WHY CHRISTIANITY HAS BEEN GREAT FOR WOMEN
Have you seen the TV series The Handmaid’s Tale ? I haven’t, but I hear it portrays brutal treatment of women at the hands of a powerful Christian patriarchy. Fiction like this strikes a chord for some; theologian Daphne Hampson, for example, claims that Christianity is irretrievably sexist. This critique, which is not new, has increased to a vitriolic pitch since Roe v Wade was overturned. Some on the far left have done more than simply criticize; since the end of Roe, over 100 pro-life pregnancy centers have been vandalized or firebombed1.
In several recent sermons I’ve pushed back against the claim made by secularists that Christianity is an oppressive or regressive force in the world. Such criticism is dangerously ignorant of the historical record, as Sharon James proves in her excellent short book How Christianity Transformed the World.
James shows that Christianity was born in a world that was often nightmarish for women. In the Roman world, for example, there was no expectation that husbands would be faithful to their wives. Husbands were expected to cheat, yet could divorce or severely punish their wives for doing so. Moreover, prostitution of women and female sex slavery was an accepted practice throughout the known world. It was religiously sanctioned by fertility cults, thus many pagan temples operated open-air markets for paid sex. Says James, “Demands for chastity outside of marriage and fidelity within marriage were just as outrageous and countercultural in the first century as they are today.”
Girls suffered even more. The Roman law called patria potestas (“power of the father”) gave fathers absolute power over their children, which often meant girls were sold as child brides or aborted at birth. Theatre productions routinely celebrated incest and pedophilia, and though homosexual prostitution was also common, girls were exploited much more routinely.
The rise of Christianity changed all this. Jesus condemned male lust (Matthew 5:28) and restricted a husband’s right to divorce (Matthew 5:32). Paul insisted on a single standard of morality for men and women (1 Corinthians 7:1-6) and taught men to sacrifice for their wives (Ephesians 5:25). For the first time in world history, women were considered equal in value to men. The feminist critique fails to credit Christianity for this change.
Even today, as James notes, “The countries where women are held back, forbidden from education, married off as children, and subjected to systemic abuses such as honor killings and genital cutting are the countries where Christianity is disallowed.”
Throughout history it has been Christian missionaries who brought dignity to women. Ann Judson (1789-1826) instituted education for girls in Burma, just as Fedelia Fiske (1816-1864) did in Persia and William Carey (1761-1834) did in southern India. It was the influence of Christian missions that led to banning widow-burning in India and foot-binding in China. We should credit communism in Russia and China with significant gains for women in those countries in the 20th century, but without Christianity, those gains would have been unthinkable.
These examples only scratch the surface, of course. Too, it would be self-serving to ignore wrongs carried out by the Church in the past. Regarding those wrongs, we need to remember that there is such a thing as a false church, and one of its signs is the injustice against the people it is meant to serve.
But I hope that setting the historical record straight, even in general terms, increases your zeal for God’s kingdom – and for his main instrument, the Church.
1 From the Fox News website
