Christian Treatment of Women

Women

Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner

INTRODUCTION:
Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner (1858-1934) was the younger daughter of the famed British atheist and
politician Charles Bradlaugh. Born near London, her role, and that of her elder sister, Alice, was
always to be supportive and helpful to her extremely busy and overworked father, for whom she
served as secretary. She was quick to defend his memory after he died, and often came to his
defense against the tired charge (hurled falsely at every atheist of note since 1700) that he had
taken out his watch in front of an audience and given God five minutes to strike him dead if God
existed. Bradlaugh always sued when this was claimed, and always won, giving the money to
charity.

Alice Bradlaugh died in her early twenties, and Hypatia became the main support to her father.
After his death, she wrote the first important biography of him, Charles Bradlaugh: A Record of
His Life and Work (with j. M. Robertson writing the section on Bradlaugh’s political career). In
1885 Hypatia married Arthur Bonner, a printer and publisher, and together they republished
collected editions of Charles Bradlaugh’s works, along with a number of other important free-
thought books under the imprint “A. & H. B. Bonner” of London. She also edited a magazine
called The Reformer for a number of years, with J.M. Robertson.

Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner was the author of three books in addition to the biography of her father
Christianizing the Heathen, The Gallows and the Lash and Christianity and Conduct She
organized the celebration of the centenary of Bradlaugh’s birth in 1933. She died the following
year.

That her father & mother chose Hypatia is of pointed

significance, for Hypatia of Alexandria became to free
thinkers a symbol of Christian cruelty to women.
Hypatia was a mathematician, astronomer, and Platonic philosopher.
According to the Byzantine encyclopedia The Suda, her father Theon was
the last head of the Museum at Alexandria. Hypatia's prominence was
accentuated by the fact that she was both female and pagan in an
increasingly Christian environment. Shortly before her death, Cyril was
made the Christian bishop of Alexandria, and a conflict arose between
Cyril and the prefect Orestes. Orestes was disliked by some Christians
and was a friend of Hypatia, and rumors started that Hypatia was to blame
for the conflict. In the spring of 415 C.E., the situation reached a tragic
conclusion when a band of Christian monks seized Hypatia on the street,
beat her, and dragged her body to a church where they mutilated her flesh
with sharp tiles and burned her remains.

The present selection is from her book Christianity and Conduct, first published in 1919. The
book has been out of print since the 1920s.
is sunk so low as this it is the bitterest irony for the Christian apologist to talk of the betterment

of the position of woman and the increase of respect in which Christian influences caused her

to be held. The “faith of Christ” which could bring wealth to the coffers of the Church and

enable its ecclesiastics to live in splendor with huge followings of courtiers and courtesans

availed nothing to alleviate the lot of the man and woman who tilled the soil and sowed the

seed.

What has Christianity done for the women of Abyssinia? Abyssinia is one of the oldest of

Christian countries, and its late ruler, Menelek, traced his descent back to the Queen of Sheba.

In Abyssinia there is no development of rationalism to dispute the claims of Christian

influence. Whatever unaided faith in Christ could accomplish, we might expect to see it there.

The Abyssinians care a great deal about their religion, and believe that they are the only real

Christians; they would not admit that the English who visited them were Christians at all.10

They may be quite right; there are so many varieties of Christians, each professing to be the

only true one, that it is difficult for outsiders to decide. In Austria, under the Empire, the

Church of England, all-important as it is in Great Britain, was not accepted as Christian. The

Abyssinians, at any rate, are described as being extremely religious, and the clergy hold the

people in their power by threat of excommunication and other clerical anathemas. A favorite

subject for church decoration appears to be martyrdom on earth and torture in hell; all the good

people are represented as white, and all the bad people and the devils as black. Education—

such as it is—is confined to the Church, the women are regarded as beasts of burden who do all

the hard work of daily life, and the people generally are described as being morally lax, while

polygamy is a common practice. In Abyssinia, where Christianity has been the prevailing

religion for close upon sixteen hundred years, and where Rationalism is utterly unknown, the

women folk are no better than beasts of burden.

URL: http://skeptically.org/bible/id13.html