Prove All Things:
A Response to Women In Ministry

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Chapter 15, part 2

Spiritualism and Women: Then and Now

Laurel Damsteegt

Spiritualism Has No Use for Christianity and the Scriptures

In the 19th century, a higher-critical method of interpreting Scripture was making inroads into Christianity. Scholars interpreted the Bible in new and creative ways, and many "errors" were "discovered." Many matters long accepted as settled suddenly were unsettled.

Higher criticism maintains that one cannot read Scripture and believe that God gave it as it reads. Rather, one must come to understand that the Bible was written by many authors who expressed the "myths" and situations of their own culture.

"Scholarship" breathed doubt into the Word. Skeptical scholars suggested that many of the stories were not really true, though their authors may have truly believed them. Creation, authorship, miracles, Bible stories, all came under attack. Historical-critical methodology was, and still is, fond of dwelling on the "errors" and "discrepancies" in Scripture. Instead of building faith, historical criticism places doubt, distrust and disillusionment in the hearts and minds of readers.

In short, higher critics viewed the Bible as a man-made book that recorded man's experience. All who believed that God Himself was the Author of infallible Scripture were derided as "fundamentalists."

Leaders of the women's rights movement found those criticisms very much to their liking. These leaders were soon in the forefront of the discussion of Scripture. Just as today there are moderates and radicals in attitudes and views towards Scripture, so also back then.

Moderate Feminism and Scripture. An example of moderate feminism was Miss Frances E. Willard, President of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. She had such a positive impact on the women's movement that she is remembered today by a statue in the Capitol Building of the United States.

Miss Willard and another woman were elected by local Methodist boards to serve as delegates to a Methodist General Conference. The church leaders refused to seat them. Willard became so angry that she wrote Woman in the Pulpit, a book promoting the ordination of women. But ordination of women was not achieved in her church in her day. (Most interestingly, a colleague, Mrs. S. M. I. Henry, a national evangelist of the W.C.T.U. and a close friend and fellow worker of Miss Frances Willard, disagreed with her on the ordination issue. Mrs. S. M. I. Henry later became a Seventh-day Adventist and was largely responsible for beginning a "Woman's Work" within the Adventist church. Mrs. Henry believed in the plain reading of the Scriptures. This is why she accepted the Sabbath and why she did not believe in the ordination of women, though she very strongly believed in women becoming involved in gospel work.)⁴⁴

Moderates such as Frances E. Willard, predecessors of today's "biblical feminists," maintained that tradition is built on man's Scriptural misinterpretation, that there is a better way of reading controverted passages. Literalism is the culprit, not the Bible itself.⁴⁵ Moderates would have you compare passages. They would sincerely uphold Scripture as the Word of God but point a finger at man, who has made it seem oppressive. Said Miss Willard:

"I think that men have read their own selfish theories into the Book, that theologians have not in the past sufficiently recognized the progressive quality of its revelation, nor adequately discriminated between its records as history and its principles of ethics of religion, nor have they until recently perceived that it is not in any sense a scientific treatise; but I believe that the Bible comes to us from God, and that it is a sufficient rule of faith and of practice. . . . To me the Bible is the dear and sacred home book which makes a hallowed motherhood possible because it raises woman up, and with her lifts toward heaven the world."⁴⁶

Miss Willard was a contemporary of Mrs. White and spoke strongly about ordaining women to the gospel ministry. Isn't it interesting that, in contrast to Frances Willard, who interpreted Scripture to mean it was necessary, Ellen White never once mentioned ordaining women to a pulpit ministry? Nor was Ellen G. White ever called Elder White or Pastor Ellen. She always called herself Sister White.

As a special messenger from the Lord, she gave plenty of messages advocating that women work for the Lord with all their hearts and souls. Indeed, the Bible and Mrs. White call for participation of women in the soul-winning ministry. And women who work in soul-winning lines are to be paid fairly; Mrs. White repeatedly calls for remuneration to wives of ministers who work alongside their husbands,⁴⁷ a fact which Adventists on both sides of the women's issue affirm.⁴⁸ But Mrs. White had no special vision or counsel showing women as pastors or having hands laid on them for that role, advocating women's ordination. She was not even ordained herself.⁴⁹

Radical Feminists and Scripture. Radicals of the 19th century, on the other hand, looked at the Bible itself as the problem. Donna Behnke, who discusses the issue of inspiration and early feminism in a Ph.D. dissertation, cites Elizabeth Cady Stanton's views on Scripture as an example of the higher-critical methodology being used in Stanton's day. "She not only used higher criticism and rejected biblical literalism, but also refused to believe the Bible itself was inspired. . . . No amount of rationalizing could erase the fact that the Bible taught principles adverse to women."⁵⁰

Mrs. Stanton edited The Woman's Bible that compiled all the passages of the Bible relative to women with essays authored by various individuals about each "problem text." "The first step in the elevation of women under all systems of religion is to convince them that the great Spirit of the Universe is in no way responsible for any of these absurdities. . . . The Woman's Bible comes to the ordinary reader like a real benediction. It tells her the good Lord did not write the Book; that the garden scene is a fable; that she is in no way responsible for the laws of the Universe."⁵¹

Stanton was radical and endured much opposition from churchmen and other more conservative feminists who believed that women were elevated by Scripture. But she was by no means alone in her fight. Another author maintained that "whatever progress woman has made in any department of effort, she has accomplished independently of, and in opposition to, the so-called inspired and infallible `Word of God,' and that this book has been of more injury to her than has any other which has ever been written in the history of the world."⁵²

In one especially heated women's rights convention, in Philadelphia in 1854, the role of revelation came to the fore. Many views were aired. One spokesman, a Rev. Grew, maintained that "unless women were prepared to discredit the entire Bible from beginning to end, . . . they would have to acquiesce and admit that it taught their subjection."⁵³

In the heated discussion William Lloyd Garrison, "author, anti-slavery speaker, and pioneer `liberator' who also became an ardent pioneer spiritualist,"⁵⁴ arose and bluntly stated the view of inspiration held by radical women's rights advocates as well as spiritualists:

"Why go to the Bible? What question was ever settled by the Bible? What question of theology or any other department? None that I ever heard of! With this same version of the Bible, and the same ability to read it, we find that it has filled all Christendom with theological confusion. All are Ishmaelites; each man's hand against his neighbor.

"The human mind is greater than any book, the mind sits in judgment on every book. If there be truth in the book, we take it; if error, we discard it. Why refer to the Bible? In this country, the Bible has been used to support slavery and capital punishment; while in the old countries, it has been quoted to sustain all manner of tyranny and persecution. All reforms are anti-Bible. We must look at all things rationally. We find women endowed with certain capacities, and it is of no importance if any book denies her such capacities."⁵⁵

The Woman's Bible sought to explain away the plain Word of God using myths and allegories and culture--higher-critical methodology. Ursula Bright boldly declared of the Bible:

"It is a grand volume, a masterpiece composed of clever, ingenious fables, containing great verities; but it reveals the latter only to those who, like the Initiates, have a key to its inner meaning; a tale sublime in its morality and didactics truly--still a tale and an allegory; a repertory of invented personages in its older Jewish portions, and of dark sayings and parables in its later additions, and thus quite misleading to any one ignorant of its esotericism. . . .

"Slowly we see a light breaking. When the dawn comes we shall have a revision of the Bible on very different lines from any yet attempted. In the meantime may we not ask, Is there any curse or crime which has not appealed to the Bible for support? Polygamy, capital punishment, slavery and war have all done so. Why not the subjection of women? Let us hold fast that which is good in the Bible and the rest will modify itself in the future, as it has done in the past, to the needs of humanity and the advance of knowledge."⁵⁶

In the nineteenth century, rationalism and the effects of the Enlightenment were prominent in intellectual circles. Josephine Henry explicitly revealed the end of the rational approach.

"The by-paths of ecclesiastical history are fetid with the records of crimes against women; and the `half has never been told.' And what of the history which Christianity is making today? . . . Answer, ye mental dwarfs and moral monstrosities, and tell what the Holy Bible has done for you. . . .

"When Reason reigns and Science lights the way, a countless host of women will move in majesty down the coming centuries. A voice will cry, `Who are these?' and the answer will ring out: `these are the mothers of the coming race, who have locked the door of the Temple of Faith and thrown the key away; "these are they which came out of great tribulation and washed their robes and made them white in the" fountain of knowledge.'"⁵⁷

Was this blatant, blasphemous hatred for inspiration as it reads just in the feminism of the past? Oh no! If anything, today's feminism has gone far beyond this and reinterpreted all of the Bible in various and radical ways.

Feminist Theology

Today's feminists go well beyond the view of earlier women's rights' views of biblical inspiration. In 1968, Mary Daly in The Church and the Second Sex argued that the Bible authors were merely men of their times who could never be "free of the prejudices of their epochs."⁵⁸ Therefore, women of the church have just as much right to direct current theology as Paul did in Scripture, to act as prophets, and to guide the church in a new direction.⁵⁹

As modern feminist theology has developed, the Bible is viewed not so much as a timeless Book that applies to all peoples in all times to shape all culture, but a Book to be picked apart and subjected to acceptance or rejection relative to their own culture or situation.⁶⁰

According to one published report, Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza argues that "feminists must employ a `hermeneutics of suspicion'--that is, they must systematically assume that the Bible's male authors and interpreters deliberately covered up the role of women in early Christianity. . . . The wider implication of the Schüssler Fiorenza work is that the biblical texts cannot be authoritative Scriptures for women until they are critically reinterpreted from women's experiences of oppression. And what is true for the Bible holds for every other dimension of the Christian religion."⁶¹

Through such methods the Bible is rewritten and Christianity redesigned to better fit women. Schüssler Fiorenza states, "Women today not only rewrite biblical stories about women, but also reformulate patriarchal prayers and create feminist rituals celebrating our ancestors. We rediscover in story and poetry, in drama and liturgy, in song and dance, our biblical foresisters' sufferings and victories. . . . In ever new images and symbols we seek to rename the God of the Bible and the significance of Jesus. . . . We not only spin tales about the voyages of Prisca, the missionary, or about Junia, the apostle, but also dance Sarah's circle and experience prophetic enthusiasm. We sing litanies of praise to our foresisters and pray laments of mourning for the lost stories of our foremothers."⁶²

Even biblical feminists (believers in both the Bible and feminism) like Hardesty and Scanzoni, who in the 1970s wrote A Biblical Approach to Women's Liberation, "altered traditional hermeneutics to present the thesis that equality between men and women was to be reflected by the obliteration of sex roles in Church and marriage . . . known as the egalitarian position. Egalitarians prided themselves in being both feminist and Biblical."⁶³

"Biblical feminists chose Galatians 3:28, `In Christ there is neither male nor female . . . ,' as the crux around which to interpret Scripture. Notwithstanding that the context of this verse dealt with who could become a Christian and on what basis--and not with male/female roles." This crux became the measuring stick by which all other Scripture was to be measured. "Biblical feminists decided that equality meant monolithic, undifferentiated role-interchangeability. Rather than gleaning their definition of equality from the Bible, Biblical feminists adopted the feminist definition of equality that was current in contemporary North American society. They chose `equality' as their crux interpretum and then demanded that all Biblical interpretation support their predetermined, feminist definition."⁶⁴

If some Scripture did not suit their fancy, they would label it "unauthentic or incorrect" or creatively seek for new meanings of Greek words like kephale (head)⁶⁵ and then argue that these new definitions altered the meaning of the text. "Finally, passages that could not be discounted in any of these ways were handled by labeling them `cultural' and hence inapplicable to the contemporary Church."⁶⁶

However, feminists have a way of "evolving." "Conservative Biblical feminism is no longer advanced by those who initiated it. Writers such as Scanzoni, Hardesty, and Mollenkott have left evangelicalism to join liberal religious feminism."⁶⁷ In order to embrace both the Bible and concerns of the women's movement they ended up compromising the Bible.

As Phyllis Trible, a very liberal feminist, once said, "A feminist who loves the Bible produces, in the thinking of many, an oxymoron. Perhaps clever as rhetoric, the description offers no possibility for existential integrity. After all, if no man can serve two masters, no woman can serve two authorities, a master called scripture and a mistress called feminism."⁶⁸

Our only hope is to seek a simple, childlike interpretation of Scripture. Carsten Johnsen once defined spiritualistic interpretation of Scripture as "an insisting egocentric desire to spiritualize away the tangible reality of God's living Word, ignore its simple message, distort and reject its plain command."⁶⁹ He showed how Kellogg's pantheism, which Ellen G. White rebuked, spiritualized away the plain, simple, real Word of God. This was called the alpha of apostasy. The omega, which is to be much worse, was still to come.

Potentially Ambiguous

The author of the chapter "Ellen White and Women's Rights" goes to some effort to define Ellen White's meaning of "rights," but soft-pedals the issue of the spiritualistic roots of the women's rights movement. According to her, the statement in the first volume of Testimonies for the Church, page 421, "one of the few on women's rights, is one of the most direct, yet it is potentially ambiguous and misunderstood."⁷⁰

Remember, this is the passage we began with: "Those who feel called out to join the movement in favor of women's rights . . . might as well sever all connection with the third angel's message. The spirit which attends the one cannot be in harmony with the other."

In order to come to a so-called "better" understanding of what this passage means, the author uses questions, projections, underlying issues, and an analysis of the principles to make an otherwise plain paragraph obscure, subtle and ambiguous. If one doesn't agree with the prophet, speculating about her grammar and context can muddy the water sufficiently to make room for softer interpretations.

In essence, here is the problem that the author raises with this powerful passage. The quotation came out of a testimony, first published in 1864, called "The Cause in the East." When it was republished in the first volume of the Testimonies, "slight editorial changes occurred--mostly in the 1880s--between Ellen White's statement in the original and that published in Testimonies to the Church, 1:421. White wrote, `the relations and rights of women and men,' while the editors corrected to `of men and women' [her italics] probably to conform to common usage. If Ellen White was intentionally referring to women first, why might she have wished to emphasize women's rights over men's? Perhaps she believed women's rights were more endangered. Support for this possibility is suggested by her writing far more about the need for women to protect their personal boundaries, to develop themselves, to be sensitive to their call to service, and to see their coequal roles in the home than about men's needs in these areas."⁷¹

Any time there are "editorial changes" one has to ask, Who made them and why? In the statement quoted above, the Women in Ministry author presupposes that the first edition of the testimony represented the real Ellen White; the second, that of the "editors."

Here a higher-critical methodology is subtly being used on Ellen White.⁷² Observe how much speculation has entered into this analysis. Note all the tentative, suggestive words: "probably," "if," "might have," "perhaps," "possibility," "suggested." The plain fact is that the paragraph was changed under Ellen White's supervision by her own editors, Marian Davis and Mary White, who edited everything she wrote during that period. The passage was not edited secretly or post-mortem.⁷³ Mrs. White had another thirty-five years to protest the changes if she didn't agree with them. Editors attempted to clarify, not change, any sense that was originally intended. In discussing the editorial changes, the preface to the volume noted:

"Some grammatical and rhetorical changes also have been made for the sake of strength and clearness. In making these changes great care has been taken to preserve every idea, and in no case have either words or sentences been omitted unless as above indicated, to avoid unnecessary repetition."⁷⁴

Sister White intended to speak about the rights and relations of women and men, or men and women; either way means the same thing, because she wasn't stressing the rights of one over the other but the relation between the two.

The Women in Ministry author continues with the chapter's analysis:

"Another change is perhaps more significant. The original wording was `Those who feel called out to join the Woman's Rights Movement,' but this was replaced with `Those who feel called out to join the movement in favor of woman's rights' [her italics]. The modification communicates a subtle but significant change in focus from the specific movement called the Woman's Rights Movement to the larger context of anyone favoring women's rights. Thus the specificity that may have been intended is removed in favor of a more general application."⁷⁵

Here the author implies that there was a motive behind the "editor's" change from the Woman's Right's Movement to "anyone favoring women's rights." She felt Ellen White was specifying only the Woman's Rights Movement and did not mean the broader issue of standing up for one's rights. By contrast, however, we have detailed how the Woman's Rights advocates were truly spiritualistic. We have also detailed how their daughters today carry on and have extended their notions and philosophies more extensively. Feminism has not left Spiritualism behind in deed (morality), philosophy (existentialism), theology (feminist theology), or mysticism (New Age and goddess rituals).

The next pages of the Women in Ministry chapter give an excellent study on "rights" in Ellen White's writings. Essentially, the author cites examples of Ellen White's views of such relationships as government and citizen, church leadership and member, parent and child, and husband and wife. In each scenario the author shows how those in authority have the responsibility of guarding the interests and individuality of those under them. She also tactfully shares how those abused "are to allow the denial of their rights in a spirit of humble submission." Those who are violated should patiently "bear the violation of their rights."⁷⁶ If defrauded, rather than take the grievance to the courts of justice one should rather "suffer loss and wrong."⁷⁷ She concludes that "Christians need not contend for their rights because `God will deal with the one who violates these rights. . . . An account is kept of all these matters, and for all the Lord declares that He will avenge.'"⁷⁸

As good as the analysis of Ellen White's use of rights is, one is left asking, "So, how does understanding rights in all these various situations change the plain meaning of our Testimonies passage?" Ellen White surely connected the women's rights movement or feminism to spiritualism. God never tells us to fight for our rights but to surrender, submit, be humble, be poor in spirit, show self-abnegation and self-denial. In a famous passage Mrs. White tells us that dissatisfaction with one's "sphere" was a cause of Eve's sin and compares Eve to women who are dissatisfied with their roles.

"Eve had been perfectly happy by her husband's side in her Eden home; but, like restless modern Eves, she was flattered with the hope of entering a higher sphere than that which God had assigned her. In attempting to rise above her original position, she fell far below it. A similar result will be reached by all who are unwilling to take up cheerfully their life duties in accordance with God's plan. In their efforts to reach positions for which He has not fitted them, many are leaving vacant the place where they might be a blessing. In their desire for a higher sphere, many have sacrificed true womanly dignity and nobility of character, and have left undone the very work that Heaven appointed them."⁷⁹

Some of the most important sentences of this Women in Ministry chapter do not have endnotes. This is especially true whenever the author discusses ordination. Suddenly the endnotes become very sparse. In an otherwise heavily-referenced article, one can't help but wish this next sentence had been supported by an endnote: "Because today's ordination issue is not associated with secular, political, religious, or social reform movements such as those in the nineteenth century, this principle does not relate as it did when Ellen White wrote."⁸⁰

Has the author read the current scene correctly? It seems to me that women's ordination is very much a cultural expectation and is very much urged by modern feminism. It is not disassociated from the religious and secular movements of our day. It is a part of their stream.

Here's another key sentence that I wish had been supported by evidence: "Because Ellen White makes it clear that women have a right to accept a call from God to ministry, and all persons should receive equal remuneration and recognition for equal work performed, it seems likely she would support women's ordination."⁸¹

Our Women in Ministry author has not made it clear that Ellen White says that God calls women to an ordained ministry. Perhaps the editor might have cross-referenced these positive assertions with other authors who did attempt to show this within the book.

Spiritualism Was Not Only "Back Then"

The Women in Ministry chapter we have been considering, "Ellen White and Women's Rights," seems to indicate that spiritualism waned. It says:

"Ellen White's wise advice to avoid any association with spiritualism was soon validated. After exerting significant force on religious thinking and various women's reform movements in the 1850s and early 1960s [sic], spiritualism fell into disrepute and scandal in the 1870s. Spiritualists continued to fight for the radical reforms of the 1850s even after many women's rights leaders distanced themselves from spiritualism because its ideas of `free love' were not helping the cause. Thereafter women's rights leaders more narrowly focused on suffrage, which was achieved by the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.⁸²

But was this the end of the alliance between spiritualism and feminism? No! I have already given some evidence. Here is more. Karen Linsey has written that spiritualism is even more involved than formerly.

"The Feminist spirituality movement began to emerge in the mid-1970s and has become one of the largest submovements within feminism. [It is] amorphous, blending radical feminism, pacifism, witchcraft, Eastern mysticism, goddess worship, animism, psychic healing and a variety of practices normally associated with the occult."⁸³

Within feminism today there is a whole neo-pagan revival which harks back to the goddesses of Greece and Rome, a renewal of interest in the Craft (witchcraft), and the New Age revival of ritual and its blending of the earth and environment with religion. Margot Adler writes,

"I have begun to see a resurgence of women returning to the Goddess, seeing themselves as Her daughters, finding Pagan-equality, self-identification, and individual strength for women. Paganism has been for all practical purposes, anti-establishment spirituality. Feminists and Pagans are both coming from the same source without realizing it, and heading toward the same goal without realizing it, and the two are now beginning to interlace."⁸⁴

Note the spiritualistic doctrine embedded in the following quotation from the program notes of the feminist 1998 Re-Imagining Revival, a convention attended by 900 feminists from major Protestant denominations. "I found God in myself and I loved her, I loved her fiercely." Another, attributed to the late liberal Paul Tillich, has echoes of Victoria C. Woodhull: "No sexuality is unclean in the context of the sacred. In the heart and soul of the deities, we are all loved, and it doesn't matter who (you) are sleeping with."⁸⁵

Compare these statements with the following passages from The Great Controversy: "Spiritualism teaches `that man is the creature of progression; that it is his destiny from his birth to progress, even to eternity, toward the God-head.' And again: `Each mind will judge itself and not another.' `The judgment will be right, because it is the judgment of self. . . . The throne is within you.' Said a spiritualistic teacher, as the `spiritual consciousness' awoke within him: `My fellow-men, all were unfallen demigods.' And another declares, `Any just and perfect being is Christ.'"⁸⁶ And another: "And to complete his work, he declares, through the spirits that `true knowledge places man above all law;' that `whatever is, is right;' that `God doth not condemn;' and that `all sins which are committed are innocent.'"⁸⁷

Seventh-day Adventists must wake up and become sensitive to the inroads of spiritualism at the end of time. True, spiritualism does not always assume its medium-spirit-rapping guise, so some may think it has diminished. Once again we can thank Mrs. White for warning us about this change.

"It is true that spiritualism is now changing its form and, veiling some of its more objectionable features, is assuming a Christian guise. But its utterances from the platform and the press have been before the public for many years, and in these its real character stands revealed. These teachings cannot be denied or hidden. . . . While it formerly denounced Christ and the Bible, it now professes to accept both. But the Bible is interpreted in a manner that is pleasing to the unrenewed heart, while its solemn and vital truths are made of no effect."⁸⁸

Spiritualism has broken out of its denominational castings to be absorbed by psychology, philosophy, and Eastern religions that have spawned the popular New Age Movement. It is preached from every theater and TV in the world because it has become our culture.⁸⁹

Mrs. White had an important vision about the destiny of spiritualism.

"I saw the rapidity with which this delusion was spreading. A train of cars was shown me, going with the speed of lightning. The angel bade me look carefully. I fixed my eyes upon the train. It seemed that the whole world was on board. Then he showed me the conductor, a fair, stately person, whom all the passengers looked up to and reverenced. I was perplexed and asked my attending angel who it was. He said, `It is Satan. He is the conductor, in the form of an angel of light. He has taken the world captive. They are given over to strong delusions, to believe a lie that they may be damned. . . .'

"He who is the father of lies, blinds and deceives the world by sending forth his angels to speak for the apostles, and to make it appear that they contradict what they wrote by the dictation of the Holy Ghost when on earth. These lying angels make the apostles to corrupt their own teachings and to declare them to be adulterated. By so doing, Satan delights to throw professed Christians and all the world into uncertainty about the Word of God. That holy Book cuts directly across his track and thwarts his plans; therefore he leads men to doubt the divine origin of the Bible."⁹⁰

Conclusion

I was interested to note that some parts of chapter 17 in Women in Ministry concurred with my earlier estimates of spiritualism in the women's rights movement.⁹¹ However, the rest of the chapter tries to prove that the women's rights movement of the 19th century has nothing to do with the present thrust to ordain women to the gospel ministry. Here we differ.

As I mentioned earlier, in 1975 I wrote a research paper entitled, "Attending Spirits," showing how the women's rights movement of the 1900s was directly linked to spiritualism. I would like to conclude my present response to chapter 17 of Women in Ministry with the same conclusion I made in 1975: "that the radical feminists were far beyond their time; modern Liberation [feminism] has encompassed most of their thought and has moved on. Further study in basic tenets of current Women's Liberation and a comparative study to the [Women's] Rights of the 1860's and '70s which was considered to be spiritualism, might prove that the undercurrents of these Movements are analogous, so that the principle of 1T 421 is still most valid."⁹²

"Those who feel called out to join the movement in favor of woman's rights and the so-called dress reform, might as well sever all connection with the third angel's message."

I wouldn't dare to be so blunt. Ellen White said it.