passionate Christian, whose favourite phrase was "God and one woman make a majority". Although staunchly liberal, she felt constant tensions between her liberal and feminist philosophies. According to the feminist historian Barbara Caine, "Liberalism provided the framework for Butler's whole social and political approach. It was an integral part of her feminism", although it was in conflict with the liberal approach to sexuality and desire. Butler resolved the conflict through her religion. According to Walkowitz, Butler "pushed liberal feminism in new directions, developing theories and methods of political agitation that directly affected future campaigns for the emancipation of women". She developed new approaches to campaigning and moved the debate beyond discussions in middle-class houses to the public forum, bringing into the political debate women who had never been involved before. Butler's campaigning, says Walkowitz, "not only reshaped gender, class, and sexual subjectivities in late Victorian Britain but also informed national political history and state-building". Numerous historians consider the success of the campaign to repeal the Contagious Diseases Acts to be a milestone in the history of female emancipation. According to the political historian Margaret Hamilton, the campaign showed that "attitudes toward women were changing". The feminist scholar Sheila Jeffreys says that Butler is "one of the bravest and most imaginative feminists in history", while Fawcett wrote that she was "convinced that ... [Butler] should take the rank of the most distinguished Englishwoman of the nineteenth century". Her unnamed obituarist in The Daily News considered that Butler's name See also History of feminism List of suffragists and suffragettes Notes and references Notes References Sources External links Josephine Butler Memorial Trust Archival Material at Leeds University Library Anti-prostitution activists English feminists English suffragists Women of the Victorian era English non-fiction writers Anglican writers People from Wooler 1828 births 1906 deaths 19th-century English women writers 19th-century English writers 19th-century British writers Writers from Liverpool British reformers British social reformers Proponents of Christian feminism