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 justifiedly One hundred and fifty-six years ago, in 1848, when the first Womens Rights Convention was held in the quiet town of Seneca Falls, New York, the concept that women were authorize to fully enfranchised citizenship was a completely foreign concept. Ideas expressed and redresss demanded at that convention, and at early feminist conventions organized throughout the next lxx years, were considered ridiculous. Suffrage rights, divorce rights, womens property rights, and married womens right to sign legal contracts, control income, or have legal bang of their childrenor themselves, for that matterwere reacted to with indifference at best. Surprisingly, one of the most candid opponents of womens rights was the conservative Church, who argued that womens place, according to Scripture, was in the domestic celestial orbit to intrude into the public sphere was to violate her natural role and imperil her mortal soul. However, religious conservatives defense of Biblical traditions did not end with womens rights if we look at the some of the most contentious complaisant issues of the retiring(a) and present, some interesting parallels exist between the terms used by fundamentalist Christians to resist womens rights, abolition, abortion rights, and gay marriage. In all(prenominal) 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 batt le of spirit behind him. Women were not to be trusted with important moral duties, collectable 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. concord to the Church women were neither supposed to take such an active genteel role as suffrage would promote, nor were they capable enough to partake in such a privileged and essential civic duty what didtherefore what shouldGod-abiding women know about politics?It was on this religious basis that more women were actually opposed to womens rights.