ereas, These dogmas are an insidious poison, sapping the
vitality of our civilization, blighting woman, and, through her,
paralyzing humanity; therefore be it

"_Resolved_, That we call on the Christian ministry, as leaders of
thought, to teach and enforce the fundamental idea of creation,
that man was made in the image of God, male and female, and given
equal rights over the earth, but none over each other. And,
furthermore, we ask their recognition of the scriptural declaration
that, in the Christian religion, there is neither male nor female,
bond nor free, but all are one in Christ Jesus."

As chairman of the committee I presented a series of resolutions,
impeaching the Christian theology--as well as all other forms of
religion, for their degrading teachings in regard to woman--which the
majority of the committee thought too strong and pointed, and, after
much deliberation, they substituted the above, handing over to the Jews
what I had laid at the door of the Christians. They thought they had so
sugar-coated my ideas that the resolutions would pass without
discussion. But some Jews in the convention promptly repudiated this
impression of their faith and precipitated the very discussion I
desired, but which our more politic friends would fain have avoided.

From the time of the decade meeting in Rochester, in 1878, Matilda
Joslyn Gage, Edward M. Davis, and I had sedulously labored to rouse
women to a realization of their degraded position in the Church, and
presented resolutions at every annual convention for that purpose. But
they were either suppressed or so amended as to be meaningless. The
resolutions of the annual convention of 1885, tame as they are, got into
print and roused the ire of the clergy, and upon the following Sunday,
Dr. Patton of Howard University preached a sermon on "Woman and
Skepticism," in which he unequivocally took the ground that freedom for
woman led to skepticism and immorality. He illustrated his position by
pointing to Hypatia, Mary Wollstonecraft, Frances Wright, George Eliot,
Harriet Martineau, Mme. Roland, Frances Power Cobbe, and Victoria
Woodhull. He made a grave mistake in the last names mentioned, as Mrs.
Woodhull was a devout believer in the Christian religion, and surely
anyone conversant with Miss Cobbe's writings would never accuse her of
skepticism. His sermon was received with intense indignation, even by
the women of his own