by Nona Blyth Cloud

Sunday, January 16, 2022, will be Religious Freedom Day, a celebration of this statute, written by Thomas Jefferson, and passed by the Virginia Assembly on January 16, 1786, which became the basis for the protections of religious freedom in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

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PLEASE NOTE: I have quoted extensively from The Woman’s Bible. It is out of copyright, the contributors are dead, and the entire book is available online:  https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/9880/pg9880.html  – under these terms:

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

It was produced by Carrie Lorenz and John B. Hare

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There have always been individual women, and even a few men, who spoke out against the subjugation of women, but they were single voices, or a chorus of the few drowned out by the silence of the many women, and the roar of Patriarchy.

But in the 19^th century, the chorus of the few began to grow, and in July, 1848, in Seneca Falls, New York – which was already a hotbed of abolitionist activity – Jane Hunt, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Martha Wright, and Mary Ann McClintock organized a woman’s rights convention. The Seneca Falls Convention became the launch pad for the women’s movement in America.

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