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.
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.
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 theirsex, 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.
[10]: Richard Mather and William Thompson, A Modest and Brotherly Answer to Mr. Charles Herle’sBook 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 presbyterianand moderator of the Westminster Assembly. His book against Independency was published theyear before in 1643. Rutherford is answering Mather and Thompson in the same year their bookwas written.] [11]: 1 Cor. 5:4-5, “In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and myspirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, to deliver such an one unto Satan for thedestruction 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 thisdeed 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 wholelump? Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened.”
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.”
