1) "In our struggle for self-identity, survival, and liberation in a patriarchal society and church, Christian women have found that the bible has been used as a weapon against us but at the same time it has been a resource for courage, hope, and commitment in this struggle." page 5

      2) " Margaret Foster writes of her own experiences of that stress when she says: "[A]nd a feminist is no shrieking harridan obsessed with destruction but a man or a woman who strives to secure a society in which neither sex finds gender alone a handicap to their progress." page 5

      3) "While the term "feminism" may be a twentieth-century invention, its ideals and strategies were practiced long before the suffragettes won the vote, and long before Mary Daly, Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Phyllis Trible, Naomi Goldenberg, or Rosemary Radford Ruether penned their scathing critiques of the religious literatures and power structures of society." page 6

      4) "There is no such thing as a completely objective or perfect interpretation of the Bible." page 13

      5) "Throughout the history of Judaism and Christianity, the Bible or the Book has been central to constructing the identities, rituals, ethics, and beliefs of its readers." page 14

      6) "Thus, the Bible has been used as a political tool by the "religious" and the not-so-religious to bring about positive social change as well as to incite and prolong disastrous, debilitating wars. While many have used interpretations to give insightful advice on ethical dilemmas, there are others who would use interpretations to control, intimidate, and abuse. The sword of truth has often become "The Only Truth." Many, hoping to fulfill apocalyptic prophesies in the Bible, have come preaching peace in the name of a God and have left their listeners in a pine box." page 14

      7) "The ISBE again gives its own opinion: "In the legitimate sense of the term, every interpreter of the bible is 'prejudiced,' i.e., is guided by certain principles which he holds antecedently to his work of interpretation." page 16

      8) "Josef Blank in the book Conflicting Ways of Interpreting the Bible also points out that interpreters are biased: "Behind it all we have to deal with the problem that the historico-critical method is never a neutral, value-free instrument of research which can be used in a purely technical way." " page 17

      9) According to George Fox: "Eve may have been at fault in the Creation story, but it is of no consequence to Christians. In Christ all people are restored and thus men and women are partners or equals within Christianity." page 34

      10) About Margaret Askew Fell Fox's husband: "Judge Fell attempted to protect her and the new movement but never identified himself with it." page 38, We owe a lot to people who "passively" support our liberation.

      "Margaret's work was groundbreaking. After the death of the judge, she ran her own house, managed her children, chose her own religion and a new husband. She also dared to write a tract defending the God-given biblical rights of herself as well as all women to speak in public.

      Her animosity toward the religious structure which imprisoned her led her to identify it with evil, the serpent. She warned her opposers not to speak against women because they have been foundational to the very church they administer. Their importance exceeds the pope's. Women are central and will always be central to the message of the true God, so let them speak!" page 43-44

      11) Regarding Sarah Moore Grimke (1792-1873): "In many states and counties on the eastern seaboard, women were prohibited from speaking in public by law." page 46

      "In 1837 a woman, if she was married, had no independent legal status of her own. She was "absorbed in her master." A wife could not take legal action against anyone, her property at marriage becomes her husband's, and the husband is in absolute control of any profits made by his wife." page 47

      "Adam seems to be a bit more guilty again because he was fully aware of the consequences of his actions. Eve was not." page 50

      12) Regarding Barbara Kellison: "Kellison said that ruling males are in control and, thus, are responsible for the social plight of females which had kept them ignorant and uneducated." page 71

      13) "Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, lawyer, physician, and defender of witches, write a treatise addressed to the Queen of the Austrians and Burgundians, defending and lauding the opposite sex as the superior sex." page 121

      14) "Throughout history, women have had to create strategies of deceit and manipulation in order to survive. Astell's work could be read as a tongue-in-cheek rhetoric. Her real message was education, liberating education." pages 136-7

      15) On page 143: Three quotes from Women, Church, and State by Matilda Joslyn Gage "Let woman first prove that she has a soul, both the Bible and the Church deny it." - An opposing speaker at the Woman's Suffrage Convention of 1854, page 471

      "The most important struggle in the history of the church is that of woman for liberty of thought and the right to give that thought to the world." page 525

      "Woman's increasing freedom within the last hundred years is not due to the church, but to the printing press, to education, to free thought, and other forms of advancing civilization." page 526

      16) "According to [Frances] Willard, Women were disqualified from Christian public ministry by an ecclesiastical hierarchy that is spite of its own incompetencies had survived. This hierarchy (which she termed ecclesiasticism) used argument from the Bible, an exegesis of the cloister, to create church edicts enforced by a white male dynasty that had lost faith in itself and others: "Their fear that incompetent women may become pastors and preachers should be put to flight by the survival of the church, in spite of centuries of the grossest incompetency in mind and profligacy in life, of men set apart by the laying-on of hands.

      The ecclesiastical authorities betrayed not only incompetencies but also prejudiced attitudes and a myriad of absurd reasoning and interpretative processes. Their view of history was biased and selective. "The whole subjection theory grows out of the one-sided interpretation of the Bible by men." Some passages of the Bible, such as the "keep silent" injunction to women were ignored, especially if they referred to a woman accomplishing anything. In short, they not only "preach but practise the heresy that woman is in subjection to man. . . . " " page 153

      "Willard attempted to demonstrate that traditional exegesis used by clerics is riddled with inconsistencies, prejudices, and presuppositions about woman's subjection that are self-serving. She characterized their approach to Scripture as "literal," "fast and loose," "exegesis of the cloister," "one eyed," "one sided," and the so-called "scientific study of the Holy Scriptures."

      She began by attacking the way clergy pick and choose scriptural passages in order to fit their own points of view. She argued that if one part of the Bible is to be interpreted internally and used as an unretractable law then other passages should also be kept in a legal manner. . . . Men enforced the letter of the law with regard to prohibiting women from exercising her abilities to preach, yet on the other hand, they ignored the provision of ministering without the signs of wealth." page 155

      17) According to Charlotte Perkins Gilman: "Jesus, himself, is a man who never condemned a woman, even if she was guilty of adultery: "Jesus was far more gentle with the Magdalene, and with the woman taken in adultery, than he was with the scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites he so condemned. but we, in spite of law, religion, and any sense of justice, continue to blame and punish the woman for acts but lightly disparaged in a man." " page 164

      "Males had failed in building a peaceful and equitable world. They had used Christianity to further their own need for power over others." page 164

      "As a philosopher, Gilman recognized the importance and influence of the Bible on American culture. Its emphasis on death and war had only led to more violence and abuse. . . . The Book did have some merit but, unfortunately, it had been used to enslave and oppress females for centuries.

      The answer to the dilemma was to begin anew with a matriarchal religion that would offer an alternative and often opposite view of life and the beyond." page 165

      18) According to Kingsford and Maitland: "Christianity had failed, that is, not because it was false, but because it had been falsified." page 188

      "To the divorce between the elements of masculine and feminine of man's intellectual system, is due the prevailing unbelief. For, converted thereby into superstition, religion has been rendered ridiculous: and instead of being exhibited as the Supreme Reason, God has been depicted as the Supreme Unreason." page 189

      "Kingsford and Maitland are included in this study because they were quoted so often by nineteenth-century women such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage. No one could possibly estimate the influence they had on the women's rights movement in England and the United States." page 195

References:

      note 6, page 78: Margaret Fell Fox, Women's Speaking Justified, Proved and Allowed by Scripture (1688). First printed in 1666, reprinted by William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1979. Introduction by David J. Latt., iv. For accessible copies of her pamphlet consult: Moria Ferguson, ed., First Feminists: British Women Writers 1578-1799 (New York, The Feminist Press, 1985), 114-127. An abbreviated version may be found in Barbara J. MacHaffie, Readings in Her Story: Women in Christian Traditions (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 109-112.

      note 7, page 82: Amy Oden, ed., In Her Words: Women's Writings in the History of Christian Thought (Nashville: Abington Press, 1994), p.290

      Agrippa von Nettesheim, Henricus Cornelius, The Glory of Women: or, A Treatise Declaring the Excellency and Preeminence of Women above Men which is proved both by Scripture, Law, Reason, and Authority, Divine and Humane, written in Latine by Henricus Cornelius Agrippa . . . and now translated into English for the Vertuous and Beautiful Female Sex of the Common wealth of England , by Devv. Fleetwood (London: Robert Ibbitson, 1652)

      Astell, Mary, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies for the Advancement of their True and Greatest Interest (London: R. Wilkin, 1701) and reprint (New York: Source Book Press, 1970), 18

      Caine, Barbara, Victorian Feminists (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992)

      Clark, Elizabeth and Herbert Richardson, eds. Women and Religion: A Feminist Sourcebook of Christian Thought (New York: Harper and Row, 1977)

      Cooper, Anna Julia Haywood, A Voice from the South (Ohio: Aldine Printing House, 1892)

      Demers, Patricia, Women as Interpreters of the Bible (New York: Paulist, 1992)       Greene, Dana, ed. Lucretia Mott: Her Complete Speeches and Sermons (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1980): 215

      Grimke, Sarah Moore Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman, Addressed to Mary S. Parker, President of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (New York: Burt Franklin, 1838)

      Hardesty, Nancy, A. Women called to Witness: Evangelical Feminism in the Nineteenth Century (Nashville: Abington, 1984)

      Hays, Mary Appeal to the Men of Great Britain in Behalf of Women

      Hays, Mary, Female Biography; or Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women of all Ages and Countries, Alphabetically Arranged (1803)

      Kellison, Barbara, The Rights of Women in the Church (Dayton: Herald and Hanner Office, 1862, 1867)

      Kingsford, Anna Bonus and Edward Maitland, The Perfect Way or, the Finding of Christ (London: John M. Watkins, 1923)

      MacHaffie, Barbara J. Her Story: Women in Christian Tradition (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986)

      MacHaffie, Barbara, Readings in Herstory: Women in Christian Tradition (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992)

      Palmer, Phoebe, The Promise of the Father (Boston: H. Degen, 1859; Reprint: New York: Garland Publishing, 1985)

      Ruether, Rosemary Radford, Religion and Sexism: Images of Woman in the Jewish and Christian Traditions (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974)

      Shaw, Susan J., A Religious History of Julia Evelina Smith's 1876 Translation of the Holy Bible. Doing More Than Any Man Has Ever Done (San Francisco: Mellen Research University Press, 1993)

      Smith, Julia E., The Holy Bible containing the Old and New Testaments. Translated from the Original Tongues (Hartford, CT: American Publishing ompany, 1876)

      Willard, Frances, E. Woman in the Pulpit (Chicago: Women's Temperance Publication Association, 1888)

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