April 27

Mary Wollstonecraft, Coretta Scott King, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the Tiananmen Square Demonstrations

Author

David Barnhart
April 27, 2025

Bluebird eggs. March 2025. Own photo.

Today in 1989, the largest protest occurred during the Tiananmen Square Demonstrations. In response to being called “anti-party” by the People’s Daily newspaper, even more students turned out in protest.

Today is also the birthday, in 1797, of Mary Wollstonecraft, a pioneering feminist, philosopher, and author. She risked much for both her outspoken writing and her friendships during the French Revolution, and inspired generations of feminists after her. 

Today is also the birthday of Coretta Scott King, in 1927. White supremacists bombed her home and the FBI tried to ruin her marriage. After her husband was assassinated, she continued civil rights and organizing work, including working for women’s rights and LGBTQ rights. 

Today marks the death, in 1882, of Ralph Waldo Emerson, transcendentalist and poet. 

Reflection: 

Mary Wollstonecraft described what today is often referred to as “the male gaze”:

Women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions which men think it manly to pay to their sex, when, in fact, men are insultingly supporting their own superiority.

Mary Wollstonecraft

…and a quote that is particularly relevant to our political and social climate today:

Men who are inferior to their fellow men, are always most anxious to establish their superiority over women.

Coretta Scott King wrote: 

I must remind you that starving a child is violence. Neglecting school children is violence. Punishing a mother and her family is violence. Discrimination against a working man is violence. Ghetto housing is violence. Ignoring medical need is violence. Contempt for poverty is violence.

At the Harvard Divinity School graduation address in 1838, Ralph Waldo Emerson denied the divinity of Jesus. This fact alone would have most Christians dismiss him as a “saint,” but I include him because I believe most Christians completely misunderstand Jesus’s divinity anyway. Emerson was highlighting the errors of hierarchical theology. When directly asked about his theology, he said, “I am more of a Quaker than anything else. I believe in the 'still, small voice', and that voice is Christ within us.” This attitude, more than intellectual assent to a particular doctrine of Christ’s uniqueness, is the mark of a Christ-follower and why I include him in my list of saints.  

Prayer: Voice of Silence, you are constantly summoning us to meet with you, and to hear you cry out for liberation for all your creatures. Make use eager to hear and respond. Amen.