Why Do I Have a Page Dedicated to Women’s Suffrage?

Welcome, dear sister.

You may be asking why I have a page that’s dedicated to exploring women’s suffrage and you would be right to ask that.

For over a hundred years, women in the United States have accepted, even depended on, the fact that women have the right to vote in our elections. And they have, by droves. In fact, women have voted so dependably that they have changed the course of our nation. Unfortunately, the change has not been good.

We are now living in a time where we can clearly see the rotten fruit that the United States is producing due to having gone outside of the stated will of God in His Word.

“Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you.”
— Deuteronomy 4:2

“So it is no small matter that we keep in our places … The suffrage question is, I believe, of far more importance than most people think. No doubt it will be a turning point in the history of our country. …”
— May Selley, “Is Equal Suffrage Worth the Fight? No! Thinks a Business Girl,” Gospel Advocate, 1913

As Christians, we must always ask what has God said? Whether we are choosing whom we will marry, who we will vote for, or even if we ought to be voting, this is the question we must ask. The Bible is our authority, and it is God that we must honor. The Bible, and it alone, must answer the question of whether women voting is good or bad. Was the 19th amendment consistent with God’s established design for men, women, marriage, the family, the church, and society? That is the question that we must seek to answer.

God’s Word does not present men and women as interchangeable. We have different designs. God created us male and female and gave us distinct responsibilities. The husband is the head of the wife. The wife submits and follows his lead. Fathers bear responsibility for their households. Women nurture the family. Throughout Scripture, men are repeatedly charged with headship, leadership, protection, provision, judgment, public responsibility in the form of leadership in the civil realm, and leadership in the church.

God does not give women such responsibilities. Not once (and, no, Deborah is not an example proving that He does).

But we’re rarely happy with obeying the rules and staying in the bounds that the Lord has given to us. Thus, in 1848, women in the United States began to publicly question whether it was right to withhold the vote from women. This was not the first stirrings of rebellion. The 1800’s were a very volatile time, with new ideas being introduced and accepted without being proven as sound. This was but one of them.

Throughout this page, we will consider the biblical order established by God, the suffrage question, and some of the changes that followed the ratification of the 19th amendment.

Perhaps you’ve never really considered this before. Perhaps you have long thought it was a problem. Or perhaps the 2026 trial of Lindsay Clancey put the thought clearly on your radar due to the plethora of posts considering various aspects of the trial and its outcome.

I grew up in the shadow of the story of a man, my grandfather, who wouldn’t allow his “womenfolk” to vote, no matter what the government allowed. “It wasn’t right,” he’d say. I believe he was right. And yet, when I was 18, I was encouraged by my mother, who wasn’t registered to vote, to go register myself. Over time, I grew to see the wisdom of my grandfather’s beliefs. A man who had been dead for 21 years when I was born, offered me guidance by his simple faith that’s God’s Word was right.

I now ask that we be willing to examine the subject of women’s suffrage carefully and in light of God’s Word.

Biblical truth—not our feelings, the culture, politics, family, friends, what is widely accepted by the modern church, or personal preferences—must be our guide.

For a broader examination of women’s suffrage and its relationship to feminism, see the companion page: Addressing Feminism Biblically.

As you go along, you will encounter history, facts, quotes, results, and more, all backed up by research and the Word of God. Following at the end, you will find a wealth of resources for you to further your own study of this question.

Soli Deo Gloria!

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What Has God Said?

Before we look at what followed women’s suffrage, we must establish the standard by which we judge it. Our argument cannot rest merely upon statistics, results, consequences, or whether women have used their right to vote for good or ill. Even if every political result had been beneficial, for the Christian question would remain the same: What has God said about this subject? Is He being honored by our choices?

God established the order between man and woman at creation. Adam was created first, and woman was created from him and for him as his help meet.

“And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.”
— Genesis 2:18

Paul appeals directly to this created order:

“For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man.”
— 1 Corinthians 11:8–9

This order did not disappear after the Fall or with the coming of Christ. Scripture continues to identify man as the head of woman and the husband as the head of his wife.

“But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.”
— 1 Corinthians 11:3

“For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church…”
— Ephesians 5:23

Headship is not merely ceremonial. It carries responsibility. Men are called to lead, provide, protect, and bear responsibility for those entrusted to them by God. Women are not described as interchangeable with men but are given their own God-designed and ordained work within marriage, family, home, and church.

Titus 2 gives older women a particular responsibility to teach younger women:

“That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children,
To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands…”
— Titus 2:4–5

Concerning the church and the Christian life, Paul grounds women’s submission in creation, not local custom or lack of education:

“But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
For Adam was first formed, then Eve.”
— 1 Timothy 2:12–13

Sisters, while these passages concern themselves with differing parts of our lives, they reveal the same created order. Man and woman possess equal worth before God, but not equal rank. They were not created for identical responsibilities. She is the weaker vessel in all ways. He is the head, the leader, in all ways. Scripture consistently gives men headship responsibilities and never gives them to women. A woman is to be under her father’s headship and then her husband’s. She is never called to rule over men but to care for her family and her home.

Isaiah gives us a sobering picture of what happens when that order is ignored:

“As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths.”
— Isaiah 3:12

Women ruling is a sign of judgment. God says so.

This is the Scriptural framework through which I believe women’s suffrage must be examined. The issue is not whether women are intelligent, competent, or capable of understanding but whether political equality between men and women pleases God or displeases Him. Does it align with His created order or rebel against it?

How does it align with the distinctions and responsibilities God established between men and women? Be a man and a woman in the home?

What hath God said?

If we disobey God, we will be held accountable. This is a sobering thought. Before we ask whether women’s suffrage produced good or bad fruit, we must first ask whether it agrees with God’s Word. If it does not, favorable statistics will never make it biblical.

And if it does not agree with His Word, we should not be surprised when its fruit increasingly reflects the rejection of the creation order and God’s design for the family.

Soli Deo Gloria!

Robert L. Dabney, Women’s Rights Women: “What those influences will be may be learned by every one who reverences the Christian Scriptures, from this fact, that the theory of “Women’s Rights” is sheer infidelity. It directly impugns the authority and the justice of these Scriptures. They speak in no uncertain tones. “The husband is the head of the wife” (Eph. 5:23). “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands, as to the Lord” (v. 22). “The man is not for the woman, but the woman for the man” (1 Cor. 2:9). “Let the woman learn in silence, with all subjection: but I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence: for Adam was first formed, then Eve: and Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression” (1 Tim. 2:11–14). They are to be “discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands,” etc. (Titus 2:5).”

The Roots of the Poisoned Tree

Matthew 7:18, A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.

The organized campaign for women’s political rights in the United States arose during the nineteenth century due to the influence of radical thoughts that preceded it, and after decades of agitation, culminated in the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.

Many women themselves opposed women’s suffrage. They organized associations, circulated literature and petitions, held public meetings, and argued publicly against enfranchising women. Some feared that woman suffrage would weaken the family, blur the distinctions between the responsibilities of men and women, and draw women into a political sphere they believed properly belonged to men. In Massachusetts alone, the organized female anti-suffrage movement eventually numbered more than 35,000 women.

How did an idea once so controversial eventually become so thoroughly accepted that questioning it now seems almost unthinkable?

This is what we will be looking at.

Soli Deo Gloria!

The Intellectual and Religious Climate of the Nineteenth Century

The women’s-rights movement did not arise in isolation. The nineteenth century was an age of enormous intellectual, religious, political, and social upheaval. Long-established beliefs concerning Scripture, authority, marriage, the family, the relationship between men and women, and the proper ordering of society were increasingly being questioned.

Higher Criticism, Darwinism, Marxism, Pragmatism, Transcendentalism and various other schools of thought arose during this time.

Robert Lewis Dabney, a nineteenth-century Presbyterian theologian and opponent of the developing women’s-rights movement, believed the controversy concerned far more than whether women should vote. He saw the battle as disputing biblical authority, the relationship between the sexes, and how the family and society were ordered.

He also observed how rapidly once-radical ideas can become ordinary:

“In our day, innovations march with so rapid a stride that they quite take away one’s breath. The fantastical project of yesterday, which was mentioned only to be ridiculed, is to-day the audacious reform, and will be to-morrow the accomplished fact.”

He was correct in his understanding and he foresaw many of the problems that would be forthcoming.

Proverbs 3: 5-7, Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the LORD, and depart from evil.

God’s Word must always remain our standard.

Soli Deo Gloria!

The Egalitarian Soil Before Seneca Falls

A bit of history…

By the time of Seneca Falls, several generations of political, religious, and social change had already challenged older understandings of authority, hierarchy, family, church, and society. One important influence was the French Revolution.

The American Revolution had declared that men were created equal. The French Revolution carried the language of equality much farther. The Jacobins, a radical, progress faction, came to the forefront during the Revolution and became known for, among other things, the Reign of Terror under Robespierre.

The Jacobins began as the Société des Amis de la Constitution, a political club founded in 1789, meeting in the Jacobin convent in Paris, which gave them their name. The Jacobins became the most radical expression of that revolutionary spirit, and their spirit soon came to American shores.

By the 1790s, political societies sympathetic to revolutionary France had appeared throughout the United States. More than 40 such societies were organized between 1793 and 1796, and members openly expressed fellowship with the radicals across the Atlantic. The Democratic Society of New York went so far as to declare its attachment to the French cause and revolutionary republicanism.

This brought egalitarianism to our shores, not just in marriage, but to the mainstream.

This increasingly raised questions concerning equality that earlier generations had already dealt with but were now being challenged. If equality means that differences in authority themselves are unjust, then all distinctions become vulnerable to challenge.

This is what happened.

The idea of equality found a landing place in the women’s-rights movement in America. At the 1851 Woman’s Rights Convention in Worcester, Ernestine Rose praised the revolutionary language of “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity” and complained that France had failed to carry its own egalitarian principle far enough because women remained without equal political rights.

Mary Wollstonecraft and Revolutionary Equality

New ideas, once accepted, inevitably lead to change. The revolutionary language of rights and equality that arose from the Jacobins led to questions concerning women and their place. One of the most important early figures was Mary Wollstonecraft, mother of Mary Shelly who wrote the novel Frankenstein. Mary Wollstonecraft was an English radical whose book, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman appeared in 1792, while the French Revolution was still unfolding. This book is widely accepted as the first feminist work.

Wollstonecraft had already defended the principles of the French Revolution in A Vindication of the Rights of Men in 1790. Two years later she extended the argument to women, insisting that women should receive greater education, independence, and opportunity rather than depending on men for her protection and provision.

Percy Bysshe Shelley and Revolutionary Womanhood

The revolutionary ideas spreading through Europe were also beginning their reach into the place of women.

In his 1817 poem Laon and Cythna, the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley provides one example. The poem was later revised and published as The Revolt of Islam. In it, Shelley portrayed a woman who challenged what she saw as the oppression of women. The original version of his poem violated Christian sexual morality by making Laon and Cythna brother and sister as well as lovers. This material so controversial that Shelley was pressured to revise it before publication.

Shelly’s work shows how revolutionary thought was moving beyond questions of government and political rights. Traditional marriage, Christianity, sexual morality, and distinctions between men and women were increasingly being questioned. The pattern would become normal as the 19th century progressed.

Frances Wright and Ernestine Rose

Frances “Fanny” Wright was a Scottish-born freethinker, socialist, and abolitionist who addressed mixed audiences about her revolutionary ideas. During the 1820s she openly criticized conventional marriage and advocated sweeping social reform. Her ideas were controversial and later influenced other women seeking equal rights for women, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Stanton, Anthony, and Gage considered Wright important enough to place her portrait in the first volume of History of Woman Suffrage.

Ernestine Rose was a Polish-born freethinker and socialist who came to the United States in the 1830s. She became a prominent lecturer and leader in the women’s-rights and suffrage movement, working alongside Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

Demands for women’s equality were mixed with freethought, socialism, and open criticism of traditional marriage well before the organized suffrage movement began.

Religious Egalitarianism

Political egalitarianism was not the only influence behind the women’s-rights movement. Religious egalitarianism was already weakening traditional distinctions between men and women in important reform circles.

The Quakers, or Society of Friends, had long given women opportunities for public religious speech and ministry. Only weeks before the Seneca Falls Convention, about two hundred Hicksite Quakers, including members of the Hunt and M’Clintock families, broke away and formed the Congregational Friends, also called the Progressive Friends. They rejected the older division between ministers, elders, men, and women and established joint meetings in which women had rights approximating those of men. The National Park Service describes this as foreshadowing a broader equality between men and women.

Seneca Falls did not simply spring from five women suddenly becoming dissatisfied over tea. Four of the five women who planned the Seneca Falls Convention had Quaker backgrounds: Lucretia Mott, Martha Coffin Wright, Jane Hunt, and Mary Ann M’Clintock. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the only one who did not, having been born Presbyterian. These women were already moving in circles where traditional understanding of male and female authority were being challenged.

Another important influence in the suffrage movement was Unitarianism, especially in New England. American Unitarianism developed out of liberal Congregationalism. The American Unitarian Association was formally organized in 1825. It rejected historic Trinitarian Christianity and placed great emphasis upon reason and one’s conscience and rejected older doctrinal understanding.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson was a Unitarian minister and a prominent suffragist who spoke at women’s-rights conventions. He also officiated at the marriage of Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell, where the couple publicly protested marriage laws that gave the husband authority over his wife. The New England Woman Suffrage Association formed in 1868 and Julia Ward Howe became president of it. Olympia Brown was a Universalist minister and was also involved in the association.

By the summer of 1848, the women who gathered at Jane Hunt’s home for tea were not beginning with a blank slate. Their ideas were already formed from the movements they were involved in. We will look into this more as we continue.

Though they ignored Scripture, we cannot afford to.

1 Corinthians 11: 8-9, For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man.

1 Timothy 2: 12-13, But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve.

By the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Paul grounded the differences in men and women in creation and not on changing ideas. These women rejected this.

And that brings us directly to the five women who gathered at Jane Hunt’s home in the summer of 1848.

Soli Deo Gloria!

Before Seneca Falls: An Older Understanding of Representation

The Constitution left voter qualifications largely to the states. Many states required voters to own property or be qualified in some other fashion. The electorate was also overwhelmingly male. Most early state constitutions limited voting to men. New Jersey was an unusual exception: its 1776 constitution allowed property-qualified inhabitants to vote without specifying sex, which permitted some unmarried and widowed women to vote until the law was changed in 1807.

This political order existed alongside an understanding of the family in which the husband bore responsibility for his household and represented his family through his vote.

Ephesians 5: 23, For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church…

1 Timothy 5: 8, But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith…

Five Women at Tea

On July 9, 1848, five women gathered at the home of Jane and Richard Hunt in Waterloo, New York. Lucretia Mott was visiting the area, and Jane Hunt invited Mary Ann M’Clintock, Martha Coffin Wright, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Mott to join her for discussion and tea. Before the evening ended, they had formulated a plan to have a convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious rights of women. Ten days later, the Seneca Falls Convention opened.

All five women were connected in some way to abolition, the temperance movement, pushing reform in religion, or women’s rights. Several were experienced organizers. Two were Quaker ministers. Some of the women participated in organizations that permitted women prominent public roles. Only weeks earlier, members of the Hunt and M’Clintock families had participated in the formation of the radical Progressive Friends, which deliberately gave women a more equal voice in religious affairs.

Lucretia Mott

Lucretia Coffin Mott was the best-known woman in the group. Born into a Quaker family in 1793, Mott was both a prominent abolitionist and a respected Hicksite Quaker minister. She had been preaching publicly, traveling, organizing, and speaking before mixed audiences for years. In 1833 she joined Mary Ann M’Clintock and other women in founding the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society.

Mott’s experience at the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840 was particularly important. Female delegates were refused full participation. There she met Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was attending with her husband. The two women discussed holding a convention concerning the rights of women—an idea finally acted upon eight years later.

Mary Ann M’Clintock

Mary Ann M’Clintock was born to Quaker parents in 1800, she was recognized among Friends as a minister and leader. She and Lucretia Mott helped found the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. After moving to Waterloo, the M’Clintocks became part of an active network of Quaker abolitionists and reformers in western New York.

Mary Ann and her husband Thomas had joined the Hicksite branch of Quakerism after the Quaker split of 1827. In the summer of 1848, they were among those involved in the still more radical Congregational or Progressive Friends, who rejected traditional Quaker hierarchy and established joint meetings in which women exercised a more equal voice.

Jane Hunt

Jane Clothier Hunt provided the table around which the decisive conversation occurred.

Jane and her husband Richard were Hicksite Quakers, abolitionists, and temperance reformers. Their Waterloo home was part of the Underground Railroad network, and the Hunts participated in the radical Progressive Friends.

Around Hunt’s tea table, Stanton poured out what she later described as her long-growing dissatisfaction with women’s position in society, home, and the church. Out of this discussion, came a plan for the Seneca Falls Convention.

Martha Coffin Wright

Martha Coffin Wright was Lucretia Mott’s younger sister.

She had been raised a Quaker, although she later left formal membership. The influence of her Quaker upbringing remained strong, particularly in her abolitionism and reform work. She helped establish the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society and later became deeply involved in the antislavery movement in New York. Her Auburn home was also used by people escaping slavery through the Underground Railroad.

Wright eventually became one of the continuing leaders of the women’s-rights movement and chaired later national conventions.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Then there was Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the only one of the five who did not come from a Quaker background. She had grown up Presbyterian.

Stanton grew up in a prominent New York family and received an unusually strong education for a woman. Over time, Elizabeth became increasingly dissatisfied with the roles of women and how they were distinct from men. When she married abolitionist Henry Brewster Stanton in 1840, she removed the word “obey” from her marriage vows.

After moving to Seneca Falls in 1847, Stanton became deeply dissatisfied with her duties as a wife, mother, and homemaker. Stanton grew increasingly hostile toward biblical teaching and the authority of Scripture and with this, the stage was set for her to produce the Declaration of Sentiments.

The Declaration of Sentiments was drafted on a mahogany tea table in the home of Thomas and Mary Ann M’Clintock, progressive Quakers who later became Spiritualists. Historian Ann Braude records that “raps” were later reportedly heard from that same table. Spiritualism itself was beginning in western New York in 1848, the very year of Seneca Falls, and soon overlapped significantly with women’s-rights reform circles.

The table is now held by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Historical research also records its later use in séances in the M’Clintock home, making it a remarkable physical connection between the early women’s-rights movement and the Spiritualist circles surrounding it.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton: “So long as ministers stand up and tell us Christ is the head of the church, so is man the head of woman, how are we to break the chains which have held women down through the ages?… Now I ask you if our religion teaches the dignity of woman? It teaches us the abominable idea of the sixth century–Augustine’s idea–that motherhood is a curse; that woman is the author of sin, and is most corrupt. Can we ever cultivate any proper sense of self-respect as long as women take such sentiments from the mouths of the priesthood?”
“When women understand that governments and religions are human inventions; that Bibles, prayer-books, catechisms, and encyclical letters are all emanations from the brains of man, they will no longer be oppressed by the injunctions that come to them with the divine authority of *Thus sayeth the Lord.*”
“The bible and the church have been the greatest stumbling block in the way of women’s emancipation.”

When these women gathered for tea that Summer afternoon, they were not simply gathering for a fun relaxing time together. They were gathered to plan how to change things and, in their minds, make things better for women. Their efforts produced the Declaration of Sentiments. This set in motion what eventually became the 19th amendment.

The Declaration of Sentiments: More Than the Vote

Elizabeth Cady Stanton prepared an initial draft of the Declaration of Sentiments, modeled upon the Declaration of Independence. On July 16, 1848, she met with Mary Ann M’Clintock and others at the M’Clintock home to revise it and to prepare resolutions for the coming Seneca Falls convention.

The Declaration opened with this statement: “All men and women are created equal.” In the document, men were accused of establishing an “absolute tyranny” over women. A series of grievances were listed, including women not being able to vote, property ownership, women’s opportunities for employment and education, traditional marriage, divorce, custody of children, women’s role in public life and in the church.

Just as Elizabeth had refused to promise to obey her husband, she felt that women should not have to obey theirs, either. The Declaration objected specifically to the wife’s promise of obedience to her husband. It also portrayed the husband’s legal authority within marriage as part of women’s oppression.

But Scripture says in Ephesians 5: 22-23, Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church…

The Declaration also objected to woman’s subordinate position within the church. It put forth the belief that women ought to be able to attain any position in the church. Their complaint was that “Apostolic authority” wrongly kept women from the ministry and that it, thus, had to be attacked.

1 Timothy 2: 12-13, But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve.

The battle over woman suffrage was beginning.

The Seneca Falls Convention: A Turning Point

On July 19 and 20, 1848, the convention that had been announced only ten days earlier assembled at the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, New York. More than 300 men and women attended over the course of the two days. The first day was intended primarily for women; men participated in the deliberations on the second. Elizabeth Cady Stanton presented the grievances and resolutions. Abolitionist Frederick Douglass was in attendance.

Even among those attending the convention, however, the demand for woman suffrage was controversial. The voting resolution was the most disputed proposal and caused considerable argument before it was adopted.Giving women the ballot was not universally regarded as reasonable. The resolution supporting woman suffrage encountered substantial resistance. Frederick Douglass spoke strongly in its favor, arguing that women had the same claim to political rights as men. Ultimately, the resolution was adopted. Thirty-two men and sixty-eight women signed the Declaration.

The Declaration and proceedings were printed and began to be circulated. Frederick Douglass’s North Star printing office reported on it. The ideas spread to other women’s rights gatherings. It was becoming an organized movement.

What Followed Seneca Falls?

Two weeks later, on August 2, 1848, another women’s-rights convention was held in Rochester, New York. Abigail Bush was chosen to preside, and this decision was considered so radical that even some of the women associated with Seneca Falls initially objected.

Women’s-rights conventions soon appeared in other parts of New York and in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and elsewhere. In October 1850, the first National Woman’s Rights Convention was held in Worcester, Massachusetts. Nearly a thousand people attended from eleven states.

Public lectures, conventions, petitions, pamphlets, newspapers, political lobbying, and organized societies all had a part in the battle.

The movement gained new support. Lucy Stone became one of its most effective lecturers and organizers. Susan B. Anthony, who had not attended Seneca Falls, entered women’s-rights work during the 1850s and eventually formed a powerful partnership with Stanton. Ernestine Rose, a freethinker and socialist who had been advocating married women’s property reform before Seneca Falls, became another influential speaker and organizer.

Spiritualism, Occultism, and the Women’s-Rights Movement

The connection between the nineteenth-century women’s-rights movement and Spiritualism is well documented. The movements developed in many of the same reform circles, shared advocates and platforms, and sometimes openly reinforced one another.

Deuteronomy 18: 10-12, There shall not be found among you any one… a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD…

Modern American Spiritualism arose in upstate New York in 1848, the same year as the Seneca Falls Convention. The Fox sisters claimed that mysterious rappings allowed them to communicate with the dead, and their experiences soon attracted the attention of Amy and Isaac Post of Rochester. Amy and Isaac were reform-minded Quakers deeply involved in abolitionism.

The Posts also became early supporters of the Fox sisters and Spiritualism. They invited the sisters into their circle of reformers, helped bring their claimed spirit communications before the public, and Isaac Post eventually became a medium himself. He later published supposed communications from the spirit world.

Even the table upon which the Declaration of Sentiments was written was later used in séances at the M’Clintock home, where rappings, knocks, and movements of the table were interpreted as communications from spirits. Elizabeth Cady Stanton reportedly experienced similar rappings in her own home.

This table was also used as a séance table within the same reform circle. The connection between women’s rights and Spiritualism existed within some of the homes, friendships, and reform networks surrounding the early movement. The table later became an important symbol within the suffrage movement itself. At the 1898 fiftieth-anniversary celebration of the Seneca Falls Convention, it was displayed prominently on the stage as a treasured artifact connected with the drafting of the Declaration of Sentiments. Its significance to the movement was so great that, when Susan B. Anthony died in 1906, the table was placed at the head of her casket.

Susan B. Anthony and Trance Mediumship

In a letter to Elizabeth Cady Stanton dated June 5, 1856, Anthony was struggling to prepare a public address and wished she could speak with the apparent ease of the trance speakers she had seen. She wrote: “If the spirits would only just make me a trance medium…” and said said she had earnestly prayed to become a “speaking medium” and would welcome the spirits if they came to her in that way.

Isaiah 8: 19, And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God?

Susan B. Anthony and Lily Dale

In later years, Anthony repeatedly visited Lily Dale, New York, one of the nation’s best-known Spiritualist communities. In August 1891, Anthony and Anna Howard Shaw spoke there during a Woman’s Day gathering that was devoted to the idea of woman suffrage. The event became an annual celebration bringing suffragists and Spiritualists together.

Anthony returned to Lily Dale multiple times, and Shaw continued speaking there well into the early twentieth century. Lily Dale became one of the places where Spiritualism and the women’s-rights movement openly overlapped.

History of Woman Suffrage, the enormous multivolume work edited by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, contains an extraordinary discussion of Spiritualism.

Volume III states that, apart from the Quakers, Spiritualists were the religious group that had recognized the equality of women. It specifically points to the female medium—the woman through whose lips spirits supposedly communicated—as evidence of that equality.

Spiritualism gave women a kind of authority that Christianity did not. A female medium required no biblical qualification for church office. She required no male eldership. She could stand before mixed audiences of men and women and claim that beings from another realm were speaking through her.

1 Timothy 2: 12, But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man…

Victoria Woodhull: Spiritualism and Suffrage in One Woman

Before becoming nationally known in politics and the women’s rights movement, she had worked as a spiritual medium and clairvoyant. In 1871, Woodhull became the first woman to address a congressional committee concerning woman suffrage. She argued that women already possessed the constitutional right to vote and quickly became one of the most visible and controversial women connected with the movement. The following year she was nominated for president of the United States.

For a time, Woodhull moved directly within the circles of leading suffragists. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony did not agree with everything she believed, and they eventually distanced themselves from her as controversy surrounding her increased.

From Spiritualism to Theosophy

Matilda Joslyn Gage, one of the major leaders of the National Woman Suffrage Association and one of the three original editors of History of Woman Suffrage, later became involved in Theosophy, an explicitly esoteric religious movement. Theosophical Society records show that Gage was admitted to the Rochester Theosophical Society on March 26, 1885.

Gage increasingly regarded Christianity as an obstacle to woman’s emancipation. In History of Woman Suffrage, she contributed a lengthy chapter titled “Woman, Church, and State,” in which she attacked Christian teaching concerning woman’s subordinate position and looked favorably upon ancient religions in which women served as priestesses and female deities were worshiped.

Gage eventually became one of the strongest nineteenth-century feminist critics of Christianity as did Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

In The Woman’s Bible, Stanton openly denied the divine inspiration of Scripture. She wrote: “I do not believe that God inspired the Mosaic code…” She argued that religion assigned women a subordinate position and that woman’s emancipation was impossible so long as women continued to accept it.

What Followed Seneca Falls?

Only two weeks after Seneca Falls, on August 2, 1848, another women’s-rights convention was held in Rochester, New York. Other conventions soon followed. Women’s-rights meetings were held in New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. The first National Woman’s Rights Convention met in Worcester, Massachusetts in October 1850. Nearly one thousand men and women from eleven states attended. National conventions continued through much of the 1850s, joined by state and local meetings, lectures, petitions, pamphlets, and newspaper campaigns. Activists began calling for changes in women’s legal rights, education, employment, marriage, property ownership, public speaking, church participation, and political power.

In 1866, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, Lucy Stone, and other reformers helped form the American Equal Rights Association, or AERA. Its stated purpose was universal suffrage without distinction of race or sex. For a time, abolitionists and women’s-rights advocates who had worked together before and during the war remained united around that goal. That soon changed.

The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, introduced the word “male” into the Constitution’s provisions concerning representation. The proposed Fifteenth Amendment then prohibited denying the vote on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, but did not include sex. Stanton and Anthony opposed accepting Black male suffrage without woman suffrage as well, while Lucy Stone, Frederick Douglass, and others supported the Fifteenth Amendment even though women remained excluded. This divided the movement.

In May 1869, Stanton and Anthony formed the National Woman Suffrage Association, or NWSA, in New York City. It concentrated upon securing a federal constitutional amendment ensuring women’s right to vote.

Later that year, Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, Julia Ward Howe, and their allies formed the American Woman Suffrage Association, or AWSA. It concentrated more heavily upon obtaining woman suffrage state by state and was generally regarded as the more moderate of the two organizations.

The federal campaign became more concrete in 1878, when Senator Aaron Sargent of California introduced a proposed woman-suffrage amendment in Congress. Its wording would eventually become the Nineteenth Amendment. The proposal would be introduced repeatedly for decades before finally passing in 1919.

Meanwhile, suffragists continued pursuing victories in individual states and territories. Wyoming Territory had granted women the vote in 1869 and retained woman suffrage when it entered the Union in 1890. Other western states would follow during the 1890s. But nationwide woman suffrage remained elusive.

By 1890, the two major organizations decided that their division was hindering the cause. The NWSA and AWSA merged to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association, or NAWSA. Elizabeth Cady Stanton became its first president, Susan B. Anthony succeeded her in 1892, and the organization became the dominant national suffrage organization for the next several decades.

Women Who Opposed Women’s Suffrage

Many women opposed woman suffrage. By the late nineteenth century, women had organized associations, signed petitions, published newspapers and pamphlets, testified before legislatures, raised money, campaigned against suffrage referendums, and argued publicly that political equality with men would not strengthen women but was anti-biblical and that it would weaken and destroy the family.

Their arguments often centered around the belief that the household, rather than the individual, was the basic unit of society. Women such as Caroline Corbin and Madeleine Vinton Dahlgren argued that the husband and father bore public responsibility for the household and that giving husband and wife separate political authority would cause untold problems.

In 1894, New York women formed the New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage. Massachusetts followed with the Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women in 1895, and Illinois organized soon afterward.

In 1911, state organizations joined to form the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, led initially by Josephine Dodge. The organization published The Woman’s Protest and coordinated campaigns against suffrage across the country. Female anti-suffragists deliberately appeared before legislatures and in public campaigns because suffrage leaders increasingly claimed to speak for women as a whole.

A 1914 pamphlet published by the Nebraska Association Opposed to Women Suffrage shows what women who opposed the vote actually believed. They argued that men had the responsibility to protect the family and community, and that giving women a vote could introduce contention and division into the home.

Ten Reasons Why The Great Majority of Women Do Not Want the Ballot
BECAUSE they have not lost faith in their fathers, husbands, sons and brothers, who afford full
protection to the community, there being no call for women to relieve them of the task.
BECAUSE women realize that when they become voters they will in consequence have to serve
as jurors, and be compelled to hear all the repugnant details incident to murder trials and
trials for other crimes disclosing unspeakable wickedness. Jury service is abhorrent to every
normal woman.
BECAUSE in political activities there is constant strife, turmoil, contention and bitterness,
producing conditions from which every normal woman naturally shrinks.
BECAUSE the primary object of government is to protect persons and property. This duty is
imposed by nature upon man, the women being by nature absolved from assuming a task to
them impossible.
BECAUSE when women noisily contest and scramble for public office — woman pitted against
woman — they write an indictment of womankind against which all right-minded women
strenuously protest.
BECAUSE women can accomplish more through counseling than they ever can attain through
commanding.
BECAUSE woman suffrage will not enhance peace and harmony in the home, but, on the
contrary, in the heat of a campaign, it is sure to bring about dissension and discord.
BECAUSE Nebraska women are already enjoying a greater measure of protection and privilege
under the laws than do women of any state where women vote.
BECAUSE the woman worker wants rest and quietude — not political excitement.
BECAUSE every reason supporting the claim of women to vote supports also the right of
women to be consulted as to whether they shall or shall not be given the ballot.
Issued by the Nebraska Association Opposed to Women Suffrage, Omaha, Nebraska.

The Massachusetts organization became particularly large. By the time of the 1915 suffrage campaign in that state, it had grown to more than 35,000 members and was distributing literature and organizing opposition throughout Massachusetts.

Ephesians 5: 23, For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church…

This was not exclusively an American phenomenon.

In Britain, novelist and social reformer Mary Augusta Ward, commonly known as Mrs. Humphry Ward, helped organize the 1889 Appeal Against Female Suffrage. The original appeal carried the names of more than one hundred prominent women and eventually attracted approximately two thousand signatures. Its argument was not that women should remain ignorant or inactive. It explicitly affirmed the development of women’s abilities and education while arguing that women’s responsibilities to the state differed from those of men.

Organized female opposition expanded further with the formation of the Women’s National Anti-Suffrage League in 1908. Historian Julia Bush records that within only two years the organization had established more than one hundred local branches, published the Anti-Suffrage Review, and gathered hundreds of thousands of petition signatures.

Again, these were women organizing against their own enfranchisement.

Many of their concerns sound familiar after a century in which marriage, motherhood, homemaking, male headship, and distinct responsibilities for men and women have maligned and given over to egalitarianism.

Woman suffrage was not something women universally demanded and men universally resisted. It was a bitterly contested change to the political and social order, and many women understood that far more was at stake than a ballot.

The final struggle over the Nineteenth Amendment would make that division unmistakable.

The Battle for Ratification

Sisters, we grew up with voting a right in the USA. But is it right for us, biblically? Does it honor God? This is the battle before us and the question we must answer.

But what about in the beginning? Before it became law?

Women’s suffrage was actually deeply contested for several decades before it became law. The federal amendment was first introduced in Congress in 1878. For the next forty-two years it was repeatedly introduced, ignored, defeated, or delayed.

The National Archives shows that it was introduced in every session of Congress during that period before it finally passed in 1919, when Tennessee got onboard and became the last state needed to ratify it.

Everything finally came down to Tennessee.

Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, admitted in July 1920 that she did not believe there was “a ghost of a chance” of obtaining ratification there. Suffragists and anti-suffragists descended upon Nashville. Supporters wore yellow roses; opponents wore red. Women on both sides lobbied legislators intensely while the nation watched.

The Tennessee Senate approved ratification, but the House was bitterly divided. On August 18, a motion to table the amendment ended in a 48–48 tie. Twenty-four-year-old Representative Harry Burn entered the chamber wearing the red rose of the anti-suffragists and represented a district strongly opposed to woman suffrage. But after receiving a letter from his mother urging him to support ratification, Burn changed his vote. The final resolution passed the Tennessee House 49 to 47.

Even then, the battle did not immediately end. Anti-suffrage legislators attempted to force reconsideration, some left the state in an effort to prevent a quorum, rallies were held against ratification, and legal efforts were made to prevent the amendment from taking effect. Tennessee nevertheless became the thirty-sixth state, and Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified the amendment on August 26, 1920.

The House approved it 304 to 90, and the Senate passed it 56 to 25. The vote was so close that the final vote was only two votes more than the necessary number.

We barely won it and, overall, women have done nothing good with it.

The Nineteenth Amendment

After decades of campaigning, the proposed constitutional amendment prohibiting the denial of voting rights on account of sex passed Congress on June 4, 1919, and was sent to the states for ratification.

On August 18, 1920, Tennessee became the thirty-sixth state to ratify it, supplying the three-fourths majority then required. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby formally certified the amendment on August 26, 1920.

The Nineteenth Amendment declared:

“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

But that was just the beginning. Now we will consider, what changed once women won the right to vote?

What Changed After Ratification?

The political effects appeared almost immediately. Estimates from ten states suggest that about 36 percent of eligible women voted in 1920, compared with 68 percent of eligible men. Meanwhile, the former National American Woman Suffrage Association became the League of Women Voters. Its program extended far beyond the ballot to child welfare, education, public health, women’s employment, the cost of living, and independent citizenship for married women. They also strongly supported the Sheppard–Towner Maternity and Infancy Act of 1921, one of the earliest major federal welfare measures.

Researchers have also found measurable growth in government following woman suffrage. John Lott and Lawrence Kenny found immediate increases in state spending and revenue, which grew as more women voted. Grant Miller likewise found changes in legislative voting and substantial increases in public-health spending.

What About Women Holding Civil Office?

Once women had secured the vote, they began to seek public office. Being in office gives women authority and power over men. This is at odds with Scripture as, from the beginning, God established an order between men and women. Scripture consistently places women under male headship rather than assigning them the responsibility of ruling over men. Not only are the women in the wrong for seeking such authority and power, the men who enable the women are also wrong before God.

1 Corinthians 11: 9, Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man.

Isaiah 3: 12, As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths.

John Knox and Christopher Goodman argued strongly against women exercising civil rule over men. John Calvin regarded female government as contrary to the ordinary order and spoke of women being excluded from the public management of affairs, though he spoke with restraint concerning a woman ruler who had lawfully inherited a throne.

Deborah is often used as an example of God allowing women to rule. But the text really doesn’t support that idea. Deborah appears during the troubled period of the Judges, and her account does not overturn the broader Scriptural order in which men, not women, are called by God to rule.

Once men and women are seen as interchangeable, it doesn’t stop with voting. Women sitting on juries and women ruling are the next natural steps. And we only have to look at the Lindsay Claney trial to see how dangerous this is.

Suffrage, Temperance, and Prohibition

Women’s suffrage and Prohibition were closely connected long before either became part of the Constitution. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, founded in the 1870s, became one of the largest women’s organizations in the country. Under Frances Willard, the WCTU increasingly embraced woman suffrage because its leaders believed women could use the ballot to enact temperance legislation. In 1881, the organization formally endorsed woman suffrage. The Prohibition Party had already endorsed it in 1872 for much the same reason.

From the beginning, women intended to use political power to change law and society. Willard and other temperance leaders argued that women needed the ballot to protect homes from the destructive effects of drunkenness and to secure stronger laws against the liquor trade.

What Followed Prohibition?

Drunkenness is a sin but Scripture does not condemn drinking wine or alcohol. Christ turned water into wine at Cana, Paul instructed Timothy to “use a little wine” for his stomach’s sake, and Scripture speaks of wine as one of God’s provisions for man. See John 2:1–11; 1 Timothy 5:23; Psalm 104:14–15.

Prohibition did not merely punish drunkenness or crimes committed while drunk. It sought to forbid something God Himself had not forbidden.

Prohibition initially reduced alcohol consumption substantially, but demand for it did not disappear and that lead to opportunities for those who saw them. During the following years bootlegging spread, illegal liquor was produced and transported across the country, and speakeasies multiplied. By 1925, estimates placed the number of speakeasies in New York City alone somewhere between 30,000 and 100,000. This gave organized crime an enormous opportunity. Criminal syndicates supplied liquor, controlled distribution networks, fought over territory, bribed officials, and expanded their power through force.

In 1933, the Twenty-First Amendment repealed Prohibition.

Women’s Suffrage and the Rise of the Welfare State

America had charity, local poor relief, pensions, and various state programs before women received the vote. What it did not yet have was the vast national welfare state we now take for granted: a permanent system in which the federal government assumes responsibility for providing income, food, medical care, housing assistance, child welfare, and other forms of support to millions of citizens.

This is not what God’s Word commands.

A husband is commanded to provide for his household: 1 Timothy 5:8, But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.

Families are commanded to care for their widows: 1 Timothy 5: 16, If any man or woman that believeth have widows, let them relieve them, and let not the church be charged…

We are to help the poor amongst our churches and help our neighbors.

The individual, the family, and our churches are the means of relief. Yet, the modern federal welfare state began taking form almost immediately after national women’s suffrage.

The Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in August 1920. The following year Congress passed the Sheppard–Towner Maternity and Infancy Act of 1921, providing federal money to states for programs serving mothers and infants. This was not simply another local charity or temporary relief effort. It established a federal-state partnership in which Washington collected and distributed funds and helped direct programs concerned with the health and welfare of mothers and children.

The U.S. House of Representatives historian stated that the passage of Sheppard–Towner so soon after women gained national suffrage “was not a coincidence.” Women’s organizations lobbied heavily for the legislation, and members of Congress felt the political pressure of millions of newly enfranchised women. More programs followed.

The newly formed League of Women Voters was among the organizations supporting the measure. Founded in 1920 as national suffrage was being achieved, the League quickly moved beyond teaching women how to cast ballots. By 1921 it had established committees addressing social hygiene and women in industry and supported passage of Sheppard–Towner. Women’s political organization was already being directed toward legislation involving health, welfare, working conditions, and other areas of social policy.

Economists John Lott and Lawrence Kenny studied the period from 1870 to 1940 and found that suffrage coincided with immediate increases in state government spending and revenue and with more liberal voting patterns among federal representatives. Those effects continued to grow as more women actually exercised their right to vote.

Sheppard–Towner expired in 1929, but it had left a lasting impact. The Social Security Administration later described the program as establishing a national policy in which the federal government shared responsibility with state and local governments for providing health and welfare services to children. It also became a blueprint for programs incorporated into the Social Security Act only a few years later.

Then came 1935.

The Social Security Act established the basic framework of the modern American welfare state. It created federal old-age benefits, unemployment compensation, grants to states for old-age assistance, Aid to Dependent Children, maternal and child-welfare programs, public-health programs, and assistance for the blind. Federal responsibility for economic and social security had become broad, continuing, and national.

Aid to Dependent Children is particularly important to this discussion. It provided federal money through the states for children deprived of parental support. Responsibilities once addressed primarily through families, relatives, churches, private charity, and local government were increasingly shared with—and eventually heavily financed and directed by—the federal government.

The system continued to expand throughout the twentieth century:

• 1939: Social Security was expanded to include benefits for spouses and surviving family members.
• 1946: the National School Lunch Program was established.
• 1950: federal assistance was added for the permanently and totally disabled.
• 1956: Social Security Disability Insurance was established.
• 1964: the modern Food Stamp Program was enacted.
• 1965: Medicare and Medicaid were created.
• 1966: the School Breakfast Program followed.
• 1972: Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, was established.
• 1974: WIC began providing nutritional assistance specifically to women, infants, and children.
• 1975: the Earned Income Tax Credit was created.
• 1981: federal low-income energy assistance was established.
• 1996: Aid to Families with Dependent Children was replaced with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, changing the structure of welfare without ending federal responsibility for family assistance.

By the twenty-first century, the welfare state was no longer an experiment. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, WIC, housing assistance, disability benefits, unemployment programs, school food programs, tax credits, and many other federal and state programs had become part of the basic structure of American life.

Feminism increasingly taught women that dependence upon husbands was degrading yet the need for protection, provision, and security did not disappear. Increasingly, the state stepped in as a substitute for husbands and fathers.

By 2024, the idea that government should provide for its citizens had become deeply rooted in American political thought. Pew Research found that 65 percent of Americans believed government had a responsibility to ensure health-care coverage, 55 percent believed government aid to the poor did more good than harm, and 79 percent opposed reducing Social Security benefits.

What Fruit Followed Women’s Suffrage?

Jesus said in Matthew 7: 18, A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.

Many things followed in the wake of women’s suffrage. As women began to vote, they were increasingly encouraged to vote their conscience rather than in line with their husbands. Because of this, societal and marital changes followed.

The ensuing years saw the rise of the welfare state, the rise of organized crime (in reaction to prohibition, a baby of the suffragettes), more cases of divorce (and eventually no-fault divorce), women choosing to pursue college, the military, or jobs rather than marrying. The age of women at the time of marriage rose drastically over time. Children began to be seen as an inconvenience and finally a parasite rather than as blessings. Family size shrunk. Women embraced modernity and rejected traditional homemaking skills and knowledge. Eventually, we saw the embrace of sexual liberty and the rejection of marriage. This saw women embracing the pill and pushing for abortion. We’ve seen untold millions of babies murdered by their moms in the womb. Children already born saw a rise in abuse, abandonment, and murder. Women entered the workplace and college in unprecedented numbers until, in many cases, they outnumbered men. Second wave feminism grabbed a firm hold on society by the late 1960’s. Men were maligned, made fun of, blamed, and feminized. Women were masculinized. Women rejected head coverings, then rejected any and all traditional roles. All of this flowed into the church as society influenced God’s people rather than, as it ought to be, the other way around. Women sought roles in places of authority in the church. Churches no longer taught about the differences in the roles of men and women but encouraged women to do whatever they wanted, including the military and college (and this even in Reformed churches). We saw the rise and embrace of sodomy and lesbianism and ultimately the trans movement.

“Ye are not your own. For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.”
— 1 Corinthians 6:19–20

These changes weren’t instantaneous, but the path had been set. As the 20th century went on, women increasingly declared their independence from men. Eventually they sought to be men. Laws changed. Beliefs changed. Mores changed.

At its 1967 national conference, the National Organization for Women adopted a Bill of Rights calling for the Equal Rights Amendment, repeal of abortion laws, publicly funded child care, and other changes intended to establish greater equality and independence for women.

In 1969, California became the first state to enact comprehensive no-fault divorce, effective the following year. Under the new law, “irreconcilable differences” could be sufficient grounds for dissolving a marriage. Other states followed.

Then came Roe v. Wade on January 22, 1973. The Supreme Court greatly restricted the ability of states to protect unborn children and treated abortion as part of a woman’s constitutional liberty. Three years later, in Planned Parenthood v. Danforth, the Court struck down a Missouri law requiring a married woman to obtain her husband’s consent before aborting their child.

“For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.”
— Psalm 139:13

Our bodies do not belong to us to use however we please. Marriage is not ours to redefine. Sexuality is not ours to separate from God’s purposes. And children are not ours to destroy because their existence interferes with the life we would rather have.

The sexual revolution increasingly separated sex from marriage, covenant, and motherhood. Pregnancy could then be treated not as the natural fruit of the one-flesh union God created but as an unwanted consequence from which a woman must be freed.

The plain instructions of Titus 2 were neglected:

Titus 2: 4-5, That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children,
To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands…

The result has been a profound confusion of the responsibilities God gave to us. Personal ambition, not Scripture, now dictates the path of most people.

We MUST return to asking, what does God’s Word say?

Romans 12: 2, And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

What Can Be Done?

The only real answer to the destruction around us is a return to God’s created order. God’s ways are not merely better than ours; they are right. We have, through sinfully rebelling against God’s Word, destroyed the foundations of marriage, family, church, and society, and only repentance and obedience to God’s Word can begin to restore them.

Husbands must faithfully lead their families. Wives must honor and submit to their husbands. Mothers must recover the tremendous worth of bearing, nurturing, and training children. Older women must once again teach younger women to love their husbands, love their children, and be keepers at home. Churches must recover male leadership and stop apologizing for distinctions God Himself established between the sexes.

We must teach our sons that manhood carries responsibility. They are not called merely to please women or avoid offending them, but to make wise decisions according to God’s Word and bear the consequences of those decisions before Him. They should be taught to work, provide, protect, lead, sacrifice, and take responsibility for those entrusted to their care.

Our daughters need something very different from the feminist message they hear nearly everywhere. They should be taught that submission is not degradation, homemaking is not wasted potential, motherhood is not an obstacle to a meaningful life, femininity is good, and dependence upon a faithful husband is a good thing and part of God’s design.

Sisters, repentance must begin in our own homes. We cannot lament disorder in the nation while embracing the same rebellion against God’s order in our marriages, families, and churches. We cannot oppose feminism in public while quietly teaching our daughters feminist assumptions about career, independence, authority, marriage, and motherhood.

It is not too late to stand for what is true. We can repent where we have been wrong. We can teach our children to think biblically and to weigh their decisions against God’s Word. We can strengthen our homes, support faithful male leadership, recover the work of Titus 2, and refuse to call rebellion progress simply because nearly everyone around us does.

Perhaps we will not live to see our nation restored. God has not promised us that. But faithfulness is never wasted. We can plant truth in our children and grandchildren and pray that the Lord will cause it to bear fruit in generations we may never see.

Our responsibility is not to make God’s order popular. Our responsibility is to believe Him, obey Him, and glorify Him in the place He has given us.

Repealing the Nineteenth Amendment

Repealing the Nineteenth Amendment would not itself prohibit women from voting. It would remove the federal constitutional requirement that no state may distinguish between men and women in determining voting qualifications. States could continue allowing women to vote if they chose to do so. Others could reconsider the question.

The Nineteenth Amendment did not merely permit women to vote. It took the question out of the hands of the states and constitutionally established woman suffrage throughout the nation. Repeal would reject that federal mandate and allow the question to be argued again at the state level.

Then we would take the battle to the states.

What About Women Holding Civil Office?

Christians before the modern feminist movement applied biblical order to civil rule. John Knox and Christopher Goodman opposed women exercising governing authority over men. John Calvin was somewhat more restrained concerning women who had lawfully inherited authority, but he nevertheless wrote that women had historically been excluded from the “public management of affairs” and regarded female government as contrary to the ordinary order.

Deborah is often raised as an objection. But an extraordinary providence does not change God’s will. Deborah appears during the troubled period of the Judges. She was a judgement, not an example.

Women have their own duties given to them by the Lord. They are in the home. The church and civil realm belong to men. A woman profoundly influences society through her support of her husband’s mission and her submission to him, through the children she loves, nurtures, and trains, through the home she builds and cares for, through the church she serves, the hospitality she practices, the good works she performs, and the truth she teaches to younger women.

A woman cannot fulfill her duties faithfully in the home while also seeking to fulfill them in the civil realm. She cannot be submissive to her husband in the home while he must be submissive to her rule in political office.

Women Ruling and the Judgment of God

In Isaiah 3, women ruling is presented as part of God’s judgment upon a disorderly people.

Isaiah 3: 12, As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths.

Look again at what Scripture teaches. Women are to be “discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands” (Titus 2:5). Wives are commanded, “submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord” (Ephesians 5:22), because “the husband is the head of the wife” (Ephesians 5:23). Paul reminds us that “Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man” (1 Corinthians 11:9). And in the church a woman is not permitted to teach or exercise authority over a man, with Paul grounding that instruction in creation itself (1 Timothy 2:11–14).

God has established an order between man and woman and His design is good. The husband leads his home. Qualified men govern the church. Woman’s primary calling is to faithfully do the work God has given her as wife, mother, keeper of the home, helper, nurturer, and teacher of younger women.

The same revolt against God’s created order has led to the devaluation of marriage and motherhood, women’s mass movement into careers, the weakening of male provision, abortion, sexual liberation, the normalization of homosexuality and transgender ideology, growing political dependence upon the state, and the erosion of biblical distinctions between men and women even within churches.

Repentance is long past due.

A Final Word

Sisters, the question is not whether women’s suffrage became popular, whether it eventually became law, or whether generations of women have been taught to regard it as unquestionable progress. The question is whether women’s suffrage honors the Lord and is in line with the design that the Lord established for men, women, marriage, family, church, and society.

I do not believe they do.

God did not make men and women interchangeable. Egalitarianism is sin. Rather, God created woman for man, placed the husband as head of the wife, gave men responsibility to lead and provide, and gave women beautiful and necessary work as wives, mothers, homemakers, helpers, and teachers of younger women.

Our culture has spent generations teaching women to pursue independence from men, and to measure happiness and freedom by following their own hearts and living, working, dressing, and acting like men.

Proverbs 14: 12, There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.

Perhaps some of what you have read here is difficult to consider. I understand that. Most of us were raised to believe that women receiving the vote was unquestionably good and that questioning women voting was unthinkable. But no political tradition, constitutional amendment, social movement, or cultural assumption is above the Word of God.

If we discover that we have accepted ideas contrary to His order, our responsibility is not to defend them simply because it is the easiest or most comfortable path. It is to repent, believe God, and obey Him. By believing that His ways are good and living in obedience to Him in all ways, including this.

Romans 11: 36, For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen.

Robert L. Dabney:

“Women’s Rights” mean the abolition of all permanent marriage ties. We are told that Mrs. Cady Stanton avowed this result, proclaiming it at the invitation of the Young Men’s Christian Association of New York. She holds that woman’s bondage is not truly dissolved until the marriage bond is annulled. She is thoroughly consistent. Some hoodwinked advocates of her revolution may be blind to the sequence; but it is inevitable.”

“If human experience has established anything at all, it is the truth of that principle announced by the Hebrew prophet when he declared that the great aim of God in ordaining a permanent marriage tie between one man and one woman was “that He might seek a godly seed.” God’s ordinance, the only effective human ordinance for checking and curbing the first tendencies to evil, is domestic, parental government. When the family shall no longer have a head, and the great foundation for the subordination of children in the mother’s example is gone; when the mother shall have found another sphere than her home for her energies; when she shall have exchanged the sweet charities of domestic love and sympathy for the fierce passions of the hustings; when families shall be disrupted at the caprice of either party, and the children scattered as foundlings from their hearthstone.—it requires no wisdom to see that a race of sons will be reared nearer akin to devils than to men. In the hands of such a bastard progeny, without discipline, without homes, without a God, the last remains of social order will speedily perish, and society will be overwhelmed in savage anarchy”

“Casting away that dependence and femininity which are her true strength, the “strong-minded woman” persists in thrusting herself into competition with man as his equal. But for contest she is not his equal; the male is the stronger animal. As man’s rival, she is a pitiful inferior, a sorry she-mannikin. It is when she brings her wealth of affection, her self-devotion, her sympathy, her tact, her grace, her subtle intuition, her attractions, her appealing weakness, and places them in the scale with man’s rugged strength and plodding endurance, with his steady logic, his hardihood and muscle, and his exemption from the disabling infirmities of her sex, that he delights to admit her full equality and to do glad homage to her as the crown of his kind. All this vantage-ground the “Women’s Rights women” madly throw away, and provoke that collision for which nature itself has disqualified them. They insist upon taking precisely a man’s chances; well, they will meet precisely the fate of a weak man among strong ones.”

“Must not God be avenged on such a nation as this? His vengeance will be to give them the fruit of their own hands, and let them be filled with their own devices. He will set apart this fair land by a sort of dread consecration to the purpose of giving a lesson concerning this godless philosophy, so impressive as to instruct and warn all future generations. As the dull and pestilential waves of the Dead Sea have been to every subsequent age the memento of the sin of Sodom, so the dreary tides of anarchy and barbarism which will overwhelm the boastful devices of infidel democracy will be the caution of all future legislators. And thus “women’s rights” will assist America “to fulfil her great mission,” that of being the “scarecrow” of the nations.”

Recommended Books

Recommended Books

Rachel Wilson — Occult Feminism: The Secret History of Women’s Liberation (2021)

Occult Feminism: The Secret History of Women’s Liberation — Google Books

Rachel Wilson examines the occult, spiritualist, esoteric, and anti-Christian influences that appeared within the history of feminism and women’s liberation. She traces connections between prominent feminist figures and movements involving Spiritualism, Theosophy, occult religion, sexual radicalism, and other departures from biblical Christianity.

This book is especially useful as a Christian critique of the spiritual roots of feminism. Because Wilson makes a broad argument, I would read it alongside primary sources and scholarly histories documenting the same individuals and movements.

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Ann Braude — Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America

Radical Spirits — Indiana University Press

Historian Ann Braude examines the close relationship between nineteenth-century Spiritualism and the early women’s-rights movement. Her central argument is that the two movements developed together and that Spiritualism gave women unusual opportunities to speak publicly, claim religious authority, challenge established churches, and reject traditional understandings of marriage and female submission.

This is one of the strongest scholarly resources for documenting that the connection between women’s rights and Spiritualism is historical fact rather than a later accusation made by critics of feminism.

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Library of Congress — The Notorious Victoria Woodhull Addresses Congress

The Notorious Victoria Woodhull Addresses Congress — Library of Congress

This Library of Congress exhibit examines Victoria Woodhull, one of the most controversial figures in the nineteenth-century suffrage movement. Woodhull was the first woman to address a congressional committee on woman suffrage and later ran for president.

The Library of Congress identifies her as a proponent of Spiritualism, free love, and other radical doctrines. Her prominence demonstrates that occult and sexually radical ideas were not entirely separate from the developing suffrage movement but were represented by women who exercised significant influence within it.

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Matilda Joslyn Gage — Woman, Church and State (1893)

Woman, Church and State — Open Library / Internet Archive

Matilda Joslyn Gage was one of the leading nineteenth-century suffragists, a close collaborator of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, and coauthor of the early volumes of History of Woman Suffrage. In Woman, Church and State, she attacked Christianity and biblical teaching as major sources of women’s oppression and devoted substantial attention to matriarchy, witchcraft, marriage, and the authority of the church.

Gage later became involved with Theosophy and regarded it as deeply important to her spiritual life. This primary source is particularly useful for showing that hostility toward biblical authority and interest in alternative religious and occult ideas existed within the leadership of the women’s-rights movement itself.

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Barbara Goldsmith — Other Powers: The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull

Other Powers — Penguin Random House

Barbara Goldsmith examines the intertwined worlds of nineteenth-century woman suffrage, Spiritualism, radical reform, and the extraordinary career of Victoria Woodhull. Woodhull was simultaneously a nationally prominent suffragist, Spiritualist, advocate of free love, newspaper publisher, and presidential candidate.

This is particularly useful for understanding that Spiritualism was not merely an obscure belief existing somewhere at the margins of the suffrage era. Spiritualists, abolitionists, women’s-rights activists, religious reformers, and political radicals frequently moved within overlapping networks, and Woodhull provides one of the clearest examples of those connections.

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Theosophical Society in America — A Notable Theosophist: L. Frank Baum

A Notable Theosophist — Theosophical Society in America

This article draws upon Theosophical Society membership records and documents that suffrage leader Matilda Joslyn Gage joined the Rochester Theosophical Society on March 26, 1885. It also discusses her influence upon her daughter Maud and son-in-law L. Frank Baum.

Because this information comes from the Theosophical Society itself and cites its membership records, it provides particularly direct evidence of Gage’s personal involvement with Theosophy rather than relying upon an accusation from her Christian critics.

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Zach Garris — Masculine Christianity

Masculine Christianity

A defense of biblical masculinity, male leadership, and the distinct responsibilities God has given to men. It is particularly relevant to the question of whether men and women have different God-given roles in the home, church, and society.

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Francis A. Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop — Whatever Happened to the Human Race? (1979)

Whatever Happened to the Human Race? — Crossway

Originally published in 1979, this important Christian work examines abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, and the broader cultural rejection of the sanctity of human life. Francis Schaeffer and pediatric surgeon C. Everett Koop argue that human dignity rests upon the biblical truth that man is created in the image of God.

Written only a few years after Roe v. Wade, the book is especially useful for understanding how Christians at the time viewed abortion as part of a much larger moral and spiritual departure from biblical truth.

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R. Albert Mohler Jr. — We Cannot Be Silent: Speaking Truth to a Culture Redefining Sex, Marriage, & the Very Meaning of Right & Wrong (2015)

We Cannot Be Silent — AlbertMohler.com

Albert Mohler examines the moral and sexual revolution that transformed Western views of marriage, sexuality, and the family. He traces that change through earlier developments including the normalization of divorce, the separation of sex from reproduction, cohabitation, homosexuality, and later transgender ideology.

Mohler argues that these changes cannot be understood apart from the abandonment of biblical authority and the Scriptural understanding of sex, marriage, and the family. This book is especially useful for tracing how seemingly separate cultural changes developed from a broader rejection of God’s created order.

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Julia Bush — Women Against the Vote: Female Anti-Suffragism in Britain

Women Against the Vote: Female Anti-Suffragism in Britain

A detailed study of British women who opposed suffrage, including their arguments, organizations, and understanding of women’s distinctive responsibilities and influence.

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Grace Duffield Goodwin — Anti-Suffrage: Ten Good Reasons

Anti-Suffrage: Ten Good Reasons

A full-length anti-suffrage work written during the suffrage campaign. Goodwin argues against woman suffrage from the differences between men and women, the nature of political authority, women’s position in industry and society, and the effects she believed enfranchisement would have upon women and the social order.

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Brian Harrison — Separate Spheres: The Opposition to Women’s Suffrage in Britain

Separate Spheres: The Opposition to Women’s Suffrage in Britain

A substantial historical study of British anti-suffragism and the arguments made concerning the distinct spheres and responsibilities of men and women.

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Susan Goodier — No Votes for Women: The New York State Anti-Suffrage Movement

No Votes for Women: The New York State Anti-Suffrage Movement

A detailed study of organized female opposition to suffrage in New York State, including the women, organizations, arguments, and campaigns involved.

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Susan E. Marshall — Splintered Sisterhood: Gender and Class in the Campaign against Woman Suffrage

Splintered Sisterhood: Gender and Class in the Campaign against Woman Suffrage

A scholarly study of organized female anti-suffragists in the United States. Marshall documents the women who organized, published, campaigned, and worked actively against woman suffrage.

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Ida M. Tarbell — The Business of Being a Woman (1912)

The Business of Being a Woman

First published in 1912, Tarbell examines the changing position of women and argues for the dignity and importance of women’s distinctive work, especially marriage, motherhood, the home, and the rearing of children. She challenges the idea that women must imitate men or take on the same occupations and public functions in order to be equal or important.

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Molly Elliot Seawell — The Ladies’ Battle (1911)

The Ladies’ Battle

Published in 1911, The Ladies’ Battle is a full-length anti-suffrage work by American writer Molly Elliot Seawell. Seawell argues against woman suffrage from the distinct responsibilities of men and women, the nature of political authority, and the effects separate political power could have upon marriage, family life, and society.

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Annie Riley Hale — The Eden Sphinx (1916)

The Eden Sphinx

Published in 1916, The Eden Sphinx is an anti-suffrage work by American writer and speaker Annie Riley Hale. Hale argues for women’s distinctive influence through motherhood, family, and their influence upon men rather than through direct political power. The book is especially valuable as a firsthand expression of female opposition to suffrage during the years immediately preceding the Nineteenth Amendment.

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Gretchen Ritter — Review of Splintered Sisterhood: Gender and Class in the Campaign against Woman Suffrage

Review of Susan E. Marshall’s Splintered Sisterhood

A scholarly review of Susan E. Marshall’s study of organized female anti-suffragists in the United States. Particularly useful is its discussion of anti-suffrage women as active participants in the movement rather than women merely following the wishes of men. It also considers their influence through family, social networks, charitable work, and community institutions.

Primary Sources and Historical Documents

The best way to understand what anti-suffragists believed is to read them in their own words. The documents below include letters, essays, appeals, pamphlets, and other materials written during the suffrage era by men and women who opposed extending the vote to women.

These sources are especially valuable because they allow us to examine the arguments as they were actually made at the time rather than relying only upon later summaries. Not every writer argued from Scripture, and I do not agree with every point made in every document. But together they show that opposition to woman suffrage was serious, organized, and based upon concerns about marriage, the family, the distinct responsibilities of men and women, political representation, and the broader effects of suffrage upon society.

Declaration of Sentiments — Seneca Falls Convention (1848)

Declaration of Sentiments — Library of Congress

Adopted at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, the Declaration of Sentiments became one of the foundational documents of the American women’s-rights movement. Modeled after the Declaration of Independence, it addressed far more than voting, challenging women’s position in marriage, law, education, employment, politics, and the church. It is an important primary source for understanding the broader aims and assumptions of the movement in its own words.

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Elizabeth Cady Stanton — The Woman’s Bible (1895–1898)

The Woman’s Bible — Project Gutenberg

Written under the leadership of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, one of the most influential figures in the American women’s-rights and suffrage movements, The Woman’s Bible openly challenges traditional Christian teaching concerning men, women, marriage, authority, and the interpretation of Scripture.

This primary source is particularly important because it allows readers to see for themselves that significant leaders within the women’s-rights movement were concerned with much more than obtaining the vote. Stanton and her collaborators sought to challenge the biblical teachings they believed had been used to establish woman’s subordinate position in the home, church, and society.

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Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, eds. — History of Woman Suffrage

History of Woman Suffrage — Wikisource

This multivolume history was compiled by some of the most prominent leaders of the women’s-rights and suffrage movement. Because Stanton, Anthony, and Gage were themselves participants in the events they recorded, History of Woman Suffrage is one of the most valuable primary-source collections for studying the movement’s development, arguments, personalities, organizations, religious connections, and political strategies.

The volumes should be read with the understanding that they were written by advocates of the movement rather than neutral observers. That is precisely what makes them so useful here: they allow us to examine how leading suffragists described their own history, motives, beliefs, conflicts, and goals.

Volume I — 1848–1861

History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I — Project Gutenberg

Volume I covers the formative years of the organized women’s-rights movement, including the events leading to Seneca Falls, the early conventions, abolitionist and reform influences, temperance activity, marriage and property-law questions, and the development of women’s public and political activism before the Civil War.

Of particular interest is the volume’s discussion of the intellectual and religious ideas preceding the movement, including the growing emphasis upon individualism rather than authority. It is especially useful for studying how the movement’s own leaders understood the relationship between women’s rights, marriage, religion, public life, and political equality.

Volume II — 1861–1876

History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II — Project Gutenberg

Volume II follows the movement through the Civil War and Reconstruction. It documents the debates surrounding the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, the development of national suffrage organizations, the division between competing suffrage factions, state campaigns, Victoria Woodhull’s congressional activity, and Susan B. Anthony’s attempt to vote and subsequent trial.

This volume is particularly useful for tracing the transition from the broader women’s-rights movement of the 1850s into the increasingly organized campaign for national woman suffrage after the Civil War.

Volume III — 1876–1885

History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III — Internet Archive

Volume III documents the movement as it became increasingly national and politically organized. It includes convention proceedings, speeches, state campaigns, religious discussions, organizational developments, and the continuing effort to secure woman suffrage.

This volume is especially valuable for its discussion of Spiritualism and woman suffrage. The editors themselves acknowledge the close relationship between Spiritualists and the women’s-rights movement and describe Spiritualism as one of the religious movements that recognized women’s equality and permitted women to exercise public spiritual authority. This makes the volume an important primary source for examining the religious and occult connections surrounding portions of the suffrage movement.

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Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (1920)

19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution — National Archives

The official National Archives page for the Nineteenth Amendment, including the amendment text and historical background surrounding its ratification. This is the constitutional measure that prohibited denying or abridging the right to vote on account of sex and brought the long national suffrage campaign to its legal conclusion.

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Frances E. Willard — Home Protection Manual (1879)

Home Protection Manual — Library of Congress

Published in 1879 by Woman’s Christian Temperance Union leader Frances Willard, this primary source argues for obtaining the vote for women specifically as a means of advancing temperance and protecting the home from the liquor trade. It provides direct evidence of the close relationship between the temperance and suffrage movements and of the intention to use women’s political power to enact social reform.

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Nebraska Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage — Ten Reasons Why the Great Majority of Women Do Not Want the Ballot (1914)

Ten Reasons Why Women Don’t Want the Right to Vote — History Nebraska

Published by the Nebraska Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage during the state’s 1914 suffrage campaign, this pamphlet presents ten arguments made by women who opposed their own enfranchisement. Among them were the beliefs that men bore responsibility for protecting the community, that women could accomplish more through counsel than command, and that separate political activity by husbands and wives would introduce division and discord into the home.

The pamphlet is valuable as a primary source because it allows anti-suffrage women to state their arguments in their own words. Readers need not agree with every claim in order to recognize that female opposition to suffrage was organized, reasoned, and concerned with questions of household unity, male responsibility, women’s influence, and the proper nature of political authority.

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National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage — Some Reasons Why We Oppose Votes for Women (1894)

Some Reasons Why We Oppose Votes for Women

A primary-source anti-suffrage publication from the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage in New York. It gives readers the opportunity to examine the arguments made by organized American opponents of woman suffrage in their own words rather than relying only upon later descriptions of what they believed.

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John Adams to James Sullivan — On Women and Voting Rights (1776)

John Adams to James Sullivan, May 26, 1776 — Founders Online, National Archives

In this 1776 letter, John Adams considers who should possess the vote and specifically addresses the exclusion of women. He points to women’s responsibilities in the nurture of children and domestic life, as well as the different demands of public and political responsibility. He also warns that once established voting qualifications were abandoned in the name of equal individual claims, demands for further political equality would follow.

Adams wrote:

“But why exclude Women? You will Say, because their Delicacy renders them unfit for Practice and Experience, in the great Business of Life, and the hardy Enterprizes of War, as well as the arduous Cares of State. Besides, their attention is So much engaged with the necessary Nurture of their Children, that Nature has made them fittest for domestic Cares.”

Later in the letter he predicted:

“New Claims will arise. Women will demand a Vote…”

This letter is particularly useful because it shows that, at the time of the American founding, political representation was not automatically understood as an identical individual right belonging to every adult regardless of sex, circumstance, or responsibility.

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John Knox — The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1558)

The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women

Published in 1558, Knox argues against women exercising civil rule over men and appeals to creation, Scripture, natural order, and the political consequences of female government. Although written centuries before the modern women’s suffrage movement, it is important for showing that Christian opposition to women occupying positions of civil authority long predates nineteenth-century anti-suffragism.

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Christopher Goodman — How Superior Powers Ought to Be Obeyed (1558)

How Superior Powers Ought to Be Obeyed

Published in 1558, Goodman’s work addresses civil authority, resistance to ungodly rulers, and the proper ordering of government. In his discussion of women exercising civil authority, he argues that female rule over men is contrary to the order established by God and applies that principle not only to queens but to other positions of civil government as well.

Although written centuries before the organized women’s suffrage movement, the book is useful for showing that Protestant objections to women holding political and governing authority have deep historical roots.

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John Calvin — Commentary on 1 Corinthians 14:34

John Calvin’s Commentary on 1 Corinthians 14:34

In commenting on Paul’s command that women remain in subjection in the church, Calvin connects the principle to the broader question of public authority. He argues that authority to teach is inconsistent with the subordinate position God assigned to woman and observes that women had historically been excluded from the public management of affairs.

Calvin writes:

“Wherever even natural propriety has been maintained, women have in all ages been excluded from the public management of affairs.”

He continues:

“It is the dictate of common sense, that female government is improper and unseemly.”

Although Calvin’s immediate subject is order within the church, his comments show that he understood the distinction between male and female authority to have implications beyond the church and into public government.

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John Calvin — Letters of John Calvin

Letters of John Calvin — Internet Archive

This collection contains Calvin’s correspondence on many subjects, but two letters are especially important for understanding his view of women exercising civil authority.

In his 1554 letter to Heinrich Bullinger, Calvin states that government by women was contrary to the ordinary order of nature and should be regarded as a judgment of God. At the same time, he argued that private individuals had no right to overthrow an established female ruler simply because she was a woman. He pointed to Deborah as an extraordinary example of God raising up a woman in judgment upon the failures of men.

His 1559 letter to Sir William Cecil, adviser to Queen Elizabeth I, is equally important. Calvin again describes female government as a departure from the original order of nature, while distinguishing his position from the more sweeping conclusions of John Knox. Calvin recognized Elizabeth’s lawful authority and opposed rebellion against her, even while maintaining that female civil rule was contrary to the ordinary order established by God.

These letters are especially useful because they show Calvin’s position in his own words: he opposed female civil government in principle, but he did not believe that an already established female ruler thereby ceased to possess legitimate civil authority.

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Lyman Abbott — Why Women Do Not Wish the Suffrage (1903)

Why Women Do Not Wish the Suffrage

Originally published in The Atlantic Monthly in September 1903, Abbott argues against woman suffrage on the basis of the family as the foundation of society and the distinct functions of men and women. He also discusses the widespread reluctance or indifference toward suffrage among women themselves and argues that the question concerned not merely politics but the home, church, industry, government, and the larger social order.

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Francis Parkman — The Woman Question (1879)

The Woman Question

Originally published in The North American Review in 1879, Parkman’s essay presents an extended nineteenth-century argument against woman suffrage and in defense of distinct roles and responsibilities for men and women. His arguments became part of a wider public debate over suffrage and were answered directly by several prominent suffragists.

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America When Feminized — Southern Woman’s League for Rejection of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment

America When Feminized

A primary-source anti-suffrage broadside circulated during the campaign over the Nineteenth Amendment. It warned that woman suffrage would blur the distinctions between men and women, weaken male leadership, draw women away from their homes and children, and ultimately damage the family and society. The accompanying cartoon depicts a mother leaving her eggs for the father while she goes off into politics, illustrating the anti-suffragists’ concern that political equality would overturn the ordinary responsibilities of men and women.

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Letter from the Cambridge Branch of the Massachusetts Anti-Suffrage Association to Congress

Letter from the Cambridge Branch of the Massachusetts Anti-Suffrage Association

A primary-source letter sent by the Massachusetts Anti-Suffrage Association to the United States Congress asking legislators to oppose the proposed woman-suffrage amendment. It is useful for seeing the arguments organized American anti-suffragists presented directly to lawmakers rather than reading those arguments only through later summaries.

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Mary Augusta Ward and Others — An Appeal Against Female Suffrage (1889)

An Appeal Against Female Suffrage

Published in The Nineteenth Century in June 1889, this appeal argues against extending the parliamentary vote to women. The signers defended distinct functions for men and women and maintained that women could exercise substantial moral, social, and civic influence without direct political power.

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The Anti-Suffrage Review — January 1909

The Anti-Suffrage Review, January 1909 — LSE Digital Library

A digitized original issue of The Anti-Suffrage Review, published during the British suffrage campaign. This primary source allows readers to examine the arguments, concerns, and activities of organized anti-suffragists in their own words rather than through later historical summaries.

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Ellen F. Vanderbilt — Letter Regarding the Federal Amendment

Letter Regarding the Federal Amendment

A primary-source letter from Ellen F. Vanderbilt of Newport, Rhode Island, sent to members of Congress in opposition to the proposed federal woman-suffrage amendment. Vanderbilt argued that the amendment would override decisions already made within individual states and expressed concern about the political movements and voting blocs she believed would be strengthened by woman suffrage.

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Robert L. Dabney — Women’s Rights Women (1871)

Women’s Rights Women

Originally published in The Southern Magazine in 1871, Dabney’s essay argues against the developing women’s-rights movement and women’s suffrage. He understood the movement as seeking much more than the ballot, including the removal of distinctions between men and women and the rejection of a wife’s subordination within marriage.

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Helen Kendrick Johnson — Woman and the Republic (1897)

Woman and the Republic — Project Gutenberg

Originally published in 1897, Woman and the Republic is one of the more substantial American anti-suffrage works written by a woman. Johnson argues against woman suffrage while defending the importance of women’s responsibilities within the home, family, and social order. The book is especially valuable because it allows readers to examine an extended female anti-suffrage argument in the author’s own words.

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Victoria C. Woodhull — And the Truth Shall Make You Free (1871)

And the Truth Shall Make You Free — Library of Congress

Delivered at Steinway Hall in New York City on November 20, 1871, this speech allows Victoria Woodhull to explain her own understanding of individual liberty, sexual freedom, marriage, and “free love.” Woodhull was simultaneously a prominent advocate of woman suffrage, a Spiritualist, and one of the most radical public figures associated with the nineteenth-century women’s-rights movement.

This is particularly useful because Woodhull’s political ideas cannot be separated from her broader program of social reform. Rather than relying upon later descriptions of what she believed, readers can examine her arguments in her own words.

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Victoria C. Woodhull — Tried as by Fire; or, The True and the False, Socially (1874)

Tried as by Fire — Online Books Page

In this extended address, Woodhull examines marriage, sexual relations, individual freedom, and the social order. The work belongs to the same radical program through which she challenged traditional marriage and argued for greater sexual and personal autonomy. Contemporary records identify the published work as dating from 1874.

Together with And the Truth Shall Make You Free, it is an important primary source for understanding how one of the most prominent radical suffragists connected political equality with much broader changes in marriage, sexuality, and society.

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Elizabeth Cady Stanton — Eighty Years and More: Reminiscences 1815–1897 (1898)

Eighty Years and More — Project Gutenberg

Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s autobiography recounts her childhood, marriage, reform work, relationship with Susan B. Anthony, women’s-rights conventions, suffrage activity, religious development, and eventual work on The Woman’s Bible. It is an important primary source for understanding how Stanton herself remembered the experiences and convictions that shaped her public life.

Because Stanton wrote these recollections decades after many of the events she describes, individual memories should sometimes be checked against contemporary records. Nevertheless, the book is invaluable for hearing one of the principal architects of the women’s-rights movement explain her life and beliefs in her own words.

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Barbara Goldsmith — Other Powers: The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull (1998)

Other Powers — Penguin Random House

Barbara Goldsmith examines the intertwined worlds of woman suffrage, Spiritualism, Reconstruction-era politics, radical reform, and the extraordinary career of Victoria Woodhull. The book is especially valuable because it places Woodhull within the larger network of suffragists, Spiritualists, political reformers, abolitionists, and religious radicals surrounding her.

For this study, Other Powers provides useful historical background for understanding why Spiritualism should not be treated as an unrelated curiosity at the edges of the suffrage movement.

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Barry Hankins — The Second Great Awakening and the Transcendentalists (2004)

The Second Great Awakening and the Transcendentalists — Bloomsbury

Historian Barry Hankins examines the Second Great Awakening, Transcendentalism, abolitionism, religious innovation, feminism, and the wider reform culture of antebellum America. The book includes sections specifically addressing revivalism and feminism as well as biographical studies of figures connected with nineteenth-century reform.

This is useful background for understanding the religious environment in which women’s-rights activism developed. It is not primarily a study of suffrage or occultism, but it helps explain the convergence of religious experimentation, social reform, abolitionism, Transcendentalism, and changing ideas about women.

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Joy Dixon — Divine Feminine: Theosophy and Feminism in England (2001)

Divine Feminine — Johns Hopkins University Press

Historian Joy Dixon examines the relationship between feminism and Theosophy in England. Her study documents how Theosophy became an important part of feminist political culture and how Theosophical ideas concerning spirituality, sex, gender, motherhood, and female religious authority influenced feminist arguments and suffrage activism.

Although the book concerns Britain rather than the United States, it is valuable for demonstrating that the relationship between feminism, suffrage, and esoteric religion was not confined to a few unusual American personalities. It also provides important background for understanding the later Theosophical connections of women such as Matilda Joslyn Gage.

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Massachusetts Municipal Suffrage Referendum (1895)

Woman Suffrage — U.S. Senate Hearing, February 13, 1900 — Library of Congress

This congressional hearing contains testimony concerning the 1895 Massachusetts referendum on municipal suffrage for women. Roughly 575,000 women were eligible to register and participate. Of the women who voted on the question, 22,204 favored municipal suffrage and 861 opposed it. Male voters rejected the proposal by 186,115 to 86,970.

The figures should be interpreted carefully because organized anti-suffrage women encouraged opponents not to register or vote. The large number of women who abstained therefore cannot automatically be counted as anti-suffragists. Nevertheless, the referendum is useful primary evidence showing that only a small proportion of eligible Massachusetts women affirmatively sought municipal suffrage at that time.

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Per Faxneld — Satanic Feminism: Lucifer as the Liberator of Woman in Nineteenth-Century Culture (2017)

Satanic Feminism — Oxford Academic

Published by Oxford University Press, Per Faxneld’s scholarly study examines the nineteenth-century use of Satan, Lucifer, Eve, and rebellion against biblical authority as symbols of female emancipation within portions of feminist, literary, socialist, and esoteric culture.

This book should not be read as evidence that ordinary suffragists generally worshiped Satan; that is not its argument. Its value is more specific. It documents an important strand of nineteenth-century radical and esoteric thought in which rebellion against Christian teaching concerning woman, marriage, sexuality, and authority was sometimes deliberately expressed through the rehabilitation of Eve or Lucifer as symbols of liberation.

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Postcards from the Anti-Suffrage Movement

37 Anti-Suffrage Postcards

A collection of historical postcards and illustrations produced during the suffrage era. The images are especially useful for seeing how anti-suffragists visually expressed concerns about women leaving the home, men becoming feminized, the disruption of family responsibilities, and the blurring of distinctions between men and women. The accompanying commentary is strongly sympathetic to suffrage, so I include this resource primarily for its collection of historical images.

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J. Gresham Machen — Letter to a Congressman on Women’s Suffrage (1918)

Letter to a Congressman on Women’s Suffrage

Written in 1918 to Congressman John R. Ramsey and later entered into the Congressional Record, Machen’s letter urges opposition to the proposed federal woman-suffrage amendment. He questions whether women generally desired the vote, argues that the matter should remain with the individual states, and describes the amendment as part of an ill-timed feminist political campaign.

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Women Voters Anti-Suffrage Party of New York — Petition to the United States Senate (1917)

Petition from the Women Voters Anti-Suffrage Party of New York to the United States Senate

A 1917 primary-source petition sent to the United States Senate by women opposed to woman suffrage. The document is especially useful because it provides direct evidence that organized female opposition remained active during the final years of the national suffrage campaign.

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Rose Young — The Record of the Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission, Inc., 1917–1929 (1929)

The Record of the Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission — Library of Congress

This contemporary record documents the remarkable bequest of publisher Mrs. Frank Leslie to suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt and the creation of the Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission. Leslie intended the bulk of an estate valued at nearly two million dollars to be used for woman suffrage. After legal challenges and estate expenses, approximately $977,000 ultimately came into Catt’s hands.

The volume is especially useful for understanding the financial resources available to the organized suffrage movement during its final years and how Leslie’s fortune was used to support publicity, organization, state campaigns, publications, and other work advancing woman suffrage.

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Library of Congress — “Alva Belmont: Benefactor”

Alva Belmont — Library of Congress

The Library of Congress describes Alva Vanderbilt Belmont as the most important financial benefactor of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage and its successor, the National Woman’s Party. Belmont used both her considerable fortune and her social connections to support the increasingly aggressive campaign for a federal woman-suffrage amendment.

This resource is useful for understanding the financial and social support behind Alice Paul’s National Woman’s Party and the highly visible demonstrations, organizing campaigns, and political pressure that helped carry the suffrage battle into its final years.

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Historical Background, Biblical Resources, and Further Reading

The resources below provide additional historical background on the suffrage and anti-suffrage movements. They include books, scholarly studies, essays, and historical overviews that examine the arguments, organizations, personalities, and social conditions surrounding the debate.

These are secondary sources rather than documents written by the original participants. They are helpful for understanding the larger historical setting, comparing different interpretations, and learning more about the women and men who opposed suffrage. As always, I encourage you to read carefully, compare sources, and measure every conclusion by the Word of God.

1599 Geneva Bible — Isaiah 3

Isaiah 3 — 1599 Geneva Bible

Isaiah 3 describes God’s judgment upon a disordered people, including the removal of capable rulers and the appointment of unfit ones. Verse 12 reads:

“Children are extortioners of my people, and women have rule over them: O my people, they that lead thee, cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths.”

The Geneva Bible’s note on this verse explains that God would give the people rulers who would be “manifest tokens of his wrath.” The surrounding notes likewise describe the chapter as a judgment marked by the loss of good government and proper order.

This historic Protestant interpretation is useful when considering whether Scripture presents female rule as an ordinary sign of blessing or, in this passage, as part of the disorder accompanying God’s judgment.

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Matthew Henry — Commentary on Isaiah 3:12

Matthew Henry on Isaiah 3

Henry treats Isaiah 3 as a description of God’s judgment upon a disordered people, including the removal of wise and capable rulers and the rise of those unfit to govern. In commenting on verse 12, he understands the reference to children and women ruling as part of that judgment rather than as a picture of normal or desirable civil order.

His commentary is useful alongside the 1599 Geneva Bible because both understand the surrounding passage as describing the breakdown of proper government under divine judgment.

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Matthew Poole — Commentary on Isaiah 3:12

Matthew Poole on Isaiah 3

Poole understands Isaiah 3 as describing great disorder among both the people and their rulers as part of God’s judgment. Commenting on the words “women rule over them,” he gives two possible meanings: women literally exercising power and influence over the rulers, or weak and effeminate rulers being described as women.

He also identifies those who lead the people in verse 12 as their civil and ecclesiastical rulers, whose duty should have been to lead them rightly but who instead caused them to err.

Poole’s commentary is useful alongside the Geneva Bible and Matthew Henry because all three understand Isaiah 3 as a picture of governmental disorder and divine judgment rather than normal, well-ordered civil rule.

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John Gill — Exposition of Isaiah 3:12

John Gill on Isaiah 3

Gill understands Isaiah 3 as a description of God’s judgment upon a sinful nation through the loss of capable leaders and the rise of rulers unfit to govern. In his introduction to the chapter, he describes the people as being given “ignorant and effeminate governors,” with oppression and disorder following.

Commenting on “women rule over them” in verse 12, Gill allows that the words may refer literally to women exercising rule over the people, while also recognizing the interpretation that they describe weak or effeminate male rulers. In either case, he understands the condition as part of the political disorder and judgment being described throughout the chapter.

Gill is useful alongside the Geneva Bible, Matthew Henry, and Matthew Poole because he provides another historic Protestant interpretation in which Isaiah 3:12 is not presented as a picture of healthy, well-ordered government, but as one feature of a nation under divine judgment.

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David Talcott — Pragmatism and Principle: John Calvin and Female Government

Pragmatism and Principle: John Calvin and Female Government

A helpful examination of John Calvin’s views on women exercising civil authority. Talcott shows that Calvin regarded female government as contrary to the ordinary order of nature and as a form of judgment, while also distinguishing Calvin from John Knox. Calvin did not believe that an already established female ruler automatically lost legitimate authority or that private citizens were justified in overthrowing her simply because she was a woman.

The article is especially useful for understanding that historic Protestant opposition to female civil rule was not monolithic. Calvin opposed it in principle while still insisting upon submission to a lawfully established ruler.

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R.C. Sproul — What Do We Mean When We Speak of the “Sanctity of Human Life”? (2017)

What Do We Mean When We Speak of the “Sanctity of Human Life”? — Ligonier Ministries

R.C. Sproul grounds the sanctity and dignity of human life in creation and the fact that mankind was made in the image of God. He then applies the biblical prohibition against murder and the positive duty to protect life to the question of abortion.

This resource is especially useful for establishing the Scriptural standard behind the abortion discussion. Human life does not possess value because the state recognizes it, because it is wanted, or because another person grants it personhood. Its value comes from God, the Creator and giver of life.

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R.C. Sproul — The Sanctity of Marriage

The Sanctity of Marriage — Ligonier Ministries

R.C. Sproul examines marriage and divorce according to the law of God, asking whether every divorce recognized by the state is therefore recognized by God. He contrasts biblical grounds for divorce with modern civil standards such as incompatibility and no-fault divorce.

This resource is especially useful for the section on the weakening of marriage because Sproul insists that marriage was instituted by God and is therefore governed by His Word rather than by changing civil law or personal desire.

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Reagan Marsh — Of Marriage: The 1689 Baptist Confession

Of Marriage: The 1689 Baptist Confession — Founders Ministries

This article examines the biblical doctrine of marriage through Chapter 25 of the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith. It presents marriage as an ordinance established by God between one man and one woman and considers its purposes, responsibilities, permanence, and Scriptural grounds for divorce.

This resource is especially useful for establishing the biblical standard before considering modern changes in marriage law. Marriage is not a civil arrangement invented by the state but part of God’s created order, and its nature and obligations must therefore be judged by His Word rather than by changing cultural expectations.

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Anti-Suffrage — The Suffragettes

Anti-Suffrage

A useful overview of British female anti-suffragism, including the 1889 Appeal Against Female Suffrage, the Women’s National Anti-Suffrage League and its more than one hundred branches, and contemporary claims that many women did not want the parliamentary vote.

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Tom Furniss — “Mary Wollstonecraft’s French Revolution” (2002)

Mary Wollstonecraft’s French Revolution — University of Strathclyde

Published as a chapter in The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft, Tom Furniss examines Wollstonecraft’s relationship to the French Revolution and the radical intellectual circles that shaped her political thought. He traces her connections with the Dissenting minister Richard Price and radical publisher Joseph Johnson, whose circle responded enthusiastically to the early stages of the French Revolution and hoped that similar political changes might reach Britain.

This chapter is especially useful for understanding the intellectual background from which Wollstonecraft’s arguments concerning women and equality emerged. It helps place early feminist thought within the larger revolutionary debates over rights, equality, authority, religion, and social order that followed the French Revolution.

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Rebecca A. Rix — Anti-Suffragism in the United States

Anti-Suffragism in the United States

A detailed National Park Service history of the American anti-suffrage movement. Rix examines the women and men who opposed suffrage, their organizations and publications, and their belief that the family rather than the autonomous individual should remain the basic unit of political representation. The article is especially useful for understanding anti-suffrage arguments concerning male headship, household representation, women competing with men for employment, feminism, socialism, and the effects political equality might have upon family and society.

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Elizabeth Garner Masarik and Averill Earls — “Ghosting the Patriarchy: Spiritualism and the Nineteenth-Century Women’s Rights Movement” (2022)

Ghosting the Patriarchy: Spiritualism and the Nineteenth-Century Women’s Rights Movement — DIG: A History Podcast

Historians Elizabeth Garner Masarik and Averill Earls examine the extensive overlap between nineteenth-century Spiritualism and the women’s-rights movement, particularly in western New York. The article and full transcript discuss the M’Clintock Declaration of Sentiments table and its later use in séances, Amy and Isaac Post’s role in introducing the Fox sisters to radical Quaker reform networks, female trance speakers, Victoria Woodhull, Susan B. Anthony’s continuing connections with Spiritualist circles, and the close relationship between Spiritualists and advocates of woman suffrage.

The transcript is especially useful because it provides extensive notes and further reading, including Ann Braude’s Radical Spirits, Nancy Hewitt’s Radical Friend: Amy Kirby Post and Her Activist Worlds, and the suffrage movement’s own History of Woman Suffrage. It provides a helpful scholarly overview while directing readers to the primary and academic sources behind these connections.

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Rachel Wilson — Who Were the Anti-Suffragettes?

Who Were the Anti-Suffragettes?

An examination of women who opposed suffrage and the arguments they made concerning marriage, motherhood, the family, political participation, and the distinct responsibilities of men and women. Wilson includes historical anti-suffrage material and considers how many of the concerns expressed by anti-suffragists compared with social changes that followed.

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The Anti-Suffrage Review, April 1909 — BBC History

The Anti-Suffrage Review, April 1909

A historical look at an April 1909 issue of The Anti-Suffrage Review, the periodical published by the Women’s National Anti-Suffrage League. The journal provides valuable evidence of the organized opposition to women’s suffrage in Britain and the arguments anti-suffragists were making while the campaign was still underway.

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Women Who Opposed Votes for Women: The Case of Mrs Humphry Ward — Bangor University

Women Who Opposed Votes for Women: The Case of Mrs Humphry Ward

A helpful overview of Mary Augusta Ward and the organized British opposition to woman suffrage. The article discusses the Women’s National Anti-Suffrage League, its petitions and branches, Ward’s public campaigning, and the publication of The Anti-Suffrage Review. It is especially useful for showing that women themselves organized and publicly argued against suffrage and believed it threatened the traditional order of the home and the responsibilities of men and women.

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Molly Elliot Seawell

Molly Elliot Seawell

A biographical overview of the American writer and prominent anti-suffragist Molly Elliot Seawell. Seawell wrote extensively against woman suffrage and published The Ladies’ Battle in 1911, arguing from the distinct responsibilities of men and women, the burdens of political authority, and the effects separate political loyalties could have upon marriage and the family.

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Ida M. Tarbell

Ida Tarbell

A biographical overview of the American writer and journalist Ida M. Tarbell. Although best known for her investigative journalism, Tarbell also wrote extensively about women, the home, motherhood, and the women’s-rights movement, opposing the idea that women must imitate men in order to be equal or important.

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Anti-Sixteenth Amendment Society

Anti-Sixteenth Amendment Society

A useful overview of one of the earliest organized female anti-suffrage groups in the United States. Formed in 1869 and led by Madeleine Vinton Dahlgren, the society included prominent women who petitioned Congress against woman suffrage and argued that extending the vote to women would burden women and harm the family.

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Manuela Thurner — “Better Citizens Without the Ballot”: American Anti-Suffrage Women and Their Rationale During the Progressive Era

“Better Citizens Without the Ballot”: American Anti-Suffrage Women and Their Rationale During the Progressive Era

A scholarly study of American women who opposed suffrage during the Progressive Era. Thurner examines their arguments, motivations, organizations, and understanding of women’s responsibilities and influence apart from the ballot. Particularly useful is its treatment of female anti-suffragists as women with a developed rationale of their own rather than simply passive opponents of women’s political rights.

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Anti-Suffragism — Wikipedia

Anti-Suffragism

A broad overview of anti-suffrage movements in the United States, Britain, and other countries. The article summarizes major organizations, arguments, prominent anti-suffragists, and the reasons many women opposed the vote. It is also useful for its extensive references, further reading, and links to primary sources.

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Grace Duffield Goodwin

Grace Duffield Goodwin

A biographical overview of the American writer and anti-suffrage activist Grace Duffield Goodwin. Goodwin served as president of the District of Columbia Anti-Suffrage Association, took part in organized national opposition to woman suffrage, and wrote and spoke publicly against the movement.

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The Women Who Fought Against the Vote — The New York Times

The Women Who Fought Against the Vote

A modern historical overview of the women who organized and campaigned against woman suffrage in the United States. The article is useful for showing that female opposition to suffrage was substantial, organized, and based upon arguments concerning the family, women’s responsibilities, and the effects political participation might have upon society.

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The Antis: Women Who Fought Against the Vote — New England Historical Society

The Antis: Women Who Fought Against the Vote

A historical overview of women in New England who organized and campaigned against woman suffrage. The article discusses anti-suffrage organizations, prominent women involved in the movement, their arguments concerning the home, family, political representation, and social order, and the substantial female membership of the organized opposition.

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List of Anti-Suffragists

List of Anti-Suffragists

A reference list of women and men who opposed woman suffrage in the United States, Britain, and elsewhere. It is useful for identifying individual anti-suffragists and then following their names to biographies, writings, speeches, organizations, and other historical sources.

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Melanie McDonagh — Did Most Women Want the Vote?

Did Most Women Want the Vote?

An accessible examination of the large number of British women who opposed suffrage. McDonagh notes that while it cannot be proved that a majority of women opposed the vote, there is substantial evidence that female anti-suffragism was widespread. Women made up the majority of the anti-suffrage movement’s rank and file, including more than two-thirds of subscribers to its central office and five-sixths of branch subscribers, and anti-suffragists gathered roughly half a million signatures against woman suffrage before the First World War. The article also discusses women who believed political participation would undermine marriage, family life, and women’s distinctive responsibilities.

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Annie Riley Hale

Annie Riley Hale

A biographical overview of the American teacher, writer, and anti-suffrage speaker Annie Riley Hale. Hale publicly argued against woman suffrage, appeared before the U.S. House Committee on Woman Suffrage in 1913, and later published The Eden Sphinx, in which she defended women’s influence through motherhood and family rather than direct political power.

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Robyn Muncy — The Necessity of Other Social Movements to the Struggle for Woman Suffrage

The Necessity of Other Social Movements to the Struggle for Woman Suffrage — National Park Service

This National Park Service article examines the close relationship between woman suffrage and other nineteenth-century reform movements, including abolition, women’s rights, labor activism, and temperance. It is particularly useful for documenting the connection between the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and suffrage. Historian Robyn Muncy notes that Frances Willard concluded women would have greater power to secure temperance legislation if they possessed the vote and persuaded the WCTU to endorse woman suffrage in 1881.

The article also helps show that suffrage did not develop as an isolated demand for the ballot. It grew within a much broader movement that increasingly brought women into public activism, political organization, and efforts to reshape law and society.

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Carrie Gress — The End of Woman: How Smashing the Patriarchy Has Destroyed Us (2023)

The End of Woman — Publisher Information

Carrie Gress examines the intellectual and cultural development of feminism, beginning with early figures such as Mary Wollstonecraft and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and continuing through the sexual revolution and modern challenges to the meaning of womanhood. She argues that feminism’s rejection of traditional distinctions between men and women has ultimately harmed women, marriage, motherhood, and the family.

This is not primarily a history of woman suffrage, but it provides useful background for understanding the broader ideological movement in which suffrage developed. Gress writes from a Roman Catholic perspective, so readers should exercise biblical discernment regarding theological differences. Nevertheless, her historical discussion of feminism’s origins and its rejection of traditional womanhood makes this a useful supplementary resource.

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Gregory Marose — Prohibition and the Rise of the American Gangster (2012)

Prohibition and the Rise of the American Gangster — U.S. National Archives

This National Archives article examines the growth of organized crime during Prohibition. It explains how criminal syndicates profited by supplying the enormous illegal market for alcohol, developed complex bootlegging operations, and used those profits to expand into other criminal enterprises.

The article is particularly useful for documenting one of Prohibition’s unintended consequences: rather than eliminating the liquor trade, the law transferred much of it into the hands of criminal organizations. As those organizations grew richer and more powerful, territorial violence increased and law enforcement struggled to contain them.

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Nebraska Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage — Ten Reasons Why the Great Majority of Women Do Not Want the Ballot (1914)

Ten Reasons Why Women Don’t Want the Right to Vote — History Nebraska

Published during Nebraska’s 1914 suffrage campaign, this anti-suffrage pamphlet gives ten reasons women themselves offered for opposing the vote. Among its arguments are confidence in the responsibility of fathers, husbands, sons, and brothers to protect the community; the belief that women could accomplish more through counsel than command; and concern that separate political activity by husbands and wives could bring contention and division into the home.

This is a valuable primary source because it allows anti-suffrage women to speak for themselves rather than being described only through later histories. Readers need not agree with every argument to see that female opposition to suffrage was real, organized, and often rooted in concerns about household unity, male responsibility, women’s influence, and the proper nature of political authority.

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Massachusetts Municipal Suffrage Referendum (1895)

Woman Suffrage — U.S. Senate Hearing, February 13, 1900 — Library of Congress

In 1895, Massachusetts allowed women qualified to vote for school committee to express their opinion on whether municipal suffrage should be extended to women. Roughly 575,000 women were eligible to register and participate, yet only about 43,000 registered and approximately 23,000 actually voted. Of those women, 22,204 voted in favor and 861 voted against. Men rejected the proposal by 186,115 to 86,970.

The numbers require some care. Anti-suffrage organizations had urged women who opposed the proposal not to register or vote, arguing that abstention would demonstrate their lack of desire for the ballot. We therefore cannot claim that the hundreds of thousands of women who did not participate were necessarily opposed to suffrage. What the referendum does demonstrate is that only a small proportion of Massachusetts women affirmatively came forward to request municipal suffrage, while the male electorate decisively rejected it. It is valuable evidence against the simplified impression that women as a whole were clamoring for the vote.

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Library of Congress — Prohibition: A Case Study of Progressive Reform

Prohibition: A Case Study of Progressive Reform — Library of Congress

This Library of Congress overview places Prohibition within the larger Progressive reform movement and traces the temperance campaign from its nineteenth-century beginnings through national Prohibition and repeal.

It is particularly useful for documenting the unintended consequences of Prohibition. The Library of Congress notes that enforcement became increasingly difficult, bootlegging and speakeasies became commonplace, and criminal gangs grew more powerful through the illegal alcohol trade. The page also links to original documents from the period, making it a useful starting point for further study.

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Spencer Howard — Law of the Land (2016)

Law of the Land — Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum

This article from the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum traces the rise and eventual repeal of national Prohibition. It notes that early campaigns against alcohol were led largely by women who believed liquor contributed to the abuse of wives and children and the destruction of homes.

The article is particularly useful for documenting what followed once Prohibition became national law. Illegal speakeasies multiplied, crime increased, and organized crime prospered from bootlegging. Criminal organizations used their enormous profits to bribe police officers and politicians, while public disregard for the law became increasingly common. By the end of the decade, the difficulties of enforcement and the growth of the illegal liquor trade had become major arguments for repeal.

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U.S. House of Representatives — Relief for the Nation: Recognizing a Need

Relief for the Nation — U.S. House of Representatives, History, Art & Archives

This U.S. House historical exhibit examines the development of federal maternity and infancy assistance that culminated in the Sheppard–Towner Act of 1921.

It is especially important for understanding the connection between women’s suffrage and the early growth of federal social-welfare policy. The House states that the passage of Sheppard–Towner so soon after women achieved national suffrage “was not a coincidence.” Women’s organizations lobbied strongly for the legislation, while members of Congress felt pressure from the newly enfranchised female electorate.

The House describes Sheppard–Towner as one of the country’s first pieces of social-welfare legislation and notes that it anticipated similar policies later enacted during Franklin Roosevelt’s administration.

Social Security Administration — The Children’s Bureau

The Children’s Bureau — Social Security Administration History

This archival Social Security Administration history traces the development of federal involvement in child and maternal welfare from the creation of the Children’s Bureau in 1912 through later federal programs.

It is particularly important for understanding the development of the American welfare state. The history explains that the Sheppard–Towner Maternity and Infancy Act of 1921 authorized federal grants to states for maternal and infant health services and established a national policy in which the federal government shared responsibility with state and local governments for children’s health and welfare.

The Social Security Administration further notes that Sheppard–Towner provided the blueprint for Title V of the Social Security Act of 1935, which continued federal aid to states for maternal and child health and child-welfare services.

Modern Studies and Statistics

The historical sources on this page show what suffragists and anti-suffragists argued at the time. The resources below look at what happened afterward.

These studies and statistics do not all prove that women’s suffrage directly caused every social, economic, political, or moral change listed here. But they do document many of the changes that followed in family life, work, education, politics, marriage, motherhood, women’s well-being, and the churches. Taken together, they help us examine whether the broader feminist promises of freedom, equality, and progress produced the good fruit we were told to expect.

As always, the statistics themselves are not our final authority. They are evidence to consider. God’s Word remains the standard by which we judge the fruit.

John R. Lott Jr. and Lawrence W. Kenny — Did Women’s Suffrage Change the Size and Scope of Government? (1999)

Did Women’s Suffrage Change the Size and Scope of Government?

Published in the Journal of Political Economy, this study examines state government spending, revenue, legislation, and congressional voting from 1870 to 1940 following women’s enfranchisement.

The authors found that woman suffrage coincided with immediate increases in state government spending and revenue and with more liberal voting patterns among federal representatives. They also found that these effects continued to grow as increasing numbers of women exercised the vote.

This study is particularly important because it provides measurable evidence that women’s suffrage changed more than who cast ballots. It altered political incentives and was associated with changes in the size, spending, and direction of government.

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Daron Acemoglu, David H. Autor, and David Lyle — Women, War and Wages: The Effect of Female Labor Supply on the Wage Structure at Mid-Century (2002)

This National Bureau of Economic Research study examines the large increase in female employment surrounding World War II. The authors found that increases in female labor supply lowered the wages of both women and men. It is particularly useful when considering how the large-scale entrance of women into paid employment affected competition for jobs and family economics.

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Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers — The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness (2009)

Although women experienced improvements in many objective measures of opportunity and economic status during the preceding decades, Stevenson and Wolfers found that women’s reported happiness declined both absolutely and relative to men. The decline appeared across different datasets, demographic groups, and industrialized countries.

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David G. Blanchflower and Alex Bryson — The Female Happiness Paradox (2022)

A more recent examination of women’s well-being using data from several countries. The authors found women reporting higher levels of anxiety, depression, sadness, loneliness, fear, restless sleep, and other measures of unhappiness than men, while also finding evidence in recent years of higher reported happiness and life satisfaction among men.

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U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Women in the Labor Force, 2023

Official federal data documenting the enormous increase in women’s participation in paid employment. Women’s labor-force participation rose from 32.7 percent in 1948 to 57.3 percent in 2023, reaching a high of 60 percent in 1999. The report provides extensive historical information on women’s employment, occupations, family status, and work patterns.

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U.S. Census Bureau — Families and Living Arrangements

Census data document the dramatic changes that have taken place in American family life. Family households declined from 79 percent of all households in 1974 to 64 percent in 2024, while the share of families living with their own children under eighteen declined from 54 percent to 39 percent. The median age at first marriage also rose substantially: for women, from about 21 in 1974 to nearly 29 in 2024.

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U.S. Census Bureau — Fertility and Childlessness

Recent Census data show that women are increasingly delaying motherhood. Between 2014 and 2024, the percentage of childless women ages 25–29 rose from about 50 percent to 63 percent, while childlessness also increased among women in their twenties and early thirties. These statistics are helpful when considering the larger cultural shift toward delayed marriage and motherhood.

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National Center for Education Statistics — Women and College Degrees

Women now earn substantially more college degrees than men. In 2021–22, women received 59 percent of all bachelor’s degrees, compared with 41 percent received by men. The data provide useful evidence of the profound change in the educational expectations and paths of young women.

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CDC — Prescription Medication for Depression Among Women

According to National Center for Health Statistics data for 2023, 15.3 percent of adult women were taking prescription medication for depression, compared with 7.4 percent of men. Women were therefore more than twice as likely as men to report taking medication for depression.

These statistics do not tell us why any individual woman suffers from depression, nor should they be used to do so. They are nevertheless worth considering alongside the promise that increasing independence, opportunity, and freedom from traditional female roles would necessarily make women happier.

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National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism — Women and Alcohol

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism reports that alcohol use and misuse among women have been increasing. This provides important background for considering the rise of drinking among women and the normalization of what has become popularly known as “mommy wine” culture.

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Gallup — U.S. Women Have Become More Liberal; Men Mostly Stable (2024)

Gallup’s long-term polling shows a growing ideological divide between men and women. Women in every age group became more likely to identify as liberal between 1999 and recent years, while men’s political ideology changed much less. Among adults ages 18–29 in 2023, 40 percent of women identified as liberal compared with 25 percent of men.

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Barna Group — What Americans Think About Women in Power (2017)

Barna documents the changing acceptance of women in positions of authority, including within churches. Its research found that the percentage of Protestant senior pastors who were women had tripled over twenty-five years, reaching 9 percent, with female senior pastors concentrated particularly in mainline churches. The study also documents the much broader cultural acceptance of women exercising the same leadership functions as men in work, politics, and ministry.

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Guttmacher Institute — Pregnancies, Births and Abortions in the United States, 1973–2020

This report provides extensive historical data on abortion in the United States from 1973 through 2020. Whatever conclusions its authors draw about abortion, the statistics themselves document the enormous scale of legalized abortion during the decades following the sexual revolution and second-wave feminism.

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Quotes, Images, and More from Those Who Opposed Women’s Suffrage

We are often given the impression that women generally wanted the vote but that simply isn’t the case.

Large numbers of women opposed women’s suffrage, both in the United States and abroad. In Britain, historians have noted that before the First World War, a majority of ordinary women did not want the parliamentary vote. Anti-suffrage women organized leagues, circulated petitions, published articles and newspapers, and argued that women exercised their greatest influence through the home, family, service, and their quiet influence upon men rather than through voting or political power.

Many women who opposed suffrage were reluctant to become politically active because they believed that the political sphere lay outside the proper role of women. The opposition was nevertheless substantial. In Britain, the Women’s National Anti-Suffrage League was formed in 1908 and developed into more than one hundred branches. By 1914, organized anti-suffragists had roughly the same support as the major suffrage organizations. In the United States, women formed anti-suffrage organizations, signed petitions, published arguments, and did all they could to campaign against the right to vote.

So, the idea that the majority of women wanted the vote is simply not true. Women themselves debated how suffrage would change womanhood, whether it would bring about change that was potentially dangerous, and if the distinctive responsibilities given to them by God should be seen as their rightful, and good, lot.

Below I have gathered letters, quotations, historical images, articles, and other materials from women and men who opposed women’s suffrage. Some argued from Scripture, some from the family and the differences between men and women, and others from political or social concerns. I encourage you to read them carefully and examine their arguments in light of the Word of God.

Soli Deo Gloria!

Maine native Kate Douglas Wiggin, who wrote Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, supported the anti-suffragettes. She told a group of women in 1912 she would have ‘woman strong enough to keep just a trifle in the background, for the limelight never makes anything grow.’

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https://www.womenshistory.org/resources/primary-source/letter-regarding-federal-amendment

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The Anti’s Alphabet (because not all women wanted the vote)

A is for Antis with Banner afloat;
B is for Battle against woman’s vote.
C is for Children we fight to protect;
D is for Duties we never neglect.
E is for Energy strengthened by hope.
F is for Folly with which we must cope.
G is the germ of unrest in the brain.
H is for Home, which we mean to maintain.
I is Insurgency now in the air;
J is calm Judgement we’re bringing to bear.
K is for Knights, our American men;
L, Loyal Service far out of our ken.
M is for Might in our cause to prevail;
N, Noble standards that naught can assail.
O, Obligations we cannot ignore;
P is for Principle marching before.
Q is the Quibble which we must combat;
R is for Reason that answers it pat.
S is Sound Sense, which we have on our side;
T is for Truths that cannot be denied.
U is for Union, whose aid we entreat;
V, Votes for women, we’re sworn to defeat.
W is wages the suffragettes claim;
X is for Xanthic, the color and fame.
Y is for Yankee, of Red, White and Blue;
Z is the Zeal to protect them for you.

https://www.womenshistory.org/sites/default/files/document/2018-07/Anti-Suffragists%20Lesson%20Plan.pdf

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Ten Reasons Why the Great Majority of Women Do Not Want the Ballot.

BECAUSE they have not lost faith in their fathers, husbands, sons, and brothers, who afford full protection to the community, there being no call for women to relieve them of the task.
BECAUSE women realize that when they become voters they will in consequence have to serve as jurors, and be compelled to hear all the repugnant details incident to murder trials and trials for other crimes disclosing unspeakable wickedness. Jury service is abhorrent to every normal woman.
BECAUSE in political activities there is constant strife, turmoil, contention and bitterness, producing conditions from which every normal woman naturally shrinks.
BECAUSE the primary object of government is to protect persons and property. This duty is imposed by nature upon man, the women being by nature absolved from assuming a task to-them impossible.
BECAUSE when women noisily contest and scramble for public office—woman pitted against woman—they write an indictment of womankind against which all rightminded women strenuously protest.
BECAUSE women can accomplish more through counselling than they ever can attain through commanding.
BECAUSE woman suffrage will not enhance peace and harmony in the home, but, on the contrary, in the heat of a campaign, it is sure to bring about dissension and discord.
BECAUSE Nebraska women are already enjoying a greater measure of protection and privilege under the law than do women of any state where women vote.
BECAUSE the woman worker wants rest and quietude—not political excitement.
BECAUSE every reason supporting the claim of women to vote supports also the right of women to be consulted as to whether they shall or shall not be given the ballot.
https://history.nebraska.gov/ten-reasons-why-women-dont-want-the-right-to-vote/

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The anti-suffragists

During the years of the suffrage campaign, a variety of arguments were put forward against granting women the vote. Opponents of women’s suffrage were known as ‘antis’. Arncliffe Sennett kept cuttings about the views and activities of the antis in her scrapbook (see p. 20).

The Anti-Suffrage League and its founder, Mrs Humphrey Ward, claimed that the vote was not desired by the majority of British women. Often focusing on the perceived physical, emotional and intellectual differences between men and women, anti-suffragists generally believed that women’s role was firmly located in the private sphere of the home. While Humphrey Ward acknowledged that women could take on roles outside the home and in public life, she argued that this role was in local government and on school boards rather than in government.

Some antis even believed that if women got the vote, Britain’s moral and social order would collapse. In ‘The Opponents’ View’, which outlines some of the reasons why the Anti-Suffrage League opposed the vote, Mrs Frederic Harrison says, ‘we believe in the division of functions as the keystone of civilisation’ (after p. 20).

In ‘Right to Work’, politician and anti-suffragist Dr Macnamara makes the argument that if a woman’s husband can maintain her and the family financially then she has no business in going out to work. He also claims that ‘it is not good for the race that women should go out into employment’ (p. 21).

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Jesse Lee Peterson, Pastor

“I think that one of the greatest mistakes America made was to allow women the opportunity to vote.”

— Jesse Lee Peterson, 2012

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Ann Coulter, author, columnist on women’s suffrage:

“If we took away women’s right to vote, we’d never have to worry about another Democrat president. It’s kind of a pipe dream, it’s a personal fantasy of mine, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. And it is a good way of making the point that women are voting so stupidly, at least single women. It also makes the point, it is kind of embarrassing, the Democratic Party ought to be hanging its head in shame, that it has so much difficulty getting men to vote for it. I mean, you do see it’s the party of women and ‘We’ll pay for health care and tuition and day care—and here, what else can we give you, soccer moms?’

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Christian Voices Against Woman Suffrage — The Gospel Advocate

The opposition to woman suffrage was not merely political. Christian men and women also argued against it from Scripture and from their understanding of the order God established between men and women. The Gospel Advocate, one of the most influential Christian publications of its day, published numerous articles opposing woman suffrage during the years leading up to the Nineteenth Amendment.

The writers did not view the vote as an isolated political question. They believed it touched the home, marriage, motherhood, male headship, women’s responsibilities, and ultimately the authority of Scripture.

James A. Allen — 1907

“[E]vil would result from the after effects of woman’s suffrage. It is the law of nature, and the law of God, that the influence of woman must be exercised through man, and when she takes the reins in her own hands it works evil to both man and woman by lifting her out of the sphere in which she was placed by the Creator. … God has not created her to take the lead or to occupy the platform in politics or religion.”

— James A. Allen, “The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union,” Gospel Advocate, December 19, 1907

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May Selley — 1913

“When God created the world, he made a law to run it by …. To transgress this law is to be punished. God would not be supreme if we were allowed to add to and take from his original plan. … So it is no small matter that we keep in our places … The suffrage question is, I believe, of far more importance than most people think. No doubt it will be a turning point in the history of our country.”

— May Selley, “Is Equal Suffrage Worth the Fight? No! Thinks a Business Girl,” Gospel Advocate, March 20, 1913

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Fannie S. Scobey — 1913

“[W]e have an infallible guide as to whether women shall vote or not vote; and that unerring guide is the Bible. … I am pleading earnestly for woman to build a happy home for her husband, children, and herself.”

She called women to be content to labor in the sphere assigned to them by divine wisdom, believing that the Creator knew both the purpose for which He created men and women and the responsibilities He intended them to fulfill.

— Fannie S. Scobey, “Shall Women Vote?” Gospel Advocate, March 27, 1913

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E. G. Sewell — 1915

“Faithful, godly women … are in a large measure the guardian angels for the wellbeing of the family and for the general good of human society. But take women in a measure out of that sphere and put them into the rugged field of politics, voting, office holding, with their trains of trouble and worldly excitement, and you at once start human society, morality, and even Christianity on a downward grade. …”

Sewell concluded that God’s arrangements for men and women could not be changed without bringing harmful consequences.

— E. G. Sewell, “Questions About Billy Sunday and Woman Suffrage,” Gospel Advocate, April 15, 1915

E. G. Sewell — 1915

“Let woman remain in the station in which the wisdom of God placed her. In that sphere she can be a wonderful blessing to the whole human race; out of it she may prove a great drawback.”

“None of God’s divine arrangements for the good of humanity can be changed without bringing evil instead of good to all connected with the change.”

— E. G. Sewell, “Questions About Billy Sunday and Woman Suffrage,” Gospel Advocate, April 15, 1915

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J. C. McQuiddy — 1920

“It is not simply the privilege of casting the vote that woman is seeking, but she is seeking equal political rights.”

McQuiddy understood suffrage as part of a much larger change in the relationship between men and women. He argued that women entering political life and seeking equal political authority conflicted with male headship and with the responsibilities God had particularly entrusted to wives and mothers.

— J. C. McQuiddy, “Woman Suffrage,” Gospel Advocate, October 28, 1920

J. C. McQuiddy — 1920

“If women could vote and go no further, there might not be so much objection to it. … But it is not simply the privilege of casting the vote that woman is seeking, but she is seeking equal political rights. … When women enter politics and hold office, they necessarily become no longer fit for wives and mothers.”

McQuiddy believed the issue reached far beyond the ballot itself. He saw woman suffrage as part of a larger movement toward equal political authority and away from the distinct responsibilities God had given men and women.

“It is true that some women object to the teaching of the word of God and are ready to reject it because it does not conform to their ideas. They object to man’s dominion over woman, as recorded in 1 Tim. 2:11-16; but if husbands love their wives as Christ loved the church, which they are taught to do, there is no weight in this objection. … So long as women are kept in their proper sphere and so long as men do the work that God has ordained for them to do, we may expect the human race to grow purer and better and happier. How much better it is to follow the wisdom of God than to follow the wisdom of men!”

“The Bible is very much in the way of woman-suffrage leaders. In order to nullify the following scriptures and other similar passages, they repudiate the Bible.”

— J. C. McQuiddy, Gospel Advocate, 1920

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G. K. Chesterton — What’s Wrong with the World (1910)

“We knew quite well that nothing is necessary to the country except that the men should be men and the women women. We knew this; we thought the women knew it even more clearly; and we thought the women would say it.”

Chesterton argued that the suffragettes had accepted the very assumption women once resisted: that politics and public life were more important than the home and the distinctly feminine sphere. To him, this was not the liberation of women but a surrender of womanhood to a masculine standard.

— G. K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World, 1910

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Fannie Hurst

“But, in the face of all these warnings and commands of our loving Heavenly Father, that same crafty serpent has stolen into our nearest approach to Eden, the home, and is destroying the sacredness of the hearthstone and rendering happy homes fewer and fewer by telling woman that she is persecuted and downtrodden because she is not permitted to have equal rights with man ….”

“[I]nstead of resisting the devil and forcing him to flee from her, she has stopped to listen to his arguments and is being deceived, and, just as she did on that unhappy day just prior to her expulsion from Eden, she is using her influence over man, and again he is blindly yielding, and has already made woman suffrage a law, even though it is directly opposed to God’s law.”

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H. Leo Boles — 1928

“Should Christian women vote under any circumstances? … No. Christian women have their greatest power and influence in the God-ordained sphere for Christian women; and this is not in politics.”

— H. Leo Boles, Ph.D., President of Lipscomb College, “Query Department,” Gospel Advocate, August 16, 1928

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A Final Word

Sisters, women’s suffrage is not merely a question about something that happened more than a hundred years ago. It matters because the ideas behind it are still with us. We are still being told that freedom means independence from God-given authority, that equality means men and women must have the same roles, and that the distinctions God created are somehow unfair or oppressive. Those ideas have shaped our homes, our churches, and our society for generations.

We cannot undo the past, but we can refuse to continue its rebellion. We can repent where we have accepted the world’s thinking, honor the order God has established, encourage men to lead faithfully, teach our daughters to value marriage, motherhood, homemaking, submission, and femininity, and teach our sons to provide, protect, lead, and bear responsibility. Older women can once again teach younger women what God has commanded us to teach them.

I do not know what our nation will look like in another generation, but I do know that obedience to God is never wasted. Our responsibility is not to make biblical womanhood popular or to win every argument. It is to believe God, obey His Word, and faithfully pass His truth to those who come after us.

“And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind…”
— Romans 12:2

Whatever the world calls progress, sisters, God’s order is still good. His Word is still true. And faithfulness to Him is still the only safe path.

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Soli Deo Gloria!