Editing Susan B. Anthony (section)

===Views on religion===
Anthony was raised a [[Quaker]], but her religious heritage was mixed. On her mother's side, her grandmother was a [[Baptist]] and her grandfather was a [[Universalist Church of America|Universalist]].<ref>Harper (1898–1908), Vol. 1, [https://archive.org/stream/lifeandworksusa00unkngoog#page/n37/mode/2up p. 5.]</ref> Her father was a radical Quaker who chafed under the restrictions of his more conservative congregation. When the Quakers split in the late 1820s into Orthodox and [[Elias Hicks|Hicksites]], her family sided with the Hicksites, which Anthony described as "the radical side, the Unitarian".<ref>Susan B. Anthony (May 27, 1893), [https://books.google.com/books?id=qXFaDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA585 "The Moral Leadership of the Religious Press"], in ''Freedom of Religion: Foundational Documents and Historical Arguments'', by Stephen A. Smith, 2019, Oxbridge Research Associates, pp. 584–585.  [[Unitarianism]], the belief that God is one person, contrasts with [[Trinitarianism]], the traditional Christian belief that God is three persons in one, with Jesus being one of those three. Elias Hicks, after whom the Hicksites were named, taught that Jesus was not God but had achieved a divine state through obedience to the Inner Light.</ref><ref>Harper (1898–1908), Vol. 1, [https://archive.org/stream/lifeandworksusa00unkngoog#page/n41/mode/2up, p. 7.]</ref>

In 1848, three years after the Anthony family moved to Rochester, a group of about 200 Quakers withdrew from the Hicksite organization in western New York, partly because they wanted to work in social reform movements without interference from that organization.<ref>Hewitt, Nancy (1995) and others.  "Women's Rights and Roles ", in ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=q7B25EPMla4C Quaker Crosscurrents: Three Hundred Years of Friends in the New York Yearly Meetings]'', edited by Hugh Barbour, Christopher Densmore, Elizabeth H. Moger, Nancy C. Sorel, Alson D. Van Wagner, and Arthur J. Worrall; Syracuse University Press, [https://books.google.com/books?id=q7B25EPMla4C&pg=PA174 pp. 173–174].  {{ISBN|978-0815626510}}</ref> Some of them, including the Anthony family, began attending services at the [[First Unitarian Church of Rochester]]. When Susan B. Anthony returned home from teaching in 1849, she joined her family in attending services there, and she remained with the Rochester Unitarians for the rest of her life.<ref>Harper (1898–1908), Vol. 1, [https://archive.org/stream/lifeandworksusa00unkngoog#page/n105/mode/2up p. 58.]</ref> Her sense of spirituality was strongly influenced by [[William Henry Channing]],<ref>Stanton (1898) [https://archive.org/details/eightyyearsandm00stangoog/page/n186 pp. 160–161]</ref> a nationally known minister of that church who also assisted her with several of her reform projects.<ref>Channing wrote the call for the Women's Rights Convention that Anthony organized in Rochester in 1853 and playing a leading role in it. He wrote an appeal that Anthony circulated as part of her women's suffrage work. See Harper (1898–1908), Vol. 1, [https://archive.org/stream/lifeandworksusa00unkngoog#page/n155/mode/2up, pp. 104, 110.]</ref> Anthony was listed as a member of First Unitarian in a church history written in 1881.<ref name=mann-history/>

Anthony, proud of her Quaker roots, continued to describe herself as a Quaker, however. She maintained her membership in the local Hicksite body but did not attend its meetings.<ref name=bacon-117>Bacon (1986), p. 117.</ref> She joined the [[Congregational Friends]], an organization that was created by Quakers in western New York after the 1848 split among Quakers there. This group soon ceased to operate as a religious body, however, and changed its name to the Friends of Human Progress, organizing annual meetings in support of social reform that welcomed everyone, including "Christians, Jews, Mahammedans, and Pagans".<ref>“Call to Congregational Friends Meeting", ''Frederick Douglass’ Paper'', May 26, 1854, reprinted in Judith Wellman and others, "1816 Farmington Quaker Meetinghouse, Farmington, New York, Historic Structure Report", 2017, [https://www.farmingtonmeetinghouse.org/_files/ugd/acfe53_574b1093147548f7af65b525f435cd02.pdf#page=106 p. 100] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230326025250/https://www.farmingtonmeetinghouse.org/_files/ugd/acfe53_574b1093147548f7af65b525f435cd02.pdf#page=106 |date=March 26, 2023 }}</ref>
<ref>{{cite book|title=Quaker Crosscurrents: Three Hundred Years of Friends in the New York Yearly Meetings|editor1=Hugh Barbour |editor2=Christopher Densmore |editor3=Elizabeth H. Moger |editor4=Nancy C. Sorel |editor5=Alson D. Van Wagner |editor6=Arthur J. Worrall|publisher=Syracuse University Press|location=Syracuse, NY|year=1995|isbn=0-8156-2664-9|page=135}}</ref> Anthony served as secretary of this group in 1857.<ref name=bacon-117/>

In 1859, during a period when Rochester Unitarians were gravely impaired by factionalism,<ref name=mann-history>{{cite web|url=http://www.rochesterunitarian.org/historical_documents/Mann-history.pdf|title=First Unitarian Congregational Society of Rochester NY: A Sketch of its History, with its Organization and Membership|author=Newton M. Mann|year=1881|publisher=First Unitarian Church of Rochester, NY|access-date=January 25, 2014|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120318133139/http://www.rochesterunitarian.org/historical_documents/Mann-history.pdf|archive-date=March 18, 2012}}</ref> Anthony unsuccessfully attempted to start a "Free church in Rochester ... where no doctrines should be preached and all should be welcome."<ref>Harper (1898–1908), Vol. 1, [https://archive.org/stream/lifeandworksusa00unkngoog#page/n223/mode/2up p. 167.]</ref>
She used as her model the Boston church of [[Theodore Parker]], a [[Unitarian Universalism|Unitarian]] minister who helped to set the direction of his denomination by rejecting the authority of the Bible and the validity of miracles.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://uudb.org/articles/theodoreparker.html|title=Theodore Parker|author=Dean Grodzins|work=Dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist Biography|publisher=Unitarian Universalist Association|access-date=December 11, 2017|archive-date=December 12, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171212224555/http://uudb.org/articles/theodoreparker.html|url-status=dead}} During Anthony's lifetime, the [[Unitarian Universalism|Unitarian]] denomination transformed from one based on Unitarian Christianity to one that was not based on any creed. Theodore Parker and William Channing Gannett played important roles in this transformation.</ref> Anthony later became close friends with William Channing Gannett, who became the minister of the Unitarian Church in Rochester in 1889, and with his wife Mary, who came from a Quaker background.<ref>Lutz (1959), pp. 271, 303.</ref> William had been a national leader of the successful movement within the Unitarian denomination to end the practice of binding it by a formal creed, thereby opening its membership to non-Christians and even non-[[theist]]s, a goal for the denomination that resembled Anthony's goal for her proposed Free church.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.lib.rochester.edu/index.cfm?PAGE=3421|title=William Channing Gannett: Two Episodes|author=William H. Pease|date=Spring 1954|work= University of Rochester Library Bulletin, Volume IX, Number 3|publisher=University of Rochester|access-date=November 7, 2011}}</ref>

After Anthony reduced her arduous travel schedule and made her home in Rochester in 1891, she resumed regular attendance at First Unitarian and also worked with the Gannetts on local reform projects. Her sister Mary Stafford Anthony, whose home had provided a resting place for Anthony during her years of frequent travel, had long played an active role in this church.<ref>Harper (1898–1908), Vol. 3, [https://archive.org/stream/lifeandworksusa02harpgoog#page/n447/mode/2up p. 1490.]</ref>

Her first public speech, delivered at a temperance meeting as a young woman, contained frequent references to God.<ref>Gordon (1997). [https://books.google.com/books?id=dBs4CO1DsF4C&pg=PA135 p. 135.]</ref> She soon took a more distant approach, however. While in Europe in 1883, Anthony helped a desperately poor Irish mother of six children. Noting that "the evidences were that 'God' was about to add a No. 7 to her flock", she later commented, "What a dreadful creature their God must be to keep sending hungry mouths while he withholds the bread to fill them!"<ref>Harper (1898–1908), Vol. 2, [https://archive.org/stream/lifeandworksusa01harpgoog#page/n91/mode/2up p. 594].</ref>

[[Elizabeth Cady Stanton]] said that Anthony was an [[agnostic]], adding, "To her, work is worship ... Her belief is not orthodox, but it is religious."<ref>Stanton (1898) [https://archive.org/details/eightyyearsandm00stangoog/page/n186 p. 161].</ref>
Anthony herself said, "Work and worship are one with me. I can not imagine a God of the universe made happy by my getting down on my knees and calling him 'great.{{' "}}<ref name="pp. 858–60">''New York World'', February 2, 1896, quoted in Harper (1898–1908), Vol. 2. [https://archive.org/stream/lifeandworksusa01harpgoog#page/n397/mode/2up pp. 858–860.]</ref>
When Anthony's sister Hannah was on her death bed, she asked Susan to talk about the great beyond, but, Anthony later wrote, "I could not dash her faith with my doubts, nor could I pretend a faith I had not; so I was silent in the dread presence of death."<ref>Harper (1898–1908), Vol. 2, [https://archive.org/stream/lifeandworksusa01harpgoog#page/n25/mode/2up p. 516.]</ref>

When an organization offered to sponsor a women's rights convention on the condition that "no speaker should say anything which would seem like an attack on Christianity", Anthony wrote to a friend, "I wonder if they'll be as particular to warn all other speakers not to say anything which shall sound like an attack on liberal religion. They never seem to think we have any feelings to be hurt when we have to sit under their reiteration of orthodox cant and dogma."<ref>Harper (1898–1908), Vol. 2, [https://archive.org/stream/lifeandworksusa01harpgoog#page/n203/mode/2up p. 678.]</ref>