Was Jesus a feminist? That’s a hard question to answer because feminism means different things to different people.
Consider the word evangelical. An evangelical used to be a Christian who believed a certain set of biblical or theological truths. But surveys show that now some people call themselves evangelical who rarely even attend church. For them, the word evangelical has more of a political meaning. There are even Hindus and people of other faiths who call themselves evangelical.
If someone asked me if I’m an evangelical, I’d say, “Well, you define the term and then I’ll tell you if I’m one or not.” I’m not afraid to tell you what I believe, but I don’t want to be misunderstood.
So, was Jesus a feminist?
If you define feminism as the advocacy of women’s rights based on the equality of the sexes, then yes, Jesus was a feminist.
Now, maybe calling Jesus a feminist strikes you as odd because you’ve heard that Christianity oppresses or controls women, or that Christians generally think less of women than men.
But that doesn’t square with the Bible or church history.
No person has been better for women than Jesus, and no religion has been better for women than Christianity. It’s undeniable that women are treated better, have more opportunities, more rights, and more freedom in countries with Christian roots. That’s not a coincidence.
Christianity has always elevated the status of women.
In the ancient world there were no feminists. If you asserted that women were equal to men, you would’ve received looks of confusion and disbelief. They would’ve asked you on what basis did you make that claim.
Women were believed to be inferior in every way. The ancient Greeks observed that women were, on average, physically weaker than men, and concluded that they were mentally and emotionally weaker, too. Plato said men were created by the gods and that cowardly and unjust men would come back in the next life as women. Plato’s disciple Aristotle was even worse. He claimed women were deformed males. Women were irrational, weak, passive, incapable of abstract reasoning and, therefore, bound to the domestic sphere.
At the heart of Christianity is the countercultural belief that every human being, regardless of sex or nationality or religion or race or ability or age, is of inestimable worth because they are created in the image of God.
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
Genesis 1:26-27
God created men and women in his image and gave them the responsibility to govern the world under his authority.
It wasn’t just Greeks who devalued women. In this excerpt from a letter written by a Roman soldier, it’s clear that the Romans didn’t value women either.
“I am asking you and begging you to take care of the little child and when we are paid, I will send it to you right away. If you happen to be pregnant again, if it is a boy, leave it; if it is a girl, throw it out.”
This explains the gender imbalance in the Roman Empire. It’s not unlike the one experienced in China today.
The idea that every woman had rights or was the equal of a man would’ve been laughable in Greco-Roman society. It was a male dominated world that believed that might makes right. The strong survived at the expense of the vulnerable.
Into this world steps a man named Jesus and he changes everything. Jesus once asked a powerful religious man, “Do you see this woman?” (Luke 7:44)
This man had been around the woman Jesus asked him about. He had talked about the woman and judged and condemned her… but he hadn’t seen her. He hadn’t seen her as a person created in the image of God and worthy of dignity and respect. He hadn’t seen her as someone of equal value to himself. He hadn’t seen her as someone with skills, talents, intellect, and the calling to use them.
He hadn’t seen her the way Jesus saw her.
Jesus launched a movement that revolutionized how society thinks about and treats women. It started with Jesus treating every woman he encountered with dignity and respect and insisting that his followers do the same.
Was Jesus a feminist?
I don’t know how you could read the Gospels and come to any other conclusion than that he believed in the equality of the sexes.
Scholars estimate that, in the first few centuries, women comprised two-thirds of the Church. Read the earliest Christian sources and you’ll find women being persecuted by the Roman government, hosting churches in their homes, caring for the poor and the imprisoned, and traveling as missionaries.
It’s not just church history. Today, women make up over half of churchgoers worldwide.
Why do women still flock to Christianity?
Jesus.
Jesus sees them, respects them, and empowers them.
Here are some lessons we can learn from how Jesus saw and related to women:
Listen to Keith's full sermon, Was Jesus a Feminist, on Luke 8:1-3 and hear more about how Jesus treated women with dignity and respect.