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BIOGRAPHY OF KATHARINE C. BUSHNELL
John A. Miller
CH/WM672: Women in World Christianity
Dr. Gina Zurlo
February 28, 2020
If one were to pick up a modern translation of the Bible, one would see that not only is it androcentric, but it seems on the surface to promote and reinforce the idea that women are to be obedient to and submissive to men. This translation and understanding of scripture have often led to a gross misunderstanding that women are lesser than their male counter parts. This misunderstanding has not only lead to the systemic sexism that still exists today but has actually created a dissonance that has given men the freedom to abuse women throughout history.
However, in 19th century Methodism, there was a rediscovery of John Wesley’s “perfectionist impulse.” This rediscovery lead to an emphasis on personal holiness, but also an intense commitment to social reform, which took shape in the temperance and social purity movements of the 19th century.[1] One of the lesser known giants of these movements was Katharine Bushnell. Bushnell was a medical doctor, missionary, activist, investigator, and biblical scholar. Her work and commitment to the latter four and her work in the social purity movement led her to the conclusion that men had mistranslated scripture so that women would be seen as inferior. Bushnell’s travels around the world as a missionary, lecturer, and investigator showed her that these mistranslations somehow created a dissonance in so called Christian men who would buy, sell, rape and abuse women all over the world. This led her to write God’s Word to Women, which seeks to remain committed to scripture and protestant Christianity while proving that women and men were created to be in equal standing with each other both in the home and in the church.[2]
Katharine C. Bushnell was born in 1855 in the town of Peru, Illinois to William Francis Bushnell and Mary Fowler McKean Bushnell. She grew up in a devoutly religious family and was the seventh of nine children. She attended public school during her childhood and in 1873 she enrolled in Northwestern University’s classics program.[3] It’s here that she began to study intently Greek and Latin. For reasons unknown, Bushnell switched from the study of classics to the study of medicine two years later.[4]
Bushnell graduated from The Woman’s Hospital Medical College in 1879 and was sponsored by the Women’s Board of the Methodist Episcopal Church to go on mission to China. At the age of twenty-four, Bushnell traveled to China. She recalled her time there with horror and said that it would have been the worst mistake of her life had she not believed that “All things work together for good to them that love God, and who are called according to his purpose”.[5]
However, it was her time in China that led Bushnell to begin thinking about how people’s religious beliefs impact their views and treatment of women. Bushnell’s Christian beliefs were typical of her time when it came to women’s roles in Christianity. But, while in China, Bushnell witnessed the oppression and plight of Chinese women, which opened her eyes to the uniqueness of suffering to women.[6]
While traveling to China, Bushnell exclaimed that it was not desirable or necessary for a woman to preach or proclaim the gospel.[7] After a few weeks engaged in missionary and medical work her understand of women’s roles began to change. The catalyst of this change was her discovery of a “sex-biased” Chinese bible translation. She proceeded to ask a male counterpart about the gender bias and his response was that the translation was rendered in that way because of pagan beliefs and prejudices regarding “women of ministry”.[8] This lead her to the question: “Could it be possible that men allowed prejudice to color Scripture translation?”.[9] This then lead her to an intense study of the original languages of scripture, which would last a life time, as she sought to understand what scripture truly said.
Bushnell returned to the United States in 1882 and after a short stint practicing medicine becomes involved in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union as Evangelist of the Purity Department under Francis Willard.[10] During her work with Willard, Bushnell became aware of the White Slave Trade taking place in the northern parts of Michigan and Wisconsin. When no one was willing or interested in finding out more, Bushnell left to investigate for herself. In that region of the United States, mining and felling trees brought a lot of labor and people to the area. With this, criminal networks sprung up promising young girls lucrative careers if they go up north. What Bushnell saw on her investigative trip horrified her. Her account reads: “girls, after being enticed to go north, were held as prisoners in stockaded dens, with bull dogs to prevent their escape; and this I found to be true, and brought away sketches that I made of the more notorious places, both outside and one an inside view”.[11] Bushnell reported her findings and held public meetings, thus receiving a lot of abuse and slander from newspapers. There was a lot of support for the brothels by local businessmen, who thought them good or the economy, and by local doctors who profited personally because of a law the required “degraded women” to be examined either out of their own pockets or by through public expense. Bushnell notes that this often gave men the freedom to sin while being “immune from physical danger”.[12]
Most disturbing in all of this was the number of women who defended the necessity of the brothels. Virtuous women, as they called themselves, believed that for their virtue to remain protected, young girls needed to be degraded by men. Bushnell believed this thinking was due to a gender system that split girls into virtuous and fallen.[13] After struggling for some time with legislatures and newspapers, a bill – dubbed that Kate Bushnell Bill – was eventually drafted in Wisconsin to fight this atrocity, sending many men to prison for the trading of young girls.[14]
After her work in Wisconsin, Bushnell felt there was more work to be done. After a series of dreams, she writes a letter to Josephine Butler, a woman in the purity movement in England. After correspondence, Bushnell and a college traveled to England then to India to investigate the circumstances of the “Queen’s Women,” young Indian girls who had been taken for use by English soldiers stationed in India. Through her medical experience and a lot of courage[15], Bushnell managed to slip past the encampment’s guards and converse with around five-hundred women and girls who were being kept in British brothels[16]. Bushnell and her colleague reported their findings to London and were later called to present their evidence in person.[17] For her efforts to expose and reform the conditions in India, Bushnell received international recognition.[18]
Bushnell was then commissioned to investigate the opium trade between China and India. Having accomplished this as well, she saw her work shape legislation around the world. All the while she kept up her biblical studies, seeking to answer the question of whether men had allowed prejudice to color scripture. As she traveled and investigated the situations of women all over the world, she kept asking “How can officials of high standing as Christian gentlemen, be so indifferent to the wrongs of women and girls, and so complacent in dealing with the sensuality of men; so ready to condone their offences against decency?”[19] She noticed that even the most upstanding of Christian men, when it came to women, viewed them as objects for their enjoyment. This led her to a deep distrust of men, especially Christian men, and the theology that had been handed down to her.[20]
In 1898, at the guidance of Josephine Butler who advised Bushnell to stop giving lectures about her investigations, Bushnell began to move toward articulating her biblical understanding of women’s roles in life and church. From 1901-1908, Bushnell plunged into bible study. In 1910, she published God’s Word to Women: 101 Questions Answered. Then, in 1911, she published Women’s Correspondence Bible Class, which was the first edition of what would later become God’s Word to Women.
Her seminal work, God’s Word to Women, is the culmination of all she learned in her time traveling the world investigating the plight and suffering of women, and of doing biblical exegesis with both women as her focal point and a belief that scripture had likely been colored by male prejudice. She believed that her laborious biblical studies, which she intensely focused on for the better part of a decade, would prevent future translations from containing the same male prejudices of the past. However, by the 1920’s and 1930’s her work was seen as less and less significant. Having never married, she died in 1946 at the age of ninety, outliving all of her contemporaries, and for a long time it was if her work had never happened. However, her contribution to biblical scholarship has been rediscovered, and her work is now considered and celebrated as a “forerunner of feminist theology.”[21] Through her commitment to scripture and Christianity, her experiences as a woman, and through seeing the suffering of women around the world, Katherine C. Bushnell came to understand that the bible, could lead to the subjugation of women when incorrectly translated through the lens of male prejudice or to the freedom and equality of women when translated correctly.
Bibliography
Bushnell, Katherine. “Dr. Katharine C. Bushnell: A Brief Sketch of Her Life Work (Hertford: Rose & Sons, 1932). https://godswordtowomen.org/bushnell_brief_sketch.pdf.
Du Mez, Kristin Kobes. “The Forgotten Woman’s Bible: Katherine Bushnell, Lee Anna Starr, Madeline Southard, and the Construction of a Woman-Centered Protestantism in America, 1870-1930.” PhD diss., University of Notre Dame, 2004.
Hoppin, Ruth. “The Legacy of Katherine Bushnell.” https://godswordtowomen.org/bushnell.htm
Stasson, Anneke Helen. “Bushnell, Katherine C. Missionary, Activist, Scholar and Writerfor Women Equality.” bu.edu/missiology/missionary-biography/a-c/bushnell-katharine-c-1855–1946/
1. Kristin Kobes Du Mez, “The Forgotten Woman’s Bible: Katherine Bushnell, Lee Anna Starr, Madeline Southard, and the Construction of a Woman-Centered Protestantism in America, 1870-1930” (PhD Diss., University of Notre Dame, 2004), 33.
2. Bushnell, Dr. Katharine C. Bushnell: A Brief Sketch of Her Life Work (Hertford: Rose & Sons, 1932), https://godswordtowomen.org/bushnell_brief_sketch.pdf.
3. Anneke Helen Stasson, “Bushnell, Katherine C. Missionary, Activist, Scholar and Writer for Women Equality,” bu.edu/missiology/missionary-biography/a-c/bushnell-katharine-c-1855–1946/
4. Bushnell, Brief Sketch
5. Bushnell, Brief Sketch
6. Du Mez, “The Forgotten Women’s Bible,” 38.
7. Du Mez, “The Forgotten Women’s Bible,” 38.
8.Bushnell, Brief Sketch.
9. Bushnell, Brief Sketch.
10. Bushnell, Brief Sketch.
11.Bushnell, Brief Sketch.
12. Du Mez, “The Forgotten Women’s Bible,” 42.
13. Du Mez, “The Forgotten Women’s Bible,” 42.
14. Bushnell, Brief Sketch.
15. Ruth Hoppin, “The Legacy of Katherine Bushnell,” https://godswordtowomen.org/bushnell.htm
16. Du Mez, “The Forgotten Women’s Bible,” 50.
17. Bushnell and her colleague, Elizabeth Andrew, recorded their experiences in The Queen’s Daughter’s in India.
18.Hoppin, The Legacay of Katherine Bushnell.
19. Bushnell, Brief Sketch.
20. Du Mez, “The Forgotten Women’s Bible,” 62-63.
21. Stasson, Bushnell, Katherine C.