“Women and the Spirits” by Jacques Ellul – English Translation
An article published by the CBE discussed a history of Jacques Ellul’s views on women and feminism; this remains the only source online available in English regarding this subject. Through some digging, I was able to acquire a French copy of one of the essays by Ellul cited in the article. and have taken to translating it into English. This article was published in the French Protestant weekly journal Reforme in November of 1950.
It is worth noting that Ellul’s views have evolved in the decades since, but the core themes of this essay can still be traced in his subsequent thought, albeit revised. The translation of this article should not be viewed as a personal statement on the contents, but a reflection of its historical value.
To be entirely transparent, I do not know French. I transcribed the article by hand and then ran it through DeepL for the bulk of the text. From there, I proofread it and made various corrections by hand where the translated output came out awkwardly. These corrections can be see in the footnotes, I had to take a guess with some of the words, it’s possible there exists some mistranslations. It’s possible some of this is sub-optimally translated, but if someone actually bilingual wants to put in the time to do a better job, be my guest.
The PDF containing the translated essay can be downloaded below.