Contra CBMW: The Secular and the Sacred

The Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood has embarked on a crusade and its purpose is to eradicate everything secular from the church. The problem is that CBMW seems unable to see the difference between the secular and the sacred when it appears outside the church.

"Prior to conversion I was the stereotypical Generation Y feminist—anti-marriage, anti-child rearing, and corporate ladder hopeful" (http://cbmw.org/women/womanhood/confessions-of-a-recovering-feminist-3/).

This describes one kind of feminism, the kind that imitates what men were always allowed and encouraged to be. This was the kind that was born in the 1970-80s.

But there is also another kind of feminism; the original kind from the 19th century. These women saw the many social ills that plagued their time, and wanted to do something about them.

The turning point came in the late 1880s and early 1890s, when the nation experienced a surge of volunteerism among middle-class women—activists in progressive causes, members of women’s clubs and professional societies, temperance advocates, and participants in local civic and charity organizations. The determination of these women to expand their sphere of activities further outside the home helped legitimate the suffrage movement and provided new momentum for the NWSA and the AWSA. By 1890, seeking to capitalize on their newfound “constituency,” the two groups united to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Led initially by Stanton and then by Anthony, the NAWSA began to draw on the support of women activists in organizations as diverse as the Women’s Trade Union League, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), and the National Consumer’s League (http://history.house.gov/Exhibitions-and-Publications/WIC/Historical-Essays/No-Lady/Womens-Rights/).

Christian women were right there in the forefront. They didn't advocate anti-marriage, anti-child rearing, corporate ladder hopefulness, for most of them were married with children, and the corporate ladder was non-existent. Instead, they focused on issues such as protections for women and children from abuse, and to accomplish it, they knew they needed the vote.

Most nineteenth-century feminists were intensely pro-motherhood and used the importance of good mothering as a prime reason that women needed civil and political rights (http://seattleuniversitylawreview.com/e-supp/2013/nineteenth-century-womens-rights-advocates-on-abortion/).

Only by being able to have a say on the laws that governed them, would they be able to protect themselves and their children. Alice Stone Blackwell from the National American Woman Suffrage Association wrote:
 

 Because laws unjust to women would be amended more quickly. It cost Massachusetts women 55 years of effort to secure the law making mothers equal guardians of their children with the fathers. In Colorado, after women were enfranchised, the very next Legislature granted it. After more than half a century of agitation by women for this reform only 13 out of 46 States now give equal guardianship to mothers.(http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/timeline/progress/suffrage/whyvote.html)

CBMW portrays men as generally benign towards women and children, or at least, it is their goal. But in reality, men aren't always benign; they can be harsh, cruel, and indifferent, as seen in the general treatment of slaves in every era. Significantly, the first women's rights advocates were all abolitionists before they took on the fight for women's rights, wherefore their ideas of what constitutes women's rights was equal to human rights. This is the difference between the secular and the sacred CBMW does not recognize: the secular seeks power and pleasure; the sacred seeks to secure human rights for all humans.

In a perfect world, men would always love and cherish women. But it is not the case in the imperfect world we live in. By demonizing those who fight for women's rights, CBMW also fights against the rights of all those who are exploited, for you cannot deny human rights from one group without denying them from all who find themselves in the same situation. It is not an accident that 37 million slaves exist in a world that believes slavery was abolished a long time ago, for when Christian women, who 150 years ago were in the forefront of the abolitionist movement, are taught to hide behind locked doors, who is going to fight for their freedom?