Any religion which will sacrifice a certain set of human beings for the enjoyment or aggrandizement or advantage of another is no religion. It is a thing which may be allowed, but it is against true religion. Any religion which sacrifices women to the brutality of men is no religion.
Interpretation
True religion upholds the dignity and rights of all individuals, rather than sacrificing some for the benefit of others.
This quote by Julia Ward Howe emphasizes that any religion that permits the harm or subjugation of certain groups of people, particularly women, for the benefit of others is fundamentally flawed. True religion should promote equality, justice, and compassion, rejecting practices that devalue human life in any form.
In practice
During a speech on women's rights, this quote can be used to emphasize the importance of equality.
The flag of our stately battles, not struggles of wrath and greed, _x000D_ Its stripes were a holy lesson, its spangles a deathless creed: _x000D_ 'T was red with the blood of freemen and white with the fear of the foe; _x000D_ And the stars that fight in their courses 'gainst tyrants its symbols know.
When I see the elaborate study and ingenuity displayed by women in the pursuit of trifles, I feel no doubt of their capacity for the most herculean undertakings.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord -
I think nothing is religion which puts one individual absolutely above others, and surely nothing is religion which puts one sex above another.
I shall stick to my resolution of writing always what I think no matter whom it offends.
I know not why there is such a melancholy feeling attached to the remembrance of past happiness, except that we fear that the future can have nothing so bright as the past.
... and it is probably that there is some secret here which remains to be discovered.
Most of the world's religions serve only to strengthen attachments to false concepts such as self and other, life and death, heaven and earth, and so on. Those who become entangled in these false ideas are prevented from perceiving the Integral Oneness.
Religious creeds encourage some of the craziest kinds of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors and favor severe manifestations of neurosis, borderline personality states, and sometimes even psychosis.
Because war and preparations for war have acquired legitimacy, and because of the tremendous proliferation of arms through production and export, so that they are now available more or less to all and sundry, right down to handguns and stilettos, the cult of violence has by now so permeated relations between people that we are compelled to witness as well an increase in everyday violence.
My brother died when he was 19, so a part of me indulges and thinks that some part of him that made him uniquely him is out there, on another plane. So inventing the fictional afterlife in 'Sing, Unburied, Sing' was a way of making that wish real.
Where the soul is full of peace and joy, outward surrounding and circumstances are of comparatively little account.
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