In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

15 speechatthe hartford bible Convention: “trample the bible, the church, andthe priests” June 4, 1853 Hartford, Connecticut The Hartford Convention was part of a history dating back to the 1820s of debates on the Bible between the Infidels and the Bibles as the defenders of divine authorship were called. Freethinkers organized the Hartford Bible Convention as a forum for a whole range of reformers, such as William Lloyd Garrison of the abolitionist movement and Ernestine L. Rose representing women’s rights, to address the question: Was the Bible an inspiration of God? Joseph Barker from England, a former Methodist minister turned freethinker, chaired the convention, which ran from June 1–5, 1853. The convention grew rowdy as theology students from nearby Trinity College repeatedly disrupted Infidel speeches with catcalls and hisses, and finally by turning off the lights. Garrison’s presence at this Convention is noteworthy, as he did not often attend freethinker gatherings, and the antislavery movement was deeply influenced by Christian religious thought. Many radical abolitionists, especially Garrisonian abolitionists, were deeply disillusioned with the failure of the churches to speak out against slavery, the central moral issue of the time. This disappointment fed the “come-outer” movement that called upon abolitionists to come out of the churches until the clergy remedied their failure to condemn slavery fully and forthrightly as inconsistent with Christianity. Rose’s first speech at the convention, delivered the evening of June 4 was frequently interrupted by noisy responses, both positive and negative. At the conclusion of the speech, Rose asserted that the Bible, like all religious texts, exists to subjugate women, and exhorted the women present: “[D]o you wish to be free? Then you must trample the Bible, the church, and the priests under your feet.” Coming from a woman, this declaration immediately created an uproar. One might even question whether Rose intended to end on such an incendiary note, or had to cut her speech short because of the response. In her second address to the convention, the following day, she began by recapping some of what she had said in her first speech, mentioning that it might not have been heard “owing to the confusion last evening.” Her exhortation was also extensively reported in the press. The notoriety it created followed Rose onto many other platforms, where she was attacked as an atheist and sometimes refused the use of meeting halls to lecture on women’s rights and abolition. In fact, Rose’s words simply express—albeit in vividly dramatic language—the belief of radical freethought that religion indoctrinated its followers to distrust their own rational understanding of the world and led them to submit to the domination of both religious and secular leaders. Since Rose believed that all human progress 16 ernestIne l.rose depended upon rational understanding and rational choices, it followed naturally that the Bible, which represented a nonrational authority, therefore needed to be cast aside in order for freedom and liberation to occur. Words in parentheses and brackets come directly from the Proceedings. Shortly after the convention, on June 14, 1853, Rose wrote a letter to the Boston Investigator, offering her own account as a participant-observer at the convention. It was published in the paper’s edition of June 29, 1953. n My friends,—I rise under peculiar disadvantages: one is, that it is so late, and another that the ground has been most ably, eloquently, and masterly occupied by the various speakers who preceded me. Under these circumstances I would prefer not to speak at all, were it not for the fact that this movement seems to be one of the highest and greatest importance that has taken place in our age—(Applause)—of more importance even than the one that has so long lain at my heart, the rights of woman—(Applause)— for it is closely connected with it; and as woman has not been represented here, I feel it my duty to raise my voice and protest against the Bible, or, as it is called, the Word of God; for if a line of demarcation could be drawn of the injurious effects produced by the errors of that book on man or woman, I would say most emphatically, that on account of the inferior education and experience of woman, the errors of the Bible which have been palmed off upon society as emanations from some superior wisdom and power, have had a far more pernicious effect on the mind of woman...

Share