rs, as
I am writing, how the clergy of Germany are thundering against
President Wilson's declaration that that country must become
democratic. Here is a manifesto of the German Evangelical League, made
public on the four hundredth anniversary of the Reformation:

We especially warn against the heresy, promulgated from
America, that Christianity enjoins democratic institutions,
and that they are an essential condition of the kingdom of
God on earth.

In exactly the same way the religious bodies of the entire South
united in an address to Christians throughout the world, early in the
year 1863:

The recent proclamation of the President of the United
States, seeking the emancipation of the slaves of the South,
is in our judgment occasion of solemn protest on the part of
the people of God.

#Witches and Women#

To whatever part of the world you travel, to whatever page of history
you turn, you find the endowed and established clergy using the word
of God in defense of whatever form of slave-driving may then be
popular and profitable. Two or three hundred years ago it was the
custom of Protestant divines in England and America to hang poor old
women as witches; only a hundred and fifty years ago we find John
Wesley, founder of Methodism, declaring that "the giving up of
witchcraft is in effect the giving up of the Bible." And if you
investigate this witch-burning, you will find that it is only one
aspect of a blot upon civilization, the Christian Mysogyny. You see,
there were two Hebrew legends--one that woman was made out of a man's
rib, and the other that she ate an apple; therefore in modern England
a wife must be content with a legal status lower than a domestic
servant.

Perhaps the most comical of the clerical claims is this--that
Christianity has promoted chivalry and respect for womanhood. In
ancient Greece and Rome the woman was the equal and helpmate of man;
we read in Tacitus about the splendid women of the Germans, who took
part in public councils, and even fought in battles. Two thousand
years before the Christian era we are told by Maspero that the
Egyptian woman was the mistress of her house; she could inherit
equally with her brothers, and had full control of her property. We
are told by Paturet that she was "juridically the equal of man, having
the same rights and being treated in the same fashion." But in
present-day England, under the common law, woman can