause him to withdrawe his present help from us, wee shall be made a story and a by-word through the world, we shall open the mouthes of enemies to speake evill of the wayes of god and all professours for Gods sake; wee shall shame the faces of many of gods worthy servants, and cause theire prayers to be turned into Curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good land whether we are going. . . .

6 Source: Edmund S. Morgan, ed., The Founding of Massachusetts: HIstorians and the Sources (Indianapolis, 1964).

Additional Readings: David Grayson Allen, In English Ways: The Movement of Societies and the Transferal of English Local Law and Custom (Chapel Hill, 1981).

David T. Konig, Law and Society in Puritan Massachusetts (1979)

Perry Miller, Errand Into the Wilderness (Boston, 1956).

______, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Boston, 1953).

______, Orthodoxy in Massachusetts, 1630-1650 (New York, 1970).

Edmund S. Morgan, Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop (New York, 1958).

Samuel Eliot Morison, Builders of the Bay Colony (Boston, 1930).

7 Darrett Rutman, Winthrop's Boston (Chapel Hill, 1965).

Winthrop Papers, multivolume (Boston, 1929 -).

8 Founders Online [Back to normal view]

Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments, [ca. 20 June] 1785 Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments

EDITORIAL NOTE

The most striking element in JM’s authorship of the Memorial and Remonstrance was the pains he took to keep the public ignorant of his heavy involvement in this battle over state­subsidized religion. So successful was he in maintaining anonymity that a few libraries still have a printed version with speculative attributions of the work to other public men. Although in 1786 printer Isaiah Thomas used JM’s name in the title when he issued A Memorial and Remonstrance … by his Excellency James Madison (Sabin 43719), JM himself waited until 1826 to make an explicit acknowledgment of his authorship. In reply to a query from George Mason’s grandson, JM recalled that Mason and George Nicholas “and some others, thought it adviseable, that a Remonstrance against the Bill should be prepared for general circulation & signature, and imposed on me the task of drawing up such a paper” (JM to George Mason [of Green Spring], 14 July 1826 [ViHi]). After forty years, the legislative undercurrents moving the General Assessment bill toward passage in 1785 had been forgotten, and the surviving documents standing alone did not tell the whole story. The importance of formal religion in the 1780s is a concept difficult for a secularistic society to grasp. JM had a decent respect for the opinions of his peers and must have been aware of the intensity with which his Baptist and Presbyterian neighbors approached religious worship. He was also conscious of loyalties held by such patriots as Edmund Pendleton and Patrick Henry for the former established church, and of their conviction that taxes should be offered to all churches through a general assessment lest public morality languish. Nonetheless, disestablishment was an accomplished fact, a social symptom of declining interest in organized Christianity. Church­going in Virginia had long been on the decline as communicants found more reasons for attending Sunday horse races or cock fights than for being in pews. In 1784 a foreign traveler in Richmond noted that the village had only “one small church, but [it was] spacious enough for all the pious souls of the place and the region. If the Virginians themselves did not freely and openly admit that zeal for religion, and religion generally, is now very faint among them, the fact might easily be divined from other circumstances” (Schoepf, Travels in the Confederation, II, 62). In the face of such realities there were still many members of the General Assembly disposed to aid the Protestant Episcopal church, and they seemed determined to carry the General Assessment bill despite widespread but inarticulate opposition from their constituents. In this confused situation the Presbyterians occupied an ambiguous position. Convinced that a religious subsidy would pass, the Hanover Presbytery first declared that “Religion as a spiritual System is not to be considered an object of human Legislation,” and in the next breath made a bid to share in the proceeds of a general assessment for teachers of Christianity (ViHi: Records of the Proceedings of Hanover Presbytery from the year 1755 to the year 1786 [typed copy by George S. Wallace, 1930], pp. 326–27). Such a compromise was anathema to JM, who had no intention of retreating from the high ground he occupied when helping fashion Article XVI of the Virginia Declaration of Rights. He had seen conservative forces in the General Assembly come within an eyelash of passing the “Bill establishing a provision for the teachers of the Christian religion” at the October 1784 session—with some sly maneuvering needed by its opponents to postpone final action on the bill and publicize its provisions in the interim. George Nicholas in neighboring Albemarle County had entreated JM to bestir himself so that apathy would not allow the bill to become law (letter to JM, 22 Apr. 1785). Surely JM discussed the matter with his neighbors, including the obstreperous Elder John Leland, a Baptist minister who loathed all forms of church­state alliances. A host of Episcopalians as well as dissenters were eager to cut all church­state ties. However, a focal point for the opposition was needed, and the usual way to protest pending legislation in the 1780s was by a petition. Partly from pressure then, and partly from personal conviction, JM took pen in hand and wrote a cogently reasoned attack on the measure, which was popularly called a General Assessment bill. By the end of June it was ready for distribution, most likely through Nicholas and other young men in the Piedmont whom Madison could trust to keep his secret—Archibald Stuart, John Breckinridge—and the tidelands patriarch at Gunston Hall who was eager to knock the tax­subsidy props from beneath the church he attended and loved, George Mason. The Library of Congress copy of the protest is in JM’s hand. No doubt he sent a copy to Mason, who was eager to see it in print. From an Alexandria press Mason broadcast copies of the Memorial and Remonstrance to friends and neighbors. Mason sent with it a covering letter which honored JM’s request for anonymity. The petition, Mason explained, was “confided to me by a particular Freind, whose Name I am not at Liberty to mention” (Mason to Washington, 2 Oct. 1785, Rutland, Papers of George Mason, II, 830). So active was Mason in supporting JM’s remonstrance that there was speculation that he was its real author (Rowland, Life of George Mason, II, 87). JM’s motive in seeking a cloud of anonymity over his attack on the General Assessment bill is uncertain. JM told Jefferson copies had been dispatched “thro’ the medium of confidential persons” (italicized words in code, JM to Jefferson, 20 Aug. 1785). Eckenrode speculated that most Virginians were inclined to support the bill until the protest movement began to swell (Eckenrode, Separation of Church and State in Virginia, p. 95). The phalanx committed to its passage was imposing. A fortuitous circumstance was the fact that Patrick Henry was still governor and thus unable to use his oratory in the House of Delegates to overwhelm the opposition. Carter Henry Harrison, Charles Mynn Thruston, Wilson Miles Cary, John Page, and lesser lights also were convinced that religion needed bolstering. Richard Henry Lee and Edmund Pendleton were not legislators, but in Richmond their support of the General Assessment bill was certainly no secret (Mays, Papers of Edmund Pendleton, II, 474). In these circumstances JM may have thought it prudent to eschew the role of rabble­rouser. There was much to be done at the October 1785 session of the legislature and JM was too good a politician to go out of his way to alienate those men whose votes or support he would need if the reforms of the court system and the whole legal code were to pass a House of Delegates fairly balanced in terms of conservative­ progressive members. So it may have been prudence and expediency that caused JM to mantle his authorship of what has been called “one of the truly epoch­making documents in the history of American Church­State separation” (Anson Phelps Stokes, Church and State in the United States [3 vols.; New York, 1950], I, 391). A comparison between the Memorial and Remonstrance and John Locke’s “Letter on Toleration” (1685) leads to the speculation that JM had occasion to use Locke’s treatise in preparing his own. Assertions of intellectual dependence are often based on slender textual coincidences, but there are a number of similarities between the views of JM and Locke toward religious ties between church and state. For example, JM speaks of the “metes and bounds” between the temporal and spiritual establishments while Locke marked “the true bounds between the church and the commonwealth” (John Locke, Epistolia de Tolerantia: A Letter on Toleration, Raymond Klibansky and J. W. Gough, eds. [Oxford, 1968], p. 65). JM denies to “the Civil Magistrate” any power over religion because “Religious truth” and “the means of salvation” are beyond the concerns of the state. With Locke, the whole jurisdiction of the magistrate is concerned only with “civil goods” such as life, liberty, and property and ought not “in any way to be extended to the salvation of souls” (ibid., p. 67). Indeed, Locke held that “the magistrate ought not to forbid the holding or teaching of any speculative opinions in any church, because they have no bearing on the civil rights of his subjects” (ibid., p. 121). If this comparison of Locke and JM is strained, there is one indisputable similarity between the “Letter on Toleration” and the Memorial and Remonstrance. Neither Locke nor JM wanted their authorship revealed. A modern scholar has noted that “Locke’s timid anxiety to conceal his identity was excessive”; JM sent his petition to a close circle of friends who were enjoined to secrecy (Locke, Letter on Toleration, p. 45; Rutland, Papers of George Mason, II, 830, 832). “My choice is that my name may not be associated with it,” JM wrote Randolph (26 July 1785). Whether JM gleaned his arguments from a growing number of volumes in his personal library or drew upon experience and practical politics as his guides, the result is beyond doubt. Because of his labors the campaign against the General Assessment bill had all the aspects of a well­organized endeavor. What is not generally known is that JM was not only seeking anonymity but was so circumspect that another opponent of the General Assessment bill actually had a more active following. While at least thirteen of JM’s petitions were circulated (and in time bore 1,552 signatures), another (and still anonymous) petition writer found that his attack on the “Teachers of Christian Religion” measure gained more widespread support. Twenty­nine petitions, signed by 4,899 Virginians, came from the pen of this unknown opponent of a church­state tie. These petitions were based on an argument that carries beyond JM’s—the General Assessment bill was not only contrary to the Virginia Declaration of Rights and to the enlightened republicanism pronounced there, but the proposed act was in conflict with “the Spirit of the Gospel.” Whoever wrote this petition, which was easily the most popular of the several circulating protests, was clearly an active Christian who believed the General Assessment bill would do nothing to check “that Deism with its banefull Influence [which] is spreading itself over the state” (Vi: Westmoreland County petition). Obviously, more Virginians were made aware of this zealous protest than JM’s calmer one, and it is also notable that in Westmoreland County at least eleven women signed the remonstrance based on “the Spirit of the Gospel.” Thus, while JM’s role in shaping opposition to the bill is noteworthy, his protest was signed by less than one­fifth of all the protesting Virginians who were recorded as opponents of the General Assessment bill (since some 10,929 signed some kind of anti­assessment petition). About eighty petitions opposed to the General Assessment bill flowed into the legislative hopper after 27 October 1785. Some were printed, and some came in longhand, but less than one­fifth of them were based entirely on JM’s work. Only eleven counties mustered enough support for the bill to send favorable petitions to Richmond. Faced with such odds, the conservatives retreated. The bill which seemed so certain of passage in November 1784 was, just a year later, allowed to die in the pigeonhole. With the passing of time, history tended to forget the other protests of 1785–1786 and focused upon Madison’s. JM himself was no longer shy about his role, and in his seventy­fifth year he remembered that chiefly because of the Memorial and Remonstrance the churchmen in the General Assembly were “entirely frustrated, and under the influence of the public sentiment thus manifested the celebrated Bill ‘Establishing Religious freedom’ [was] enacted into a permanent Barrier agst. future attempts on the Rights of Conscience as declared in the great Charter affixed to the Constitution of the State” (JM to George Mason [of Green Spring], 14 July 1826 [ViHi]). His latter allusion was to the benchmark Article XVI of the Virginia Declaration of Rights which had opened the door for the winds of change, toppled the established church, and left men “equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience.” JM remembered that entering wedge with some satisfaction for (with Mason’s help) he had written that, too. [ca. 20 June 1785]

To the Honorable the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia A Memorial and Remonstrance

We the subscribers, citizens of the said Commonwealth, having taken into serious consideration, a Bill printed by order of the last Session of General Assembly, entitled “A Bill establishing a provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion,”1 and conceiving that the same if finally armed with the sanctions of a law, will be a dangerous abuse of power, are bound as faithful members of a free State to remonstrate against it, and to declare the reasons by which we are determined. We remonstrate against the said Bill, 1. Because we hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth, “that Religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence.”2 The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right. It is unalienable, because the opinions of men, depending only on the evidence contemplated by their own minds cannot follow the dictates of other men: It is unalienable also, because what is here a right towards men, is a duty towards the Creator. It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society. Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governour of the Universe: And if a member of Civil Society, who enters into any subordinate Association, must always do it with a reservation of his duty to the General Authority; much more must every man who becomes a member of any particular Civil Society, do it with a saving of his allegiance to the Universal Sovereign. We maintain therefore that in matters of Religion, no mans right is abridged by the institution of Civil Society and that Religion is wholly exempt from its cognizance. True it is, that no other rule exists, by which any question which may divide a Society, can be ultimately determined, but the will of the majority; but it is also true that the majority may trespass on the rights of the minority.3 2. Because if Religion be exempt from the authority of the Society at large, still less can it be subject to that of the Legislative Body. The latter are but the creatures and vicegerents of the former. Their jurisdiction is both derivative and limited: it is limited with regard to the co-ordinate departments, more necessarily is it limited with regard to the constituents. The preservation of a free Government requires not merely, that the metes and bounds which separate each department of power be invariably maintained; but more especially that neither of them be suffered to overleap the great Barrier which defends the rights of the people.4 The Rulers who are guilty of such an encroachment, exceed the commission from which they derive their authority, and are Tyrants. The People who submit to it are governed by laws made neither by themselves nor by an authority derived from them, and are slaves. 3. Because it is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of Citizens, and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The free men of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle.5 We revere this lesson too much soon to forget it. Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects? that the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of any one establishment, may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever? 4. Because the Bill violates that equality which ought to be the basis of every law, and which is more indispensible, in proportion as the validity or expediency of any law is more liable to be impeached. If “all men are by nature equally free 6 and independent,” all men are to be considered as entering into Society on equal conditions; as relinquishing no more, and therefore retaining no less, one than another, of their natural rights. Above all are they to be considered as retaining 7 an “equal title to the free exercise of Religion according to the dictates of Conscience.” Whilst we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess and to observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us. If this freedom be abused, it is an offence against God, not against man: To God, therefore, not to man, must an account of it be rendered. As the Bill violates equality by subjecting some to peculiar burdens, so it violates the same principle, by granting to others peculiar exemptions. Are the Quakers and Menonists the only sects who think a compulsive support of their Religions unnecessary and unwarrantable? Can their piety alone be entrusted with the care of public worship? Ought their Religions to be endowed above all others with extraordinary privileges by which proselytes may be enticed from all others? We think too favorably of the justice and good sense of these denominations to believe that they either covet pre-eminences over their fellow citizens or that they will be seduced by them from the common opposition to the measure. 5. Because the Bill implies either that the Civil Magistrate is a competent Judge of Religious Truth; or that he may 8 employ Religion as an engine of Civil policy. The first is an arrogant pretension falsified by the contradictory opinions of Rulers in all ages, and throughout the world: the second an unhallowed perversion of the means of salvation. 6. Because the establishment proposed by the Bill is not requisite for the support of the Christian Religion. To say that it is, is a contradiction to the Christian Religion itself, for every page of it disavows a dependence on the powers of this world: it is a contradiction to fact; for it is known that this Religion both existed and flourished, not only without the support of human laws, but in spite of every opposition from them, and not only during the period of miraculous aid, but long after it had been left to its own evidence and the ordinary care of Providence. Nay, it is a contradiction in terms; for a Religion not invented by human policy, must have pre-existed and been supported, before it was established by human policy. It is moreover to weaken in those who profess this Religion a pious confidence in its innate excellence and the patronage of its Author; and to foster in those who still reject it, a suspicion that its friends are too conscious of its fallacies to trust it to its own merits. 7. Because experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution. Enquire of the Teachers of Christianity for the ages in which it appeared in its greatest lustre; those of every sect, point to the ages prior to its incorporation with Civil policy. Propose a restoration of this primitive State in which its Teachers depended on the voluntary rewards of their flocks, many of them predict its downfall. On which Side ought their testimony to have greatest weight, when for or when against their interest? 8. Because the establishment in question is not necessary for the support of Civil Government. If it be urged as necessary for the support of Civil Government only as it is a means of supporting Religion, and it be not necessary for the latter purpose, it cannot be necessary for the former. If Religion be not within the cognizance of Civil Government how can its legal establishment be necessary to Civil Government? What influence in fact have ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the Civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny: in no instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just Government instituted to secure & perpetuate it needs them not. Such a Government will be best supported by protecting every Citizen in the enjoyment of his Religion with the same equal hand which protects his person and his property; by neither invading the equal rights of any Sect, nor suffering any Sect to invade those of another. 9. Because the proposed establishment is a departure from that generous policy, which, offering an Asylum to the persecuted and oppressed of every Nation and Religion, promised a lustre to our country, and an accession to the number of its citizens. What a melancholy mark is the Bill of sudden degeneracy? Instead of holding forth an Asylum to the persecuted, it is itself a signal of persecution. It degrades from the equal rank of Citizens all those whose opinions in Religion do not bend to those of the Legislative authority. Distant as it may be in its present form from the Inquisition, it differs from it only in degree. The one is the first step, the other the last in the career of intolerance. The magnanimous sufferer under this cruel scourge in foreign Regions, must view the Bill as a Beacon on our Coast, warning him to seek some other haven, where liberty and philanthrophy in their due extent, may offer a more certain repose from his Troubles. 10. Because it will have a like tendency to banish our Citizens. The allurements presented by other situations are every day thinning their number. To superadd a fresh motive to emigration by revoking the liberty which they now enjoy, would be the same species of folly which has dishonoured and depopulated flourishing kingdoms. 11. Because it will destroy that moderation and harmony which the forbearance of our laws to intermeddle with Religion has produced among its several sects. Torrents of blood have been spilt in the old world, by vain attempts of the secular arm, to extinguish Religious discord, by proscribing all difference in Religious opinion. Time has at length revealed the true remedy. Every relaxation of narrow and rigorous policy, wherever it has been tried, has been found to assuage the disease. The American Theatre has exhibited proofs that equal and compleat liberty, if it does not wholly eradicate it, 9 sufficiently destroys its malignant influence on the health and prosperity of the State. If with the salutary effects of this system under our own eyes, we begin to contract the bounds of Religious freedom, we know no name that will too severely reproach our folly. At least let warning be taken at the first fruits of the threatened innovation. The very appearance of the 10 Bill has transformed “that Christian forbearance, love and charity,” which of late mutually prevailed, into animosities and jealousies, which may not soon be appeased. What mischiefs may not be dreaded, should this enemy to the public quiet be armed with the force of a law? 12. Because the policy of the Bill is adverse to the diffusion of the light of Christianity. The first wish of those who enjoy this precious gift ought to be that it may be imparted to the whole race of mankind. Compare the number of those who have as yet received it with the number still remaining under the dominion of false Religions; and how small is the former! Does the policy of the Bill tend to lessen the disproportion? No; it at once discourages those who are strangers to 11 the light of revelation from coming into the Region of it; and countenances by example the nations who continue in darkness, in shutting out those who might convey it to them. Instead of Levelling as far as possible, every obstacle to the victorious progress of Truth, the Bill with an ignoble and unchristian timidity would circumscribe it with a wall of defence against the encroachments of error. 13. Because attempts to enforce by legal sanctions, acts obnoxious to so great a proportion of Citizens, tend to enervate the laws in general, and to slacken the bands of Society. If it be difficult to execute any law which is not generally deemed necessary or salutary, what must be the case, where it is deemed invalid and dangerous? And what may be the effect of so striking an example of impotency in the Government, on its general authority? 14. Because a measure of such singular magnitude and delicacy ought not to be imposed, without the clearest evidence that it is called for by a majority of citizens, and no satisfactory method is yet proposed by which the voice of the majority in this case may be determined, or its influence secured. “The people of the respective counties are indeed requested to signify their opinion respecting the adoption of the Bill to the next Session of Assembly.”12 But the representation must be made equal, before the voice either of the Representatives or of the Counties will be that of the people. Our hope is that neither of the former will, after due consideration, espouse the dangerous principle of the Bill. Should the event disappoint us, it will still leave us in full confidence, that a fair appeal to the latter will reverse the sentence against our liberties. 15. Because finally, “the equal right of every citizen to the free exercise of his Religion according to the dictates of conscience” is held by the same tenure with all our other rights. If we recur to its origin, it is equally the gift of nature; if we weigh its importance, it cannot be less dear to us; if we consult the “Declaration of those rights which pertain to the good people of Virginia, as the basis and foundation of Government,”13 it is enumerated with equal solemnity, or rather studied emphasis. Either then, we must say, that the Will of the Legislature is the only measure of their authority; and that in the plenitude of this authority, they may sweep away all our fundamental rights; or, that they are bound to leave this particular right untouched and sacred: Either we must say, that they may controul the freedom of the press, may abolish the Trial by Jury, may swallow up the Executive and Judiciary Powers of the State; nay that they may despoil us of14 our very right of suffrage, and erect themselves into an independent and hereditary Assembly or, we must say, that they have no authority to enact into law the Bill under consideration. We the Subscribers say, that the General Assembly of this Commonwealth have no such authority: And that no effort may be omitted on our part against so dangerous an usurpation, we oppose to it, this remonstrance; earnestly praying, as we are in duty bound, that the Supreme Lawgiver of the Universe, by illuminating those to whom it is addressed, may on the one hand, turn their Councils from every act which would affront his holy prerogative, or violate the trust committed to them: and on the other, guide them into every measure which may be worthy of his [blessing, may re]dound15 to their own praise, and may establish more firmly the liberties, the prosperity and the happiness of the Commonwealth.

Ms (Manuscript) (DLC (Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)); Ms (Manuscript) (DLC (Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.): Breckinridge Family Papers); Broadside (Vi (Library of Virginia, Richmond)). JM’s may have been the original draft which he then copied and sent to George Nicholas, who acknowledged its receipt on 7 July 1785. Undoubtedly a third copy was posted to George Mason. The date is fixed by circumstances. JM was concerned that his authorship of the petition not become known. He did not mention the subject in his 21 June letter to Monroe but George Nicholas, one of those who had urged JM to prepare a remonstrance, appears to have received his copy from a friend who was present at the Orange County court day on 23 June. JM’s wish for anonymity led to speculation on the petition’s proper date. The Breckinridge Ms (Manuscript) is headed, “Copy of Remonstrance written by Madison, Aug 1785,” in an unknown hand; and in a tribute to JM, Joseph Blau writes that the “brilliant” Memorial and Remonstrance was “written during the session of 1784–85 of the Virginia House of Delegates” (Joseph L. Blau, ed., Cornerstones of Religious Freedom in America [Boston, 1949], p. 71). The anonymous broadside was the most familiar form of the petition as George Mason procured a copy, had it published in Alexandria, and then widely distributed. In addition to the Mason­sponsored printing of 1785, the petition was reprinted by Isaiah Thomas in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1786 where JM is acknowledged as the author (Sabin 43719). Nonetheless, in Mathew Carey’s American Museum … for the Year 1789, pp. 120– 23, the petition is printed without attribution of authorship. Niles’ Weekly Register, XII (1817), 295–97, carried the petition as JM’s, and ibid., XXX (1826), published JM’s pertinent correspondence with George Mason (of Green Spring) of July 1826 and the petition, pp. 188–91 and passim. Mason told JM he had heard the Memorial and Remonstrance “attributed to yourself, as well as to others” (Mason to JM, 6 July 1826 [DLC (Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)]). 1. This measure, introduced under the aegis of Patrick Henry at the Oct. 1784 session, had passed two readings and was close to final passage when the opposition obtained a respite by a parliamentary tactic. They pleaded the need for public consideration of the bill and were able to postpone another reading until the Oct. 1785 session (JHDV, Oct. 1784, p. 82).

2. In the margin JM noted the source of this quotation—Article XVI of the Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776. JM had a large role in the final form of the article although this section was written by George Mason (Papers of Madison, I, 171–75).

3. JM’s historical studies along with his experience in the legislature had convinced him of the dangers of unfettered majority rule. He pointed this out later in his friendly disagreement with Jefferson over a federal bill of rights (JM to Jefferson, 17 Oct. 1788, Madison, Writings [Hunt ed.], V, 272). JM reaffirmed his fear of oppression by the majority during debates at the Federal Convention (6 June 1787, James Madison, Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention [Athens, Ohio, 1966], p. 77). He also brought up the same point in Federalist No. 10 (Cooke, ed., The Federalist, pp. 60–61).

4. For long­range evidence of JM’s tenacity on the separation of church and state “metes and bounds,” see JM’s annual message to Congress of 3 Dec. 1816 (James D. Richardson, ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789–1897 [10 vols.; Washington, 1898–99], I, 580).

5. This idea, that revolutions spring from those groaning not under oppression but in anticipation of it, was central to the argument presented in Jefferson’s “Declaration of the Causes and Necessity for Taking Up Arms” of 1775. “Parliament … for the first time asserted a right of unbounded legislation over the colonies of America and pursuing with eagerness the newly assumed thought in the space of 10 years during which they have exercised this right have given such decisive specimens of the spirit of this new legislation as leaves no room to [doubt the] consequence of acquiescence under it” (Boyd, Papers of Jefferson, I, 194).

6. JM noted in the margin that this was a quotation from Article I, Virginia Declaration of Rights. 7. Article XVI, ibid.

8. Locke states these ideas differently but to the same end. “The commonwealth seems to me to be a society of men constituted only for preserving and advancing their civil goods. What I call civil goods are life, liberty, bodily health and freedom from pain, and the possession of outward things, such as lands, money, furniture, and the like. It is the duty of the civil magistrate, by impartially enacted equal laws, to preserve and secure for all the people … these things that belong to this life.… The whole jurisdiction of the magistrate is concerned only with these civil goods” (Letter on Toleration, pp. 65–67).

9. Surry County supporters of the General Assessment bill took the opposite view. Their petition favoring passage of the bill observed “that [the] United State[s] of America exhibit[s] to the World the singular Instance of a free & enlighten’d Government destitute of a legal Provision for the support of Religion” (Vi (Library of Virginia, Richmond): Ms (Manuscript), quoted in Eckenrode, Separation of Church and State in Virginia, p. 112).

10. JM noted in the margin, “+ Decl. Rights Art: 16.”

11. Changed by JM from his original “light of truth.”

12. Opponents of the General Assessment bill had staved off its enactment by passing a resolution late in the Oct. 1784 session, for which JM extracted this quotation. The ostensible purpose of the postponement was to canvass voters’ attitudes toward the bill (William Taylor Thom, The Struggle for Religious Freedom in Virginia: The Baptists [Baltimore, 1900], pp. 75–76).

13. JM noted in the margin that this quotation was “Per Decl. Rights title.” In fact it is a rather loose rendering of Mason’s original introductory title.

14. Originally JM wrote, “nay that they can abolish.”

15. Words within brackets are faded on the Ms (Manuscript) and restored from the broadside text.

PERMALINK http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-08-02-0163 What’s this?

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SOURCE PROJECT Madison Papers TITLE Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments, [ca. 20 June] 1785 AUTHOR Madison, James DATE 20 June 1785 CITE AS “Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments, [ca. 20 June] 1785,” Founders Online, National Archives (http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-08-02-0163 [last update: 2015-06-29]). Source: The Papers of James Madison, vol. 8, 10 March 1784 – 28 March 1786, ed. Robert A. Rutland and William M. E. Rachal. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1973, pp. 295–306.

The National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) is part of the National Archives. Through its grants program, the NHPRC supports a wide range of activities to preserve, publish, and encourage the use of documentary sources, relating to the history of the United States, and research and development projects to bring historical records to the public. 8/21/2015 W. E. B. Du Bois, THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLKS: The Forethought The Forethought

Herein lie buried many things which if read with patience may show the strange meaning of being black here at the dawning of the Twentieth Century. This meaning is not without interest to you, Gentle Reader; for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line. I pray you, then, receive my little book in all charity, studying my words with me, forgiving mistake and foible for sake of the faith and passion that is in me, and seeking the grain of truth hidden there.

I have sought here to sketch, in vague, uncertain outline, the spiritual world in which ten thousand thousand Americans live and strive. First, in two chapters I have tried to show what Emancipation meant to them, and what was its aftermath. In a third chapter I have pointed out the slow rise of personal leadership, and criticized candidly the leader who bears the chief burden of his race to-day. Then, in two other chapters I have sketched in swift outline the two worlds within and without the Veil, and thus have come to the central problem of training men for life. Venturing now into deeper detail, I have in two chapters studied the struggles of the massed millions of the black peasantry, and in another have sought to make clear the present relations of the sons of master and man. Leaving, then, the white world, I have stepped within the Veil, raising it that you may view faintly its deeper recesses,--the meaning of its religion, the passion of its human sorrow, and the struggle of its greater souls. All this I have ended with a tale twice told but seldom written, and a chapter of song.

Some of these thoughts of mine have seen the light before in other guise. For kindly consenting to their republication here, in altered and extended form, I must thank the publishers of the Atlantic Monthly, The World's Work, the Dial, The New World, and the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Before each chapter, as now printed, stands a bar of the Sorrow Songs,--some echo of haunting melody from the only American music which welled up from black souls in the dark past. And, finally, need I add that I who speak here am bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh of them that live within the Veil?

W.E.B Du B. ATLANTA, GA., FEB. 1, 1903.

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http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/DUBOIS/fore.html 1/1 8/21/2015 W. E. B. Du Bois, THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLKS

I

Of Our Spiritual Strivings

O water, voice of my heart, crying in the sand, All night long crying with a mournful cry, As I lie and listen, and cannot understand The voice of my heart in my side or the voice of the sea, O water, crying for rest, is it I, is it I? All night long the water is crying to me.

Unresting water, there shall never be rest Till the last moon droop and the last tide fail, And the fire of the end begin to burn in the west; And the heart shall be weary and wonder and cry like the sea, All life long crying without avail, As the water all night long is crying to me. ARTHUR SYMONS.

Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. They approach me in a half- hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil? At these I smile, or am interested, or reduce the boiling to a simmer, as the occasion may require. To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.

And yet, being a problem is a strange experience,--peculiar even for one who has never been anything else, save perhaps in babyhood and in Europe. It is in the early days of rollicking boyhood that the revelation first bursts upon one, all in a day, as it were. I remember well when the shadow swept across me. I was a little thing, away up in the hills of New England, where the dark Housatonic winds between Hoosac and Taghkanic to the sea. In a wee wooden schoolhouse, something put it into the boys' and girls' heads to buy gorgeous visiting- cards-- ten cents a package--and exchange. The exchange was merry, till one girl, a tall newcomer, refused my card, --refused it peremptorily, with a glance. Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows. That sky was bluest when I could beat my mates at examination-time, or beat them at a foot-race, or even beat their stringy heads. Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the words I longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine. But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them. Just how I would do it I could never decide: by reading law, by healing the sick, by telling the wonderful tales that swam in my head, --some way. With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny: their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the pale world about them and mocking distrust of everything white; or wasted itself in a bitter cry, Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/DUBOIS/ch01.html 1/5 8/21/2015 W. E. B. Du Bois, THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLKS strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly, watch the streak of blue above.

After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, -- a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,--an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,--this longing to attain self- conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.

This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius. These powers of body and mind have in the past been strangely wasted, dispersed, or forgotten. The shadow of a mighty Negro past flits through the tale of Ethiopia the Shadowy and of Egypt the Sphinx. Through history, the powers of single black men flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness. Here in America, in the few days since Emanci- pation, the black man's turning hither and thither in hesitant and doubtful striving has often made his very strength to lose effectiveness, to seem like absence of power, like weakness. And yet it is not weakness,--it is the contradiction of double aims. The double-aimed struggle of the black artisan--on the one hand to escape white contempt for a nation of mere hewers of wood and drawers of water, and on the other hand to plough and nail and dig for a poverty-stricken horde-- could only result in making him a poor craftsman, for he had but half a heart in either cause. By the poverty and ignorance of his people, the Negro minister or doctor was tempted toward quackery and demagogy; and by the criticism of the other world, toward ideals that made him ashamed of his lowly tasks. The would-be black savant was confronted by the paradox that the knowledge his people needed was a twice- told tale to his white neighbors, while the knowledge which would teach the white world was Greek to his own flesh and blood. The innate love of harmony and beauty that set the ruder souls of his people a-dancing and a-singing raised but confusion and doubt in the soul of the black artist; for the beauty revealed to him was the soul-beauty of a race which his larger audience despised, and he could not articulate the message of another people. This waste of double aims, this seeking to satisfy two unreconciled ideals, has wrought sad havoc with the courage and faith and deeds of ten thousand thousand people,--has sent them often wooing false gods and invoking false means of salvation, and at times has even seemed about to make them ashamed of themselves.

Away back in the days of bondage they thought to see in one divine event the end of all doubt and disappointment; few men ever worshipped Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the American Negro for two centuries. To him, so far as he thought and dreamed, slavery http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/DUBOIS/ch01.html 2/5 8/21/2015 W. E. B. Du Bois, THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLKS was indeed the sum of all villainies, the cause of all sorrow, the root of all prejudice; Emancipation was the key to a promised land of sweeter beauty than ever stretched before the eyes of wearied Israelites. In song and exhortation swelled one refrain--Liberty; in his tears and curses the God he implored had Freedom in his right hand. At last it came,--suddenly, fearfully, like a dream. With one wild carnival of blood and passion came the message in his own plaintive cadences:--

"Shout, O children! Shout, you're free! For God has bought your liberty!"

Years have passed away since then,--ten, twenty, forty; forty years of national life, forty years of renewal and development, and yet the swarthy spectre sits in its accustomed seat at the Nation's feast. In vain do we cry to this our vastest social problem:--

"Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves Shall never tremble!"

The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land. Whatever of good may have come in these years of change, the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people,--a disappointment all the more bitter because the unattained ideal was unbounded save by the simple ignorance of a lowly people.

The first decade was merely a prolongation of the vain search for freedom, the boon that seemed ever barely to elude their grasp,--like a tantalizing will-o'-the-wisp, maddening and misleading the headless host. The holocaust of war, the terrors of the Ku-Klux Klan, the lies of carpet-baggers, the disorganization of industry, and the contradictory advice of friends and foes, left the bewildered serf with no new watchword beyond the old cry for freedom. As the time flew, however, he began to grasp a new idea. The ideal of liberty demanded for its attainment powerful means, and these the Fifteenth Amendment gave him. The ballot, which before he had looked upon as a visible sign of freedom, he now regarded as the chief means of gaining and perfecting the liberty with which war had partially endowed him. And why not? Had not votes made war and emancipated millions? Had not votes enfranchised the freedmen? Was anything impossible to a power that had done all this? A million black men started with renewed zeal to vote themselves into the kingdom. So the decade flew away, the revolution of 1876 came, and left the half-free serf weary, wondering, but still inspired. Slowly but steadily, in the following years, a new vision began gradually to replace the dream of political power,--a pow- erful movement, the rise of another ideal to guide the unguided, another pillar of fire by night after a clouded day. It was the ideal of "book-learning"; the curiosity, born of compulsory ignorance, to know and test the power of the cabalistic letters of the white man, the longing to know. Here at last seemed to have been discovered the mountain path to Canaan; longer than the highway of Emancipation and law, steep and rugged, but straight, leading to heights high enough to overlook life.

Up the new path the advance guard toiled, slowly, heavily, doggedly; only those who have watched and guided the faltering feet, the misty minds, the dull understandings, of the dark pupils of these schools know how faithfully, how piteously, this people strove to learn. It was weary work. The cold statistician wrote down the inches of progress here and there, noted also where here and there a foot had slipped or some one had fallen. To the tired climbers, the horizon was ever dark, the mists were often cold, the Canaan was always dim and far away. If, however, the vistas disclosed as yet no goal, no resting-place, little but flattery and criticism, the journey at least gave leisure for reflection and self-examination; it changed the http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/DUBOIS/ch01.html 3/5 8/21/2015 W. E. B. Du Bois, THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLKS child of Emancipation to the youth with dawning self-consciousness, self-realization, self- respect. In those sombre forests of his striving his own soul rose before him, and he saw himself,--darkly as through a veil; and yet he saw in himself some faint revelation of his power, of his mission. He began to have a dim feeling that, to attain his place in the world, he must be himself, and not another. For the first time he sought to analyze the burden he bore upon his back, that dead-weight of social degradation partially masked behind a half-named Negro problem. He felt his poverty; without a cent, without a home, without land, tools, or savings, he had entered into competition with rich, landed, skilled neighbors. To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships. He felt the weight of his ignorance,--not simply of letters, but of life, of business, of the humanities; the accumulated sloth and shirking and awkwardness of decades and centuries shackled his hands and feet. Nor was his burden all poverty and ignorance. The red stain of bastardy, which two centuries of systematic legal defilement of Negro women had stamped upon his race, meant not only the loss of ancient African chastity, but also the hereditary weight of a mass of corruption from white adulterers, threatening almost the obliteration of the Negro home.

A people thus handicapped ought not to be asked to race with the world, but rather allowed to give all its time and thought to its own social problems. But alas! while sociologists gleefully count his bastards and his prostitutes, the very soul of the toiling, sweating black man is darkened by the shadow of a vast despair. Men call the shadow prejudice, and learnedly explain it as the natural defence of culture against barbarism, learning against ignorance, purity against crime, the "higher" against the "lower" races. To which the Negro cries Amen! and swears that to so much of this strange prejudice as is founded on just homage to civilization, culture, righteousness, and progress, he humbly bows and meekly does obeisance. But before that nameless prejudice that leaps beyond all this he stands helpless, dismayed, and well-nigh speechless; before that personal disrespect and mockery, the ridicule and systematic humiliation, the distortion of fact and wanton license of fancy, the cynical ignoring of the better and the boisterous welcoming of the worse, the all-pervading desire to inculcate disdain for everything black, from Toussaint to the devil, --before this there rises a sickening despair that would disarm and discourage any nation save that black host to whom "discouragement" is an unwritten word.

But the facing of so vast a prejudice could not but bring the inevitable self-questioning, self- disparagement, and lowering of ideals which ever accompany repression and breed in an atmosphere of contempt and hate. Whisperings and portents came home upon the four winds: Lo! we are diseased and dying, cried the dark hosts; we cannot write, our voting is vain; what need of education, since we must always cook and serve? And the Nation echoed and enforced this self-criticism, saying: Be content to be servants, and nothing more; what need of higher culture for half-men? Away with the black man's ballot, by force or fraud,--and behold the suicide of a race! Nevertheless, out of the evil came something of good, --the more careful adjustment of education to real life, the clearer perception of the Negroes' social responsibilities, and the sobering realization of the meaning of progress.

So dawned the time of Sturm und Drang: storm and stress to-day rocks our little boat on the mad waters of the world- sea; there is within and without the sound of conflict, the burning of body and rending of soul; inspiration strives with doubt, and faith with vain questionings. The bright ideals of the past,--physical freedom, political power, the training of brains and the training of hands,--all these in turn have waxed and waned, until even the last grows dim and overcast. Are they all wrong,--all false? No, not that, but each alone was over-simple and incomplete,--the dreams of a credulous race-childhood, or the fond imaginings of the other http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/DUBOIS/ch01.html 4/5 8/21/2015 W. E. B. Du Bois, THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLKS world which does not know and does not want to know our power. To be really true, all these ideals must be melted and welded into one. The training of the schools we need to-day more than ever,--the training of deft hands, quick eyes and ears, and above all the broader, deeper, higher culture of gifted minds and pure hearts. The power of the ballot we need in sheer self- defence,--else what shall save us from a second slavery? Freedom, too, the long-sought, we still seek,--the freedom of life and limb, the freedom to work and think, the freedom to love and aspire. Work, culture, liberty,--all these we need, not singly but together, not successively but together, each growing and aiding each, and all striving toward that vaster ideal that swims before the Negro people, the ideal of human brotherhood, gained through the unifying ideal of Race; the ideal of fostering and developing the traits and talents of the Negro, not in opposition to or contempt for other races, but rather in large conformity to the greater ideals of the American Republic, in order that some day on American soil two world-races may give each to each those characteristics both so sadly lack. We the darker ones come even now not altogether empty-handed: there are to-day no truer exponents of the pure human spirit of the Declaration of Independence than the American Negroes; there is no true American music but the wild sweet melodies of the Negro slave; the American fairy tales and folklore are Indian and African; and, all in all, we black men seem the sole oasis of simple faith and reverence in a dusty desert of dollars and smartness. Will America be poorer if she replace her brutal dyspeptic blundering with light-hearted but determined Negro humility? or her coarse and cruel wit with loving jovial good-humor? or her vulgar music with the soul of the Sorrow Songs?

Merely a concrete test of the underlying principles of the great republic is the Negro Problem, and the spiritual striving of the freedmen's sons is the travail of souls whose burden is almost beyond the measure of their strength, but who bear it in the name of an historic race, in the name of this the land of their fathers' fathers, and in the name of human opportunity.

And now what I have briefly sketched in large outline let me on coming pages tell again in many ways, with loving emphasis and deeper detail, that men may listen to the striving in the souls of black folk.

BACK | FORWARD

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/DUBOIS/ch01.html 5/5 8/25/2015 The Promised Land.

The Promised Land by Mary Antin (1881-1949). Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1912.

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THE PROMISED LAND

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[Frontispiece]

MASHKE AND FETCHKE

[Title Page] THE PROMISED LAND

BY MARY ANTIN

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/antin/land/land.html#0 1/163 8/25/2015 The Promised Land. INTRODUCTION

I WAS born, I have lived, and I have been made over. Is it not time to write my life's story? I am just as much out of the way as if I were dead, for I am absolutely other than the person whose story I have to tell. Physical continuity with my earlier self is no disadvantage. I could speak in the third person and not feel that I was masquerading. I can analyze my subject, I can reveal everything; for she, and not I, is my real heroine. My life I have still to live; her life ended when mine began.

A generation is sometimes a more satisfactory unit for the study of humanity than a lifetime; and spiritual generations are as easy to demark as physical ones. Now I am the spiritual offspring of the marriage within my conscious experience of the Past and the Present. My second birth was no less a birth because there was no distinct incarnation. Surely it has happened before that one body served more than one spiritual organization. Nor am I disowning my father and mother of the flesh, for they were also partners in the generation of my second self; copartners with my entire line of ancestors. They gave me body, so that I have eyes like my father's and hair like my mother's. The spirit also they gave me, so that I reason like my father and endure like my mother. But did they set me down in a sheltered garden, where the sun should warm me, and no winter should hurt, while they fed me from their hands? No; they early let me run in the fields – perhaps because I would not be held – and eat of the wild fruits and drink of the dew. Did they teach me from books, and tell me what to believe? I soon chose my own books, and built me a world of my own.

In these discriminations I emerged, a new being, something that had not been before. And when I discovered my own friends, and ran home with them to convert my parents to a belief in their excellence, did I not begin to make my father and mother, as truly as they had ever made me? Did I not become the parent and they the children, in those relations of teacher and learner? And so I can say that there has been more than one birth of myself, and I can regard my earlier self as a separate being, and make it a subject of study.

A proper autobiography is a death-bed confession. A true man finds so much work to do that he has no time to contemplate his yesterdays; for to-day and to-morrow are here, with their impatient tasks. The world is so busy, too, that it cannot afford to study any man's unfinished work; for the end may prove it a failure, and the world needs masterpieces. Still there are circumstances by which a man is justified in pausing in the middle of his life to contemplate the years already passed. One who has completed early in life a distinct task may stop to give an account of it. One who has encountered unusual adventures under vanishing conditions may pause to describe them before passing into the stable world. And perhaps he also might be given an early hearing, who, without having ventured out of the familiar paths, without having achieved any signal triumph, has lived his simple life so intensely, so thoughtfully, as to have discovered in his own experience an interpretation of the universal life.

I am not yet thirty, counting in years, and I am writing my life history. Under which of the above categories do I find my justification? I have not accomplished anything, I have not discovered anything, not even by accident, as Columbus discovered America. My life has been unusual, but by no means unique. And this is the very core of the matter. It is because I understand my history, in its larger outlines, to be typical of many, that I consider it worth recording. My life is a concrete illustration of a multitude of statistical facts. Although I have written a genuine personal memoir, I believe that its chief interest lies in the fact that it is illustrative of scores of unwritten lives. I am only one of many whose fate it has been to live a page of modern history. We are the strands of the cable that binds the Old World to the New. As the ships that brought us link the shores of Europe and America, so our lives span the bitter sea of racial differences and misunderstandings. Before we came, the New World knew not the Old; but since we have begun to come, the Young World has taken the Old by the hand, and the two are learning to march side by side, seeking a common destiny. http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/antin/land/land.html#0 4/163 8/25/2015 The Promised Land. Perhaps I have taken needless trouble to furnish an excuse for my autobiography. My age alone, my true age, would be reason enough for my writing. I began life in the Middle Ages, as I shall prove, and here am I still, your contemporary in the twentieth century, thrilling with your latest thought.

Had I no better excuse for writing, I still might be driven to it by my private needs. It is in one sense a matter of my personal salvation. I was at a most impressionable age when I was transplanted to the new soil. I was in that period when even normal children, undisturbed in their customary environment, begin to explore their own hearts, and endeavor to account for themselves and their world. And my zest for self- exploration seems not to have been distracted by the necessity of exploring a new outer universe. I embarked on a double voyage of discovery, and an exciting life it was! I took note of everything. I could no more keep my mind from the shifting, changing landscape than an infant can keep his eyes from the shining candle moved across his field of vision. Thus everything impressed itself on my memory, and with double associations; for I was constantly referring my new world to the old for comparison, and the old to the new for elucidation. I became a student and philosopher by force of circumstances.

Had I been brought to America a few years earlier, I might have written that in such and such a year my father emigrated, just as I would state what he did for a living, as a matter of family history. Happening when it did, the emigration became of the most vital importance to me personally. All the processes of uprooting, transportation, replanting, acclimatization, and development took place in my own soul. I felt the pang, the fear, the wonder, and the joy of it. I can never forget, for I bear the scars. But I want to forget – sometimes I long to forget. I think I have thoroughly assimilated my past – I have done its bidding – I want now to be of to-day. It is painful to be consciously of two worlds. The Wandering Jew in me seeks forgetfulness. I am not afraid to live on and on, if only I do not have to remember too much. A long past vividly remembered is like a heavy garment that clings to your limbs when you would run. And I have thought of a charm that should release me from the folds of my clinging past. I take the hint from the Ancient Mariner, who told his tale in order to be rid of it. I, too, will tell my tale, for once, and never hark back any more. I will write a bold "Finis" at the end, and shut the book with a bang!

THE PROMISED LAND

CHAPTER I

WITHIN THE PALE

WHEN I was a little girl, the world was divided into two parts; namely, Polotzk, the place where I lived, and a strange land called Russia. All the little girls I knew lived in Polotzk, with their fathers and mothers and friends. Russia was the place where one's father went on business. It was so far off, and so many bad things happened there, that one's mother and grandmother and grown-up aunts cried at the railroad station, and one was expected to be sad and quiet for the rest of the day, when the father departed for Russia.

After a while there came to my knowledge the existence of another division, a region intermediate between Polotzk and Russia. It seemed there was a place called Vitebsk, and one called Vilna, and Riga, and some others. From those places came photographs of uncles and cousins one had never seen, and letters, and sometimes the uncles themselves. These uncles were just like people in Polotzk; the people in Russia, one understood, were very different. In answer to one's questions, the visiting uncles said all sorts of silly things, to make everybody laugh; and so one never found out why Vitebsk and Vilna, since they were not Polotzk, were not as sad as Russia. Mother hardly cried at all when the uncles went away. http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/antin/land/land.html#0 5/163 8/21/2015 The Promised Land. CHAPTER VI

THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE

HISTORY shows that in all countries where Jews have equal rights with the rest of the people, they lose their fear of secular science, and learn how to take their ancient religion with them from century to awakening century, dropping nothing by the way but what their growing spirit has outgrown. In countries where progress is to be bought only at the price of apostasy, they shut themselves up in their synagogues, and raise the wall of extreme separateness between themselves and their Gentile neighbors. There is never a Jewish community without its scholars, but where Jews may not be both intellectuals and Jews, they prefer to remain Jews.

The survival in Russia of mediæval injustice to Jews was responsible for the narrowness of educational standards in the Polotzk of my time. Jewish scholarship, as we have seen, was confined to a knowledge of the Hebrew language and literature, and even these limited stores of learning were not equally divided between men and women. In the mediæval position of the women of Polotzk education really had no place. A girl was "finished" when she could read her prayers in Hebrew, following the meaning by the aid of the Yiddish translation especially prepared for women. If she could sign her name in Russian, do a little figuring, and write a letter in Yiddish to the parents of her betrothed, she was calledwohl gelehrent – well educated.

Fortunately for me, my parents' ideals soared beyond all this. My mother, although she had not stirred out of Polotzk, readily adopted the notion of a liberal education imported by my father from cities beyond the Pale. She heartily supported him in all his plans for us girls. Fetchke and I were to learn to translate as well as pronounce Hebrew, the same as our brother. We were to study Russian and German and arithmetic. We were to go to the best pension and receive a thorough secular education. My father's ambition, after several years' sojourn in enlightened circles, reached even beyond the pension; but that was flying farther than Polotzk could follow him with the naked eye.

I do not remember our first teacher. When our second teacher came we were already able to read continuous passages. Reb' Lebe was no great scholar. Great scholars would not waste their learning on mere girls. Reb' Lebe knew enough to teach girls Hebrew. Tall and lean was the rebbe, with a lean, pointed face and a thin, pointed beard. The beard became pointed from much stroking and pulling downwards. The hands of Reb' Lebe were large, and his beard was not half a handful. The fingers of the rebbe were long, and the nails, I am afraid, were not very clean. The coat of Reb' Lebe was rusty, and so was his skull-cap. Remember, Reb' Lebe was only a girls' teacher, and nobody would pay much for teaching girls. But lean and rusty as he was, the rebbe's pupils regarded him with entire respect, and followed his pointer with earnest eyes across the limp page of the alphabet, or the thumbed pages of the prayer-book.

For a short time my sister and I went for our lessons to Reb' Lebe's heder, in the bare room off the women's gallery, up one flight of stairs, in a synagogue. The place was as noisy as a reckless expenditure of lung power could make it. the pupils on the bench shouted their way from aleph to tav, cheered and prompted by the growl of the rebbe; while the children in the corridor waiting their turn played "puss in the corner" and other noisy games.

Fetchke and I, however, soon began to have our lessons in private, at our own home. We sat one on each side of the rebbe, reading the Hebrew sentences turn and turn about.

When we left off reading by rote and Reb' Lebe began to reveal the mysteries to us, I was so eager to data:text/html;charset=utf-8,%3Ch3%20align%3D%22center%22%20style%3D%22color%3A%20rgb(0%2C%200%2C%200)%3B%20font-family%3A%20Times… 1/11 8/21/2015 The Promised Land. know all that was in my book that the lesson was always too short. I continued reading by the hour, after the rebbe was gone, though I understood about one word in ten. My favorite Hebrew reading was the Psalms. Verse after verse I chanted to the monotonous tune taught by Reb' Lebe, rocking to the rhythm of the chant, just like the rebbe. And so ran the song of David, and so ran the hours by, while I sat by the low window, the world erased from my consciousness.

What I thought I do not remember; I only know that I loved the sound of the words, the full, dense, solid sound of them, to the meditative chant of Reb' Lebe. I pronounced Hebrew very well, and I caught some mechanical trick of accent and emphasis, which was sufficiently like Reb' Lebe's to make my reading sound intelligent. I had a clue to the general mood of the subject from the few Psalms I had actually translated, and drawing on my imagination for details, I was able to read with so much spirit that ignorant listeners were carried away by my performance. My mother tells me, indeed, that people used to stop outside my window to hear me read. Of this I have not the slightest recollection, so I suppose I was an unconscious impostor. Certain I am that I thought no ignoble thoughts as I chanted the sacred words; and who can say that my visions were not as inspiring as David's? He was a shepherd before he became a king. I was an ignorant child in the Ghetto, but I was admitted at last to the society of the best; I was given the freedom of all America. Perhaps the "stuff that dreams are made of" is the same for all dreamers.

When we came to read Genesis I had the great advantage of a complete translation in Yiddish. I faithfully studied the portion assigned in Hebrew, but I need no longer wait for the next lesson to know how the story ends. I could read while daylight lasted, if I chose, in the Yiddish. Well I remember that Pentateuch, a middling thick octavo volume, in a crumbly sort of leather cover; and how the book opened of itself at certain places, where there were pictures. My father tells me that when I was just learning to translate single words, he found me one evening poring over thehumesh and made fun of me for pretending to read; whereupon I gave him an eager account, he says, of the stories of Jacob, Benjamin, Moses, and others, which I had puzzled out from the pictures, by the help of a word here and there that I was able to translate.

It was inevitable, as we came to Genesis, that I should ask questions.

Rebbe, translating: "In the beginning God created the earth."

Pupil, repeating: "In the beginning – Rebbe, when was the beginning?"

Rebbe, losing the place in amazement: "'S gehert a kasse? (Ever hear such a question?) The beginning was – the beginning – the beginning was in the beginning, of course! Nu! nu! Go on."

Pupil, resuming: "In the beginning God made the earth. – Rebbe, what did He make it out of?"

Rebbe, dropping his pointer in astonishment: "What did – ? What sort of a girl is this, that asks questions? Go on, go on!"

The lesson continues to the end. The book is closed, the pointer put away. The rebbe exchanges his skull- cap for his street cap, is about to go.

Pupil, timidly, but determinedly, detaining him: "Reb' Lebe, who made God? "

The rebbe regards the pupil in amazement mixed with anxiety. His emotion is beyond speech. He turns and leaves the room. In his perturbation he even forgets to kiss the mezuzah 1 on the doorpost. The pupil feels reproved and yet somehow in the right. Who did make God? But if the rebbe will not tell – will not tell? Or, perhaps, he does not know? The rebbe – ? data:text/html;charset=utf-8,%3Ch3%20align%3D%22center%22%20style%3D%22color%3A%20rgb(0%2C%200%2C%200)%3B%20font-family%3A%20Times… 2/11 8/21/2015 The Promised Land. It was some time after this conflict between my curiosity and his obtuseness that I saw my teacher act a ridiculous part in a trifling comedy, and then I remember no more of him.

Reb' Lebe lingered one day after the lesson. A guest who was about to depart, wishing to fortify himself for his journey, took a roll of hard sausage from his satchel and laid it, with his clasp knife, on the table. He cut himself a slice and ate it standing; and then, noticing the thin, lean rebbe, he invited him, by a gesture, to help himself to the sausage. The rebbe put his hands behind his coat tails, declining the traveller's hospitality. The traveller forgot the other, and walked up and down, ready in his fur coat and cap, till his carriage should arrive. The sausage remained on the table, thick and spicy and brown. No such sausage was known in Polotzk. Reb' Lebe looked at it. Reb' Lebe continued to look. The stranger stopped to cut another slice, and repeated his gesture of invitation. Reb' Lebe moved a step towards the table, but his hands stuck behind his coat tails. The traveller resumed his walk. Reb' Lebe moved another step. The stranger was not looking. The rebbe's courage rose, he advanced towards the table; he stretched out his hand for the knife. At that instant the door opened, the carriage was announced. The eager traveller, without noticing Reb' Lebe, swept up sausage and knife, just at the moment when the timid rebbe was about to cut himself a delicious slice. I saw his discomfiture from my corner, and I am obliged to confess that I enjoyed it. His face always looked foolish to me after that; but, fortunately for us both, we did not study together much longer.

Two little girls dressed in their best, shining from their curls to their shoes. One little girl has rosy cheeks, the other has staring eyes. Rosy-Cheeks carries a carpet bag; Big-Eyes carries a new slate. Hand in hand they go into the summer morning, so happy and pretty a pair that it is no wonder people look after them, from window and door; and that other little girls, not dressed in their best and carrying no carpet bags, stand in the street gaping after them.

Let the folks stare; no harm can come to the little sisters. Did not grandmother tie pepper and salt into the corners of their pockets, to ward off the evil eye? The little maids see nothing but the road ahead, so eager are they upon their errand. Carpet bag and slate proclaim that errand: Rosy-Cheeks and Big-Eyes are going to school.

I have no words to describe the pride with which my sister and I crossed the threshold of Isaiah the Scribe. Hitherto we had been to heder, to a rebbe; now we were to study with a lehrer, a secular teacher. There was all the difference in the world between the two. The one taught you Hebrew only, which every girl learned; the other could teach Yiddish and Russian and, some said, even German; and how to write a letter, and how to do sums without a counting-frame, just on a piece of paper; accomplishments which were extremely rare among girls in Polotzk. But nothing was too high for the grandchildren of Raphael the Russian; they had "good heads," everybody knew. So we were sent to Reb' Isaiah.

My first school, where I was so proud to be received, was a hovel on the edge of a swamp. The schoolroom was gray within and without. The door was so low that Reb' Isaiah had to stoop in passing. The little windows were murky. The walls were bare, but the low ceiling was decorated with bundles of goose quills stuck in under the rafters. A rough table stood in the middle of the room, with a long bench on either side. That was the schoolroom complete. In my eyes, on that first morning, it shone with a wonderful light, a strange glory that penetrated every corner, and made the stained logs fair as tinted marble; and the windows were not too small to afford me a view of a large new world.

Room was made for the new pupils on the bench, beside the teacher. We found our inkwells, which were simply hollows scooped out in the thick table top. Reb' Isaiah made us very serviceable pens by tying the pen points securely to little twigs; though some of the pupils used quills. The teacher also ruled our paper for us, into little squares, like a surveyor's notebook. Then he set us a copy, and we copied, one letter in data:text/html;charset=utf-8,%3Ch3%20align%3D%22center%22%20style%3D%22color%3A%20rgb(0%2C%200%2C%200)%3B%20font-family%3A%20Times… 3/11 8/21/2015 The Promised Land. each square, all the way down the page. All the little girls and the middle-sized girls and the pretty big girls copied letters in little squares, just so. There were so few of us that Reb' Isaiah could see everybody's page by just leaning over. And if some of our cramped fingers were clumsy, and did not form the loops and curves accurately, all he had to do was to stretch out his hand and rap with his ruler on our respective knuckles. It was all very cosey, with the inkwells that could not be upset, and the pens that grew in the woods or strutted in the dooryard, and the teacher in the closest touch with his pupils, as I have just told. And as he labored with us, and the hours drew themselves out, he was comforted by the smell of his dinner cooking in some little hole adjoining the schoolroom, and by the sound of his good Leah or Rachel or Deborah (I don't remember her name) keeping order among his little ones. She kept very good order, too, so that most of the time you could hear the scratching of the laborious pens accompanied by the croaking of the frogs in the swamp.

Although my sister and I began our studies at the same time, and progressed together, my parents did not want me to take up new subjects as fast as Fetchke did. They thought my health too delicate for much study. So when Fetchke had her Russian lesson I was told to go and play. I am sorry to say that I was disobedient on these occasions, as on many others. I did not go and play; I looked on. I listened, when Fetchke rehearsed her lesson at home. And one evening I stole the Russian primer and repaired to a secret place I knew of. It was a storeroom for broken chairs and rusty utensils and dried apples. Nobody would look for me in that dusty hole. Nobody did look there, but they looked everywhere else, in the house, and in the yard, and in the barn, and down the street, and at our neighbors'; and while everybody was searching and calling for me, and telling each other when I was last seen, and what I was then doing, I, Mashke, was bending over the stolen book, rehearsing A, B, C, by the names my sister had given them; and before anybody hit upon my retreat, I could spell B-O-G, Bog (God) and K-A-Z-A, Kaza (goat). I did not mind in the least being caught, for I had my new accomplishment to show off.

I remember the littered place, and the high chest that served as my table, and the blue glass lamp that lighted my secret efforts. I remember being brought from there into the firelit room where the family was assembled, and confusing them all by my recital of the simple words, B-O-G, Bog, and K-A-Z-A, Kaza. I was not reproached for going into hiding at bedtime, and the next day I was allowed to take part in the Russian lesson.

Alas! there were not many lessons more. Long before we had exhausted Reb' Isaiah's learning, my sister and I had to give up our teacher, because the family fortunes began to decline, and luxuries, such as schooling, had to be cut off. Isaiah the Scribe taught us, in all, perhaps two terms, in which time we learned Yiddish and Russian, and a little arithmetic. But little good we had from our ability to read, for there were no books in our house except prayer-books and other religious writings, mostly in Hebrew. For our skill in writing we had as little use, as letter-writing was not an everyday exercise, and idle writing was not thought of. Our good teacher, however, who had taken pride in our progress, would not let us lose all that we had learned from him. Books he could not lend us, because he had none himself; but he could, and he did, write us out a beautiful "copy" apiece, which we could repeat over and over, from time to time, and so keep our hands in.

I wonder that I have forgotten the graceful sentences of my "copy"; for I wrote them out just about countless times. It was in the form of a letter, written on lovely pink paper (my sister's was blue), the lines taking the shape of semicircles across the page; and that without any guide lines showing. The script, of course, was perfect – in the best manner of Isaiah the Scribe – and the sentiments therein expressed were entirely noble. I was supposed to be a high-school pupil away on my vacation; and I was writing to my "Respected Parents," to assure them of my welfare, and to tell them how, in the midst of my pleasures, I still longed for my friends, and looked forward with eagerness to the renewal of my studies. All this, in phrases half Yiddish, half German, and altogether foreign to the ears of Polotzk. At least, I never heard such talk in the market, when I went to buy a kopeck's worth of sunflower seeds. data:text/html;charset=utf-8,%3Ch3%20align%3D%22center%22%20style%3D%22color%3A%20rgb(0%2C%200%2C%200)%3B%20font-family%3A%20Times… 4/11 8/21/2015 The Promised Land. This was all the schooling I had in Russia. My father's plans fell to the ground, on account of the protracted illness of both my parents. All his hopes of leading his children beyond the intellectual limits of Polotzk were trampled down by the monster poverty who showed his evil visage just as my sister and I were fairly started on a broader path.

One chance we had, and that was quickly snatched away, of continuing our education in spite of family difficulties. Lozhe the Rav, hearing from various sources that Pinchus, son-in-law of Raphael the Russian, had two bright little girls, whose talents were going to waste for want of training, became much interested, and sent for the children, to see for himself what the gossip was worth. By a strange trick of memory I recall nothing of this important interview, nor indeed of the whole matter, although a thousand trifles of that period recur to me on the instant; so I report this anecdote on the authority of my parents.

They tell me how the rav lifted me up on a table in front of him, and asked me many questions, and encouraged me to ask questions in my turn. Reb' Lozhe came to the conclusion, as a result of this interview, that I ought by all means to be put to school. There was no public school for girls, as we know, but a few pupils were maintained in a certain private school by irregular contributions from city funds. Reb' Lozhe enlisted in my cause the influence of his son, who, by virtue of some municipal office which he held, had a vote in fixing this appropriation. But although he pleaded eloquently for my admission as a city pupil, the rav's son failed to win the consent of his colleagues, and my one little crack of opportunity was tightly stopped.

My father does not remember on what technicality my application was dismissed. My mother is under the impression that it was plainly refused on account of my religion, the authorities being unwilling to appropriate money for the tuition of a Jewish child. But little it matters now what the reason was; the result is what affected me. I was left without teacher or book just when my mind was most active. I was left without food just when the hunger of growth was creeping up. I was left to think and think, without direction; without the means of grappling with the contents of my own thought.

In a community which was isolated from the mass of the people on account of its religion; which was governed by special civil laws in recognition of that fact; in whose calendar there were twoscore days of religious observance; whose going and coming, giving and taking, living and dying, to the minutest details of social conduct, to the most intimate particulars of private life, were regulated by sacred laws, there could be no question of personal convictions in religion. One was a Jew, leading a righteous life; or one was a Gentile, existing to harass the Jews, while making a living off Jewish enterprise. In the vocabulary of the more intelligent part of Polotzk, it is true, there were such words as freethinker and apostate; but these were the names of men who had forsaken the Law in distant times or in distant parts, and whose evil fame had reached Polotzk by the circuitous route of tradition. Nobody looked for such monsters in his neighborhood. Polotzk was safely divided into Jews and Gentiles.

If any one in Polotzk had been idle and curious enough to inquire into the state of mind of a little child, I wonder if his findings would not have disturbed this simple classification.

There used to be a little girl in Polotzk who recited the long Hebrew prayers, morning and evening, before and after meals, and never skipped a word; who kissed the mezuzah when going or coming; who abstained from food and drink on fast days when she was no bigger than a sacrificial hen; who spent Sabbath mornings over the lengthy ritual for the day, and read the Psalms till daylight failed.

This pious child could give as good an account of the Creation as any boy of her age. She knew how God made the world. Undeterred by the fate of Eve, she wanted to know more. She asked her wise rebbe how God came to be in His place, and where He found the stuff to make the world of, and what was doing in data:text/html;charset=utf-8,%3Ch3%20align%3D%22center%22%20style%3D%22color%3A%20rgb(0%2C%200%2C%200)%3B%20font-family%3A%20Times… 5/11 8/21/2015 The Promised Land. the universe before God undertook His task. Finding from his unsatisfying replies that the rebbe was but a barren branch on the tree of knowledge, the good little girl never betrayed to the world, by look or word, her discovery of his limitations, but continued to accord him, outwardly, all the courtesy due to his calling.

Her teacher having failed her, the young student, with admirable persistence, carried her questions from one to another of her acquaintances, putting their answers to the test whenever it was possible. She established by this means two facts: first, that she knew as much as any of those who undertook to instruct her; second, that her oracles sometimes gave false answers. Did the little inquisitor charge her betrayers with the lie? Magnanimous creature, she kept their falseness a secret, and ceased to probe their shallow depths.

What you would know, find out for yourself: this became our student's motto; and she passed from the question to the experiment. Her grandmother told her that if she handled "blind flowers" she would be stricken blind. She found by test that the pretty flowers were harmless. She tested everything that could be tested, till she hit at last on an impious plan to put God Himself to the proof.

The pious little girl arose one Sabbath afternoon from her religious meditations, when all the house was taking its after-dinner nap, and went out in the yard, and stopped at the gate. She took out her pocket handkerchief. She looked at it. Yes, that would do for the experiment. She put it back into her pocket. She did not have to rehearse mentally the sacred admonition not to carry anything beyond the house-limits on the Sabbath day. She knew it as she knew that she was alive. And with her handkerchief in her pocket the audacious child stepped into the street!

She stood a moment, her heart beating so that it pained. Nothing happened! She walked quite across the street. The Sabbath peace still lay on everything. She felt again of the burden in her pocket. Yes, she certainly was committing a sin. With an access of impious boldness, the sinner walked – she ran as far as the corner, and stood still, fearfully expectant. What form would the punishment take? She stood breathing painfully for an eternity. How still everything was – how close and still the air! Would it be a storm? Would a sudden bolt strike her? She stood and waited. She could not bring her hand to her pocket again, but she felt that it bulged monstrously. She stood with no thought of moving again. Where were the thunders of Jehovah? No sacred word of all her long prayers came to her tongue – not even "Hear, O Israel." She felt that she was in direct communication with God – awful thought! – and He would read her mind and would send His answer.

SABBATH LOAVES FOR SALE (BREAD MARKET, POLOTZK) data:text/html;charset=utf-8,%3Ch3%20align%3D%22center%22%20style%3D%22color%3A%20rgb(0%2C%200%2C%200)%3B%20font-family%3A%20Times… 6/11 8/21/2015 The Promised Land. An age passed in blank expectancy. Nothing happened! Where was the wrath of God? Where was God?

When she turned to go home, the little philosopher had her handkerchief tied around her wrist in the proper way. The experiment was over, though the result was not clear. God had not punished her, but nothing was proved by His indifference. Either the act was no sin, and her preceptors were all deceivers; or it was indeed a sin in the eyes of God, but He refrained from stern justice for high reasons of His own. It was not a searching experiment she had made. She was bitterly disappointed, and perhaps that was meant as her punishment: God refused to give her a reply. She intended no sin for the sake of sin; so, being still in doubt, she tied her handkerchief around her wrist. Her eyes stared more than ever, – this was the child with the staring eyes, – but that was the only sign she gave of a consciousness suddenly expanded, of a self-consciousness intensified.

When she went back into the house, she gazed with a new curiosity at her mother, at her grandmother, dozing in their chairs. They looked different. When they awoke and stretched themselves and adjusted wig and cap, they looked very strange. As she went to get her grandmother her Bible, and dropped it accidentally, she kissed it by way of atonement just as a proper child should.

How, I wonder, would this Psalm-singing child have been labelled by the investigator of her mind? Would he have called her a Jew? She was too young to be called an apostate. Perhaps she would have been dismissed as a little fraud; and I should be content with that classification, if slightly modified. I should say the child was a piteously puzzled little fraud.

To return to the honest first person, I was something of a fraud. The days when I believed everything I was told did not run much beyond my teething time. I soon began to question if fire was really hot, if the cat would really scratch. Presently, as we have seen, I questioned God. And in those days my religion depended on my mood. I could believe anything I wanted to believe. I did believe, in all my moods, that there was a God who had made the world, in some fashion unexplained, and who knew about me and my doings; for there was the world all about me, and somebody must have made it. And it was conceivable that a being powerful enough to do such work could be aware of my actions at all times, and yet continue to me invisible. The question remained, what did He think of my conduct? Was He really angry when I broke the Sabbath, or pleased when I fasted on the Day of Atonement? My belief as to these matters wavered. When I swung the sacrifice around my head on Atonement Eve, repeating, "Be thou my sacrifice," etc., I certainly believed that I was bargaining with the Almighty for pardon, and that He was interested in the matter. But next day, when the fast was over, and I enjoyed all of my chicken that I could eat, I believed as certainly that God could not be party to such a foolish transaction, in which He got nothing but words, while I got both the feast and the pardon. The sacrifice of money, to be spent for the poor, seemed to me a more reliable insurance against damnation. The well-to-do pious offered up both living sacrifice and money for the poor-box, but it was a sign of poverty to offer only money. Even a lean rooster, to be killed, roasted, and garnished for the devotee's own table at the breaking of the fast, seemed to be considered a more respectable sacrifice than a groschen to increase the charity fund. All this was so illogical that it unsettled my faith in minor points of doctrine, and on these points I was quite happy to believe to-day one thing, to-morrow another.

As unwaveringly as I believed that we Jews had a God who was powerful and wise, I believed that the God of my Christian neighbors was impotent, cruel, and foolish. I understood that the god of the Gentiles was no better than a toy, to be dressed up in gaudy stuffs and carried in processions. I saw it often enough, and turned away in contempt. While the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – my God – enjoined on me honesty and kindness, the god of Vanka bade him beat me and spit on me whenever he caught me alone. And what a foolish god was that who taught the stupid Gentiles that we drank the blood of a murdered child at our Passover feast! Why, I, who was only a child, knew better. And so I hated and feared and avoided the great white church in the Platz, and hated every sign and symbol of that monstrous data:text/html;charset=utf-8,%3Ch3%20align%3D%22center%22%20style%3D%22color%3A%20rgb(0%2C%200%2C%200)%3B%20font-family%3A%20Times… 7/11 8/21/2015 The Promised Land. god who was kept there, and hated my own person, when, in our play of a Christian funeral, I imagined my body to be the corpse, over which was carried the hideous cross.

Perhaps I have established that I was more Jew than Gentile, though I can still prove that I was none the less a fraud. For instance, I remember how once, on the eve of the Ninth of Ab – the anniversary of the fall of the Temple – I was looking on at the lamentations of the women. A large circle had gathered around my mother, who was the only good reader among them, to listen to the story of the cruel destruction. Sitting on humble stools, in stocking feet, shabby clothes, and dishevelled hair, weeping in chorus, and wringing their hands, as if it was but yesterday that the sacred edifice fell and they were in the very dust and ashes of the ruin, the women looked to me enviously wretched and pious. I joined the circle in the candlelight. I wrung my hands, I moaned; but I was always slow of tears – I could not weep. But I wanted to look like the others. So I streaked my cheeks with the only moisture at hand.

Alas for my pious ambition! alas for the noble lament of the women! Somebody looked up and caught me in the act of manufacturing tears. I grinned, and she giggled. Another woman looked up. I grinned, and they giggled. Demoralization swept around the circle. Honest laughter snuffed out artificial grief. My mother at last looked up, with red and astonished eyes, and I was banished from the feast of tears.

I returned promptly to my playmates in the street, who were amusing themselves, according to the custom on that sad anniversary, by pelting each other with burrs. Here I was distinguished, more than I had been among my elders. My hair being curly, it caught a generous number of burrs, so that I fairly bristled with these emblems of mortification and woe.

Not long after that sinful experiment with the handkerchief I discovered by accident that I was not the only doubter in Polotzk. One Friday night I lay wakeful in my little bed, staring from the dark into the lighted room adjoining mine. I saw the Sabbath candles sputter and go out, one by one, – it was late, – but the lamp hanging from the ceiling still burned high. Everybody had gone to bed. The lamp would go out before morning if there was little oil; or else it would burn till Natasha, the Gentile chorewoman, came in the morning to put it out, and remove the candlesticks from the table, and unseal the oven, and do the dozen little tasks which no Jew could perform on the Sabbath. The simple prohibition to labor on the Sabbath day had been construed by zealous commentators to mean much more. One must not even touch any instrument of labor or commerce, as an axe or a coin. It was forbidden to light a fire, or to touch anything that contained a fire, or had contained fire, were it only a cold candlestick or a burned match. Therefore the lamp at which I was staring must burn till the Gentile woman came to put it out.

The light did not annoy me in the least; I was not thinking about it. But apparently it troubled somebody else. I saw my father come from his room, which also adjoined the living-room. What was he going to do? What was this he was doing? Could I believe my eyes? My father touched the lighted lamp! – yes, he shook it, as if to see how much oil there was left.

I was petrified in my place. I could neither move nor make a sound. It seemed to me he must feel my eyes bulging at him out of the dark. But he did not know that I was looking; he thought everybody was asleep. He turned down the light a very little, and waited. I did not take my eyes from him. He lowered the flame a little more, and waited again. I watched. By the slightest degrees he turned the light down. I understood. In case any one were awake, it would appear as if the lamp was going out of itself. I was the only one who lay so as to be able to see him, and I had gone to bed so early that he could not suppose I was awake. The light annoyed him, he wanted to put it out, but he would not risk having it known.

I heard my father find his bed in the dark before I dared to draw a full breath. The thing he had done was a monstrous sin. If his mother had seen him do it, it would have broken her heart – his mother who fasted half the days of the year, when he was a boy, to save his teacher's fee; his mother who walked almost data:text/html;charset=utf-8,%3Ch3%20align%3D%22center%22%20style%3D%22color%3A%20rgb(0%2C%200%2C%200)%3B%20font-family%3A%20Times… 8/11 8/21/2015 The Promised Land. barefoot in the cruel snow to carry him on her shoulders to school when she had no shoes for him; his mother who made it her pious pride to raise up a learned son, that most precious offering in the eyes of the great God, from the hand of a poor struggling woman. If my mother had seen it, it would have grieved her no less – my mother who was given to him, with her youth and good name and her dowry, in exchange for his learning and piety; my mother who was taken from her play to bear him children and feed them and keep them, while he sat on the benches of the scholars and repaid her labors with the fame of his learning. I did not put it to myself just so, but I understood that learning and piety were the things most valued in our family, that my father was a scholar, and that piety, of course, was the fruit of sacred learning. And yet my father had deliberately violated the Sabbath.

His act was not to be compared with my carrying the handkerchief. The two sins were of the same kind, but the sinners and their motives were different. I was a child, a girl at that, not yet of the age of moral responsibility. He was a man full grown, passing for one of God's elect, and accepting the reverence of the world as due tribute to his scholarly merits. I had by no means satisfied myself, by my secret experiment, that it was not sinful to carry a burden on the Sabbath day. If God did not punish me on the spot, perhaps it was because of my youth or perhaps it was because of my motive.

According to my elders, my father, by turning out the lamp, committed the sin of Sabbath-breaking. What did my father intend? I could not suppose that his purpose was similar to mine. Surely he, who had lived so long and studied so deeply, had by this time resolved all his doubts. Surely God had instructed him. I could not believe that he did wrong knowingly, so I came to the conclusion that he did not hold it a sin to touch a lighted lamp on Sabbath. Then why was he so secret in his action? That, too, became clear to me. I myself had instinctively adopted secret methods in all my little investigations, and had kept the results to myself. The way in which my questions were received had taught me much. I had a dim, inarticulate understanding of the horror and indignation which my father would excite if he, supposedly a man of piety, should publish the heretical opinion that it was not wrong to handle fire on the Sabbath. To see what remorse my mother suffered, or my father's mother, if by some accident she failed in any point of religious observance, was to know that she could never be brought to doubt the sacred importance of the thousand minutiæ of ancient Jewish practice. That which had been taught them as the truth by their fathers and mothers was the whole truth to my good friends and neighbors – that and nothing else. If there were any people in Polotzk who had strange private opinions, such as I concluded my father must hold, it was possible that he had a secret acquaintance with them. But it would never do, it was plain to me, to make public confession of his convictions. Such an act would not only break the hearts of his family, but it would also take the bread from the mouths of his children, and ruin them forever. My sister and my brother and I would come to be called the children of Israel the Apostate, just as Gutke, my playmate, was called the granddaughter of Yankel the Informer. The most innocent of us would be cursed and shunned for the sin of our father.

All this I came to understand, not all at once, but by degrees, as I put this and that together, and brought my childish thoughts to order. I was by no means absorbed in this problem. I played and danced with the other children as heartily as ever, but I brooded in my window corner when there was nothing else to do. I had not the slightest impulse to go to my father, charge him with his unorthodox conduct, and demand an explanation of him. I was quite satisfied that I understood him, and I had not the habit of confidences. I was still in the days when I was content to find outthings, and did not long to communicate my discoveries. Moreover, I was used to living in two worlds, a real world and a make-believe one, without ever knowing which was which. In one world I had much company – father and mother and sister and friends – and did as others did, and took everything for granted. In the other world I was all alone, and I had to discover ways for myself; and I was so uncertain that I did not attempt to bring a companion along. And did I find my own father treading in the unknown ways? Then perhaps some day he would come across me, and take me farther than I had yet been; but I would not be the first to whisper that I was there. It seems strange enough to me now that I should have been so uncommunicative; but I remind myself that data:text/html;charset=utf-8,%3Ch3%20align%3D%22center%22%20style%3D%22color%3A%20rgb(0%2C%200%2C%200)%3B%20font-family%3A%20Times… 9/11 8/21/2015 The Promised Land. I have been thoroughly made over, at least once, since those early days.

I recall with sorrow that I was sometimes as weak in morals as I was in religion. I remember stealing a piece of sugar. It was a long time ago – almost as long ago as anything I remember. We were still living in my grandfather's house when this dreadful thing happened, and I was only four or five years old when we moved from there. Before my mother figured this out for me I scarcely had the courage to confess my sin.

And it was thus: In a corner of a front room, by a window, stood a high chest of drawers. On top of the chest stood a tin box, decorated with figures of queer people with queer flat parasols; a Chinese tea-box, in a word. The box had a lid. The lid was shut tight. But I knew what was in that gorgeous box, and I coveted it. I was very little – I never could reach anything. There stood a chair suggestively near the chest. I pushed the chair a little and mounted it. By standing on tiptoe I could now reach the box. I opened it and took out an irregular lump of sparkling sugar. I stood on the chair admiring it. I stood too long. My grandmother came in – or was it Itke, the housemaid? – and found me with the stolen morsel.

I saw that I was fairly caught. How could I hope to escape my captor, when I was obliged to turn on my stomach in order to descend safely, thus presenting my jailer with the most tempting opportunity for immediate chastisement? I took in the situation before my grandmother had found her voice for horror. Did I rub my eyes with my knuckles and whimper? I wish I could report that I was thus instantly struck with a sense of my guilt. I was impressed only with the absolute certainty of my impending doom, and I promptly seized on a measure of compensation. While my captor – I really think it was a grandmother – rehearsed her entire vocabulary of reproach, from a distance sufficient to enable her to hurl her voice at me with the best effect, I stuffed the lump of sugar into my mouth and munched it as fast as I could. And I had eaten it all, and had licked my sticky lips, before the avenging rod came down.

I remember no similar lapses from righteousness, but I sinned in lesser ways more times than there are years in my life. I sinned, and more than once I escaped punishment by some trick or sly speech. I do not mean that I lied outright, though that also I did, sometimes; but I would twist my naughty speech, if forced to repeat it, in such an artful manner, or give such ludicrous explanation of my naughty act, that justice was overcome by laughter and threw me, as often as not, a handful of raisins instead of a knotted strap. If by such successes I was encouraged to cultivate my natural slyness and duplicity, I throw blame on my unwise preceptors, and am glad to be rid of the burden for once.

I have said that I used to lie. I recall no particular occasion when a lie was the cause of my disgrace; but I know that it was always my habit, when I had some trifling adventure to report, to garnish it up with so much detail and circumstance that nobody who had witnessed my small affair could have recognized it as the same, had I not insisted on my version with such fervid conviction. The truth is that everything that happened to me really loomed great and shone splendid in my eyes, and I could not, except by conscious effort, reduce my visions to their actual shapes and colors. If I saw a pair of geese leading about a lazy goose girl, they went through all sorts of antics before my eyes that fat geese are not known to indulge in. If I met poor Blind Munye with a frown on his face, I thought that a cloud of wrath overspread his countenance; and I ran home to relate, panting, how narrowly I had escaped his fury. I will not pretend that I was absolutely unconscious of my exaggerations; but if you insist, I will say that things as I reported them might have been so, and would have been much more interesting had they been so.

The noble reader who never told a lie, or never confessed one, will be shocked at these revelations of my childish depravity. What proof has he, he will cry, that I am not lying on every page of this chronicle, if, by my own confession, my childhood was spent in a maze of lies and dreams? I shall say to the saint, when I am challenged, that the proof of my conversion to veracity is engraven in his own soul. Do you not remember, you spotless one, how you used to steal and lie and cheat and rob? Oh, not with your own data:text/html;charset=utf-8,%3Ch3%20align%3D%22center%22%20style%3D%22color%3A%20rgb(0%2C%200%2C%200)%3B%20font-family%3A%20Time… 10/11 8/21/2015 The Promised Land. hand, of course! It was your remote ancestor who lived by plunder, and was honored for the blood upon his hairy hands. By and by he discovered that cunning was more effective than violence, and less troublesome. Still later he became convinced that the greatest cunning was virtue, and made him a moral code, and subdued the world. Then, when you came along, stumbling through the wilderness of cast-off errors, your wise ancestor gave you a thrust that landed you in the clearing of modernity, at the same time bellowing in your ear, "Now be good! It pays!"

This is the whole history of your saintliness. But all people do not take up life at the same point of human development. Some are backward at birth, and have to make up, in the brief space of their individual history, the stages they missed on their way out of the black past. With me, for example, it actually comes to this: that I have to recapitulate in my own experience all the slow steps of the progress of the race. I seem to learn nothing except by the prick of life on my own skin. I am saved from living in ignorance and dying in darkness only by the sensitiveness of my skin. Some men learn through borrowed experience. Shut them up in a glass tower, with an unobstructed view of the world, and they will go through every adventure of life by proxy, and be able to furnish you with a complete philosophy of life; and you may safely bring up your children by it. But I am not of that godlike organization. I am a thinking animal. Things are as important to me as ideas. I imbibe wisdom through every pore of my body. There are times, indeed, when the doctor in his study is less intelligible to me than a cricket far off in the field. The earth was my mother, the earth is my teacher. I am a dutiful pupil: I listen ever with my ear close to her lips. It seems to me I do not know a single thing that I did not learn, more or less directly, through the corporal senses. As long as I have my body, I need not despair of salvation.

data:text/html;charset=utf-8,%3Ch3%20align%3D%22center%22%20style%3D%22color%3A%20rgb(0%2C%200%2C%200)%3B%20font-family%3A%20Time… 11/11 8/21/2015 The Promised Land. CHAPTER XI

"MY COUNTRY"

THE public school has done its best for us foreigners, and for the country, when it has made us into good Americans. I am glad it is mine to tell how the miracle was wrought in one case. You should be glad to hear of it, you born Americans; for it is the story of the growth of your country; of the flocking of your brothers and sisters from the far ends of the earth to the flag you love; of the recruiting of your armies of workers, thinkers, and leaders. And you will be glad to hear of it, my comrades in adoption; for it is a rehearsal of your own experience, the thrill and wonder of which your own hearts have felt.

How long would you say, wise reader, it takes to make an American? By the middle of my second year in school I had reached the sixth grade. When, after the Christmas holidays, we began to study the life of Washington, running through a summary of the Revolution, and the early days of the Republic, it seemed to me that all my reading and study had been idle until then. The reader, the arithmetic, the song book, that had so fascinated me until now, became suddenly sober exercise books, tools wherewith to hew a way to the source of inspiration. When the teacher read to us out of a big book with many bookmarks in it, I sat rigid with attention in my little chair, my hands tightly clasped on the edge of my desk; and I painfully held my breath, to prevent sighs of disappointment escaping, as I saw the teacher skip the parts between bookmarks. When the class read, and it came my turn, my voice shook and the book trembled in my hands. I could not pronounce the name of George Washington without a pause. Never had I prayed, never had I chanted the songs of David, never had I called upon the Most Holy, in such utter reverence and worship as I repeated the simple sentences of my child's story of the patriot. I gazed with adoration at the portraits of George and Martha Washington, till I could see them with my eyes shut. And whereas formerly my self-consciousness had bordered on conceit, and I thought myself an uncommon person, parading my schoolbooks through the streets, and swelling with pride when a teacher detained me in conversation, now I grew humble all at once, seeing how insignificant I was beside the Great.

As I read about the noble boy who would not tell a lie to save himself from punishment, I was for the first time truly repentant of my sins. Formerly I had fasted and prayed and made sacrifice on the Day of Atonement, but it was more than half play, in mimicry of my elders. I had no real horror of sin, and I knew so many ways of escaping punishment. I am sure my family, my neighbors, my teachers in Polotzk – all my world, in fact – strove together, by example and precept, to teach me goodness. Saintliness had a new incarnation in about every third person I knew. I did respect the saints, but I could not help seeing that most of them were a little bit stupid, and that mischief was much more fun than piety. Goodness, as I had known it, was respectable, but not necessarily admirable. The people I really admired, like my Uncle Solomon, and Cousin Rachel, were those who preached the least and laughed the most. My sister Frieda was perfectly good, but she did not think the less of me because I played tricks. What I loved in my friends was not inimitable. One could be downright good if one really wanted to. One could be learned if one had books and teachers. One could sing funny songs and tell anecdotes if one travelled about and picked up such things, like one's uncles and cousins. But a human being strictly good, perfectly wise, and unfailingly valiant, all at the same time, I had never heard or dreamed of. This wonderful George Washington was as inimitable as he was irreproachable. Even if I had never, never told a lie, I could not compare myself to George Washington; for I was not brave – I was afraid to go out when snowballs whizzed – and I could never be the First President of the United States.

So I was forced to revise my own estimate of myself. But the twin of my new-born humility, paradoxical as it may seem, was a sense of dignity I had never known before. For if I found that I was a person of small consequence, I discovered at the same time that I was more nobly related than I had ever supposed. I had relatives and friends who were notable people by the old standards, – I had never been ashamed of data:text/html;charset=utf-8,%3Ch3%20align%3D%22center%22%20style%3D%22color%3A%20rgb(0%2C%200%2C%200)%3B%20font-family%3A%20Times%… 1/9 8/21/2015 The Promised Land. my family, – but this George Washington, who died long before I was born, was like a king in greatness, and he and I were Fellow Citizens. There was a great deal about Fellow Citizens in the patriotic literature we read at this time; and I knew from my father how he was a Citizen, through the process of naturalization, and how I also was a citizen by virtue of my relation to him. Undoubtedly I was a Fellow Citizen, and George Washington was another. It thrilled me to realize what sudden greatness had fallen on me; and at the same time it sobered me, as with a sense of responsibility. I strove to conduct myself as befitted a Fellow Citizen.

Before books came into my life, I was given to stargazing and daydreaming. When books were given me, I fell upon them as a glutton pounces on his meat after a period of enforced starvation. I lived with my nose in a book, and took no notice of the alternations of the sun and stars. But now, after the advent of George Washington and the American Revolution, I began to dream again. I strayed on the common after school instead of hurrying home to read. I hung on fence rails, my pet book forgotten under my arm, and gazed off to the yellow-streaked February sunset, and beyond, and beyond. I was no longer the central figure of my dreams; the dry weeds in the lane crackled beneath the tread of Heroes.

What more could America give a child? Ah, much more! As I read how the patriots planned the Revolution, and the women gave their sons to die in battle, and the heroes led to victory, and the rejoicing people set up the Republic, it dawned on me gradually what was meant by my country. The people all desiring noble things, and striving for them together, defying their oppressors, giving their lives for each other – all this it was that made my country. It was not a thing that I understood; I could not go home and tell Frieda about it, as I told her other things I learned at school. But I knew one could say "my country" and feel it, as one felt "God" or "myself." My teacher, my schoolmates, Miss Dillingham, George Washington himself could not mean more than I when they said "my country," after I had once felt it. For the Country was for all the Citizens, and I was a Citizen. And when we stood up to sing "America," I shouted the words with all my might. I was in very earnest proclaiming to the world my love for my new- found country.

"I love thy rocks and rills, Thy woods and templed hills."

Boston Harbor, Crescent Beach, Chelsea Square – all was hallowed ground to me. As the day approached when the school was to hold exercises in honor of Washington's Birthday, the halls resounded at all hours with the strains of patriotic songs; and I, who was a model of the attentive pupil, more than once lost my place in the lesson as I strained to hear, through closed doors, some neighboring class rehearsing "The Star-Spangled Banner." If the doors happened to be open, and the chorus broke out unveiled –

"O! say, does that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?" –

delicious tremors ran up and down my spine, and I was faint with suppressed enthusiasm.

Where had been my country until now? What flag had I loved? What heroes had I worshipped? The very names of these things had been unknown to me. Well I knew that Polotzk was not my country. It was goluth – exile. On many occasions in the year we prayed to God to lead us out of exile. The beautiful Passover service closed with the words, "Next year, may we be in Jerusalem." On childish lips, indeed, those words were no conscious aspiration; we repeated the Hebrew syllables after our elders, but without their hope and longing. Still not a child among us was too young to feel in his own flesh the lash of the oppressor. We knew what it was to be Jews in exile, from the spiteful treatment we suffered at the hands of the smallest urchin who crossed himself; and thence we knew that Israel had good reason to pray for deliverance. But the story of the Exodus was not history to me in the sense that the story of the American data:text/html;charset=utf-8,%3Ch3%20align%3D%22center%22%20style%3D%22color%3A%20rgb(0%2C%200%2C%200)%3B%20font-family%3A%20Times%… 2/9 8/21/2015 The Promised Land. Revolution was. It was more like a glorious myth, a belief in which had the effect of cutting me off from the actual world, by linking me with a world of phantoms. Those moments of exaltation which the contemplation of the Biblical past afforded us, allowing us to call ourselves the children of princes, served but to tinge with a more poignant sense of disinheritance the long humdrum stretches of our life. In very truth we were a people without a country. Surrounded by mocking foes and detractors, it was difficult for me to realize the persons of my people's heroes or the events in which they moved. Except in moments of abstraction from the world around me, I scarcely understood that Jerusalem was an actual spot on the earth, where once the Kings of the Bible, real people, like my neighbors in Polotzk, ruled in puissant majesty. For the conditions of our civil life did not permit us to cultivate a spirit of nationalism. The freedom of worship that was grudgingly granted within the narrow limits of the Pale by no means included the right to set up openly any ideal of a Hebrew State, any hero other than the Czar. What we children picked up of our ancient political history was confused with the miraculous story of the Creation, with the supernatural legends and hazy associations of Bible lore. As to our future, we Jews in Polotzk had no national expectations; only a life-worn dreamer here and there hoped to die in Palestine. If Fetchke and I sang, with my father, first making sure of our audience, "Zion, Zion, Holy Zion, not forever is it lost," we did not really picture to ourselves Judæa restored.

So it came to pass that we did not know what my country could mean to a man. And as we had no country, so we had no flag to love. It was by no far-fetched symbolism that the banner of the House of Romanoff became the emblem of our latter-day bondage in our eyes. Even a child would know how to hate the flag that we were forced, on pain of severe penalties, to hoist above our housetops, in celebration of the advent of one of our oppressors. And as it was with country and flag, so it was with heroes of war. We hated the uniform of the soldier, to the last brass button. On the person of a Gentile, it was the symbol of tyranny; on the person of a Jew, it was the emblem of shame.

So a little Jewish girl in Polotzk was apt to grow up hungry-minded and empty-hearted; and if, still in her outreaching youth, she was set down in a land of outspoken patriotism, she was likely to love her new country with a great love, and to embrace its heroes in a great worship. Naturalization, with us Russian Jews, may mean more than the adoption of the immigrant by America. It may mean the adoption of America by the immigrant.

On the day of the Washington celebration I recited a poem that I had composed in my enthusiasm. But "composed" is not the word. The process of putting on paper the sentiments that seethed in my soul was really very discomposing. I dug the words out of my heart, squeezed the rhymes out of my brain, forced the missing syllables out of their hiding-places in the dictionary. May I never again know such travail of the spirit as I endured during the fevered days when I was engaged on the poem. It was not as if I wanted to say that snow was white or grass was green. I could do that without a dictionary. It was a question now of the loftiest sentiments, of the most abstract truths, the names of which were very new in my vocabulary. It was necessary to use polysyllables, and plenty of them; and where to find rhymes for such words as "tyranny," "freedom," and "justice," when you had less than two years' acquaintance with English! The name I wished to celebrate was the most difficult of all. Nothing but "Washington" rhymed with "Washington." It was a most ambitious undertaking, but my heart could find no rest till it had proclaimed itself to the world; so I wrestled with my difficulties, and spared not ink, till inspiration perched on my penpoint, and my soul gave up its best.

When I had done, I was myself impressed with the length, gravity, and nobility of my poem. My father was overcome with emotion as he read it. His hands trembled as he held the paper to the light, and the mist gathered in his eyes. My teacher, Miss Dwight, was plainly astonished at my performance, and said many kind things, and asked many questions; all of which I took very solemnly, like one who had been in the clouds and returned to earth with a sign upon him. When Miss Dwight asked me to read my poem to the class on the day of celebration, I readily consented. It was not in me to refuse a chance to tell my data:text/html;charset=utf-8,%3Ch3%20align%3D%22center%22%20style%3D%22color%3A%20rgb(0%2C%200%2C%200)%3B%20font-family%3A%20Times%… 3/9 8/21/2015 The Promised Land. schoolmates what I thought of George Washington.

I was not a heroic figure when I stood up in front of the class to pronounce the praises of the Father of his Country. Thin, pale, and hollow, with a shadow of short black curls on my brow, and the staring look of prominent eyes, I must have looked more frightened than imposing. My dress added no grace to my appearance. "Plaids" were in fashion, and my frock was of a red-and-green "plaid" that had a ghastly effect on my complexion. I hated it when I thought of it, but on the great day I did not know I had any dress on. Heels clapped together, and hands glued to my sides, I lifted up my voice in praise of George Washington. It was not much of a voice; like my hollow cheeks, it suggested consumption. My pronunciation was faulty, my declamation flat. But I had the courage of my convictions. I was face to face with twoscore Fellow Citizens, in clean blouses and extra frills. I must tell them what George Washington had done for their country – for our country – for me.

I can laugh now at the impossible metres, the grandiose phrases, the verbose repetitions of my poem. Years ago I must have laughed at it, when I threw my only copy into the wastebasket. The copy I am now turning over was loaned me by Miss Dwight, who faithfully preserved it all these years, for the sake, no doubt, of what I strove to express when I laboriously hitched together those dozen and more ungraceful stanzas. But to the forty Fellow Citizens sitting in rows in front of me it was no laughing matter. Even the bad boys sat in attitudes of attention, hypnotized by the solemnity of my demeanor. If they got any inkling of what the hail of big words was about, it must have been through occult suggestion. I fixed their eighty eyes with my single stare, and gave it to them, stanza after stanza, with such emphasis as the lameness of the lines permitted.

He whose courage, will, amazing bravery, Did free his land from a despot's rule, From man's greatest evil, almost slavery, And all that's taught in tyranny's school,

TWOSCORE OF MY FELLOW-CITIZENS – PUBLIC SCHOOL, CHELSEA

Who gave his land its liberty, Who was he?

'T was he who e'er will be our pride, Immortal Washington, Who always did in truth confide. We hail our Washington! data:text/html;charset=utf-8,%3Ch3%20align%3D%22center%22%20style%3D%22color%3A%20rgb(0%2C%200%2C%200)%3B%20font-family%3A%20Times%… 4/9 8/21/2015 The Promised Land. The best of the verses were no better than these, but the children listened. They had to. Presently I gave them news, declaring that Washington

Wrote the famous Constitution; sacred's the hand That this blessed guide to man had given, which says, "One And all of mankind are alike, excepting none."

This was received in respectful silence, possibly because the other Fellow Citizens were as hazy about historical facts as I at this point. "Hurrah for Washington!" they understood, and "Three cheers for the Red, White, and Blue!" was only to be expected on that occasion. But there ran a special note through my poem – a thought that only Israel Rubinstein or Beckie Aronovitch could have fully understood, besides myself. For I made myself the spokesman of the "luckless sons of Abraham," saying –

Then we weary Hebrew children at last found rest In the land where reigned Freedom, and like a nest To homeless birds your land proved to us, and therefore Will we gratefully sing your praise evermore.

The boys and girls who had never been turned away from any door because of their father's religion sat as if fascinated in their places. But they woke up and applauded heartily when I was done, following the example of Miss Dwight, who wore the happy face which meant that one of her pupils had done well.

The recitation was repeated, by request, before several other classes, and the applause was equally prolonged at each repetition. After the exercises I was surrounded, praised, questioned, and made much of, by teachers as well as pupils. Plainly I had not poured my praise of George Washington into deaf ears. The teachers asked me if anybody had helped me with the poem. The girls invariably asked, "Mary Antin, how could you think of all those words?" None of them thought of the dictionary!

If I had been satisfied with my poem in the first place, the applause with which it was received by my teachers and schoolmates convinced me that I had produced a very fine thing indeed. So the person, whoever it was, – perhaps my father – who suggested that my tribute to Washington ought to be printed, did not find me difficult to persuade. When I had achieved an absolutely perfect copy of my verses, at the expense of a dozen sheets of blue-ruled note paper, I crossed the Mystic River to Boston and boldly invaded Newspaper row.

It never occurred to me to send my manuscript by mail. In fact, it has never been my way to send a delegate where I could go myself. Consciously or unconsciously, I have always acted on the motto of a wise man who was one of the dearest friends that Boston kept for me until I came. "Personal presence moves the world," said the great Dr. Hale; and I went in person to beard the editor in his armchair.

From the ferry slip to the offices of the "Boston Transcript" the way was long, strange, and full of perils; but I kept resolutely on up Hanover Street, being familiar with that part of my route, till I came to a puzzling corner. There I stopped, utterly bewildered by the tangle of streets, the roar of traffic, the giddy swarm of pedestrians. With the precious manuscript tightly clasped, I balanced myself on the curbstone, afraid to plunge into the boiling vortex of the crossing. Every time I made a start, a clanging street car snatched up the way. I could not even pick out my street; the unobtrusive street signs were lost to my unpractised sight, in the glaring confusion of store signs and advertisements. If I accosted a pedestrian to ask the way, I had to speak several times before I was heard. Jews, hurrying by with bearded chins on their bosoms and eyes intent, shrugged their shoulders at the name "Transcript," and shrugged till they were out of sight. Italians sauntering behind their fruit carts answered my inquiry with a lift of the head that made their earrings gleam, and a wave of the hand that referred me to all four points of the compass at once. I was trying to catch the eye of the tall policeman who stood grandly in the middle of the data:text/html;charset=utf-8,%3Ch3%20align%3D%22center%22%20style%3D%22color%3A%20rgb(0%2C%200%2C%200)%3B%20font-family%3A%20Times%… 5/9 8/21/2015 The Promised Land. crossing, a stout pillar around which the waves of traffic broke, when deliverance bellowed in my ear.

"Herald, Globe, Record, Tra-avel-er! Eh? Whatcher want, sis?" The tall newsboy had to stoop to me. "Transcript? Sure!" And in half a twinkling he had picked me out a paper from his bundle. When I explained to him, he good-naturedly tucked the paper in again, piloted me across, unravelled the end of Washington Street for me, and with much pointing out of landmarks, headed me for my destination, my nose seeking the spire of the Old South Church.

I found the "Transcript" building a waste of corridors tunnelled by a maze of staircases. On the glazed- glass doors were many signs with the names or nicknames of many persons: "City Editor"; "Beggars and Peddlers not Allowed." The nameless world not included in these categories was warned off, forbidden to be or do: "Private – No Admittance"; "Don't Knock." And the various inhospitable legends on the doors and walls were punctuated by frequent cuspidors on the floors. There was no sign anywhere of the welcome which I, as an author, expected to find in the home of a newspaper.

I was descending from the top story to the street for the seventh time, trying to decide what kind of editor a patriotic poem belonged to, when an untidy boy carrying broad paper streamers and whistling shrilly, in defiance of an express prohibition on the wall, bustled through the corridor and left a door ajar. I slipped in behind him, and found myself in a room full of editors.

I was a little surprised at the appearance of the editors. I had imagined my editor would look like Mr. Jones, the principal of my school, whose coat was always buttoned, and whose finger nails were beautiful. These people were in shirt sleeves, and they smoked, and they didn't politely turn in their revolving chairs when I came in, and ask, "What can I do for you?"

The room was noisy with typewriters, and nobody heard my "Please, can you tell me." At last one of the machines stopped, and the operator thought he heard something in the pause. He looked up through his own smoke. I guess he thought he saw something, for he stared. It troubled me a little to have him stare so. I realized suddenly that the hand in which I carried my manuscript was moist, and I was afraid it would make marks on the paper. I held out the manuscript to the editor, explaining that it was a poem about George Washington, and would he please print it in the "Transcript."

There was something queer about that particular editor. The way he stared and smiled made me feel about eleven inches high, and my voice kept growing smaller and smaller as I neared the end of my speech.

At last he spoke, laying down his pipe, and sitting back at his ease.

"So you have brought us a poem, my child?"

"It's about George Washington," I repeated impressively. "Don't you want to read it?"

"I should be delighted, my dear, but the fact is –"

He did not take my paper. He stood up and called across the room.

"Say, Jack! Here is a young lady who has brought us a poem – about George Washington. – Wrote it yourself, my dear? – Wrote it all herself. What shall we do with her?"

Mr. Jack came over, and another man. My editor made me repeat my business, and they all looked interested, but nobody took my paper from me. They put their hands into their pockets, and my hand kept growing clammier all the time. The three seemed to be consulting, but I could not understand what they said, or why Mr. Jack laughed. data:text/html;charset=utf-8,%3Ch3%20align%3D%22center%22%20style%3D%22color%3A%20rgb(0%2C%200%2C%200)%3B%20font-family%3A%20Times%… 6/9 8/21/2015 The Promised Land. A fourth man, who had been writing busily at a desk near by, broke in on the consultation.

"That's enough, boys," he said, "that's enough. Take the young lady to Mr. Hurd."

Mr. Hurd, it was found, was away on a vacation, and of several other editors in several offices, to whom I was referred, none proved to be the proper editor to take charge of a poem about George Washington. At last an elderly editor suggested that as Mr. Hurd would be away for some time, I would do well to give up the "Transcript" and try the "Herald," across the way.

A little tired by my wanderings, and bewildered by the complexity of the editorial system, but still confident about my mission, I picked my way across Washington Street and found the "Herald" offices. Here I had instant good luck. The first editor I addressed took my paper and invited me to a seat. He read my poem much more quickly than I could myself, and said it was very nice, and asked me some questions, and made notes on a slip of paper which he pinned to my manuscript. He said he would have my piece printed very soon, and would send me a copy of the issue in which it appeared. As I was going, I could not help giving the editor my hand, although I had not experienced any handshaking in Newspaper Row. I felt that as author and editor we were on a very pleasant footing, and I gave him my hand in token of comradeship.

I had regained my full stature and something over, during this cordial interview, and when I stepped out into the street and saw the crowd intently studying the bulletin board I swelled out of all proportion. For I told myself that I, Mary Antin, was one of the inspired brotherhood who made newspapers so interesting. I did not know whether my poem would be put upon the bulletin board; but at any rate, it would be in the paper, with my name at the bottom, like my story about "Snow" in Miss Dillingham's school journal. And all these people in the streets, and more, thousands of people – all Boston! – would read my poem, and learn my name, and wonder who I was. I smiled to myself in delicious amusement when a man deliberately put me out of his path, as I dreamed my way through the jostling crowd; if he only knewwhom he was treating so unceremoniously!

When the paper with my poem in it arrived, the whole house pounced upon it at once. I was surprised to find that my verses were not all over the front page. The poem was a little hard to find, if anything, being tucked away in the middle of the voluminous sheet. But when we found it, it looked wonderful, just like real poetry, not at all as if somebody we knew had written it. It occupied a gratifying amount of space, and was introduced by a flattering biographical sketch of the author – the author! – the material for which the friendly editor had artfully drawn from me during that happy interview. And my name, as I had prophesied, was at the bottom!

When the excitement in the house had subsided, my father took all the change out of the cash drawer and went to buy up the "Herald." He did not count the pennies. He just bought "Heralds," all he could lay his hands on, and distributed them gratis to all our friends, relatives, and acquaintances; to all who could read, and to some who could not. For weeks he carried a clipping from the "Herald" in his breast pocket, and few were the occasions when he did not manage to introduce it into the conversation. He treasured that clipping as for years he had treasured the letters I wrote him from Polotzk.

Although my father bought up most of the issue containing my poem, a few hundred copies were left to circulate among the general public, enough to spread the flame of my patriotic ardor and to enkindle a thousand sluggish hearts. Really, there was something more solemn than vanity in my satisfaction. Pleased as I was with my notoriety – and nobody but I knew how exceedingly pleased – I had a sober feeling about it all. I enjoyed being praised and admired and envied; but what gave a divine flavor to my happiness was the idea that I had publicly borne testimony to the goodness of my exalted hero, to the greatness of my adopted country. I did not discount the homage of Arlington Street, because I did not data:text/html;charset=utf-8,%3Ch3%20align%3D%22center%22%20style%3D%22color%3A%20rgb(0%2C%200%2C%200)%3B%20font-family%3A%20Times%… 7/9 8/21/2015 The Promised Land. properly rate the intelligence of its population. I took the admiration of my schoolmates without a grain of salt; it was just so much honey to me. I could not know that what made me great in the eyes of my neighbors was that "there was a piece about me in the paper"; it mattered very little to them what the "piece" was about. I thought they really admired my sentiments. On the street, in the schoolyard, I was pointed out. The people said, "That's Mary Antin. She had her name in the paper." I thought they said, "This is she who loves her country and worships George Washington."

To repeat, I was well aware that I was something of a celebrity, and took all possible satisfaction in the fact; yet I gave my schoolmates no occasion to call me "stuck-up." My vanity did not express itself in strutting or wagging the head. I played tag and puss-in-the-corner in the schoolyard, and did everything that was comrade-like. But in the schoolroom I conducted myself gravely, as befitted one who was preparing for the noble career of a poet.

I am forgetting Lizzie McDee. I am trying to give the impression that I behaved with at least outward modesty during my schoolgirl triumphs, whereas Lizzie could testify that she knew Mary Antin as a vain boastful, curly-headed little Jew. For I had a special style of deportment for Lizzie. If there was any girl in the school besides me who could keep near the top of the class all the year through, and give bright answers when the principal or the school committee popped sudden questions, and write rhymes that almost always rhymed, I was determined that that ambitious person should not soar unduly in her own estimation. So I took care to show Lizzie all my poetry, and when she showed me hers I did not admire it too warmly. Lizzie, as I have already said, was in a Sunday-school mood even on week days; her verses all had morals. My poems were about the crystal snow, and the ocean blue, and sweet spring, and fleecy clouds; when I tried to drag in a moral it kicked so that the music of my lines went out in a groan. So I had a sweet revenge when Lizzie, one day, volunteered to bolster up the eloquence of Mr. Jones, the principal, who was lecturing the class for bad behavior, by comparing the bad boy in the schoolroom to the rotten apple that spoils the barrelful. The groans, coughs, a-hem's, feet shufflings, and paper pellets that filled the room as Saint Elizabeth sat down, even in the principal's presence, were sweet balm to my smart of envy; I did n't care if I did n't know how to moralize.

When my teacher had visitors I was aware that I was the show pupil of the class. I was always made to recite, my compositions were passed around, and often I was called up on the platform – oh, climax of exaltation! – to be interviewed by the distinguished strangers; while the class took advantage of the teacher's distraction, to hold forbidden intercourse on matters not prescribed in the curriculum. When I returned to my seat, after such public audience with the great, I looked to see if Lizzie McDee was taking notice; and Lizzie, who was a generous soul, her Sunday-school airs notwithstanding, generally smiled, and I forgave her her rhymes.

Not but what I paid a price for my honors. With all my self-possession I had a certain capacity for shyness. Even when I arose to recite before the customary audience of my class I suffered from incipient stage fright, and my voice trembled over the first few words. When visitors were in the room I was even more troubled; and when I was made the special object of their attention my triumph was marred by acute distress. If I was called up to speak to the visitors, forty pairs of eyes pricked me in the back as I went. I stumbled in the aisle, and knocked down things that were not at all in my way; and my awkwardness increasing my embarrassment I would gladly have changed places with Lizzie or the bad boy in the back row; anything, only to be less conspicuous. When I found myself shaking hands with an august School- Committeeman, or a teacher from New York, the remnants of my self-possession vanished in awe; and it was in a very husky voice that I repeated, as I was asked, my name, lineage, and personal history. On the whole, I do not think that the School-Committeeman found a very forward creature in the solemn-faced little girl with the tight curls and the terrible red-and-green "plaid."

These awful audiences did not always end with the handshaking. Sometimes the great personages asked data:text/html;charset=utf-8,%3Ch3%20align%3D%22center%22%20style%3D%22color%3A%20rgb(0%2C%200%2C%200)%3B%20font-family%3A%20Times%… 8/9 8/21/2015 The Promised Land. me to write to them, and exchanged addresses with me. Some of these correspondences continued through years, and were the source of much pleasure, on one side at least. And Arlington Street took notice when I received letters with important-looking or aristocratic-looking letterheads. Lizzie McDee also took notice. I saw to that.

data:text/html;charset=utf-8,%3Ch3%20align%3D%22center%22%20style%3D%22color%3A%20rgb(0%2C%200%2C%200)%3B%20font-family%3A%20Times%… 9/9

The Phyllis Schlafly Reporf

VOL. 15, NO. 4, SECTION 2 BOX 6 18, ALTON, ILLINOIS 62002 NOVEMBER, 1981 How ERA Would Change Federal Laws Proponents of the Equal Rights Amendment often argue, unacceptable to Americans. Sex Bias convicts the ERAers out "We need ERA because 800 Federal laws discriminate on of their own mouths. In the view of the authors, all the pro- account of sex." This report examines those 800 laws and how posed changes listed in Sex Bias are needed in order to achieve ERA would c%ange them. It reveals how our nation would be "the equality principle" of ERA. dramatically changed if ERA ever became part of the U.S. An old adage warns, "Would that mine enemy had Constitution. written a book." Well, the top ERA lawyers wrote one, and The source of the "800 laws" argument is a 230-page they've provided a powerful weapon against ERA. Here is a book entitled Sex Bias in the U.S. Code: A Report of the U.S. summary of the changes demanded by the book Sex Bias in Commission on Civil Rights published in April 1977. The U.S. the U.S. Code. All quotations below are directly from the book Commission on Civil Rights is a Federal agency established by and are identified by page numbers. Congress to investigate and study discrimination and make reports to Congress. ERA Changes in Employment Sex Bias in the U.S. Code was actually written by Ruth The box below shows what changes ERA will bring in Bader Ginsburg and Brenda Feigen-Fasteau (who were paid employment. with tax funds under Contract No. CR3AKO10). Ginsburg is one of the two most widely quoted pro-ERA lawyers. Her name appears as one of the feminist lawyers in most of the gender cases that have reached the Supreme Court in the last decade. At the time Sex Bias was written, she was a professor of law at Columbia Law School and used the assistance of 15 right, Sex Bias in the U.S. Code proves ~olumbia~aw School students. In 19803 President Jimmy that ERA will do absolutely nothing in employment! Sew Bias Carter appointed Ginsburg to the second highest court in Our in the U.S. Code explodes all the phony arguments made by country, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Col- the ERAers about the job discrimination and ed59Q.m umbia. Feigen-Fasteau was a director of the Women's Rights Sex Bias tries to claim that two Federal laws discriminate Project for the American Civil Liberties Union, and has ap- on sex in employment - and both claims are completely false. peared in TV network and other debates on ERA with Phyllis Sex Bias falsely claims that there is a differential in Schlafly. 41 U.S.C. #35 setting a minimum age of 16 for boys and 18 for Thus, Sex Bias in the Code is a good index to what girls employed by public contractors." (p. 217) The fact is that ERA do It was written the two ERA activist the age was equalized for boys and in 1968, Sex Bias female lawyers, it was published the U.S. Commission On falsely claims that women are prohibited from working in coal Civil Rights, and it was funded the Government mines (p 217) The fact is that more than 3,000 women are during the Carter Administration. coal miners today. Sex Bias in the U.S. Code was written and published in order to identify all the Federal laws that discriminate against ERA Changes in the Military women, and to recommend the specific changes demanded by 1. Women must be drafted when men are drafted. the women's lib movement in order to eliminate "sex bias" supporters of the equal rights principle firmly reject draft or and to onform to ''the equality principle'' of ERA. (p. 10) Sex exemption for as Congress did when it re- Bias in the US. Code makes it clear that, if ERA were ever fused to qualify the Equal Rights Amendment by incorpo- added to the Constitution, ERA would accomplish all these rating any military service exemption The equal rights changes in one stroke. Sex Bias in the U.S. Code also makes it principle implies that must be subject to the draft if clear that ERA activists are trying to accomplish the same men are, that military assignments must be .made on the basis results by changing Federal statutes. The ERAers are con- of individual capacity rather than sex." (p. 218) stantly pressuring the President and Congress to eliminate all the laws that discriminate on account of sex. "Equal rights and responsibilities for men and women implies Sex Bias in the U.S. Code is, therefore, a handbook to that women must be subject to draft registration if men are. prove what the ERA will do and what the ERAers want. The Congressional debate on the Equal Rights Amendment points book proves that the legal consequences of ERA and the social clearly to an understanding of this effect on the Amendment." and political goals of the ERAers are radical, irrational, and (p. 202) PDF processed with CutePDF evaluation edition www.CutePDF.com 2. Women must be assigned to military combat duty. 5. No-fault divorce must be adopted nationally. "Until the combat exclusion for women is eliminated, women "Consideration should be given to revision of 38 U.S.C. #lo1 who choose to pursue a career in the military will continue to (3) to reflect the trend toward no-fault divorce." (p. 159) be held back by restrictions unrelated to their individual "Retention of a fault concept in provisions referring to sepa- abilities. Implementation of the equal rights principle requires ration ... is questionable in light of the trend away from fault a unitary system of appointment, assignment, promotion, determinations in the dissolution of marriages." (pp. 214-215) discharge, and retirement, a system that cannot be founded on a combat exclusion for women." (p. 26) 6. The government must provide "paternity" leave for childrearing as well as maternity leave. 3. Affirmative action must be applied to equalize the number of men and women in the armed services. "A provision of Title 20 (#904) authorizes 'maternity' leave. To the extent. that leave is authorized for childrearing as dis- "The need for affirmative action and for transition measures tinguished from childbearing, fathers as well as mothers is particularly strong in the uniformed services." (p. 218) should be eligible." (p. 213) 4. We must recruit an equal number of women into the "In government schools overseas, leave may be taken by a military academies. teacher for ... 'maternity' purposes. ... Both male and female teachers may wish to take 'parental' leave to care for their "Because entrance to the academies enables a person to obtain infant children, and there is no justification for limiting such the education necessary for officer status and advancement leave to female teachers." (pp. 106-107) opportunities, the equal rights principle mandates equal access to the academies." (p. 27) 7. The role of motherhood must be restricted to the very ERA Changes in the Family few months in which a woman is pregnant and nursing her baby. Mothers are not entitled to any special benefits 1. The traditional family concept of husband as bread- or protections for motherhood responsibilities beyond winner and wife as homemaker must be eliminated. that. "Congress and the President should direct their attention to "The references are to 'maternal' health or welfare and the concept that pervades the Code: that the adult world is 'mothers.' Those terms would be appropriately descriptive (and should be) divided into two classes - independent men, only if the programs involved were confined to care for whose primary responsibility is to win bread for a family and pregnant women and lactating mothers." (p. 212) dependent women, whose primary responsibility is to care for children and household. This concept must be eliminated 8. The law must not assume that a woman takes her from the code if it is to reflect the equality principle." (p. 206) husband's name upon remarriage. "It is a prime recommendation of this report that all legislation "38 U.S.C. #3020 prohibits delivery of benefit checks to based on the breadwinning, husband - dependent, home- 'widows' [of veterans] whom the postal employee believes to making wife pattern be recast using precise functional de- have remarried, 'unless the mail is addressed to such widow in scription in lieu of gross gender classification." (p. 212) the name she has acquired by her remarriage.' As written, the "A scheme built upon the breadwinning husband [and] de- provision implies that women automatically acquire a new pendent homemaking wife concept inevitably treats the name upon remarriage, an implication inconsistent with woman's efforts or aspirations in the economic sector as less current law and the equality principle." (p. 156) important than the man's." (p. 209) ERA Changes in Moral Standards 2. The Federal Government must provide comprehensive 1. The age of consent for sexual acts must be reduced to 12 government child-care. years old. "The increasingly common two-earner family pattern should "Eliminate the phrase 'carnal knowledge of any female, not impel development of a comprehensive program of his wife who has not attained the age of 16 years' and sub- government-supported child care." (p. 214) stitute a Federal, sex-neutral definition of the offense ... : A person is guilty of an offense if he engages in a sexual act with 3. The right to determine the family residence must be another person, not his spouse, and ... the other person is, in taken away from the husband. fact, less than 12 years old." (p. 102) "Title 43 provisions on homestead rights of married couples 2. Bigamists must have special privileges that other felons are premised on the assumption that a husband is authorized don't have. to determine the family's residence. This 'husband's prerog- ative' is obsolete." (p. 214) "This section restricts certain rights, including the right to vote or hold office, of bigamists, persons 'cohabiting with more 4. Homestead law must give twice as much benefit to a than one woman,' and women cohabiting with a bigamist. married couple who live separate and apart from each Apart from the male/female differentials, the provision is of other as to a husband and wife who live together. questionable constitutionality since it appears to encroach impermissibly upon private relationships." (pp. 195-196) "Married couples who choose to live together would be able to enter upon only one tract at a time." (p. 175) 3. Prostitution must be legalized; it is not sufficient to "Couples willing to live apart could make entry on two tracts." change the law to sex-neutral language. (P 176) "Prostitution proscriptions are subject to several constitutional and policy objections. Prostitution, as a consensual act between without wives to the 'forepart' of the vessel, and segregates adults, is arguably within the zone of privacy protected by unmarried females in a separate and closed compartment. 46 recent constitutional decisions." (p. 97) U.S.C. #I53 requires provision of a bathroom for every 100 male passengers for their exclusive use and one for every 50 "Retaining prostitution business as a crime in a criminal code female passengers for the exclusive use of females and young is open to debate. Reliable studies indicate that prostitution is children." (p. 190) not a major factor in the spread of venereal disease, and that prostitution plays a small and declining role in organized "46 U.S.C. #I52 might be changed to allow double occupancy crime operations." (p. 99) by two 'consenting adults.' ... Requirements for separate bathroom facilities stipulated in Section 153 should be re- "Current provisions dealing with statutory rape, rape, and tained but equalized so that the ratio of persons to facility is prostitution are discriminatory on their face. ... There is a not sex-determined." (p. 192) growing national movement recommending unqualified de- criminalization [of prostitution and the prostitution business] as sound policy, implementing equal rights and individual ERA Changes- in Education privacy principles." (pp. 215-216) 1. Single-sex schools and colleges, and single-sex school and college activities must be sex-integrated. 4. The Mann Act must be repealed; women should not be "The equal rights principle looks toward a world in which protected from "bad men. men and women function as full and equal partners, with "The Mann Act ... prohibits the transportation of women and artificial barriers removed and opportunity unaffected by a girls for prostitution, debauchery, or any other immoral pur- person's gender. Preparation for such a world requires elim- pose. This language, which is not confined to illegal acts but ination of sex separation in all public institutions where edu- encompasses 'immora1'~conductas well, appears too broad and cation and training occur." (p. 101) vague to the point where fair notice of the activity proscribed 2. All-boys' and all-girls' organizations must be sex- is hardly supplied. ... The act poses the invasion of privacy integrated because separate-but-equal organizations issue in an acute form. The Mann Act also is offensive because perpetuate stereotyped sex roles. of the image of women it perpetuates. ... It was meant to protect from 'the villainous interstate and international traffic "Societies established by Congress to aid and educate young in women and girls,' 'those women and girls who, if given a people on their way to adulthood should be geared toward a fair chance, would, in all human probability, have been good world in which equal opportunity for men and women is a wives and mothers and useful citizens. ... As the courts con- fundamental principle. In some cases, separate clubs under sistently proclaimed, the act was meant to protect weak one umbrella unit might be a suitable solution, at least for a women from bad men." (pp. 98-9) transition period. In other cases, the educational purpose would be served best by immediately extending membership 5. Rape laws must be rewritten in sex-neutral language. to both sexes in a single organization." (pp. 219-220) "A sex-neutral definition of rape ... should be added to Title 18 3. Fraternities and sororities must be sex-integrated. or Title 10 and referred to throughout for the definition of the "Replace college fraternity and sorority chapters with 'social offense." (p. 103) societies.' " (p. 169) "Current provisions dealing with statutory rape, rape, and 4. The Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, and other prostitution are discriminatory on their face." (p. 215) congressionally-chartered youth organizations, must change their names and their purposes and become 6. Prisons and reformatories must be sex-integrated. sex-integrated. "If the grand design of such institutions is to prepare inmates "Six organizations, which restrict membership to one sex, for return to the community as persons equipped to benefit furnish educational, financial, social and other assistance to from and contribute to civil society, then perpetuation of their young members. These include the Boy Scouts (36 U.S.C. single-sex institutions should be rejected. ... 18 U.S.C. #4082, ##21-29), the Girl Scouts (36 U.S.C. ##31-34,36,39), Future ordering the Attorney General to commit convicted offenders Farmers of America ..., Boys' Clubs of America ..., Big to 'available suitable, and appropriate' institutions, is not sex Brothers of America ..., and the Naval Sea Cadets Corp. ... The discriminatory on its face. It should not be applied, as it now Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, while ostensibly providing is, to permit consideration of a person's gender as a factor 'separate but equal' benefits to both sexes, perpetuate stereo- making a particular institution appropriate or suitable for that typed sex roles to the extent that they carry out person." (p. 101) congressionally-mandated purposes. 36 U.S.C. #23 defines the purpose of the Boy Scouts as the promotion of '...the ability of "Change the name and eliminate the single sex character of boys to do things for themselves and others, to train them in the National Training School for Boys. ... Change the name scoutcraft, and to teach them patriotism, courage, self- and eliminate the single sex character of the Federal Refor- reliance, and kindred virtues. ...' The purpose of the Girl matory for Women as part of the larger reorganization of the Scouts, on the other hand, is '...to promote the qualities of Federal correctional system necessitated by the equal rights truth, loyalty, helpfulness, friendliness, courtesy, purity, principle. " (p. 103) kindness, obedience, cheerfulness, thriftiness, and kindred virtues among girls, as a preparation for their responsibilities 7. In the merchant marine, provisions for passenger in the home and for service to the community....' (36 U.S.C. accommodations must be sex-neutralized, and women #33.)" (pp. 145-146) may not have more bathrooms than men. "Organizations that bestow material benefits on their mem- "46 U.S.C. #I52 establishes different regulations for male and bers should consider a name change to reflect extension of female occupancy of double berths, confines male passengers membership to both sexes ... [and] should be revised to con- form to these changes. Congress should refuse to create such "A further unwarranted male reference ... regulates use sex-segregated organizations in the future. ... Review of the of the 'Johnny Horizon' anti-litter symbol. ... This sex purposes and activities of all these clubs should be undertaken stereotype of the outdoorsperson and protector of the to determine whether they perpetuate sex-role stereotypes." environment should be supplemented with a female (pp. 147-148) figure promoting the same values. The two figures should 5. The 4-H Boys and Girls Clubs must be sex-integrated into be depicted as persons of equal strength of character, 4-H Youth Clubs. displaying equal familiarity and concern with the terrain "Change in the proper name '4-H Boys and Girls Clubs' should of our country." (p. 100) reflect consolidation of the clubs to eliminate sex segregation, 3. On the other hand, Sex Bias shows its hypocrisy by e.g., '4-H-Youth Clubs.'" (p. 138) demanding that the "Women's Bureau" in the U.S. Depart- 6. Men and women should be required to salute the flag in ment of Labor be continued. Although the authors admit that the same way. this is "inappropriate," (it is obviously sex discriminatory), "Differences [between men and women] in the authorized they simply demand it anyway. method of saluting the flag should be eliminated in 36 U.S.C. "The Women's Bureau is ... a necessary and proper office #177." (p. 148) for service during a transition period until the equal rights ~rincipleis realized." (p. 221) ERA Changes in Social Security What Sex Bias Proves The Social Security section in Sex Bias in the U.S. Code is hopelessly out of date. It has been obsoleted by Supreme A fundamental error in Sex Bias is its statement that "The Court decisions and statutory changes by Congress. There is Constitution, which provides the framework for the American no sex discrimination in Social Security today. The working legal system, was drafted using the generic term "man." (p. 2) woman receives the same benefit as the working man. The The authors apparently didn't bother to read the U.S. Con- dependent-husband receives the same benefit as the stitution. If they had, they would have found that the word dependent-wife. ERA should have no effect on Social Secu- "man" does not appear in it (except in a no-longer-operative rity. section of the 14th Amendment, which is not in effect now and was not in effect when the Constitution was "drafted"). ERA Changes in Language The U.S. Constitution is the most beautiful sex-neutral docu- 1. The overwhelming majority of the 800 Federal laws ment. It exclusively uses sex-neutral words such as person, that allegedly "discriminate" on account of sex merely involve citizen, resident, inhabitant, President, Vice-President, Sena- the use of so-called "sexist" words which the ERAers are tor, Representative, elector, Ambassador, and minister, so that trying to censor out of the English language. About 750 out of women enjoy every constitutional right that men enjoy - and the 800 changes in Federal laws demanded by the ERAers are always have. ridiculous semantic changes. Here is a partial list of the spe- Out of the "800 laws" that allegedly discriminate on cific words which Sex Bias in the U.S. Code wants censored account of sex, a half dozen changes might be worth making. out of the Federal laws. "The following is a list of specific Sex Bias' most constructive proposal is to extend Secret Service recommended word changes:" (pp. 15-16, 52-53) protection to the widower of a future female President just Words To Be Removed Words To Be Substituted like the protection now given to the widows of our male Presidents. (p. 99) But for that, we hardly need a constitutional manmade artificial amendment or a radical revision of Federal laws! man, woman person, human Sex Bias in the U.S. Code is devastating to the ERA mankind humanity cause. It proves that the "equality principle" of the Equal manpower human resources Rights Amendment will bring about more extremist results husband, wife spouse than anyone has yet imagined. Sex Bias proves that ERA is mother, father parent extremist in its anti-family objectives and extremist in its sister, brother sibling trivial nonsense. Sex Bias proves that ERA is extremist in its entryman enterer assault on our moral standards and extremist in its attack on serviceman servicemember the combat-effectiveness of our armed services. midshipman midshipperson Above all, Sex Bias proves how the leading lawyers of the longshoremen stevedores ERA movement intend to use the "equality principle" of ERA chairman chairperson, the chair to bring about vast changes in our legal, political, social, and postmaster postoffice director educational structures - and that they are working hard with plainclothesman plainsclothesperson our tax dollars to do it either by constitutional mandate or by watchman watchperson legislative changes or by judicial activism. 1'ineman line installer, line maintainer Finally, Sex Bias in the U.S. Code proves conclusively newsboy newscarrier that (a) there are NO laws that discriminate against women, businessman businessperson and that (b) all claims that ERA will help women in regard to salesman salesperson jobs or employment are false and fraudulent. duties of seamanship nautical or seafaring duties "to man" (a vessel) to staff The Phyllis Schlafly Report she, her (reference to ship) it, its Box 618, Alton, Illinois 62002 he or she he/she ISSN0556-0152 her or him her/him Published monthly by The Eagle Trust Fund, Box 618, Alton, hers or his hers/his Illinois 62002. 2. In another piece of nonsense, Sex Bias demands that Second Class Postage Paid at Alton, Illinois. Subscription Price: $10 per year. Extra copies available: 25 Congress create a female anti-litter symbol to match "Johnny cents each; 6 copies $1; 50 copies $5; 100 copies $8. Horizon." The Civil Constitution of the Clergy, July 12, 1790

J.H. Robinson, ed., Readings in European History 2 vols. (Boston: Ginn, 1906), 2: 423-427

Hanover Historical Texts Project Scanned by Brooke Harris, October 1996. Proofread by Angela Rubenstein, February 1997. Proofread and pages added by Jonathan Perry, March 2001.

Robinson's Note: The reorganization of the Church which followed upon the confiscation of its vast possessions is an excellent illustration of the spirit of the National Assembly The demand for complete uniformity and simplification is especially pronounced in the reform of this most venerable institution of France, the anomalies and intricacies of which were hallowed not only by age but by religious reverence. The chief articles are given below, and indicate how completely the Assembly desired to bring the Church under rules similar to those which they were drawing up for the state.

The National Assembly, after having heard the report of the ecclesiastical committee, has decreed and do decree the following as constitutional articles:

Title I

ARTICLE I. Each department shall form a single diocese, and each diocese shall have the same extent and the same limits as the department.

II. The seat of the bishoprics of the eighty-three departments of the kingdom shall be established as follows: that of the department of the Lower Seine at Rouen; that of the department of Calvados at Bayeux.

All other bishoprics in the eighty-three departments of the kingdom, which are not included by name in the present article, are, and forever shall be, abolished.

The kingdom shall be divided into ten metropolitan districts of which the sees shall be situated at Rouen, Rheims, Besancon, Rennes, Paris, Bourges, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Aix, and Lyons. These archbishoprics shall have the following denominations : that of Rouen shall be called the Archbishopric of the Coast of the Channel. IV. No church or parish of France nor any French citizen may acknowledge upon any occasion, or upon any pretext whatsoever, the authority of an ordinary bishop or of an archbishop whose see shall be under the supremacy of a foreign power, nor that of his representatives residing in France or elsewhere; without prejudice, however, to the unity of the faith and the intercourse which shall be maintained with the visible head of the universal Church, as hereafter provided.

VI. A new arrangement and division of all the parishes of the kingdom shall be undertaken immediately in concert with the bishop and the district administration.

XX. All titles and offices other than those mentioned in the present constitution, dignities, canonries, prebends, half prebends, chapels, chaplainships, both in cathedral and col legiate churches, all regular and secular chapters for either sex, abbacies and priorships, both regular and in commendam, for either sex, as well as all other benefices and prestimonies in general, of whatever kind or denomination, are from the day of this decree extinguished and abolished and shall never be reestablished in any form.

Title II

ARTICLE I. Beginning with the day of publication of the present decree, there shall be but one mode of choosing bishops and parish priests, namely that of election.

II. All elections shall be by ballot and shall be decided by the absolute majority of the votes.

III. The election of bishops shall take place according to the forms and by the electoral body designated in the decree of December 22, 1789, for the election of members of the departmental assembly.

VI. The election of a bishop can only take place or be undertaken upon Sunday, in the principal church of the chief town of the department, at the close of the parish mass, at which all the electors are required to be present.

VII. In order to be eligible to a bishopric, one must have fulfilled for fifteen years at least the duties of the church ministry in the diocese, as a parish priest, officiating minister, or curate, or as superior, or as directing vicar of the seminary.

XIX. The new bishop may not apply to the pope for any form of confirmation, but shall write to him, as to the visible head of the universal Church, as a testimony to the unity of faith and communion maintained with him.

XXI. Before the ceremony of consecration begins, the bishop elect shall take a solemn oath, in the presence of the municipal officers, of the people, and of the clergy, to guard with care the faithful of his diocese who are confided to him, to be loyal to the nation, the law, and the king, and to support with all his power the constitution decreed by the National Assembly and accepted by the king. XXV. The election of the parish priests shall take place according to the forms and by the electors designated in the decree of December 22, 1789, for the election of members of the administrative assembly of the district.

XI. Bishoprics and cures shall be looked upon as vacant until those elected to fill them shall have taken the oath above mentioned.

Title III I

ARTICLE I. The ministers of religion, performing as they do the first and most important functions of society and forced to live continuously in the place where they discharge the offices to which they have been called by the confidence of the people, shall be supported by the nation.

II. Every bishop, priest, and officiating clergyman in a chapel of ease shall be furnished with a suitable dwelling, on condition, however, that the occupant shall make all the necessary current repairs. This shall not affect at present, in any way, those parishes where the priest now receives a money equivalent instead of his dwelling. The departments shall, moreover, have cognizance of suits arising in this connection, brought by the parishes and by the priests. Salaries shall be assigned to each, as indicated below.

III. The bishop of Paris shall receive fifty thousand livres; the bishops of the cities having a population of fifty thousand (p. 426) or more, twenty thousand livres ; other bishops, twelve thousand livres.

V. The salaries of the parish priests shall be as follows : in Paris, six thousand livres; in cities having a population of fifty thousand or over, four thousand livres; in those having a population of less than fifty thousand and more than ten thousand, three thousand livres; in cities and towns of which the population is below ten thousand and more than three thousand, twenty-four hundred livres.

In all other cities, towns, and villages where the parish shall have a population between three thousand and twenty-five hundred, two thousand livres; in those between twenty-five hundred and two thousand, eighteen hundred livres; in those having a population of less than two thousand, and more than one thousand, the salary shall be fifteen hundred livres; in those having one thousand inhabitants and under, twelve hundred livres.

VII. The salaries in money of the ministers of religion shall be paid every three months, in advance, by the treasurer of the district.

XII. In view of the salary which is assured to them by the present constitution, the bishops, parish priests, and curates shall perform the episcopal and priestly functions gratis.

Title IV ARTICLE I. The law requiring the residence of ecclesiastics in the districts under their charge shall be strictly observed. All vested with an ecclesiastical office or function shall be subject to this, without distinction or exception.

II. No bishop shall absent himself from his diocese more than two weeks consecutively during the year, except in case of real necessity and with the consent of the directory of the department in which his see is situated.

III. In the same manner, the parish priests and the curates may not absent themselves from the place of their duties beyond the term fixed above, except for weighty reasons, and even in such cases the priests must obtain the permission both of their bishop and of the directory of their district, and the curates that of the parish priest.

VI. Bishops, parish priests, and curates may, as active citizens, be present at the primary and electoral assemblies; they may be chosen electors, or as deputies to the legislative body, or as members of the general council of the communes or of the administrative councils of their districts or departments.

CHARITAS (On The Civil Oath In France) Pope Pius VI

Encyclical promulgated on 13 April 1791.

To Our Beloved Sons, the Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, to Our Venerable Brothers the Archbishops and Bishops, and to Our Beloved Children the Capitulars, Clergy and People of the Kingdom of France.

Beloved Sons, Venerable Brothers and Beloved Children, We give you greeting and Our Apostolic Blessing.

1. Love, which is patient and kindly, as the Apostle Paul says, supports and endures all things as long as a hope remains that mildness will prevent the growth of incipient errors. But if errors increase daily and reach the point of creating schism, the laws of love itself, together with Our duty, demand that We reveal to the erring their horrible sin and the heavy canonical penalties which they have incurred. For this sternness will lead those who are wandering from the way of truth to recover their senses, reject their errors, and come back to the Church, which opens its arms like a kind mother and embraces them on their return. The rest of the faithful in this way will be quickly delivered from the deceits of false pastors who enter the fold by ways other than the door, and whose only aim is theft, slaughter, and destruction.

2. With these divine precepts in mind, We have just learned of the war against the Catholic religion which has been started by the revolutionary thinkers who as a group form a majority in the National Assembly of France. We have wept in God’s presence, shared Our sorrow with the cardinals, and proclaimed public and private prayers. Then We wrote to King Louis, on July 9, 1790, and repeatedly encouraged him not to confirm the Civil Constitution of the Clergy which would lead his people into error and schism. For it was intolerable that a political assembly should change the universal practice of the Church, disregard the opinions of the holy Fathers and the decrees of the councils, overturn the order of the hierarchy and control the election of bishops, destroy episcopal sees, and introduce a worse form into the Church after removing the better.

3. We sent two briefs on the following day to the archbishops of Bordeaux and Vienne who were with the King, urging them in fatherly fashion to advise the king that if he lent his authority to this Constitution, his kingdom would be in schism; furthermore We would regard any bishops appointed in accordance with its decrees as schismatic and lacking all ecclesiastical jurisdiction. To remove all doubt that Our concern was solely with matters of religion and to silence the enemies of this Apostolic See, We gave orders that the collection of taxes from French revenues should be discontinued, although these taxes were due for Our services from unbroken custom and earlier agreements.

4. The king would certainly have refrained from approving the Constitution, but the National Assembly finally forced him to lend his authority to the Constitution as his letters to Us on July 28, September 6, and December 16 attest. He besought Us insistently to approve five, and later seven, articles at least provisionally. These articles were so similar in tenor that they formed a comprehensive summary of the new Constitution.

5. We saw at once, of course, that We could approve or tolerate none of the articles since they were at variance with canonical regulations. However, We did not want to give Our enemies an opportunity to deceive the nations by claiming that We were opposed to every sort of negotiations: therefore We told the King in Our letter of August 17 that We would consider the articles carefully and consult with the cardinals, who would meet to discuss every aspect of the proposal. After the cardinals had met on September 24 and December 16 to discuss the first two articles, they decided unanimously to request the opinions of the French bishops on these articles in case they could show some canonical reason for approval. Such a reason was not easily imaginable at this distance from France, as We had said earlier in other letters to the King.

6. In the meanwhile, We were greatly consoled when a majority of the French bishops firmly opposed the Constitution and attacked every point in it which referred to the government of the Church. Our consolation was increased when Cardinal Rochefoucauld, the archbishop of Aix, and thirty other archbishops and bishops appealed to Us for assistance in meeting such great dangers. On October 10 they sent an explanation of the main points contained in the Constitution of the Clergy and requested Our help and advice.

We were further consoled because many other bishops joined the thirty in accepting this explanation. Only four out of one hundred and thirty-one bishops dissented. A great number of capitulars and most of the parish priests and lower clergy also joined the bishops. So this explanation, accepted with harmonious unanimity, should be regarded as the teaching of the entire French Church.

7. We Ourselves immediately engaged in the task of examining all the articles of the Constitution. The Assembly, although it heard the unanimous views of the French Church, did not abandon its design, but tried all the more to destroy the firmness of the bishops. But it knew well that none of the metropolitans or the senior bishops would agree to ordain new bishops who were elected in the municipal districts by laity, heretics, unbelievers, and Jews as the published decrees commanded. It also understood that this foolish form of Church government could nowhere survive, for without the bishops the entire appearance of the church would vanish. As a result the Assembly considered publishing other even more foolish decrees, and did so on November 15 and 27, 1790, and January 3, 4, and 26, 1791. These decrees, with the king’s approval, provided that any bishop from a different district could consecrate the elected persons if the metropolitan or senior bishop refused to do so.

Furthermore, to instantly disperse all faithful bishops and parish priests, the decrees provided that all pastors should swear unequivocally that they would observe the Constitution already published and the one which was to be published later. Those who refused were to be considered expelled from their office, and their sees and parishes were to lose their pastor. When the lawful pastors and ministers were driven out, by force if necessary, the municipal districts could set about electing new bishops and parish priests. Upon election these men were to disregard the metropolitans and senior bishops who had refused the oath, and to go to the Assembly Executive which would appoint some bishops to ordain them.

8. These later decrees have immeasurably renewed Our sorrow. Moreover they made it more difficult for Us to send the bishops the answer which We were then preparing, since We then had to take account of these developments.

They caused Us to proclaim public prayers to beseech God for help. New pastoral letters to their flocks were published by the French bishops who had already begun the attack on the Constitution of the Clergy with remarkable astuteness. Now they devoted all their efforts to oppose the provision on the deposition of bishops, the vacating of episcopal sees, and the election and ordination of new bishops. They agreed that these civil oaths should be regarded as perjury and sacrilege, unbefitting not merely the clergy but any Catholic; all actions which are based on these oaths should be seen as schismatic, null, void, and liable to severe censures.

9. These praiseworthy statements of the French clergy have been put into effect. Almost all the bishops and most of the parish priests have refused the oath with unconquerable firmness. The enemies of religion then realized correctly that their vicious plans would come to nothing unless they persuaded some bishop, either by appealing to his ambition or his stupidity, to take the oath to observe the Constitution and to undertake sacrilegious consecrations and so, to initiate a schism. Among those who have been overcome by this wicked deceit the first was Charles bishop of Autun, the greatest enthusiast for the Constitution; second was Jean-Joseph bishop of Lidda; third was Louis bishop of Orleans; fourth, Charles bishop of Viviers; fifth, Cardinal de Lomenie, Archbishop of Sens; and a few wretched pastors of lower rank.

10. As regards Cardinal de Lomenie, he tried to excuse himself for taking the oath in a letter to Us last November 25. He stated that it was not to be regarded as mental assent and claimed that he was quite undecided on the question of ordaining bishops who had been elected. (He had not yet done so.) Since it was most important that none of the bishops should consecrate those elected and so broaden the road to schism, We decided to postpone a little Our answer to the bishops, which was near completion; instead We wrote to the cardinal without delay on February 23. We pointed out to him the error of his opinion in taking the oath, and the canonical penalties which with sadness We would be obliged to apply, stripping him of the rank of Cardinal unless he removed the public scandal by a timely and appropriate retraction.

As to his indecision about ordaining those elected, in answer We commanded him not to ordain new bishops for any reason whatsoever, and so join new rebels to the church. For the right of ordaining bishops-belongs only to the Apostolic See, as the Council of Trent declares; it cannot be assumed by any bishop or metropolitan without obliging Us to declare schismatic both those who ordain and those who are ordained, thus invalidating their future actions.

11. When We had completed this business, We resumed the task of replying to the bishops. This task had become more troublesome and time-consuming because of the many new developments which subsequently affected it. After examining all the articles in order to make clear to everyone that in the judgment of this Holy See, which has been sought by the French bishops and is eagerly awaited by French Catholics, We declared that the new Constitution of the Clergy is composed of principles derived from heresy. It is consequently heretical in many of its decrees and at variance with Catholic teaching. In other decrees it is sacrilegious and schismatic. It overturns the rights and primacy of the Church, is opposed to ancient and modern practice, and is devised and published with the sole design of utterly destroying the Catholic religion. For it is only this religion which cannot be freely professed, whose lawful pastors are removed, and whose property is taken over. Men of other sects are left at liberty and in possession of their property. We pointed all this out clearly, but We stated mildly that We had hitherto refrained from excommunicating the authors of the ill- omened Civil Constitution of the Clergy. It was Our duty, however, to emphasize that We would be obliged against Our will to declare schismatic all who did not reject the errors We had revealed (the customary procedure of this Holy See in these cases). This threat applied to the authors of the Constitution as well as to those who swore to observe it, whether they supervised the election of new bishops, consecrated those who were elected, or accepted this consecration. For none of these would have either a lawful appointment or be in communion with the Church.

12. We are ready to show as much favor to the French people as We can without prejudicing the teaching and universal practice of the Church. Thus We have followed the advice of the Cardinals whom We consulted on this matter, repeating the message which We sent by letter to the King. We have urged the bishops who are living in the midst of these developments to inform Us of any other possible method of action which is not in opposition to Catholic teaching and universal practice, and to submit it for Our consideration. We have mentioned Our intentions to the King and have sent him a copy of Our answer to the bishops. We have also urged him to take the wiser bishops into his counsel in order to apply an appropriate remedy to the disease which derives in part from the royal authorization. Finally We have informed him that out of pastoral duty, We will take the same measures against those who remain obstinate in their error as Our predecessors took when faced with a similar necessity.

13. Our March 10 letters to the King and to the bishops were both entrusted to an express messenger who left early the next day. On the 15th a regular messenger arrived from France, and We learned from many sources that the schism had been completed in Paris on February 24th. For on that day the bishop of Autun, already stained with perjury and guilty of desertion for relinquishing his church into the hands of laymen on his own authority, defied his chapter, by joining with the bishops of Babylon and Lidda. The bishop of Babylon had received the honor of the pallium from Us and temporal aid as well, but he showed that he was a worthy successor of another bishop of Babylon, Dominicus Varlet, notorious for the schism of Utrecht. The bishop of Lidda was also guilty of perjury, and had incurred the hatred and abhorrence of good men for his dissent from the correct teaching of the bishop and chapter of the church at Basel of which he is a suffragan.

So on that day the bishop of Autun, with the assistance of these two bishops, rashly and sacrilegiously consecrated Alois Alexandre Expilly and Claude Eustache Francois Marolles, in a church of the priests of the Oratory without permission of the Ordinary. They had received no commission to do so from the Apostolic See; they omitted the oath of obedience to the Pope; they neglected the examination and confession of faith which are prescribed in the Roman pontifical which should be observed universally; and they broke and despised all laws. They did this even though they must have known that the former candidate had been wrongly elected bishop of Quimper against the serious and repeated objections of the chapter, and that the latter was far more wrongly given as bishop to the church of Soissons since this church has a lawful pastor alive and well, Our venerable brother Henry Joseph Claude de Bourdeilles. He consequently considered that it was his duty to attack violently this great act of profanation and to provide ready help for his diocese. His letter published on the following day, the 25th, attests that he did so.

14. At the same time We learned that the bishop of Lidda had piled sin on top of sin. For on February 27, with the assistance of the new spurious bishops Expilly and Marolles, he rashly and sacrilegiously in the same church consecrated the parish priest Saurine as bishop of Aix, although this flourishing church rejoices in its own bishop, Our venerable brother Charles Auguste Lequien. Perhaps in appreciation of these actions, the bishop of Lidda, Jean Joseph Gobel, was elected archbishop of Paris, while the archbishop there was still living. He is following the example of Ischyras, who was proclaimed bishop of Alexandria at the Council of Tyre as payment for his sinful service in accusing St. Athanasius and ejecting him from his See.

15. This sad and burdensome news overwhelmed Us with sorrow. But uplifted by hope in God, We again summoned the assembly of the Cardinals on March 17 to learn their views on this important development. While We were engaged in consultation with the cardinals on the 21st, another messenger from France brought Us word that the bishop of Laye had grown even more evil. With the assistance of the spurious bishops Expilly and Saurine, he had on the 6th in the same church and with the same sacrilege consecrated as bishop of Beauvais the parish priest Massieu, a deputy of the French Assembly; as bishop of Evreux another deputy, the parish priest Lindet; as bishop of Moulins the parish priest Laurent, also a deputy; and the parish priest Heraudin as bishop of Chateauroux.

They dared to do this, even though the first two of these churches have their own lawful pastors and the other two have not yet been created episcopal sees by Apostolic Authority. The proper view regarding men who allow themselves to be elected and consecrated for churches whose bishops are still governing and administering, was well expressed by St. Leo many years ago. In a letter to Julian, bishop of Cos, (chap. 4), he attacked a certain Theodosius who had occupied the see of Bishop Juvenal while he was still alive. "The nature of the deed leaves no doubt about the character of a man who usurps the place of a bishop in his lifetime. It is perfectly clear that he is wicked, since he is loved by the enemies of the faith."

16. The Church has at all times rightly rejected men elected by a low mob of the laity, men who share the same wrong opinions as their electors. This is abundantly proved by the pastoral letter of "Bishop" Expilly brought by the same messenger. It was published on February 25 to deceive the simple-minded, and obviously aimed at rending the seamless garment of Christ.

This man first mentions the oath (that is, the perjury) he has sworn, and introduces all the principal assertions of the French Constitution which he copies almost word-for- word. In accord with the statements of the Assembly, he attempts to prove that Christian dogma is not affected by this Constitution, while a better form of Church order is introduced which is closer to the purity of early centuries. He states that this is particularly true of the section which restores ecclesiastical elections to the people and consecrations to the metropolitans; but he established his claim only by former decrees of the French Assembly. The better to impress the simple-minded, he mentions his letter to Us of November 18, 1790, as if he enjoyed communion with this Apostolic See. He then addresses the different groups in the diocese and admonishes them all to receive him as their lawful pastor and to embrace the Constitution unreservedly.

17. Woe to the wretch! We purposely pass by matters relating to the civil government, but how rash he was to try to defend a Constitution concerning the affairs of the Church which nearly all the bishops of the French Church and many others of the clergy condemned and rejected as opposed to Church teaching and completely at variance with common practice, especially in regard to the election and consecration of bishops! Not even he could have concealed the evident truth, if he had not carefully avoided any mention of the most recent foolish decrees to come from the Assembly. For alongside other wickedness, these decrees go so far as to give the right of consecrating to any bishop at the discretion of the Assembly Executive.

18. Let this unfortunate man, who has advanced so far along the road to perdition, read Our answer to the French bishops; he will see the truth which he hates shining clear in every article, for at the start We have refuted the amazing errors contained in his letter. Meanwhile let him be aware that he has pronounced sentence on himself. He claims that the one elected must be consecrated by his metropolitan to obtain his lawful title in accordance with the ancient practice deriving from a canon of Nicaea; this right of the metropolitans derives from the right of the Apostolic See. If this is true, then how can Expilly think that he is lawfully and canonically installed since he owes his consecration not to the archbishop of Tours to whom the church of Quimper is suffragan, but to other bishops? For even if these men by their rash sacrilege could confer the rank of bishop on him, they certainly could not give him a jurisdiction which they themselves do not possess in accordance with the practice of every century, since they belong to different provinces. Moreover, this power of giving jurisdiction as a consequence of a new practice established now for several centuries and confirmed by general councils and even by concordats, has returned to its point of origin and does not belong in any way to metropolitans, but resides solely in the Apostolic See. So today the Pope as a duty of his office appoints bishops for each of the churches, and no lawful consecration may take place in the entire Catholic Church without the order of the Apostolic See (Trent, session 24, chap. 1, de Reformat.).

19. His letter to Us, far from relieving his plight, worsens it, and must be called schismatic. For that letter makes a mere pretense of establishing communion with Us, since it does not even mention the confirmation which We must give; it simply informs Us of the unlawful election as provided for in the French decrees. Hence, following the precedent of Our predecessors, We did not consider answering his letter; rather We gave orders that he should be warned to proceed no further, since We expected that he would attempt to do so. The bishop of Rennes indeed, of his own accord, had given him similar warning when he refused him the confirmation which he was insistently asking for.

Therefore, instead of accepting him as their pastor, the people should reject him with abhorrence as an intruder. For he has failed to profess the truth which he must acknowledge; he has begun to put his so-called pastoral duty to bad uses; and lastly he has become so presumptuous as to relax the Lenten observance commanded by the Church, at the end of his pastoral letter. So "he is an imitator of the devil and does not stand firm in the truth, but makes bad use of the appearance and name of the office he has attained," as St. Leo the Great wrote to some Egyptian bishops concerning a similar intruder.

20. From this series of sins schism is being introduced and spread in the kingdom of France, which is so dear to Us and has served religion so well; for the same reason pastors of first and second rank are being everywhere elected as the days go by, legitimate ministers are ejected from their positions, and ravening wolves are put in their place. We are certainly saddened by this sorrowful situation. Therefore to hinder the spread of schism from the start, to recall to their duty those who have strayed, to fortify the good in their purpose, and to preserve religion in that prosperous kingdom, We follow the advice of the Cardinals and answer the prayers of the entire group of bishops of the French church. Imitating the example of Our predecessors, We proclaim that each and every cardinal, archbishop, bishop, abbot, vicar, canon, parish priest, curate and member of the clergy, whether secular or regular, who has purely and simply taken the Civil Oath as ordered by the National Assembly is suspended from the exercise of his office and will act irregularly if he exercises his office unless he abjures his oath within forty days from this date. For the oath is the poisoned source and origin of all errors and the chief cause of the sorrow of the French Catholic church.

21. Furthermore, We declare specifically that the elections of the said Expilly, Marolles, Saurine, Massieu, Lindet, Laurent, Heraudin, and Gobel as Bishops of Quimper, Soissons, Aix, Beauvais, Evreux, Moulins, Chateauroux, and Paris are unlawful, sacrilegious, and utterly void. We rescind, efface, and abrogate them, as well as the recent creation of the so- called dioceses of Moulins, Chateauroux, and others.

22. We similarly declare and decree that their consecrations were sinful, and are illicit, unlawful, sacrilegious, and at variance with the regulations of the sacred canons; since they were rashly and wrongfully elected, they lack all ecclesiastical and spiritual jurisdiction for the guidance of souls, and have been suspended from all exercise of the episcopal office.

23. We declare likewise that Charles, bishop of Autun; Jean-Baptiste, bishop of Babylon; and Jean-Joseph, bishop of Lidda have been suspended from all exercise of their episcopal office as sacrilegious consecrators or assistants; all who gave them help, consent, or counsel at those accursed consecrations have been suspended from the exercise of their priestly, or other, office.

24. We therefore severely forbid the said Expilly and the other wickedly elected and illicitly consecrated men, under this punishment of suspension, to assume episcopal jurisdiction or any other authority for the guidance of souls since they have never received it. They must not grant dimissorial letters for ordinations. Nor must they appoint, depute, or confirm pastors, vicars, missionaries, helpers, functionaries, ministers, or others, whatever their title, for the care of souls and the administration of the Sacraments under any pretext of necessity whatsoever. Nor may they otherwise act, decree, or decide, whether separately or united as a council, on matters which relate to ecclesiastical jurisdiction. For We declare and proclaim publicly that all their dimissorial letters and deputations or confirmations, past and future, as well as all their rash proceedings and their consequences, are utterly void and without force.

25. We also command and prohibit under the same punishment of suspension both the men consecrated and their consecrators from illicitly conferring the sacrament of confirmation or of orders, or exercising in any way the episcopal office from which they have been suspended. Consequently anyone ordained by them should realize that he is suspended and will be guilty of irregularity if he exercises the orders he has received.

26. However to prevent greater evils, We decree and declare by this letter and Our authority that all other elections by the electors of municipal districts to French cathedral and parochial churches, whether vacant or occupied, whether old-established or recently and unlawfully created in accordance with the said Constitution of the Clergy, have been, are, and will be void, unlawful, sacrilegious, and utterly null, and We hereby rescind, efface, and revoke them. We therefore declare that men who have been or will be elected wickedly and wrongfully, whether to cathedral or parochial churches, lack all ecclesiastical and spiritual jurisdiction for the guidance of souls and that bishops who have been or will be illicitly consecrated are suspended from all exercise of their episcopal office; parish priests who have been or are to be invalidly appointed are suspended from their priestly ministry.

Accordingly We prohibit severely both those who have been or are to be elected as bishops from rashly accepting episcopal consecration from any metropolitan or bishop as well as the spurious bishops and their sacrilegious consecrators and all other archbishops and bishops from daring to consecrate on any pretext those who have been or are to be wrongfully elected. Furthermore, We command those who have been or are to be elected, to behave in no way as archbishops, bishops, parish priests, or vicars nor to call themselves by the name of any cathedral or parochial church, nor to assume any jurisdiction, authority, or faculty for the care of souls under the penalty of suspension and invalidity. None of those who have been named can ever be freed from the punishment of suspension, except by Us or by delegates of the Apostolic See.

27. With the greatest possible kindness, We have declared the canonical penalties imposed until the present in order that the evil deeds already accomplished may be corrected and prevented from spreading abroad. We hope in the Lord that the consecrators, the intruders in cathedral and parochial churches, and all the authors and supporters of the published Constitution will recognize their error and return repentant to the fold from which they were seduced by treacherous deceit.

For this reason, We insistently urge them to retire from their ministry, to draw back from the way to perdition on which they are traveling at full speed, and never to allow strange doctrines which are opposed to the teaching of Christ, the tradition of the Fathers, and the law of the Church to be spread among the people by men inspired by the philosophy of the present age. However, if Our mild manner of action and paternal warnings come to nothing- may God prevent this!-they should be aware that We do not intend to spare them those heavier penalties to which they are liable under the canons. They may be quite certain that We will anathematize them and proclaim them as such to the whole Church, since they are schismatic and cut off from communion with the Church and with Us.

For it is very fitting "that as each one chooses to lie in the mud of his own foolishness, so the laws should stay firm, and he should have the same lot as those whose error he has followed," as Leo the Great says in his letter to Julian, bishop of Coensum.

28. We now address you, who with few exceptions know your duty to your flocks, and publicly professed it, disregarding human calculations. You judged that the greatest care and labor should be given to counter the greatest dangers. We apply to you the lavish praise given by Leo the Great to the Egyptian Catholic bishops in Constantinople: "Although I heartily share your loving labors for the observance of the Catholic faith, and I regard the attacks of the heretics on you as attacks on my person, I realize that your invincible constancy by the strength of the Lord Jesus Christ in the evangelical and apostolic teaching is reason for joy rather than for sorrow. And when the enemies of the Christian faith removed you from the sees of the churches, you preferred to endure the evil of travel than to be defiled by any contact with their impiety." Indeed as We consider you, We are consoled and strongly urge you to stand fast in your purpose. To this end, We remind you of the bond of spiritual marriage which unites you to your churches and which only death or Our Apostolic authority can dissolve, according to the provision of the canons. Stay with your churches, then, and never leave them at the bidding of ravening wolves whose plots you have condemned in holy zeal as you unhesitatingly performed the tasks of lawful authority.

29. Next We address you, beloved sons, canons of excellent chapters.

Subject to your archbishops and bishops, as is right, you form one clerical body as limbs which are united with their head, which the civil power is unable to destroy or overthrow. You have won great praise in following the remarkable example of your prelates: never turn aside from the right road, on which you are set, and never allow anyone in false bishop’s garments with a company of subordinates to take possession of your churches. For if the churches are deprived of their bishops, they will be your concern alone, despite all new plots hatched against you. Therefore, united in mind and counsel, keep as far from you as possible all intrusion and schism.

30. We also address you, beloved sons, parish priests and curates, who in great numbers and firm virtue have performed your duty far differently from your colleagues who, overcome by weakness or swept away by the tide of ambition, have gone over to the service of error. We hope that these men will soon return to their duty on receiving Our admonition. Press on bravely with the work you have begun, and bear in mind that the appointment you received from your lawful bishops can be taken from you only by them. Consequently, even if you are removed from your place by the civil power, you will still always be the lawful pastors, in duty bound as far as you are able to keep off the thieves who try to sneak into your place with the sole aim of destroying the souls entrusted to your care, whose salvation you will have to account for.

31. We address you too, beloved sons, priests, and other clergy and ministers of France. Since you have been called to the Lord’s work, you ought to stay close to your lawful pastors and be firm in faith and doctrine. Above all, avoid and condemn the sacrilegious intruders.

32. At length We beseech you all, beloved Catholic children, in the kingdom of France; as you recall the religion and faith of your fathers, We urge you lovingly not to abandon it. For it is the one true religion which both confers eternal life and makes safe and thriving civil societies. Carefully beware of lending your ears to the treacherous speech of the philosophy of this age which leads to death. Keep away from all intruders, whether called archbishops, bishops, or parish priests; do not hold communion with them especially in divine worship. Listen carefully to the message of your lawful pastors who are still living, and who will be put in charge of you later, according to the canons. Finally, in one word, stay close to Us. For no one can be in the Church of Christ without being in unity with its visible head and founded on the See of Peter.

To inspire all to fulfill their duties more ardently, We implore the heavenly Father to send you the Spirit of counsel, truth, and constancy. As a pledge of Our paternal love, beloved sons, venerable brothers and beloved children, We impart to you the Apostolic blessing.

Given at Rome in St. Peter’s under the Ring of the Fisherman on April 13, 1791, in the 17th year of Our pontificate.

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Provided Courtesy of: Eternal Word Television Network 5817 Old Leeds Road Irondale, AL 35210 www.ewtn.com Gender, Place and Culture, 2015 Vol. 22, No. 7, 1023–1040, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2014.958061

‘The Republic is lived with an uncovered face’ (and a skirt): (un)dressing French citizens Claire Hancock*

De´partement de Ge´ographie, Universite´ Paris-Est Cre´teil, Cre´teil, France (Received 20 March 2012; accepted 12 March 2014)

The title of this article refers to the campaign carried out by the French government, in April and May 2011, to publicize and promote the law banning the full veil from public spaces, ‘la Re´publique se vit a` visage de´couvert.’ The article examines ways in which political discourses, during the 2009–2012 period over which this law was first discussed, and then applied, used specific norms of female dress in order to establish a certain understanding of citizenship. Drawing on Rancie`re’s notion of the ‘police’ and Dikec’s theorization of ‘aesthetic regimes,’ the article discusses the entanglements of female dress with French republicanism. These are illustrated through controversial representations of ‘Marianne,’ the female embodiment of the Republic, which raise the issue of color, in a country where race remains taboo. Turning more specifically to the report produced by a Parliamentary committee prior to the discussion of the burqa ban, the article discusses the paradoxical promotion of skirts as the epitome of French femininity, and shows how the discussion of women’s right to wear skirts challenged ideas about the location of sexism, and the subject of politics, in French society. Keywords: France; Republic; veil; colour; race; female dress; citizenship

Well I don’t know, in the end, whether I have, have the right to say that I’m French? Do I? ‘Cause apparently not, a French person doesn’t wear a veil! a French person, well, I don’t know, a French person, a French woman doesn’t wear a veil, a French woman, I don’t know how she dresses, but she surely doesn’t dress the way I do ... (Nadia, a young French woman of Malian origin interviewed by Anissa Ouamrane, February 2012) This article originates from fieldwork, still in progress, with young Muslim women in a banlieue of Paris, most of whom are of immigrant (North African or African) background. Many of these young women have expressed, in interviews, their sense of being in many

Downloaded by [Harvard Library] at 08:21 04 September 2015 ways ‘non-French’ and often also physically inadequate. They tell stories of abuse, either physical or verbal, from complete strangers, in different areas of the Paris region where they live, and quite often the abuse centers on the way they dress, and implies that they do not belong. Many of them also point to television and newspaper coverage of Islam as a trigger of these aggressions and a major influence on their everyday experiences. While the aim of our research is ultimately to document our research participants’ experiences of ‘everyday citizenship’ (Secor 2004), and in particular the constrained geographies they learn to live with in the face of exclusionary discourses and attitudes, what this article examines is rather the ‘aesthetic regime’ within which their experiences take place. It focuses on a number of recent debates which took place in France around female dress, which seems to be one of the questions through which Frenchness is constructed, and aims to follow on a point made by Meer, Dwyer, and Modood (2010, 85) in their discussion of

*Email: [email protected]

q 2014 Taylor & Francis 1024 C. Hancock

the British case: ‘very little research has systematically explored how accounts of nationhood and citizenship are being invoked during the course of public discussion of Muslim “difference”.’ The objective of the article is to show how the image of veiled women exposes the exclusionary nature of French citizenship, and, working with Rancie`re’s idea of ‘politics,’ to see how they can be seen as a ‘political’ challenge to a commonly accepted French ‘partition of the sensible.’ A large section of French public opinion remains fond of the stories it tells itself and the rest of the world about being a beacon of revolutionary freedom and human rights. What this story omits is the extent to which the French Revolution, that was supposed to be about the downtrodden taking power from their former masters, in fact produced a citizen that was, much as were the masters, male and white. This accounts for many French misgivings in the face of postcolonial theory, for instance (see Bancel et al. 2010). French republicanism, as pointed out by Laborde, ‘displays its own singular set of commitments, focused on the centralized nation-state and its direct relationship to the individual citizen, and founded on principles of universality and equality’ (2008, 3), and advocates ‘a strong public identity transcending private preferences and identities’ (4). Because of the way the ideal French citizen was constituted, the notion of community is strongly rejected, even by self-styled progressive and left-wing movements, as running counter to the absolute equality of (taken to mean lack of difference between) citizens (Favell 2001; Bowen 2007). Laborde insists that ‘republican citizenship’ is not an intrinsically exclusionary ideal, but admits that ‘in public discourse, the ideal of republicanism has functioned as a social ideology that purports to describe, and thereby legitimizes, existing arrangements in actual society’ (2008, 255). Religion further complicates the picture: freedom from the oppression of a Catholic church that conspired with royalty and aristocracy to keep the poor submissive was one of the concerns of the actively anti-clerical French Revolution. There were gendered implications: one of the arguments used to deny women the vote in France in the early twentieth century was that they were under the influence of the Catholic clergy and likely to support the most conservative parties (see Bard 1995). Recently the attention of those who claim to defend ‘revolutionary values’ and secularism seems to have been diverted by a strong wave of Islamophobia common to many western countries, but with specific overtones in France (Tevanian 2013); again women are suspected of being ‘under the influence’ of clerics, and, as a result, Islamophobic abuse is highly gender-specific. According to watchdog organization Collectif Contre l’Islamophobie en France, a large majority of Islamophobic acts, in France, aim women (85% of incidents reported in 2011 Downloaded by [Harvard Library] at 08:21 04 September 2015 and 2012 concerned women, mostly women wearing the veil). While the politics of veiling has been dealt with extensively both in Anglophone (Dwyer 1999, 2008; Secor 2002, 2005; Bowen 2007; Scott 2007; Hancock 2008;Go¨karıksel 2009; Tarlo 2010; Siraj 2011; Tissot 2011; McGinty 2013; Rootham 2014) and in Francophone literature (Gue´nif- Souilamas 2004; Lorcerie 2005; Liogier 2010; Tevanian 2012), the contribution this article aims to make is to show how ‘burqa’ debates in France, between 2010 and 2012, shed new light on entanglements of citizenship, religion, and female dress and agency. If ‘veil debates’ repeatedly flare up in France (there was a first major debate in 2003–2004 about the prohibition of ‘religious signs’ in schools), and are not a mere by-product of right-wing rule in France, but the object of a ‘consensus’ throughout the political spectrum, it is because veil-wearing women seem to encapsulate many of France’s contradictions in its attitudes to gender, race, and citizenship, and have been scapegoated in ways that sometimes suggest they are the single most important threat to the French nation. They are also part of a wider discussion about what femininity has to do with Gender, Place and Culture 1025

Frenchness, and about the embodiment and ways of dressing appropriate for French women. Duits and van Zoonen (2006), discussing headscarves and ‘porno-chic’ as they were framed in the Dutch context, underlined a tendency of dominant discourse to ‘discipline’ girls’ bodies when they are perceived as either too visible or too hidden, and to regulate female sexuality. This of course is strongly redolent of what Foucault (1976) called ‘biopower,’ the exercise of the power of the state on bodies; in the French instance, this idea has been built on by Dorlin (2006, 12–13) who shows that ‘Sexism and racism are not so much theoretically comparable as historically inseparable ( ...) dominant categories literally made bodies, sexed and racialized bodies, including the very body of the Nation.’ Dorlin traces the sexual and colonial genealogy of the French nation through an examination of early modern medical literature which depicts both women and non- Whites as pathological bodies. This article draws inspiration from two different but nevertheless compatible understandings of ‘the police,’ one of which is Dorlin’s (2010), who theorizes ‘gender policing’ as the disciplinary and often violent enforcement of gender categorizations, and of ‘proper’ femininity or masculinity, by the general public. While not referring to the gender binary, Rancie`re’s understanding of ‘the police’ as ‘a form of partition of the sensible, characterized by the imaginary adequation of places, functions and ways of being, by the absence of vacuum or supplement’ (2000, 20) can also be enlisted to further analyze these questions. Drawing on Rancie`re’s definition of the political as that which disrupts the order instituted by the police, and challenges the assignation of places (Dikec 2005), I view dominant discourses of gender and citizenship as a form of ‘police’ and suggest that not conforming to dress norms set out in public discourse can be seen as political in that it makes manifest the extent to which these discourses omit or exclude women as autonomous and/or devout subjects (Bracke 2003),1 and challenges the accepted boundaries of citizenship as well as the definition of French womanhood. In order to explore these links between forms of female dress and citizenship, this article looks at elements of female clothing other than the veil that have played a part in the definition of an adequate female citizen in France, cleavage and skirts, which were enlisted to exert pressure on Muslim women, either in governmental or media discourse, in the context of the debates about the full-face veil which took place in 2010–2011. This is best illustrated by a few images, which all, at some stages in the past few years, caused public controversies: because the ‘sensible’ is about aesthetics, about the ways our perceptions are structured by dominant orders, images or ‘forms of visibility,’ play a major part in what Downloaded by [Harvard Library] at 08:21 04 September 2015 Dikec (2013), following Rancie`re, has termed ‘aesthetic regimes’. A further part of these regimes being ‘conceptualisation’ or how practices or images ‘are thought or talked about’ (Dikec 2013), I therefore analyze these images through the lens of the discussions they triggered in mainstream and online media, as well as material from two reports available on the Internet. One is the public report which includes most of the hearings and public debates held by the Parliamentary committee responsible for investigating the ‘full-face veil’ issue in 2009; the other is a report funded by the Open Society Foundation, which, unlike the previous one, relied on research and in-depth interviews conducted with women wearing the full-face veil in France.2 In the first of these reports, the skirt gained pride of place alongside the veil as a contested indicator of women’s place in French society, and I follow its trajectory through events known as ‘skirt days’ to trace the shifting understanding of the location of sexism in French society, from rural Catholic backwaters to banlieues and finally to the inner sanctum of French political elite. I also make connections between these images and reports and more general trends in French politics, 1026 C. Hancock

exemplified by statements or pledges by the previous and the current president of the Republic, and comments by ministers and members of Parliament under the previous government. Lastly, I include short excerpts from interviews carried out by Anissa Ouamrane in 2012, as part of our joint research project in Champigny-sur-Marne, as a recognition of the fact that these served to point me in the directions explored in this article, though they are not per se part of the material explored here.

(Un)dressing Marianne First, following on Scott’s remarks on what she terms ‘sexularism’ (2009), I would like to outline ways in which the French Republic is premised on specific female images, with the exhibition of breasts playing a major part in proclaiming the ‘emancipatory’ nature of the Republican ideal. A governmental campaign took place in France in April and May 2011 to publicize and promote the law banning the full veil from public spaces: it was entitled ‘la Re´publique se vit a` visage de´couvert’ (roughly, ‘the Republic is lived with an uncovered face’) and was illustrated by a classical bust of Marianne, the (female) symbol of the French Republic since the late eighteenth century. The leaflet mentions that there are sanctions for the persons who cover their faces in public, but also for whoever ‘obliges another person to hide their face in public.’3 At this point, there is a slippage in the ostentatiously gender-neutral wording, since the leaflet goes on to comment that ‘To oblige a woman, whatever her age, to hide her face, is an offense to her dignity. It also contravenes the principle of equality between men and women.’ These remarks are quite typical of the standard interpretation of the full veil in the debate which took place in France in 2010: that no woman could actually choose to wear it, and it was necessarily imposed on the wearers by (presumably male, presumably fundamentalist) external influences. Not only does this go against research findings (see Liogier 2010; Open Society Foundation 2011), it also exemplifies a patronizing attitude to women that somehow, in France, is allowed to parade as ‘feminist.’ On this leaflet, a stern bust of Marianne, with her bosom well covered, was chosen to illustrate governmental communication (see Figure 1). While few voices were heard in French politics denouncing the law, there were comments in the press4 on the small amount of cleavage displayed by the Marianne on the front page, a 1945 bust by sculptor Saupique. The conservative aspect of the Marianne was indeed in sharp contrast with better- Downloaded by [Harvard Library] at 08:21 04 September 2015 known depictions of her, for instance in the very famous 1830 Delacroix painting showing a ‘Liberte´ guidant le peuple’ with fully exposed breasts, which is crucial to France’s understanding of its own Republican values as inseparable from the emancipation of women (with admirable self-delusion on the part of a country that only granted women the right to vote in 1944). As pointed out by Sharp (1996), ‘women are not equal to the nation but symbolic of it,’ and Marianne is a case in point. By making the female figure of Marianne the symbol of the Republic, France attempted to conceal its denial of women as political subjects, and Muslim women, in particular by refusing to play along with the Marianne model of femininity, seem to be playing a critical role in exposing this exclusion. This is one reason why veiling, among other elements of female dress, has become caught up in a discourse about French citizenship, in ways which echo what has been described in the Turkish context: ‘State control over women’s bodies has been crucial to the secularization and modernization process in Turkey. The republic put great emphasis Gender, Place and Culture 1027 Downloaded by [Harvard Library] at 08:21 04 September 2015

Figure 1. The leaflet used by the French government to publicize and promote the application of the law prohibiting ‘covering one’s face in public space.’

on women’s “emancipation,” symbolized by unveiling as the necessary condition, vehicle and embodiment of the modern state’ (Go¨le 1996).5 In France unveiling was a major concern of colonial rule over Algeria, in particular (Shepard 2004, Scott 2007). This 1028 C. Hancock

history is all but suppressed in contemporary political discourse, and descendants of Algerian forebears are being subjected to similar pressures in present-day France. Reading Fanon’s (1959) account of the ‘battle of the veil’ in Algeria in the 1950s irresistibly brings to mind the ongoing confrontation between the recent and current French governments and women whose right to wear the veil was denied in public schools, and is currently being challenged for child-minders working at home (Tevanian 2012) or in private facilities.6 Scott coined the term ‘sexularism’ (a conflation of ‘sexism’ and ‘secularism’) to question the mistaken idea that Republican ideals naturally foster gender equality by rolling back religious influence and argued that in France, in particular, The Revolution divorces the breast from its context; that is, from the women’s powers of intention, heart, and mind. The Revolutionaries’ preoccupation with the breast is the indicator of a gender split in the new republican mentality so deep as to defy repair. Women’s foreignness to republican culture was reified by its representation. (2009,2) Since the 1950s the Association of French mayors regularly elects a female personality on whom busts of Marianne displayed in town halls are to be modeled: in 1968 they elected Brigitte Bardot, who was represented with a sizable part of her breasts uncovered, and since then female actresses, singers, or models have been selected. Gue´nif-Souilamas (2011) has poked fun at this depiction of Marianne as ‘sex-bomb’, Dorlin (2010) has ironically commented on ‘the great strip-tease,’ and Scott (2007) has eloquently described France’s paradoxical foregrounding of female sexuality as perfectly compatible with, if not a critical part of, Republican and democratic values. The women selected to embody Marianne have always been part of show business or haute couture culture, and never women having attained notoriety for much else than their looks (and maybe acting or singing talent in some cases) – as though embodying French citizenship were premised on a specific, ornamental, model of femininity. Needless to say, these women are also all ‘white’: there are few instances of Marianne being depicted as Black, and none of them occurred in official contexts. In February 2010, the government used the image of a pregnant Marianne to illustrate an ad, which ran in daily newspapers, to promote a public call for funds for research and development (see Figure 2). This image proved controversial on many levels. The left pointed out that Marianne’s bonnet, which is traditionally red to symbolize its revolutionary meaning, had been ‘whitened,’ giving a conservative twist to the figure. Additionally, the white robe on a blue backdrop recalls traditional depictions of Mary, mother of Christ, in Catholic imagery (see Hancock 2011). This Marianne is fully embodied, with a long skirt, rather than in the more Downloaded by [Harvard Library] at 08:21 04 September 2015 usual bust format: the female body is seen as instrumental to the nation’s future, and the part most on display is her belly and only secondarily her bosom. This is evocative of what constitutes one of the ‘key means through which conceptions of gender and nationhood can be charted,’ ‘women ( ...) as biological reproducers of members of ethnic collectivities and ( ...) reproducers of boundaries of national groups’ (Meer, Dwyer, and Modood 2010, 85). These images were used in a specific context in France. President Sarkozy came to power, in 2007, pledging to ‘protect’ women, worldwide, against oppression.7 As minister of the Interior in 2003, he had initiated a law criminalizing ‘passive soliciting’ – the implication of which was that any woman wearing clothes deemed provocative could be suspected of whoring. In a symmetrical move reminiscent of the Dutch situation, provocative clothing among schoolgirls was as much of a concern of the education minister at the time as was the wearing of veils by other schoolgirls (Scott 2007). Not coincidentally, Sarkozy’s presidency was also the occasion for political soul-searching Gender, Place and Culture 1029

Figure 2. ‘France invests in the future’ runs the slogan of this advertisement (for a state bond issue intended to collect funds for teaching, research, and development), February 2010.

about ‘national identity,’ the theme of a so-called ‘nationwide consultation’ in 2010, and ‘laı¨cite´,’ the theme of a short-lived initiative in 2011 mainly aimed at Islam. This led to a Downloaded by [Harvard Library] at 08:21 04 September 2015 2012 presidential campaign that was unusually focused on a nationalistic use of issues of gender and sexuality (Achin and Bargel 2013). This, I argue, forms not only the backdrop, but also the ‘conceptualisation’ (Dikec 2013) of the aesthetic regime within which these images were conceived, published, and perceived, with all these tensions being played out on women’s bodies.

An aesthetic regime in black and white The use of color in these pictures is all but accidental. The ‘whiteness’ of Marianne is symbolically reasserted, in a country that prides itself on the ‘colour-blindness’ of its laws and founding principles. The ‘republican’ ideology makes the very use of notions of race, ethnicity, or minority highly controversial in French society8 and even in social sciences, a specificity well analyzed by Amiraux and Simon (2006). The idea of collecting racial or ethnic data in the census, even the basis of self-declaration, is strongly resisted by leading 1030 C. Hancock

intellectual figures who warn of the risk of fragmenting French society into ‘communities’ and recall the precedent of Jews who were forced to wear a yellow star during the World War II. The latter point is telling because in the absence of any politicization of racial or ethnic belonging, religion has become a proxy for race, and Islamophobia has taken after the anti-Semitism prevalent during the 1920s and 1930s, in large areas of public discourse (see, for instance, Fassin and Fassin 2006). Historian Patrick Weil has contributed to expose the fact that in French Algeria, there was an ‘assignation’ of Muslim people to a ‘radically different and ethno-religious status’: any person who was originally a Muslim kept a specific status which fell short of full French citizenship, regardless of whether s/he had converted to Catholicism (2010, 109). Today in France, there is a similar sociological dimension to Muslim identity, which is applied to people regardless of whether they actually believe or practice religion. This was illustrated very forcefully in March 2012, when the then President of the Republic Sarkozy described soldiers killed in South-West France as ‘Muslim in appearance.’9 This focus on ‘appearance’ resonates with the idea of aesthetic regimes and is clearly a result of what Rancie`re has theorized as the ‘loss’ of the political form of identity and otherness in contemporary discourse: ‘(the immigrant) is left with a mere sociological identity, which boils down to the anthropological nudity of a different race and skin’ (1995, 161). The impossibility to discuss race publicly has another consequence: spatial Otherness, or implied foreign-ness, has become the acceptable way to imply difference. Interior Minister Gue´ant, in a 2 January 2012 interview to the newspaper Le Monde, admitted his surprise that many of the niqab-wearers are in fact women of French descent converted to Islam. Naima Bouteldja, who conducted a survey with 32 women who wear the full-face veil in France (Open Society Foundation 2011), confirms that a large proportion are converts. She also reports that abuse is very frequent, and that among the recurring phrases heard by the women, ‘go back to your country’ and ‘we’re in France, here’ are foremost, carrying the implication that Islam is a foreign import and ‘out of place’ in France. Where ‘the police’ operate on the strict assignation of places, abuse becomes one of the foremost instruments of ‘policing,’ as shown by Dorlin (2010). There is a further, and intriguing, ‘aesthetic’ dimension to reactions to the ‘burqa’: color seems to play a role in its acceptability. One of Bouteldja’s respondents, Vivi, states: ( ...) my niqab is not black but white, so it hasn’t got the same connotations. In French culture, the colour black is scary, it’s sad, while white is fine. I know a sister who lives in the Paris region. She wears a white seetar and she told me that when she goes out with the white seetar she feels there is less spiteful gazing at her. Downloaded by [Harvard Library] at 08:21 04 September 2015 Depictions of the niqab on European political posters indeed emphasize the color black, as can be seen on this picture (see Figure 3) used in 2010 by the youth organization of a regional branch of the Front National, France’s extreme-right nationalistic party: modeled on the infamous image used by the UDC in the Swiss referendum which forbade minaret building, it was banned in France as it fell foul of the law prohibiting ‘incitement to ethnic or racial hatred.’ What is ethnic or racial about this picture? Beyond the national reference (the flag of Algeria covering the iconic shape of the French territory), the symbols are mostly religious (the minarets, the veil); while the small amount of female skin visible may be slightly dark, the most visible feature of the woman is her black veil – both in sharp contrast to the peachy complexion and the white garments of the Marianne in Figure 2. Additionally, while the white Marianne’s eyes are suitably dreamy and lost in vagueness, and her feminine attributes on display, the woman on the FN’s poster stares with determination at the onlooker, usurping the masculine power of the gaze.10 And, in fact, women wearing Gender, Place and Culture 1031

Figure 3. ‘No to Islamism – youth with Le Pen.’

full-face veils are abused on the grounds of their supposed foreign-ness, but also on those of their ‘unfeminine’ appearance. Among the insults frequently leveled at Bouteldja’s interviewees, some designate them as masculine figures such as ‘Darth Vader,’ ‘Batman,’ and ‘Fantoˆmas’ (a fictional, masked villain in an early twentieth-century series). I now turn to the report that records the sessions of the Parliamentary commission formed to discuss ‘the practice of full-veil wearing on the national territory,’11 a strange formulation implying that wearing the full-face veil is not so much a personal choice of dress as a major geopolitical threat and the beginning of an ‘invasion.’ The notion of a ‘reverse invasion’ of France by Algeria has been voiced by figures such as the mayor of Marseilles, and is clearly illustrated by Figure 3 above. At least one of the legal experts Downloaded by [Harvard Library] at 08:21 04 September 2015 heard by the Ge´rin commission analyzed the current situation as a consequence, or continuation, of a ‘spatial overlap’ between France and Algeria for which French colonization, in his view, is clearly responsible: ‘We have two cultures, which lived together very long under the French flag, until very recently ( ...) France used to be in Algeria. Today, Algeria is in France. The problem isn’t that different’ (Rapport de la commission parlementaire 2010, 609). What is exposed is the artificial nature of the ‘spatial’ argument about Islam being ‘from elsewhere,’ especially on the part of a nation that long considered ‘l’Alge´rie francaise’ an integral part of its territory. It is also a breakdown of the conventional ‘partition of the sensible’ within which such an overlap is unthinkable. The ‘black and white’ view presented above and underlined by the contrast of two female figures is also a ‘them and us’ view (‘they’ are defined by their religion, ‘we’ are secular and therefore enlightened and emancipated, ‘our’ women are feminine, and ‘theirs’ are not), and, from a geographic perspective, a ‘here and there’ view (‘they’ belong 1032 C. Hancock

elsewhere, ‘we’ are in our proper place) – dualistic and falsely premised approaches, which all ignore the complexities of contemporary identities and attempt to pit minority rights against one another (on the way the French debate has constructed anti-racism and anti-sexism as antagonistic, see Gue´nif-Souilamas and Mace´ 2004, Fassin and Fassin 2006; Delphy 2008), and which also reproduce the ‘police’ ordering whereby each group is assigned a place. What was being debated was as much a partition of the feminine and the masculine, as of the French and non-French, with the arguments constructed spatially about what and who is in/out of place. Such images also consolidate the ‘aesthetic regime’ within which a veil covering female hair triggers a strong emotional response, and ‘policing’ of the wearers through abuse, on the part of members of the public.

Let them wear skirts! During the commission hearings, an expert on Islam and the politics of veiling, Nilu¨fer Go¨le, was invited to take part in a round-table on ‘the body and the face,’ along with an art historian, as though to trivialize what she said (December 8, 2009 session, 593–595 in the Rapport 2010). The major points Go¨le made do not seem to have received much response from the members of the commission, though, unlike many others, she offered a nuanced reading of the full-face veil, as the sign of a quest for purity on the part of women reacting to social pressure to expose themselves ever more: ‘This inducement in public space to expose more and more of one’s face and body, this spiral of secularization is a source of oppression for many women and a symptom of something pathological in our societies’ (Go¨le, in Rapport 2010, 594). This resonates with the undressed figures of Marianne taken to best embody the French nation, as well as the assertion, by some of the niqab wearers interviewed by Bouteldja, that their experience of wearing the full-face veil is one of elation, and a sense of freedom, though this goes against the common understanding of the practice so radically that it seems inaudible. However, according to Go¨le, not only should they be heard, but they should also actually be listened to in their implied criticism of the dominant government-sanctioned voyeurism. Another woman received a more enthusiastic response from the Ge´rin commission, in September 2009, probably because she had come to deliver a message which conformed with the politicians’ expectations: Elisabeth Badinter, a controversial ‘feminist philosopher,’12 delivered an impassioned plea to defend young French women’s right to wear ... skirts. Downloaded by [Harvard Library] at 08:21 04 September 2015 You know full well too many young women in France are not allowed, in France, to wear dresses or skirts. What is being done for them? What is being done to secure their right to dress as they please? These young women come under severe pressure from their family and social environment to hide their bodies under shapeless tracksuits, if they don’t they are called ‘whores’ and physically assaulted ( ...) To put it bluntly, we’re headed for ‘the burqa is better than the headscarf’ – and it’s going to be ever more difficult for these young women to say ‘no’ to the headscarf and prefer the skirt. And if there is one freedom of dress we have to defend, that is the one. (Rapport 2010, 334) This insistence on the skirt as antidote to the veil could seem somewhat paradoxical outside of France – as it does indeed to many within: did not Guillaumin vocally expose the skirt as ‘destined to maintain women in a state of permanent sexual accessibility’ and oblige them to pay constant attention to their physical attitudes, ways of moving, and their body, which is ‘by no means protected, but rather offered by this astute piece of clothing’ (1992, 86)? Bard has shown that women in France have traditionally fought for the right not to wear skirts, but trousers, in order to gain an equal footing with men, since wearing Gender, Place and Culture 1033

trousers was one of the symbols of citizenship as established in 1792 (2010a, 2010b), and the claim was still a major issue in 1968. The status of the skirt started to be reverted, she explains, in 2000, with the emergence of the ‘Ni Putes ni soumises’ (Neither Whores nor Submissive) movement, which claimed a ‘right to femininity’ for girls in deprived neighborhoods. According to the spokespersons of the movement, wearing a skirt had become an act of resistance to machismo (though the claim does not appear to be subtantiated by in-depth sociological research with young people in the cite´s, see Clair 2008), while wearing a veil was constructed as submitting, which is how veil and skirt came to be coupled in the public imagination. Where the issue is located is extremely important. A first ‘spring of the skirt’ event, in 2006, took place not in urban, industrial France, but in an agricultural school in Brittany, one of the regions of France with the lowest proportion of immigrants. The objective of the association organizing the event was to promote awareness of sexism among white, Catholic pupils, by opening up discussions about ways of dressing, boy/girl relationships, etc. There was little public attention for this action, however, until in 2009 director Jean- Paul Lilienfeld used the expression La Journe´e de la Jupe, ‘Skirt Day,’ as the title of a film, starring Isabelle Adjani in the role of a teacher struggling to gain the respect of her mostly black and brown-skinned pupils, who breaks down and threatens them at gunpoint one day. While critics praised the performance of Adjani, the depiction of the racialized banlieue youth as inherently sexist and unable to respond to anything but the threat of violence proved controversial (see, for instance, Chollet 2009). It tapped into stereotypes of the banlieues as ‘badlands of the Republic’ (Dikec 2007) and alien to French culture, as well as common ideas about the location of sexism in France (among brown men of immigrant background). Probably as a result of the success of the film, another ‘Skirt Day’ was organized nationwide on 25 November 2010, with Ni Putes Ni Soumises13 at the forefront of the mobilization. No such event was organized on 25 November 2011. Instead, there had been a ‘skirt day’ in June 2011, and at the National Assembly, of all places. In the meantime, a major event had taken place in French political life that changed the way public opinion thought of the ‘where’ of sexism. The arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, in May 2011, by the NYPD, forced many to rethink the assumption that sexual violence was located in working-class, deprived, neighborhoods inhabited by ethnic minorities, and that a rich man, in a position of power at the head of the IMF, and tipped off to be the next President of France, could be indicted for sexual assault against a poor, Muslim, African hotel Downloaded by [Harvard Library] at 08:21 04 September 2015 worker, seemed to suddenly subvert all previous assumptions and liberate many women who, in French politics, had been subjected to various forms of sexual harassment over the years. Women politicians of all parties were heard recalling the many instances in which they were insulted or harassed, and newspapers (somewhat shaken by the fact that many journalists knew about DSK’s so-called ‘weakness for women’ but none had ever made it public or suggested it might be at odds with his ability to preside the country) started reporting what they said. Sports Minister Chantal Jouanno said that she had stopped wearing skirts when she went to Parliament,14 because she had enough of hearing ‘inappropriate remarks.’ Bernard Accoyer, the president of the Assembly, also part of the majority UMP party, countered that saying such things was ‘unfair,’ since there were ‘no more (sexist remarks) than elsewhere’ – begging the question of what ‘elsewhere’ he had in mind, and whether the elected representatives of the people did not have a responsibility to behave marginally better than the man on the street (or the youth in the banlieue?). Scott (2010), who had 1034 C. Hancock

previously pointed out the extent to which French national identity not only condoned, but also positively valued heterosexual ‘seduction’ as a crucial part of Frenchness, reiterated in a New York Times column that ‘French political culture has long tolerated behavior like Strauss-Kahn’s, explaining it as a trait of national character,’15 only to be reviled by French intellectuals. The two female UMP de´pute´es who organized the ‘skirt day’ claimed it was a gesture of celebration of the ‘harmonious’ coexistence of men and women in Parliament. Many of their male colleagues were critical, however: UMP politician Bernard Debre´, for instance, admitted that there was a local habit of ‘salacious comments,’ but insisted that the Assemble´e was ‘not the place for this sort of operation’ (Libe´ration, June 7, 2011, emphasis added). There were other issues at play, not least about the nature of political power in France and its construction as inherently masculine, if not outright sexist (see Achin and Dorlin 2008). Interestingly, in the 2012 presidential campaign, male candidates came under as much scrutiny of their bodily attributes and forms of dress as female candidates always had, which points to an increasing awareness of politics as embodied.16 However, the fact that gender, sexuality, and ethnicity were used as part of political identity construction did not warrant their politicization, and might even have prevented it (Achin and Bargel 2013). No ‘Skirt Days’ were organized either in 2012 or 2013, though incidents of cat-calling and sexist harassment remain as frequent occurrences in the French Parliament as ever.17

Conclusion So fifty years ago, all the nuns were covered, and being topless (on the beach) was shocking, while today it’s normal. The women who are displayed on billboards with their naked breasts don’t represent the values of the Republic of fifty or sixty years ago. The evolving Republican values do not take into account the diversity of people who live in France. ( ...) In France, they want a country where everyone looks like Pierre, Paul, Jacques, and where (everyone) is dressed the same. (Latifah, who wears a full-face veil, interviewed by Naı¨ma Bouteldja for the Open Society Foundation Report 2011) It is important to seize the extent to which, in France, denying difference is seen as progressive, and any political claim presented by a specific ‘community’ is depicted as conservative: belonging to a community is seen as slowing progress toward full citizenship, if not threatening the entire fabric of French egalitarianism. This notion relies on another belief widely held in France, of ‘Anglo-Saxon’ countries being at the forefront of neoliberalization, and thus, their understanding of society as diverse as inherently Downloaded by [Harvard Library] at 08:21 04 September 2015 linked with, and propitious to, capitalistic exploitation. A similar form of intellectual nationalism was at work in the ways, rightly underlined by Scott, a specific strand of feminism, ‘fe´minisme a` la francaise,’ sought to distinguish itself from imported varieties by claiming the French ‘art of seduction’ makes for peaceful gender relations. Scharff (2011) has described how in Britain and Germany too, the Othering of ‘oppressed Muslim women,’ by designating them as the only victims of sexism in western countries, was instrumental to silencing feminist claims. However, this is combined with the fact that in France, any discourse about difference, and identity politics, is seen as a diversion from the real major form of oppression, based on class. This context helps to understand why the rhetoric of ‘diversity’ was put forward, in France, by right-wing parties, and resisted by left-wing ones. It also helps to understand the broad consensus around bans on veiling. As shown by Bowen (2010), laı¨cite´ is bandied about and claimed by both mainstream parties as a core French value, though in recent years it has been wielded selectively and quite systematically against the Muslims of France. The mechanisms whereby any Gender, Place and Culture 1035

negative reporting about Islam increases the discomfort felt by young women perceived as Muslim in their daily lives, described by Bowen in 2007, are still felt very painfully by many: nearly all young women in interviews conducted in 2012 reported that things had been getting much worse in the previous two years, during the public discussion of the so- called ‘burqa,’ in which Muslim women never given a voice, constantly objectified, somehow measured up against specific understandings of femininity and found wanting. Our respondents reported increased fear of aggression, and particular precautions taken as a result of the coverage of the events, cautious dressing and avoidance of public space outside the confines of their neighborhood, in particular. In the words of one of our interviewees, Myriam, who wears a veil: Some of them go, ‘women’s oppression,’ like, they fought for us to have the vote, the right to wear trousers ... one day a woman said that to me, on the bus, she goes ‘what are you doing, have you forgotten everything they’ve done for us’ ... a Frenchwoman, pure breed, and all ... it has nothing to do with voting or wearing trousers! Voting and wearing trousers are the hard-earned rights of Republican citizens, and even more recently acquired rights of female citizens; that politically assertive veil-wearing young women on the outskirts of Paris are being instructed to display their hair, neck and legs to prove themselves to be proper citizens is one of the bizarre results of historical ‘sexularism’ and its recent manifestations in French politics. I return here to Rancie`re, whose notion of the ‘consensus’ is helpful in reflecting on this situation. The ‘consensus,’ Rancie`re explains, presupposes the inclusion of all, by rendering the boundaries invisible, thereby denying the possibility of political subjectification of the un-counted and the shareless (1995, 158). This consensus creates a new, fake political subject, with strongly held beliefs in visibility and exhibition: ... a subject who is called upon to live out all his fantasms in a world of total exhibition and asymptotic convergence of bodies, in a belief that ‘everything is possible’ with enjoyment flaunted and promised, that is, of course, bound to be disappointed and with an incentive, therefore, to seek and chase the ‘bad body’ (le ‘mauvais corps’), the diabolic body that obstructs the total satisfaction that is within reach everywhere and yet always withheld. (163) This quote, in the light of the issues discussed here, strongly evokes the political witch- hunt against veiled women, ‘bad bodies,’ bodies that deny themselves to the enjoyment and hedonic satisfaction of a ‘pseudo-political’ subject for whom exhibition and sexual availability have come to stand in for political rights and dignity. I would argue that whereas members of the French Parliament may believe they are

Downloaded by [Harvard Library] at 08:21 04 September 2015 political actors, they are in fact enforcing ‘the police,’ and that, conversely, political subjectification may be what is taking place, not only in banlieue riots, as demonstrated by Dikec (2007), but also in the everyday, mundane, refusal of some Muslim girls and women to conform to the dominant aesthetic regime, a ‘Marianne’ dress code, in order to be acknowledged as citizens.

Acknowledgements The author wishes to thank Hu¨lya Arik and Hilal O¨ zcetin for organizing a great session at the AAG in 2012, entitled ‘Dress(ing) in Public: Dress, Ideology and the Female Body,’ which allowed for the discussion of parts of this paper, Me´lina Germes for her insights into the appearance of the pregnant Marianne, and Jean-Francois Staszak for his support. Thanks are also due to Anissa Ouamrane for her assistance, and our research participants for all they shared with us. Without Mustafa, my life would be sadly Rancie`re-less. Lastly, heartfelt thanks to the reviewers and editors who assisted with the revisions of this paper with great generosity. 1036 C. Hancock

Notes 1. This is not to suggest that wearing the veil is necessarily intended as political, as pointed out by Bilge (2010) who advocated moving beyond the ‘subordination vs. resistance’ binary that structures many discussions about the veil. 2. The reports are available at http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/13/rap-info/i2262.asp and http:// www.opensocietyfoundations.org/publications/unveiling-truth-why-32-muslim-women-wear- full-face-veil-France. Both include extremely rich material of which I select only a few points of particular resonance. 3. As Scott has pointed out, law in France cannot be targeted at a specific group, but has to be worded as though it concerned the entire population. Because the wording had to be so general, it was therefore necessary to list, in the law and in the campaign, a large number of exceptions: covering one’s face with a mask for medical reasons, for professional reasons (in the case of workers in the building industry, in particular), for safety reasons (wearing a helmet on a motorbike), or, more ironically, in the case of ‘traditional demonstrations such as carnivals or processions.’ 4. See, for instance, ‘Niqab, la Marianne de Gue´ant, visage de´couvert, poitrine cache´e,’ www. rue89.com (published April 11, 2011). 5. There are specific forms of secularism, called laı¨cite´ in France, laiklik in Turkey, the discussion of which falls outside the scope of this paper but which I discussed elsewhere (Hancock 2008). In the French context characterized by what has been called ‘combat secularism’ (Roy 2005), the separation of Church and state was made law in 1905, and President Francois Hollande has talked of enshrining it in the Constitution. 6. President Hollande is known to support a proposal to ban veil-wearing women from childcare, and his Minister of the Interior Manuel Valls criticized a March 2013 Court of Appeal decision whereby the veil-wearing employee of a private, but publicly subsidized, childcare center in Chanteloup-les-Vignes, on the western outskirts of Paris, had been unfairly dismissed in 2008. 7. In his first discourse as President on 6 May 2007, Sarkozy said ‘to all martyrized women in the world ... I want to say that France’s pride and duty will be to stand by their side. ( ...) France shall not abandon women condemned to the burqa ... France shall not abandon women who are denied freedom.’ 8. This was further illustrated by President Hollande’s pledge to erase the word ‘race’ from the French Constitution, where it is mentioned in the preamble which states that France ‘ensures the equality of all citizens before the law, without distinction of origin, race or religion.’ 9. Two soldiers of North-African origin, one of them Catholic, were killed by Mohammed Merah in March 2012, in what was believed to be a racist crime until the terrorist assassinated a rabbi and three children in front of a Jewish confessional school a few days later. See http:// www.rue89.com/rue89-presidentielle/2012/03/26/nicolas-sarkozy-invente-le-concept-de- musulmans-dapparence-230532 10. This is one of the differences between the niqab, which does not cover the eyes, and the burqa, which does. Therefore, the word burqa, most used in public debates, was in fact inaccurate. 11. This cross-party Commission was presided by Andre´ Ge´rin, a Communist, and Eric Raoult, from

Downloaded by [Harvard Library] at 08:21 04 September 2015 the right-wing UMP, drafted the report, which was handed in to the Assembly on 26 January 2010, and which also includes verbatim reports of many of the hearings conducted by the commission. 12. Badinter has taken many controversial positions in recent years, about feminism as ‘man-hating’ or about the fact that mainstream parties, in her view, have ‘abandoned laı¨cite´ to the Front National’ (see http://blogs.mediapart.fr/blog/jean-bauberot/300911/elisabeth-badinter-et-la- laicite-lepenisee); what undermines her credibility is also the fact that she is a major stakeholder in Publicis, one of France’s main advertising companies, founded by her father (see, for instance, http://www.rue89.com/2010/02/11/elisabeth-badinter-actionnaire-feministe-dun- publicis-sexiste-137891). 13. This movement which originated as a genuine grassroots movement led by women of immigrant background lost credit when its founder, Fadela Amara, accepted a ministerial job in a right- wing government in 2007. It had already been widely criticized for accepting to play into the hands of several political parties’ racist depictions of banlieue youth (see Gue´nif-Souilamas 2004). 14. Incidentally, at the time, 18.5% of de´pute´s (113 out of a total of 576) were women, despite the 2000 law on ‘parite´’ which was supposed to ensure that parties nominate equal numbers of men Gender, Place and Culture 1037

and women in national elections. This accounts for one of the most enjoyable asides in the Raoult report, when the esteemed historian of laı¨cite´ Jean Baube´rot reminds a de´pute´ who is challenging his ‘grasp of reality’ of ‘the paradox of an Assembly, male at 80%, from parties which pay fines not to have to respect the law on parity, giving lessons to Islam’ (Baube´rot, in the Rapport 2010, 428). 15. See http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/05/18/are-french-women-more-tolerant/ feminism-a-foreign-import?scp¼1&sq¼joan%st¼cse, ‘Feminism, a foreign import?’ May 20, 2011. 16. For example, there were many comments about Hollande’s weight loss in the run-up to the election and how this made him fitter for the function. 17. Ecologist Minister Ce´cile Duflot was booed and whistled for showing up in Parliament in a dress in July 2012, and a right-wing de´pute´ made chick-like sounds during a speech by a female colleague in October 2013.

Notes on contributor Claire Hancock teaches geography at the University of Paris-Est Cre´teil. She recently edited a special issue of the online journal Justice Spatiale/Spatial Justice on ‘gender, sexual identities and spatial justice’ (www.jssj.org/archives/03). She is carrying out a research project on figures of Muslim Others in European cities funded by the Institut Universitaire de France.

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ABSTRACT TRANSLATIONS “La Repu´blica se vive a cara descubierta” (y con una falda): (des)vistiendo ciudadanas francesas El tı´tulo de este artı´culo se refiere a la campan˜a llevada a cabo por el gobierno france´sen abril y mayo de 2011 para publicitar y promover la ley de prohibicio´n del uso del velo total en los espacios pu´blicos, “la Re´publique se vit a` visage de´couvert”. El artı´culo analiza las formas en que los discursos polı´ticos, durante el perı´odo 2009–2012, en el que esta ley fue discutida por primera vez, y luego aplicada, utilizaron normas especı´ficas de vestimenta femenina para establecer una cierta manera de entender la ciudadanı´a. Basa´ndonos en la nocio´n de “policı´a” de Rancie`re y la teorizacio´n de Dikec de “regı´menes este´ticos”, el artı´culo discute los entrecruzamientos de la vestimenta femenina con el republicanismo france´s. Estos son ilustrados a trave´s de representaciones controversiales de “Marianne”, Downloaded by [Harvard Library] at 08:21 04 September 2015 la encarnacio´n femenina de la Repu´blica, que plantea la cuestio´n de color, en un paı´s donde la raza continu´a siendo un tabu´. Volvie´ndose ma´s especı´ficamente al informe producido por el comite´ parlamentario antes de la discusio´n de la prohibicio´n de la burka, el artı´culo discute la parado´jica promocio´n de las faldas como el arquetipo de la feminidad francesa, y muestra co´mo la discusio´n de los derechos de las mujeres a vestir faldas desafio´ las ideas sobre la localizacio´n del sexismo y el tema de la polı´tica en la sociedad francesa. Palabras claves: Francia; Repu´blica; velo; color; raza; vestimenta femenina; ciudadanı´a

“共和国的生活无需掩面 ”（但穿着裙装）：为法国公民（褪去）着衣

本文的标题指向法国政府于2011年四月至五月间，为了公共化并提倡禁止在公共 场所穿戴全罩式面纱的“la Re´publique se vit a` visage de´couvert”（共和国公开生活） 法案所推动的政策倡议。本文检视在此一法案最初进行讨论、随后并付诸执行的 2009年至2012年间，政治论述如何利用特定的女性穿着规范，建立对于公民权的