UUWHS - They Showed The Way: The Way Leads On

As our foremother, Universalist Phebe Hanaford once said: “Man was not made subject to woman, nor should woman be subject to man. Neither men’s rights nor women’s rights should be considered, but human rights— the rights of each, the rights of all.”

We welcome you to this service in celebration of 150 years of the movement for women’s rights.

CHALICE LIGHTING (in unison)

The flame of our heritage lights the way to our future.

THE VISION (Ring chime.)

We begin with the vision.

150 years ago our foremothers articulated their vision in a document called “The Declaration of Sentiments.” The language and demands are patterned after the United States Declaration of Independence. In 1848, in Seneca Falls, New York, a small but brave group of women declared their rights and in so doing launched a movement that would change the world as they knew it. Here is a portion of that vision.

Reader 1: When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a course.

Reader 2: We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Reader 3: The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

Reader 1: He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.

Reader 2: He had compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.

Reader 3: He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.

Reader 1: After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it.

Reader 2: He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.

Reader 3: He has made her morally, an irresponsible being.

Reader 1: He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments.

Reader 2: He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education, all colleges being closed against her.

Reader 3: He has endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.

Reader 1: Therefore be it resolved:

That all laws which prevent woman from occupying such a station in society as her conscience shall dictate, or which place her in a position inferior to that of man, are contrary to the great precept of nature and therefore of no force or authority.

Reader 2: That woman is man’s equal—was intended to be so by the Creator, and the highest good of the race demands that she should be recognized as such.

Reader 3: That the same amount of virtue, delicacy, and refinement of behavior that is required of woman in the social state, should also be required of man, and the same transgressions should be visited with equal severity on both man and woman.

All Readers That it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise.

ONE HUNDRED YEARS HENCE

Immediately following the historic meeting 150 years ago in Seneca Falls, New York, women began to hold similar gatherings across the continent and abroad. Universalist Frances Dana Gage put her vision of where this new movement would lead into a song, first sung at the 1852 convention held at the Universalist church in Akron, Ohio. Let’s sing it now.

QUESTIONS. (Ring chime.)

We go on with some questions.

How did this vision of the future reveal itself to these innovative women of the 19th century? When we reflect on the culture of the time, we can only wonder at the imagination and the creativity that led them to see beyond their social arrangements to a complete transformation of gender relations. The possibility of equality between men and women was the romantic dream of a few courageous women. Where did these notions come from? Could they be made real? Was there something in the upstate New York area that fed their ideas? What were the sources that were being explored which may have influenced our foremothers?

SOURCES (Ring chime.)

We examine some sources.

SOURCE 1: In 1776, Unitarian Abigail Adams knew from her study of English law and her observations of life that the new government of the United States should not perpetuate the mistakes of the past and continue to deprive women of their rights.

Abigail Adams’ husband was not only a signer of the Declaration of Independence, but also a drafter of the United States Constitution. She admonished him to “Remember the ladies,” especially after she learned that William Blackstone’s Code of English common law would likely be used as a basis for the new state constitutions. Blackstone had written that women’s “very being or legal existence was upended during marriage, or at least, incorporated or consolidated into that of the husband, under whose wing, protection and cover, she performs everything.” As she feared, under these laws, a single woman lost control of her property and her earnings when she married. She gave away all of her rights to any children she would bear. With the words, “I do,” a woman lost her legal identity. She lost her name, her right to control her own body, and to live where she chose. She could not make any contracts, sue or be sued. She was, in effect, dead in the law.

After her husband ignored her advice, Abigail wrote to her friend, Mercy Otis Warren. “I even threatened fomenting a Rebellion in case we were not considered and assured [my husband] we would not hold ourselves bound by any laws m which we had neither a voice nor representation.”

(in Alice Brown, Mercy Warren 1896)

CONGREGATIONAL RESPONSE: We are grateful for this gift to our heritage.

SOURCE 2: In 1790, Universalist Judith Sargeant Murray knew that women were being treated unfairly by the way things were, so she wrote the first articles on women’s rights published in the United States.

Yes, ye lordly, ye haughty sex, our souls are by nature equal to yours; the same breath of God animates, enlivens, and invigorates us; and that we are not fallen lower than yourselves, let those witness who have greatly towered above the various discouragements by which they have been so heavily oppressed;... from the commencement of time to the present day, there hath been as many females, as males, who, by the mere force of natural powers, have merited the crown of applause; who, thus unassisted, have seized the wreath of fame.

(“On the Equality of the Sexes,” Massachusetts Magazine 1790)

CONGREGATIONAL RESPONSE: We are grateful for this gift to our heritage.

SOURCE 3: In 1792 in England, Unitarian Mary Wollstonecraft understood that the women’s lack of education was the major cause of any weaknesses they might exhibit. Her famous book, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, was written in response to the recommendation that girls be banned from attending school.

After considering the historic page, and viewing the living world with anxious solicitude, the most melancholy emotions of sorrowful indignation have depressed my spirits, and I have sighed when obliged to confess, that either nature has made a great difference between man and woman, or that the civilization which has hitherto taken place in the world has been very partial. I have turned over various books written on the subject of education, and patiently observed the conduct of parents and the management of schools; but what has been the result?—a profound conviction that the neglected education of my fellow-creatures is the grand source of the misery I deplore; and that women, in particular, are rendered weak and wretched by a variety of concurring causes...

CONGREGATIONAL RESPONSE: We are grateful for this gift to our heritage.

SOURCE 4: In 1845, Unitarian Margaret Fuller saw the struggle of women to gain respect and equality moved forward by the French Revolution, but the repression and violence that followed took away the gains. Her book, Women in the 19^th Century, became a sort of “bible” for the incipient movement for women’s rights.

We would have every arbitrary barrier thrown down. We would have every path laid open to Woman as freely as to Man. Were this done, and a slight temporary fermentation allowed to subside, we should see crystallizations more pure and of more various beauty. We believe the divine energy would pervade nature to a degree unknown in the history of former ages, and that no discordant collision, but a ravishing harmony of the spheres, would ensue.

CONGREGATIONAL RESPONSE: We are grateful for this gift to our heritage.

SOURCE 5: The words of these foremothers helped to prepare women to organize to demand their rights, but it was the indigenous people of upstate New York—particularly the Onondaga and Seneca nations of the Iroquois Confederacy—who provided a model for balanced gender relations. In her book, Women, Church and State, Matilda Joslyn Gage recorded what had inspired women in the area to realize that a totally different form of society was not only possible but, in fact, a reality.

The famous Iroquois Indians, or Six Nations,,, showed alike in its form of government, and in social life, reminiscences of the Matriarchate (or Mother Rule). The line of descent, feminine, was especially notable in all tribal relations such as the election of Chiefs, and the Council of Matrons, to which all disputed questions were referred for final adjudication. No sale of land was valid without consent of the [women] and among the State Archives at Albany, New York, treaties are preserved signed by the “Sachems and Principal Women of the Six Nations.” The women also possessed the veto power on questions of war....

CONGREGATIONAL RESPONSE: We are grateful for this gift to our heritage.

THE EVENT (Ring chime.)

We recall the pivotal events that took place in New York, 150 years ago.

July 19, 1848, was a warm, sunny day in Seneca Falls, New York. Despite the busy needs of an agricultural community in the summer and the fact that there was almost no publicity, people came from far places to the Methodist Chapel to hear the speeches in which women demanded the right to vote. Elizabeth Cady Stanton spoke in a scholarly, eloquent way. She had been encouraged by the Negro abolitionist leader, Frederick Douglass, to persevere in her work toward this goal.

Many of those present signed the “Declaration of Sentiments and Purposes,” before the meeting adjourned and participants agreed to reconvene two weeks later at the Unitarian Church in Rochester. That meeting was larger, and although the husband of Lucretia Mott had presided in Seneca Falls, the Committee for Arrangement decided that a woman should preside in Rochester. Susan B. Anthony was teaching in eastern New York at the time, but members of her family attended the Rochester meeting and she joined the new movement as soon as she returned home.

The energy and determination generated by these meetings grew into a national movement for women’s suffrage and equality. Although it thought to speak for all women, in reality many were overlooked or even intentionally excluded.

LIMITATIONS (Ring chime.)

We recognize some limitations.

Despite the vision, the rich sources, and the inspiring events that moved women forward in the struggle for equal rights, we know now that they had limits in their understanding of justice. We cannot fault them for being products of their time, but we can acknowledge the effect their limitations have on us today.

LIMITATION 1: The Boston Female Antislavery Society had at least one black woman member, but for the most part, in spite of their common goals, black and white women activists worked in separate groups. In their book, Divided Sisters, Midge Wilson and Kathy Russell suggest that white women could have learned a lot from black women who were free of notions of passivity that hampered whites. Black women had no illusions about the value of marriage and often had more self-confidence than their white sisters. Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman courageously freed their enslaved people and also spoke out for women’s rights.

EXTINGUISH ONE CANDLE.