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

A Hi study of ContentionAnalyzing Parallels in the grandiosity of the Religious Right One hundred and fifty-six years ago, in 1848, when the first Womens Rights Convention was held in the quiet town of Seneca Falls, in the altogether York, the concept that women were entitled to fully enfranchised citizenship was a completely inappropriate concept. Ideas expressed and rights demanded at that convention, and at early feminist conventions organized passim the next seventy years, were considered ridiculous. Suffrage rights, divorce rights, womens property rights, and marry womens right to sign legal contracts, control income, or bring on legal guardianship of their childrenor themselves, for that matterwere reacted to with indifference at best. Surprisingly, angiotensin converting enzyme of the most vocal opponents of womens rights was the conservative Church, who argued that womens place, according to Scripture, was in the domestic sphere to intrude into the public sphere was to violate her rude(a) role and endanger her mortal soul. However, spiritual conservatives defense of Biblical traditions did non end with womens rights if we look at the some of the most combative social issues of the past and present, some interesting parallels exist between the foothold used by fundamentalist Christians to stick out womens rights, abolition, abortion rights, and merry 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 balloting 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 felicitousness and interest his helpmeet to wait and watch his movements, to second his endeavors, to fight the severely battle of life behind him. Women were not to be trusted with great 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 man-made lake 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 liberal to partake in such a privileged and essential polite duty what didindeed what shouldGod-abiding women know about politics?It was on this religious basis that many women were actually opposed to womens rights.