The Woman's Bible
The Woman's Bible is a two-part book, written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and a committee of 26 women, and published in 1895 and 1898 to challenge the traditional position of religious orthodoxy that woman should be subservient to man. By producing the book, Stanton wished to promote a radical liberating theology, one that stressed self-development. The book attracted a great deal of controversy and antagonism at its introduction.
Many women's rights activists who worked with Stanton were opposed to the publication of The Woman's Bible; they felt it would harm the drive for women's suffrage. Although it was never accepted by Bible scholars as a major work, it became a popular best-seller, much to the dismay of suffragists who worked alongside Stanton within the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Susan B. Anthony tried to calm the younger suffragists, but they issued a formal denunciation of the book, and worked to distance the suffrage movement from Stanton's broader scope which included attacks on traditional religion. Because of the widespread negative reaction, including suffragists who had been close to her, publication of the book effectively ended Stanton's influence in the suffrage movement. (wikipedia.org)
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Become an affiliateElizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) was a leader of the U.S. women's rights movement. Born to a powerful New York family, Stanton was raised by a conservative father and progressive mother. Although both of her parents were politically active--her father was a congressman and later a New York Supreme Court justice; her mother was a campaigner for abolition and women's suffrage--Stanton, who excelled in school, gravitated toward the radical politics of her mother as she entered adulthood. In 1848, she was instrumental in establishing the Seneca Falls Convention on women's rights, where she controversially demanded that white American women be granted the right to vote. In 1851, she met Susan B. Anthony, with whom she established several organizations to campaign for abolition and women's suffrage, shifting during the war to a platform advocating for voting rights to be granted to African Americans and women before opposing the Fifteenth Amendment on the grounds that it afforded African American men the right to vote while denying women the same privilege. After the Civil War, Stanton, alongside Anthony, formed the National Woman Suffrage Association, branching off from the larger suffrage movement to advocate for the right for white women to vote. Despite this controversial decision--she was widely criticized by members of her own movement as well as such prominent African Americans as Frederick Douglass--Stanton remains a crucial figure in the history of women's rights in the United States.