Men, Women, and Gods and Other Lectures

About the Book

Men, Women, and Gods, and Other Lectures by Helen H. Gardener is the first in a series of books to be published by Books Reborn. The goal of Books Reborn is to reprint rare books and other literature from the 18th and 19th centuries which are of interest to skeptics, freethinkers, feminists, and students of American history.

Helen Hamilton Gardener was born Mary Alice Chenoweth on January 21, 1853, in Winchester, Virginia, daughter of Alfred Griffith Chenoweth and Catherine Peel Chenoweth. She graduated from the Cincinnati (Ohio) Normal School in 1873, married Charles S. Smart in 1875, and moved with him to New York City in 1880. In New York, she studied biology at Columbia University, lectured on sociology at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, contributed to newspapers, and came under the influence of the famous freethinker Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll. She gave a series of lectures on freethinking in 1884 and published them in 1885 as Men, Women, and Gods, and Other Lectures under the name Helen Hamilton Gardener, which she subsequently adopted.  After her husband's death in 1901, she married Selden Allen Day in 1902. They spent five years in world travel before settling in Washington, D.C.

In 1913 Gardener was appointed to reorganize the Congressional Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association [NAWSA], which had been depleted by mass resignations of radical suffragists and followers of Alice Paul. She was elected a vice president of the association in 1917. Her contacts, notably with President Woodrow Wilson and Speaker of the House Champ Clark, along with her wit and tact, made her a central figure in the practical business of maneuvering the federal suffrage amendment through a maze of obstacles. In 1920 (following the ratification of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote) she was appointed by Wilson to the U.S. Civil Service Commission, the highest federal position occupied by a woman to that time. She served until her death in Washington, D.C., on July 26, 1925.

Other books by Helen Gardener: Is This Your Son, My Lord? (1890); A Thoughtless Yes (1890), Pray You, Sir, Whose Daughter? (1892), Pushed By Unseen Hands (1892), and An Unofficial Patriot (1894), a fictionalized biography of her father that was later successfully dramatized by James A. Herne as Griffith Davenport, Circuit Rider. Many of her articles on social questions were collected in Facts and Fictions of Life (1893).

Anne Firor Scott, W. K. Boyd Professor of History, Duke University, describes Helen Gardener as “... the extraordinary NAWSA lobbyist whose ability to influence members of Congress would make many highly paid modern lobbyists look like amateurs....” (Women's Studies Manuscript Collections from the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, Introduction, ,">http://www.cispubs.com"> www.cispubs.com .

“The writer of this little volume has read the Bible with open eyes. The mist of sentimentality has not clouded her vision. She has had the courage to tell the result of her investigations. She has been quick to discover contradictions. She appreciates the humorous side of the stupidly solemn. Her heart protests against the cruel, and her brain rejects the childish, the unnatural, and absurd. There is no misunderstanding between her head and heart. She says what she thinks, and feels what she says.” — Robert G. Ingersoll, Introduction to Men, Women, and Gods, and Other Lectures.

Gardener describes Men, Women, and Gods and her reasons for giving the lectures which are compiled therein: “I claim that I have a right to offer my objections to the Bible from the standpoint of a woman. I think that it is fair, at least, to put the case before you as it looks to me, using the Bible itself as my chie

About the Author

Laurence E. Dalton and Shirley Strutton Dalton have established Books Reborn (www.booksreborn.com) to reprint rare books from the 18th and 19th centuries of interest to skeptics, freethinkers, feminists, and students of American history. Men, Women, and Gods is the first in this series.