Women Without Superstition: "No Gods - No Masters."

edited by Annie Laurie Gaylor (Madison, WI: Freedom From Religion Foundation, 1997), 679 pp.; $25.00 cloth

--reviewed by Annette Van Howe

A first-of-its-kind anthology, Women Without Superstition is a superb collection of original writings--many of them never before published, out of print, or generally unavailable--by fifty feminist freethinkers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Edited by Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-founder of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, this book tells the story of how female heretics, agnostics, and atheists influenced the women's movement. It is particularly valuable to history buffs and women activists. The writings are provocative, timely, and give the eloquent views of women--past and present--who were social reformers as well as revolutionaries.

The centerpiece of the anthology is the chapter "Elizabeth Cady Stanton: A Freethought Reader," containing over forty of Stanton's writings and speeches which summarize her iconoclastic views on the harm of religion. Indicative of her philosophy, Cady Stanton wrote in 1896:-My heart's desire is to lift women out of all these dangerous, degrading superstitions, and to this end will I labor my remaining days on earth."

Other writings dare to question the status quo, which at the time expected women to be silent, obedient, and subservient to men. Among others, there are excerpts from "Vote for Religious Liberty" by Susan B.Anthony; A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft; His Religion and Hers by Charlotte Perkins Gilman; and Woman, Church, and State by Matilda Joslyn Gage, who in 1890 urged women to"unite upon a platform of opposition to the teaching and aim of that ever more scrupulous enemy of freedom--the Church."

The thoughts of current-day feminists are represented as well and include From Housewife to Heretic by Sonia Johnson; "U.S. Patriots: Without God on Their Side" by Barbara Ehrenreich;"On Islamic Fundamentalism" by Taslima Nasrin; and "The Skeptical Feminist" by Barbara Walker, who in 1993 said, "Faith in God necessarily implies a lack of faith in humanity." To complete the anthology there is a brief biographical section chronicling other women freethinkers and an appendix of documents pertaining to women's struggle with the church.

Gaylor said her motivation for editing Women Without Superstition was to "feature women pursuing every avenue of religious assumption and freethought conviction." She adds,"The authors dissect the nature of belief,prayer,vicarious atonement, biblical claims, the preachments of Jesus, and ontological arguments."

Even the pansy on the cover and the colors of the book jacket represent feminism. According to Gaylor,"Pansies at one time became the symbol of free-thought, a custom that ought to be revived. The word comes from the French pensee, meaning thought....The purple, yellow, and white colors on the jacket were those adopted by the American women's suffrage movement."

Annette Van Howe is the 1996 Humanist Heroine of the Feminist Caucus of the American Humanist Association and bead of Voice for Choice, an abortion rights activist group in Florida. Copies of the book are available from the Freedom from Religion Foundation, PO. Box 750, Madison, WI 53 701; [phone];[e-mail].