Woman, Church, and State Annotated

Woman, Church and State is a book by American writer and activist Matilda Joslyn Gage, first published in 1893. Vehemently anti-clerical, this was one of the first books to draw the conclusion that Christianity is a primary impediment to the progress of women, as well as civilization, arguing that the church was responsible for women's oppression throughout history. Then, as now, religious doctrine was used as a justification for the dehumanization of women, depriving them of civil, human, economic and political rights, even denying them the right to worship alongside men. Gage reviews extensive evidence of this complex. In 1913, Women, Church, and State was banned under the Comstock Laws, that dealt with the suppression of trade in so-called obscene literature.