Ellen White and Women's Rights

Three Great Reform Movements

Reform was in the air in the nineteenth-century America that Ellen White knew. Among the many reform issues of that era, three in particular stand out: abolitionism, temperance, and women's rights. These attracted much attention, had many adherents, and were widely discussed and debated. Where did Ellen White stand on the "big three" reform issues of her time?

Ellen White and Temperance

In the latter part of the century Ellen White was a well-known and widely-appreciated lecturer on temperance. For instance, she tells us of an occasion on which she spoke on the subject for ninety minutes while "the crowd of fully five thousand persons listened in almost breathless silence."1

Her written statements on this theme have been compiled into the book Temperance.2 She encouraged all Adventists to sign the temperance pledge, and to do so repeatedly. While she counseled against uniting with certain societies and clubs whose commitment to principle was doubtful, she urged and modeled cooperative fellowship with other groups active in the cause of true temperance. For instance, she called for united effort with the Woman's Christian Temperance Union to further the cause. "We cannot do a better work than to unite, so far as we can do so without compromise, with the W. C. T. U. workers."3

The Abolitionist Commitment

The commitment of Ellen White and her husband James to the abolitionist reform is also entirely clear. James White tells where the Seventh-day Adventist movement, and he as editor of the Review, stood:

Mrs. White even advocated civil disobedience rather than comply with the Fugitive Slave Act (passed in 1850 and upheld by the Supreme Court in 1857), which she saw as contrary to "the word and law of God." In 1859 she published this daring statement:

Shoulder-to-Shoulder with Reformers

So on the matter of slavery and the human rights of the black man, James and Ellen White stood shoulder-to-shoulder with other leading reformist couples, such as Stephen and Abbey Foster, James and Lucretia Mott, and Henry and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, well-known champions of the abolitionist cause. These other couples also typically championed the women's rights cause, which had begun in the 1830s and organized in 1848. It called for broad changes in the legal and social structure, in the nature of the marriage relationship, in women's dress and in their role in the church. The agenda included the "right" of women to the pastorate and ordination. On the connection between the two reforms, one scholar wrote concerning the Fosters:

A Different Path

Yet at about the same time as the Fosters were redirecting their energies into the women's rights movement, to fight what they saw as the same enemy they had fought before in the anti-slavery movement, Mrs. White wrote:

Did she object to this movement on the basis of its excesses? She names certain of them elsewhere in the statement: adoption of an immodest, mannish style of dress widely used by spiritualists, and encouragement to immodest behavior. But the causes to which she gave her support also had their excesses, which today we connect with such names as John Brown and Carrie Nation. It is fair to conclude that the abuses of some would not have discouraged Mrs. White from endorsing a cause she believed in. We must search beyond the abuses to find the cause for such a categorical rejection of this movement for those connected with Adventism.

Two Basic Objections

Indeed, Mrs. White offers two such basic objections to the women's rights movement of her day:

Application for Today

What application does this have for us today? First, we must realize that those who would make the women's rights movement today the natural extension of the campaign for human rights are traveling a road Mrs. White refused to go, in contrast to what many other abolitionist leaders of her time were doing.

Second, we must ask whether the spirit of the movement breathes the spirit of Adventism and of Christianity. It is on this basis that many today have become uncomfortable with the movement within the church, even before examining its teachings and claims in detail.

Third, we must note that Mrs. White appealed to the plain teachings of Scripture as against the women's rights movement of her day. And the main lines of argument we hear today for changing women's roles in the church are the same as those made by women's rights authors in Mrs. White's day.

In The Adventist Home and in other places, we find a record of Mrs. White's earnest labors to overcome abuses of Scripture's plain teaching on this subject, particularly as applied to the home. She calls men and women back to what the Bible says about their relationship. But nowhere do we find her endorsing the aims of the women's rights movement, or more specifically, encouraging women to take the man's leadership role in the home or church.