Church and Religion
Stone was expelled in 1851 from the West Brookfield congregation she had long attended for being "engaged in a course of life evidently inconsistent with her covenant engagements to this church." Her lectures were seen as anti-clerical since nearly all of the Congregationalist churches in the North continued to refuse to take a stand on the question of slavery. Some were calling Stone an atheist but it was her absolute faith that the Bible held better things for women that drove her to learn Greek and Hebrew. As a schoolgirl, she had been moved by hearing Unitarian clergyman Robert Collyer lecture. Cast out now by the Congregationalists, Stone joined a Unitarian church.
Read more about this topic: Lucy Stone
Famous quotes containing the words church and/or religion:
“If I should go out of church whenever I hear a false statement I could never stay there five minutes. But why come out? The street is as false as the church, and when I get to my house, or to my manners, or to my speech, I have not got away from the lie.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The great end of all religion ... is to purify our hearts—and conquer our passions—and in a word, to make us wiser and better men—better neighbours—better citizens—and better servants of GOD.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)