The Handmaid Cometh

 

 

Well yes. Most women most of the time still enjoy more freedom than Offred, the handmaid of Atwood’s tale. But the old script has flipped.

What is the old script? Many people my age, who were born just after World War II, have consciously or unconsciously, viewed freedom like a stream that expands to include more people. Women’s history, for example, changed enormously in this time period. The female vote was firmly established by the 1940s and the birth control pill, legalized abortion, no-fault divorce, put more decisions into women’s own hands. Due to increased levels of education and more opportunities to prove themselves, twentieth-century women broke barriers in nearly every profession, from sports to business to academe. There was only one direction for their history — greater freedom.

 

I was among the first professors to teach women’s history in America, first at the University of Texas at Austin in 1974 and then at Goshen College. Without realizing it, I participated in viewing women’s progress as painful and slow, but also inexorable if not inevitable. It was easy to see rights expanding and barriers tumbling. Going backward was temporary, never permanent. 

 

When The Handmaid’s Tale was published in 1985, women’s right to vote was considered “settled law.” Nobody in public life was calling for repeal. However, if you ask AI today whether there are opponents to women’s right to vote, in the U.S. you will learn:

Although no mainstream politicians in the United States openly advocate for revoking the 19th Amendment, which guarantees women the right to vote, some public figures and far-right religious nationalists have recently espoused rhetoric or promoted ideas that would have the effect of disenfranchising women. Historically, organized opposition to women’s suffrage was common, even after the 19th Amendment was ratified.

 

Contemporary figures promoting misogynistic voting ideas:

• Paul Ingrassia: In 2023, while awaiting confirmation after being nominated by President Donald Trump to lead the Office of Special Counsel, Ingrassia suggested approval of repealing the 19th Amendment. During a podcast interview, Ingrassia reacted to the host stating his own wife thinks “women should not vote” by responding, “She’s very based”—a term expressing support for a bold opinion.

• Abby Johnson: The anti-abortion activist and speaker at the 2020 Republican National Convention advocates for a system of “head-of-household” voting. In this system, only the head of a household would be permitted to cast a ballot, a practice that historically has disenfranchised women and other groups by concentrating power in the male heads of households.

• Doug Wilson: A Christian nationalist pastor in Idaho, Wilson leads a movement that questions women’s right to vote based on a conservative evangelical belief system. In August 2025, his beliefs gained greater traction when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a supporter of Wilson, reposted a news segment about the pastor to X (formerly Twitter)

Beyond overt rhetoric, some contemporary voter suppression efforts may disproportionately affect women.

• The SAVE Act: A proposed bill dubbed the SAVE Act could make it impossible for millions of women to vote. It would require that a birth certificate match a voter’s current name for voter registration. This would disenfranchise up to 69 million women, approximately 25% of eligible voters, who change their last name after marriage and do not have a passport with their updated name.

• Voter ID laws: Transgender women and other trans and non-binary individuals can face disenfranchisement due to voter ID laws. If their voter registration or ID documents do not permit changes to their name or gender marker, they may face barriers to voting.

• Caregiver disenfranchisement: Many caregivers are women, particularly women of color. Restrictive voting laws, such as cutbacks to early in-person voting or limited absentee voting options, can disproportionately affect their ability to cast a ballot.

 

Could it be that women in the U.S., like women in Afghanistan and Iraq, are moving from relative freedom to greater and greater restriction? What is the role of religion when freedom expands and later contracts?

 

Would I find inspiration from 19th-century women who met in Seneca Falls in 1848? How revolutionary was it to begin the Declaration this way: “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal.” Or to pen these words: “The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her.” 

 

 

One might think that becoming a National Parks Service location would solidify the story of the first Women’s Rights Convention so that all Americans could come see the place and hear the story of how the idea of equal rights for men and women first gained a public hearing.

 

But several things have happen to the National Parks during the current administration:

 

 

And by pressing my phone directly onto the windows of the Wesleyan Chapel, I could see the dim outlines of very simple, barren, pews inside:

Here is the message that I am choosing to take from my 24 hours in Seneca Falls.

 

1. These women (and some men) had moral courage, and nothing is more beautiful than that.  Researcher Dacher Keltner in his book Awe says that the moral beauty is even more inspiring than natural beauty. The most common producer of awe is not spiritual practice or music, he says. Rather, “it was other people’s courage, kindness, strength, or overcoming.” Let us use the inspiration we get from the people depicted on this wall and the women in the sculptures — none of whom lived long enough to see the passage of the 19th amendment — to fortify our own willingness to take risks and to speak up on behalf of the vulnerable.

 

2. Religion is often viewed as a threat to rights because much of it, the loud and angry kind, interprets the Bible or the Koran or other religious dogma as God’s blessing on men to have dominion over all the earth, including over women.  Indeed, this idea has been seeing a resurgence around the world. BUT these courageous women of 1848 were women of faith also! Many of them were Quakers, whose belief in equality was also deeply rooted in the Bible, especially the life and teachings of Jesus. As a Mennonite, and a fellow pacifist, I feel a special appreciation for those plain speaking and plain dressing sisters.  (“Thee will make us ridiculous” was Lucretia Mott’s first reaction to Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s proposal to make the demand for the vote the centerpiece of the Declaration.)

 

3. The religion of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois confederacy) woman depicted on the mural was also significant. The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy) is made up of six nations: the Mohawk, Oneida, Onandage, Cayuga, Seneca, and Turscarora. These nations provided a model of gender equality that contradicted the patriarchal beliefs of 19th-century America. The indigenous religion enhanced rather than restricted women’s status, demonstrating that subordination was not a divine decree but a social construct.

 

4. Seneca Falls was also the squarely in the area historians have called “The Burnt Over District” after the Second Great Awakening of the 1820’s and 1830s. Revivalism spread over the area like a forest fire. In those days, the Spirit led new converts to take up causes based on the commandment to love one another. They developed a conscience against the evil of slavery. When other churches would not stand strongly enough against slavery, the fervent evangelists formed a new church, the Wesleyan Methodists, which was first organized in Seneca Falls in 1845. The Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls (see photos above), already an outpost of abolitionism, became a natural home for another assertion of human rights. 

 

There is power in faith, wonder-working power. 

 

As my friend Sharon Parks says, “in this tender and treacherous time . . . we must take a long and faithful view.”