Essay On The Anti-Slavery Convention Of American Women

In 1837, a coalition of women who had created local, female abolitionist societies came together in New York, forming the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women. It was the first national political women’s meeting in American history. Both black and white women met and began to break the taboo of speaking in public and petitioning in the political arena. Calling their work “the cause of God,” this courageous band of 180 women saw themselves on a mission to unite Heaven and Earth, in the form of a society that would live the democratic and religious ideals it espoused.
The response to the meeting was outrage. At the next convention, a mob of 10,000 surrounded the building throwing stones at it, and eventually lighting it on fire. The demoralizing reaction seemed only to galvanize these pioneers.
With deepened resolve, the women continued to meet. In 1848, five religious women, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, a Quaker Minister, would meet in Seneca Falls, New York for their infamous tea party during which they would plot a revolution.
These women were both revolutionaries and visionaries who had their eyes on a truth that transcended man-made religious or governmental law.
In the twentieth century, however, feminism
While I understand that organized religions have often been fierce opponents to women’s social and political equality, I consider it a great loss to separate the women’s movement from faith entirely. As Helen LaKelly Hunt, Ph.D, author of Faith and Feminism: A Holy Alliance writes, “the crimes of any religious institution do not negate the value of universal love and the religious ideals at its core. Sadly, human institutions will always be flawed reflections of the values they hope to embody.” Hunt goes on to explain that women’s groups – and I would add, most political organizations and movements – fall short of their stated values and ideals, as