The anti-war origins of Mother's Day

[villager]

The Anti-War Origins of Mother's Day


Each year the president issues a Mother's Day Proclamation. The original Mother's Day Proclamation was made in 1870. Written by Julia Ward Howe, perhaps best known today for having written the words to "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" in 1862 when she was an antislavery activist, the original Proclamation was an impassioned call for peace and disarmament. In the years following the Civil War her political activism increased, as did her condemnation of war. Here are the words to the original Mother's Day Proclamation:

"Arise then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be of water or of tears!

"Say firmly: 'We will not have questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience. We women of one country will be too tender to those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own, it says "Disarm! Disarm!" The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.'

"As men have forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his time the sacred impress not of Caesar, but of God.

"In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace."

http://www.accuracy.org/newsrelease.php?articleId=304

[Echo In Light]

1. I was unaware of that. Thanks for posting

[bobburgster]

2. Appreciate the post too.

Thanks, I'll pass it along to my history professor daughter so I sound smart ;)

[intheflow]

3. Back when I was a Unitarian Universalist minister...

I used to preach this every Mother's Day, since Howe was a Unitarian back in the day. Let me just say: people coming to church on Mother's Day don't want to hear it! they want a nice, safe, sickly-sweet, sentimental Mother's Day, a Hallmark Holiday Mother's Day. This was one of the saddest things I faced year after year. No one gave a shit about peace, they just wanted hearts and flowers (but not bleeding hearts or flowers from graves). :( Suffice to say, even Howe herself was so sick of this sentimentalist abduction of her original goals that she unaffiliated herself from the holiday once Congress got her hands on it, though of course she never stopped working for peace.

[LiberalEsto]

4. Not even UUs?

The UU congregation I belong to - in Germantown, MD - would probably love it.

[intheflow]

5. This particular negative sermon response was probably

exacerbated by the fact that Mother's Day is one of those Sundays when we get a lot of visitors/irregular attendees. So, you've just brought your mom to your church (which she thinks is some kind of cult to begin with) and then you get an anti-war sermon instead of something OTT warm and fuzzy... I mean, I guess I get the disconnect, it's just frustrating that I only ever heard negative feedback about what I always felt was one of my best sermon topics b/c it blended UU history with the sixth principle and the second and fourth sources. And it's not like I preached it at only one congregation; I preached on Mother's Day at at least five different congregations: one in Massachusetts, one in Mississippi, one in Texas, and two different churches in Colorado. Negative feedback every. single. time.

FWIW, no one ever wanted to hear my pro-labor sermons, either. :(

[snowdays]

6. REC and thanks for posting.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

7. Video of Julia Ward Howe's Mother's day proclamation

This was put together by my BF. Music is Carmen Dragon's orchestral arrangement of "Battle Hymn of the Republic".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1vND8c_Pbg

[Occam Bandage]

8. Kind of interesting.

She completely bought into the "women should send boys off to war" mentality of the nineteenth century before the war, as well as the "war is an instrument of God to purge the land of sin" mentality; her Battle Hymn was the intersection of both.

It seems she recanted on both.