A History of Contention:Analyzing Parallels in the Rhetoric of the Religious Right :: Essays Papers

A History of ContentionAnalyzing Parallels in the Rhetoric of the Religious Right One hundred and fifty-six years ago, in 1848, when the premier(prenominal) Womens Rights Convention was held in the quiet town of Seneca Falls, New York, the concept that women were entitled to fully enfranchised citizenship was a completely foreign concept. Ideas expressed and rights demanded at that convention, and at early feminist conventions organized throughout the next seventy years, were considered ridiculous. Suffrage rights, divorce rights, womens property rights, and married womens right to take legal contracts, control income, or have legal guardianship of their childrenor themselves, for that matterwere reacted to with indifference at best. Surprisingly, one of the most vocal opponents of womens rights was the nonprogressive Church, who argued that womens place, according to Scripture, was in the domestic sphere to intrude into the public sphere was to violate her natural berth and enda nger her mortal soul. However, religious conservatives defensive structure of Biblical traditions did not end with womens rights if we look at the some of the most contentious social issues of the past and present, some interesting parallels exist amid the terms used by fundamentalist Christians to balk womens rights, abolition, abortion rights, and gay marriage. In each of these debates, the religious conservatives used Scriptural notions of what is natural to resist liberal social reform.The Religious Right and its devotees had been the primary protesters of womens suffrage since the conception of the movement. Biblically, they argued, womens roles have been established as subservient to man, second-class their God-given role is to be dependent, weak, diminutive, and obedient. The Reverend J. G. Holland asserted that woman was called into being for mans happiness and interest his helpmeet to wait and watch his movements, to second his endeavors, to fight the hard battle of b rio behind him. Women were not to be trusted with important moral duties, due to the weakness inherent in their sex. For instance, through the story of Eves fall, Christianity has been founded on the doctrine that woman is weak and the source of human evil. According to the Church women were neither supposed to take such an active civil role as suffrage would promote, nor were they capable enough to partake in such a privileged and essential civic duty what didindeed what shouldGod-abiding women know about government activity?It was on this religious basis that many women were actually opposed to womens rights.