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Author Topic: Women Voting in Church Affairs  (Read 7198 times)

jjeanniton

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Re: Women Voting in Church Affairs
« Reply #30 on: June 30, 2015, 08:50:12 AM »
Why Congregational Voting is NOT an Exercise of Ecclesiastical Authority – Session 14.

Here is what a certain Antiburgher Presbyterian, named James Watt, stated in 1794 about female suffrage:

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As to the Settlement of Vacant Congregations among us: They have the important privilege of choosing their own ministers, and are uncontrouled in the exercise of this right. This right is of the utmost importance; but, that the benefit may be enjoyed, it seems necessary, that those concerned should be fully apprised, where it resides, and how it is to be applied. If this is not the case, the good may not be obtained; and while the means of preserved, the end may be lost.

Four things seem necessary to the attainment of the full benefit of this right. The congregation ought to be fully apprised, 1. What description of persons have a right to vote …

As to the First, we are not sufficiently agreed, and our practice is not uniform. It is generally required that the voters be Seceders; but I am not certain whether a person, whole under scandal, is or ought to be, in all cases excluded. I believe this is not settled. In some places, females are excluded, in others they may be electors. That they should be in any case excluded, merely on account of sex, is not enjoined in Scripture, and seems contrary to Reason. Women are, indeed prohibited from public teaching; but we do not, on that account, prohibit them from sitting down at the Lord’s Table, and there making a public profession. They are admitted to present their children for baptism, and to join in public covenanting. In each of these, they must be as chargeable with speaking in the church, as they can be in using their right of suffrage in the choice of a teacher. In a religious view, they are equally interested as the other sex; and they are often of equal discernment. To exclude a mother in widowhood, is to exclude one of the most interested; to exclude a wife, because a wife, from an independent suffrage, is to erect a patron in every family, and make the husband, in this instance, lord over the conscience: besides it gives to a single man, perhaps of precarious residence, an equal quantity of influence, as to him who is a resident householder, and represents a numerous family. And why a female, merely for want of a family connection, should be excluded from the exercise of her right, seems scarcely evident. In some cases, the right is confined to heads of families. This is liable to equal objections as those above stated, but in a more extensive degree.


Yes, these are rational reasons why Mr. Watt seemed to FAVOR the right of women to congregationally vote.
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newbie

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Re: Women Voting in Church Affairs
« Reply #31 on: June 30, 2015, 03:23:30 PM »
where are you going with this JJ?
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jjeanniton

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Re: Women Voting in Church Affairs
« Reply #32 on: July 16, 2015, 07:34:17 AM »
My original intent was to vindicate the SDA practice of allowing women to vote in congregational church affairs, and to show that the Spiritualists at the Seneca Woman's Rights Convention in 1848 only revived the foundational principles of woman-suffrage ideology that had already been planted in a seed form and had been hiding in many Baptist churches, and even some Presbyterian churches since the early 18th Century.
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newbie

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Re: Women Voting in Church Affairs
« Reply #33 on: July 18, 2015, 06:35:18 AM »
Quote from: jjeanniton on July 16, 2015, 07:34:17 AM
My original intent was to vindicate the SDA practice of allowing women to vote in congregational church affairs, and to show that the Spiritualists at the Seneca Woman's Rights Convention in 1848 only revived the foundational principles of woman-suffrage ideology that had already been planted in a seed form and had been hiding in many Baptist churches, and even some Presbyterian churches since the early 18th Century.
okay thanks
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jjeanniton

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Re: Women Voting in Church Affairs
« Reply #34 on: December 18, 2015, 10:05:54 AM »
It has been a while since I have posted anything. I wonder, by now, has any of you considered these points I made about why congregational voting is not a share in the government of the Church? An EXCELLENT idea has just entered my mind! In my next session, I shall prove that at least ONE staunch Presbyterian, the Rev. Samuel Rutherford, in 1644, actually PROVED that the New Law found in the New Testament of the Bible DOES give women the right to vote in congregational affairs!

Therefore let not these ultraconservative reactionary neo-confederate ultrapatriarchalist sects of the Protestant (nor of the Papist) persuasions put the blame on the French-Revolution Spiritualist Free-Love Abe-LINCOLN-abolitionazi yankee carpetbagger radical red Republican innovators of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, for the idea of women voting and holding public office anywhere in the Church or the State: for the virus of woman-suffrage (in congregational affairs) was ALREADY harboured and nourished by Rev. Samuel Rutherford, in 1644, on Presbyterian principles!! And this is the man that the ultrafundamentalist branches of the Presbyterian denomination LOVE with the love of complacency and show no remorse! Instead of glorying in him, they ought to be ashamed if they are so opposed to woman suffrage!

"Thou also, which hast judged thy sisters, bear thine own shame for thy sins that thou hast committed more abominable than they: they are more righteous than thou: yea, be thou confounded also, and bear thy shame, in that thou hast justified thy sisters." - Ezekiel 16:52 KJV

"Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye." - Matthew 7:1-5 KJV
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jjeanniton

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Re: Women Voting in Church Affairs
« Reply #35 on: December 18, 2015, 12:59:35 PM »
Why Congregational Voting is NOT an Exercise of Ecclesiastical Authority – Session 15.

In 1644, Samuel Rutherford, a Presbyterian theologian, in his book, Due Right of Presbyteries, on pages 476, 477, wrote the following:

https://reformedtheologybooks.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/fentiman-travis-an-analysis-of-rutherford-and-mcire-on-whether-ladies-have-the-right-to-vote-for-church-officers.pdf, https://reformedtheologybooks.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/rutherford-samuel-ladies-have-the-right-to-vote-in-ecclesiastical-elections.pdf:

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Mr. Mather and Mr. Thompson [assert]:
“Governing power is only in the elders, 1 Cor. 12:28; Rom. 12:8; Heb. 13:17. The people have no power, but rather a liberty or privilege, which, when it is exercised about ordination, deposition or excommunication, it is of the whole community (or, in general), but not of all and every member in particular. Women for their
sex, children for lack of discretion, are debarred.”[10]

1. If there be no governing power in women, nor any act at all in excommunication, you lose many arguments that you bring [from] 1 Cor. 5 [11] to prove that all had a hand in excommunication, because:

1. Paul writes to all; 2. all were to mourn[12]; 3. all were to forbear the company of the excommunicated men.[13]

[If your thesis be true] Then Paul writes not to all saints at Corinth: not to women. And [consequently] women were not to mourn for the scandal, nor to forbear his company.

2. This privilege, being a part of the liberty purchased by Christ [for his] Body, it must be due to women. For the liberty, wherewith Christ has made women free, cannot be taken away by any law of God from their sex, except in Christ Jesus there be difference between Jew and Gentile, male and female [Gal. 3:28]. Nor is it removed because it is a power or authority, for the authors say it is ‘no power, but a privilege.’

3. What privilege the people have in [the] ordination [of officers], to confer a ministry which they have neither formally nor virtually, I know not.



In the footnotes:

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[10]: Richard Mather and William Thompson, A Modest and Brotherly Answer to Mr. Charles Herle’s
Book Against the Independency of Churches
(London, 1644), ch. 1, pp. 8-9 [Thomas Herle (1598-
1659), to whom Mather and Thompson are writing against, was a leading English presbyterian
and moderator of the Westminster Assembly. His book against Independency was published the
year before in 1643. Rutherford is answering Mather and Thompson in the same year their book
was written.]

[11]: 1 Cor. 5:4-5, “In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my
spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, to deliver such an one unto Satan for the
destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the Day of the Lord Jesus.”

[12]: 1 Cor. 5:2, “And ye are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he that hath done this
deed might be taken away from among you.”

[13]: 1 Cor. 5:6-7, “Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole
lump? Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened.”


As you see, one of the Congregationalists / Independentists of the 17th century argued AGAINST woman-suffrage in congregational affairs - though that was not his MAIN intention. The Rev. Rutherford showed just how fallacious those anti-woman suffrage arguments are. Since this privilege of congregational suffrage is by the Independentists' own testimony, part and parcel of the liberties Christ has purchased for His Mystical Body, it is not expedient, but rather contrary to Gospel liberty, to deny this prilvilege to women.
« Last Edit: December 18, 2015, 05:55:14 PM by jjeanniton »
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ColporteurK

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Re: Women Voting in Church Affairs
« Reply #36 on: December 18, 2015, 02:13:28 PM »

jj;

 Do you see this as a problem in the SDA church ?
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jjeanniton

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Re: Women Voting in Church Affairs
« Reply #37 on: September 10, 2017, 08:00:02 PM »
I am presenting proof that no one ought to be opposed to woman-suffrage either in church or in the State. I have no problem with women voting in the church as members of the congregation. One more thing: enemies of woman suffrage plead that women are represented by their husbands, brothers, fathers, and sons.

But such "representation" is entirely discretionary on the part of the male voters and not contingent upon the consent of the women they claim to "represent"! See Woman Suffrage: The Argument of Carrie S. Burnham, page 76 for one of the key reasons why the votes of men can't POSSIBLY represent their womenfolk in any legally or politically legitimate sense:

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There can be no representation without delegated authority. Women have not only never authorized men to vote for them, but it is adjudicated as a principle of the common law that where an election depends upon the exercise of judgment, the right cannot be deputed ; on the contrary, “in all elections of a public nature, every vote,” says Chancellor Kent, “must be personally given.”

Additionally, it is contrary to Natural Law and Divine Law for any woman to delegate to others, whether male or female, any species of authority which does not properly appertain to the proper sphere of her sex. But by hypothesis, the right of women to vote is a prerogative denied to women: therefore it is not lawful for her to delegate the right of voting to any man or any number of men. Therefore no man's vote can justly be representative of the political preferences or consent of any woman. QED
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jjeanniton

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Re: Women Voting in Church Affairs
« Reply #38 on: April 29, 2018, 02:20:31 PM »
Why Congregational Voting is NOT an Exercise of Ecclesiastical Authority – Session 16.

I have discovered something else. In The Lutheran Church Review, volume 18, pages 479 - 486, a certain F. P. Mayser, who AFFIRMS the Minor Premise in contending that the very act of voting is INDEED an act of governing the church (and therefore absolutely UNLAWFUL and ANTI-SCRIPTURAL for women to exercise), writes:

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1. If the Scriptures recognize us as voters at all, they do not recognize us as families, but as individuals. No one votes for a family, but for himself only.
Note: Either one person one vote or else the individual is worth nothing at all!
Quote
2. The "opinion" [namely, that of a certain professedly Lutheran Synodical Committee attempting to DENY that a congregation violates a Scriptural or Lutheran principle, where a family is not otherwise represented, by allowing all members male AND female to congregationally vote] assumes that "a family" - possibly composed of a number of male and female members - may be "represented" by one male member at a congregational meeting, and one vote would be cast for the whole family. We deny the right of such representation of the female members of the family, but granting this right, for argument's sake, it is very doubtful whether the one vote expresses the views and convictions of all the other members of the family.

Note: Enemies of woman suffrage also ought to know that the plea that women are represented by their male relatives also makes this same fallacious assumption "that "a family" - possibly composed of a number of male and female members - may be "represented" by one male member at a congregational meeting, and one vote would be cast for the whole family". Even on the assumption that woman suffrage is against the Law of God, there are certain grave reasons, which I will list later, why we must DENY "the right of such representation of the female members of the family".

And the final reason why this assumption that a male voter represents his family must be rejected is because:

Quote
5. It is also a fallacy to suppose, that a wife, who is "represented" by a husband at a congregational meeting thereby exercises more rights and privileges than a widow or single woman, if the latter are debarred from voting. The husband of a wife votes only for himself and not for his wife, depositing only one vote. The wife has, therefore, no more to say in the matter than the widow or single woman. If the right of voting is to be given to the widow and the female members of a family not otherwise represented, as seems to be contemplated in the report of the committee, it must in justice be given to all women, whether single or married.

I do not need to tell you again why the assumption that the vote of a male head of the house represents his entire family is false - that reason was already given in the previous post!

TO BE CONTINUED

« Last Edit: April 29, 2018, 02:23:24 PM by jjeanniton »
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jjeanniton

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Re: Women Voting in Church Affairs
« Reply #39 on: April 29, 2018, 02:22:08 PM »
Why Congregational Voting is NOT an Exercise of Ecclesiastical Authority – Session 16 (Continued).

Additionally, a certain Theodore E Schmauk writes on Pages 522 - 524:

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A right to vote is not identical with the right to headship or the right to rule. Both the American President and the American citizen have a right to vote, but not both of them have the right to rule. A vote is a formal expression of will or opinion or preference in regard to some question submitted to decision, on the part of a single individual. It is an expression on a submitted question. The voter does not decide what question is to be submitted, nor does he rule during or after its submission, nor does he as an individual rule any more fully after his vote than he did before. The man who has voted for an officer is as fully under the headship of that officer as the man who has voted against him. And to say that a woman should never have the right to exercise any choice of the officer who is to be her head is to say that a woman has not the right of exercising any choice as to the one who is lo be her husband. Is this New Testament teaching? This is barbarism of the worst sort. No voter in his individuality and as a unit is a ruler; and even in their collective capacity the voters in an organization are only sub-rulers. They are under a multitude of constitutional, legal and traditional provisions that come down from above. This is particularly true in a Christian congregation, where neither doctrine, mode of organization, mode of worship, or in large part discipline are matters of franchise. Great confusion on this and all questions of Church government in our land arises when we do not see that a voter is not a magistrate. He does not bear the sword. The power of the franchise is not the power of the office. All men have the one. Not all men have the other. Many men are not even eligible to office. There are qualifications for nearly all civil and political offices. No American voter who is not a native-born citizen can ever become President of the United States. Nor can anyone hold that office who is not 35 years of age, or who has not resided in the country for 14 years. Not all voters can be elected to the judgeship, the governorship, or even to the office of a local alderman. That a woman should, as an individual, express her will or opinion or judgment by a vote in those earthly matters which are decided in a congregation by a vote, if, under present conditions of society, her Christian judgment is as good as that of the man, does not detract from the headship of the man. In an aristocratic or barbarous country a woman's vote has no place. But where a vote is the ascertainment of the common sense and judgment of a majority of sound and mature human minds, irrespective of social or physical distinctions, and on the basis of an equality of intelligence and on the principle that two heads are better than one, there a Christian woman's vote seems to be in place. The modern theory of government, as a result of the application of New Testament principles, and under the moulding of the Gospel, differs totally from the ancient in that the important thing is no longer rule, but service. A very good motto for both men and women in matters of ecclesiastical polity would be: “Let him that is chief among you be as he that serveth.”

And this is true in ALL matters of congregational voting and not just the election of ministers. QED
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