Seneca Falls in España

https://evangelicalfocus.com/life-tech/4871/we-identify-with-a-feminism-with-deep-historical-roots

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Sentiments

This is tragic in so many ways. Would it have ever occurred to these Spanish Christians to seek out, emulate, and celebrate the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention apart from American Evangelical influence?

Once again US Evangelicalism is exposed as a veritable font of global heresy – one of the central foci of False Church activity in the world. Its money has bought it global influence, its money corrupts everything around it – including itself.

There is a pernicious narrative at work here regarding feminism. Seneca Falls feminism is being contrasted with 'French Revolution' feminism and its concepts of equality. This is a mythical expansion of the popular narrative that seeks to radically divide the French and American Revolutions. However it consistently ignores the fact that the French Revolution went through several incarnations. Its initial goals were quite similar to what happened in the United States. Its context was different and so it quickly went in a very different direction. But it's no mere accident of history that a figure such as Lafayette played a key role in the events of 1789 – which he viewed as directly related to his involvement in the American rebellion that had only concluded a few years earlier in 1783. There's a reason why the key to the Bastille was given by Lafayette to George Washington and put on display in the entrance hall of Mt. Vernon. Clearly Washington celebrated the actions of 1789 and viewed his life legacy to be one in concert with those events. The fact that the French Revolution went off the rails is another matter entirely.

This oft-employed narrative, disingenuously contrasts the 1793-94 Terror with the events of 1776 but this is not an honest reading of the events – and though Edmund Burke's arguments are often marshaled in defense of this historiographical paradigm, they are hardly unassailable and are easily demonstrated to be inconsistent, romantic, and from a Christian standpoint wanting. In New Testament terms both the English Colonial and French royal systems were evil – as were the revolutions which challenged them. Christian thinking does not fit into the mainstream and beware of Christian teachers who present a 'Christian' read of history that does little more than match the viewpoint and interpretative grid of a political faction.

This whole line of argument around the French vs. American Revolutions is really side-show, a rabbit trail that has little to do with feminism. Feminism had its genesis in the Enlightenment but what really fueled and shaped the movement was the Industrial Revolution – a much more complicated topic and one less practical or polarising when it comes to stirring up and shaping a Church audience.

What has happened is that Western culture at large has embraced feminism and its rejection (while still viable even a generation ago) has in our day become all but unthinkable. A hard stand against the ideology will mean the emptying of churches and it will thus relegate the Church to numerical and financial insignificance and thus to cultural irrelevance. For the Evangelical movement which is grounded in seeking just such cultural influence, this is unthinkable.

So what has happened is on the one hand the movement has embraced the ethic of – if you can't beat them join them, and in order to justify this ideological and ethical defection, they have sought to re-cast the subject at hand. By redefining their feminism and contrasting themselves with the latest manifestations of the ideology they can still posture as 'conservatives'.

The Seneca Falls feminists and suffragettes have been transformed into Christian heroes even though only a generation ago they were rightly decried as heretics and subversives. Evangelicalism is also eager to marshal votes and thus the women's vote has been reckoned a net positive because it can aid in the changing society – even though earlier generations rejected it because of the ideas that undergird the movement.

New Testament Christianity has little to say on these points as Christians are necessarily non-participants in government and while democratic republicanism is acceptable to live under (as are many other forms of government) it's not a Christian system and there's a grave danger when its values and ideas are confused with Scripture – as has happened. And this problem is one that's much bigger than mere feminism.

If lost societies want their women to vote, we care little for it. But when Christians theologize these concepts and when professed Christian women acting in a spirit of rebellion and rejection of Scriptural precept make the championing of these errors a Biblical virtue – then it is the duty of Christians to heartily reject their claims and call them out.

By moving the goalposts modern Evangelicals can claim to be conservatives even while embracing feminism. They have sought to contrast 'Christian' feminism (as represented by the Seneca Falls Convention) with later forms of feminism such as what emerged in the 1960's and what is taking place today.

It must be granted that feminism today is something much worse. The cry for equality has shifted and now women are often being placed in a role of superiority and men are increasingly become the subservient (supportive) members of the relationship. We see this in the rise of house-husbands and the like. Indeed today many modern men are actually the helpmeets of their wives – an absolute (but inevitable) rejection of the Biblical model.

Supposedly the Seneca Falls feminists were of a different order. They weren't trying to overthrow the teachings of Scripture and they are often lionised for their opposition to abortion.

But the truth is as late as the 1980's these women were despised by conservative Christians. It is only because of the cultural victory of feminism which was on full display by the 1990's that the narrative shifted. Homosexuality was viewed as more of a pressing threat as were other cultural issues and to lose so many votes, voices, and dollars by taking a hard-line stand on feminism became unthinkable and so opposition was functionally abandoned. The same thing happened with divorce and today it too is now mainstream and largely accepted in the Evangelical community. They think they're changing the world but in reality the world is changing them – re-making them into the world's image.

So were the Seneca Falls feminists more conservative, more acceptable and conformable to a Biblically conservative viewpoint? The answer is a resounding 'no'.

While the Finger Lakes town of Seneca Falls is not without its charms, the whole region is part of the Burned Over District and as I've traveled through the region this reality is ever on my mind – as it was when I stood in Seneca Falls not long ago and gazed on the 'water wall' monument wherein the Convention's 'Sentiments' are memorialized for public display. It had been some time since I had revisited the feminism of Seneca Falls and I was mostly appalled by what I read – and burdened by the many reminders and sad legacy of the Burned Over District and the unfortunate Christianity it produced.

The Sentiments appeal to God but reject what His Word has revealed. Patterned off the errors of the Jeffersonian Declaration of Independence, the document conflates Christian concepts and claims with those of the Enlightenment. It teaches rebellion against God's order, a rejection of the doctrines taught in Romans 12 and 13, and other bogus Enlightenment concepts such as the consent of the governed.

It is quite literally a declaration of witchcraft – if one correctly understands the ethic of witchcraft and what it properly represents – a rebellion against God's order and an attempt to re-order and manipulate the laws of the created order for one's gain.

No one has the inalienable 'right' to the franchise and in Biblical terms even if such rights were granted (for the sake of argument), would it be right and proper for a woman to countermand her husband's orders and wishes in terms of the political sphere? Only by rejecting the teaching of the New Testament could this be the case.

The document decries the notion that a woman would be forced to submit to laws of which she had no voice. This is a rejection of not only what the Scriptures teach – in requiring a woman to submit to her husband, but in principle this is to question the validity of God's own commands and Providential rule as if they were only reckoned valid in the context of a negotiated settlement.

One is reminded of Lyman Abbott's rejection of Original Sin wherein he said that Adam didn't represent him – because he never voted for him to do so. Such foolish sentiments are cases of cosmic rebellion, a fist of defiance raised against the prerogatives of the Almighty as He has revealed Himself through the apostles in His Word. These are the expressions of unregenerate and lost people masquerading as Christians – people that need to be put out of the Church.

Or from a more analytical standpoint these are the expressions of theological liberalism – rooted in a rejection of Scriptural authority and the triumph of Enlightenment epistemology and rationalism. This is at the very heart of the Seneca Falls Sentiments.

While undoubtedly many men have abused their role and authority and have treated their wives in a cruel fashion, the rejection of obedience is a rejection of God's authority to order the family and the Church.

Divorce, taxation and social prestige – these are all categories that range into the errors of the so-called Christian West and the feminist protestations provide no corrective. The entire spirit and framing of the document is rooted in assumptions wholly alien to New Testament cosmology and ethics.

The document essentially calls for women's ordination – again in explicit rejection of New Testament doctrine. Make no mistake theological liberalism undergirds the so-called Christian posture of the document.

The entire document and its assumptions must be condemned by anyone that professes to hold to Biblical authority and yet it is quite common in our day to hear Evangelicals who on the one hand proclaim their adherence to Scripture Alone, at the same time will praise the likes of Stanton and Anthony and proudly take up their legacy. It is but another instance of Evangelicalism's drift toward theological liberalism.

The document is heresy and the Christians who uncritically embrace it are guilty of the same. American Christians should be appalled that this doctrinal and ideological filth has been permitted to infiltrate the Church and even now is being utilised in an equally dubious and even devious fashion to ratify feminism abroad as a means to combat more radical forms of the same error.

And yet who can doubt in reading such a document that the aforementioned radical forms are already present albeit in seed form?

This is a cancer and it is what I often refer to as one of the 'elephants' in the room when it comes to contemporary Evangelicalism and so-called conservative Christianity. Feminism along with several other issues represents a grave threat to the Church and it representatives are aggressively working to undermine Biblical foundations. The success of feminism and some of the other 'elephants' cannot be overstated and risk bringing down conservative Christianity in but another generation.

One hopes that Biblical Christians in Spain will rise up and condemn this embrace of heresy and will in future look to the Scriptures rather than the compromised and corrupted example of American Evangelicalism and its house of shame.