Document 11.8 Congregational Pastoral Letter, 1837

Document 11.8

Congregational Pastoral Letter, 1837

White women’s increased involvement in abolitionism generated considerable controversy. In August 1837 Congregational Church leaders circulated a letter to ministers throughout New England. They were outraged by Angelina and Sarah Grimké’s lecturing on antislavery to mixed-sex audiences and condemned both them and women’s public activism generally.

We invite your attention to the dangers which at present seem to threaten the female character with wide-spread and permanent injury. The appropriate duties and influence of woman are clearly stated in the New Testament. Those duties and that influence are unobtrusive and private, but the source of mighty power. When the mild, dependent, softening influence of woman upon the sternness of man’s opinions is fully exercised, society feels the effects of it in a thousand ways. The power of woman is in her dependence, flowing from the consciousness of that weakness which God has given her for her protection. . . . There are social influences which females use in promoting piety and the great objects of Christian benevolence which we cannot too highly commend. We appreciate the unostentatious prayers and efforts of woman in advancing the cause of religion at home and abroad; in Sabbath-schools; . . . and in all such associated effort as becomes the modesty of her sex. . . .

But when she assumes the place and tone of man as a public reformer, our care and protection of her seem unnecessary; . . . and her character becomes unnatural. If the vine, whose strength and beauty is to lean upon the trellis-work and half conceal its clusters, thinks to assume the independence and the overshadowing nature of the elm, it will not only cease to bear fruit, but fall in shame and dishonor into the dust. We cannot, therefore, but regret the mistaken conduct of those who encourage females to bear an obtrusive and ostentatious part in measures of reform, and countenance any of that sex who so far forget themselves as to incinerate in the character of public lecturers and teachers. . . . We especially deplore the intimate acquaintance and promiscuous conversation of females with regard to things “which ought not to be named”; by which that modesty and delicacy . . . which constitutes the true influence of woman in society, is consumed, and the way opened . . . for degeneracy and ruin.

Source: “Pastoral Letter of the General Association of Massachusetts to the Congregational Churches under Their Care,” Liberator, August 11, 1837.