![]() It remains loyal to Willard’s “do everything” policy and advocates for the rights of women and the protection of home and family life around the globe. The WCTU was a founding member of the National Council for Women (1888), the International Council of Women (1893), and the United Nations Non-Governmental Organizations (1945). ![]() As president of the WCTU she adopted the motto “do everything” to summarize the mission of the WCTU: in addition to promoting individual abstinence from alcohol and prohibition laws, under her leadership, the organization embraced a wide-ranging policy agenda including dress reform, married women’s property laws, labor issues, and suffrage. Like others within the Holiness Movement ( A Brand Plucked from the Fire) she saw personal purity as the prerequisite to the cultural and spiritual sanctification that would mark the “new heavens and the new earth” spoken of in the Bible. ![]() A Methodist in the pietistic tradition, Willard believed true believers were marked by the purity of the lives in word and deed, not their performance of particular rites or adherence to specific creeds. ![]() Liberally educated and independently wealthy, Willard helped found the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in 1874 and served as its president from 1879 until her death. Frances Willard (1839–1898) never married instead, she devoted her life to teaching and promoting the rights of American women. ![]()
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