Dancing through the Doctrine: Observations on Religion and Feminism

by Cecilia Konchar Farr
Originally published Fall 1995 (28:03)
LUCRETIA MOTT, A NINETEENTH-CENTURY QUAKER minister and suffragist, delivered a speech at a Philadelphia women’s rights convention in 1854 in which she discussed the day of Pentecost. She said:

Then Peter stood forth—some one has said that Peter made a great mistake in quoting the prophet Joel—but he stated that “the time is come, this day is fulfilled the prophecy when it is said, I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,” etc.—the language of the Bible is beautiful in its repetition—”upon my servants and my handmaidens I will pour out my spirit and they shall prophesy.” Now can anything be clearer than that? [Emphasis mine.]

Sarah Kimball, a nineteenth-century LDS Relief Society leader and suffragist, held similar beliefs about the relationship between religion and women’s suffrage, about the evidence of God’s hand in the expansion of women’s rights. She wrote that “the sure foundations of the suffrage cause were deeply and permanently laid on the 17th of March, 1842…”
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