Mrs. Stanton's Bible

Book excerpt: Mrs. Stanton's Bible traces the impact of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's religious dissent on the suffrage movement at the turn of the century. Stanton is best remembered for organizing the Seneca Falls convention at which she first called for women's right to vote. Yet she spent the last two decades of her life working for another cause: women's liberation from religious oppression. In 1895, she collaboratively authored the Woman's Bible and found herself arguing not only against male clergy members but also against devout female suffragists. Kathi Kern demonstrates that the Woman's Bible played a fundamental role in the new conservatism of the women's movement because it sparked Stanton's censure and the elimination of her fellow radicals from the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Book jacket.