0.4 1.1 introduction to "hidden work: baptist women in texas 1880  (Page 2/10)

Despite this lack of serious attention by intellectuals through most of the twentieth century, the popular American mind continued to hold to the symbols and tenets of a literal biblical faith with tenacity and to argue some issues on its terms. Women's rights are a prominent example. The same reasoning used in the nineteenth century to detract from the expansion of the female role was used to resist ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s and early 1980s. The creation order of man before woman, particularly in the family, and the inherent weakness of the second sex are ideas founded in the biblical myth and so deeply rooted in our cultural subconscious that, until the late twentieth century, only radical feminists resisted them. Despite the weight this view of woman has borne in supporting disparity of domestic arrangements (and, therefore, of society), no tough, well-reasoned thought was developed to counter it before the 1970s. William L. O'Neill, Everyone Was Brave (New York: Quadrangle/ The New York Times Book Co., 1969), p. 358. Instead, a self-denying, supporting model of womanhood was incorporated into the feminist movement early in the 1900s; and while it provided a comforting rationale for woman's political and economic liberation and helped secure certain advances, including the right to vote, it also limited the scope and degree of real change.

Paradoxically, bibliolatry, as practiced in America, has not been uniform and simplistic in its advocacy of a traditional hierarchy of sexes. Opposing these conservative forces has been an emphasis on scriptural sources that promoted the supremacy of the individual. Central to Reformation theology was a diminution of the efficacy of an institution or its functionaries to mediate between a believer and the deity. Ultimately, that individualistic notion, formulated as the "priesthood of all believers," was a key concept in the cultural revolution that has transformed the western world since Martin Luther's time. The theme was an important one in the centuries of settlement and formation of government in America, and the democratic system that resulted was in many ways a secular manifestation and amplification of its individualistic thrust.

Despite efforts by some colonists to impose communal order and discipline, the abundance of land and lack of tradition in the New World quickly weakened the organicism and hierarchy of the Old. With unprecedented opportunity, individuals stood alone—not just before God, but before an open continent, as well. Those who attempted to maintain a balanced stance toward both the Word and the West found biblical teaching to support their position. The concept of freedom before God was extended to freedom from all institutional restraints and to the withdrawal of the government from exercising any control over religion.

Churches themselves tended to develop into democratic institutions, emphasizing the ultimate power and freedom of the individual members. By the nineteenth century, the pattern of free churches transmitted from Europe to New England reached independent extremes in the proliferation of evangelical sects on the American frontier. Charismatic evangelists vied with one another for the conversion of sinners in a competitive religious scene that had no parallel in the European manifestation of the Free Church tradition. In isolated congregations, lay members decided everything from the call of a minister to the acceptance of newcomers by majority vote, including women among the voters long before they were franchised by the state.