Bible -- Commentaries; Bible -- Feminist criticism; Women in the Bible
We claim that woman's advancement is due to civilization, and that the
Bible has been a bar to her progress. It is true that "woman receives
most consideration in Christian nations;" but this is due to the mental
evolution of humanity, stimulated by climate and by soil, and the
intercommunication of ideas through modern invention. All the Christian
nations are in the north temperate zone, whose climate, and soil are
better adapted to the development of the race than any other portions
of the earth. Christianity took its rise in thirty degrees north
latitude. Mohammedanism took its rise in the torrid zone; and as
it made its way north it advanced in education, in art, in science, and
in invention, until the civilization of Moslem Spain far surpassed that
of Christian Europe, and as it retreated before the Christian sword
from the fertile valleys of Spain into the and plains of Arabia it
retrograded, after giving to the world some of the greatest scientific
truths and inventions.
The women of the United States receive "more consideration" and are
being emancipated more rapidly than are the women of Europe; yet, in
Europe, Christianity holds iron sway, while in America the people are
free to accept or to reject its teachings; and in the United States,
out of a population of seventy millions, but twenty-two millions have
accepted it; and a large percentage of these are children, who have not
arrived at the years of discretion, and foreigners from Christian
Europe. The consideration extended to woman does not depend upon the
teachings of the Bible, but upon the mental and material advancement of
the men of a nation. Now if it can be proven that Bible teaching has
inspired men to explore and to subdue new lands, to give to the world
inventions, to build ships, railroads and telegraphs, to open mines, to
construct foundries and factories, and to amass knowledge and wealth,
then the Bible has been woman's best friend; for she receives most
consideration where men have liberty of thought and of action, have
prospered materially, builded homes, and have bank accounts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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