Faith & Spirit Quote by Susan B. Anthony

Certainty about God is rarely just theology; it's a power move. Susan B. Anthony’s line targets a familiar American character type: the person who invokes divine instruction not as private consolation but as public permission slip. Her distrust isn’t aimed at faith so much as the rhetorical shortcut that lets someone skip debate, evidence, and empathy by claiming to speak for the Almighty.

The bite is in “to their fellows.” Anthony frames the issue horizontally, among equals, where moral authority should be accountable to other humans, not laundered through heaven. If you “know so much” about what God wants you to do to other people, you’re usually not describing humility or spiritual struggle; you’re describing enforcement. The sentence quietly links certainty with cruelty: the less room there is for doubt, the more room there is for coercion. It’s a warning about how moral certainty can become a kind of social weapon, especially against the vulnerable.

Context matters. Anthony spent her life fighting for women’s rights in a culture that routinely dressed male dominance in biblical language. Ministers and politicians could sanctify inequality with a verse and call it order. Her phrasing refuses the premise that divine intent is legible, tidy, and conveniently aligned with existing hierarchies. It’s also strategic: “I distrust” is personal and restrained, a skeptic’s posture rather than a heretic’s manifesto. That restraint makes the critique harder to dismiss. She’s not arguing with God; she’s arguing with the people who use God to stop arguments.