Invisible Yet Powerful: The Influence of Women in the Rise of Christianity

The role of women in the church, particularly in leadership roles, has been debated for centuries. Seeking to establish church practice on tradition, many have looked to both the Bible and our Church Fathers for standards. Unfortunately, both the paucity and diversity of such information can cause no small amount of difficulty in ascertaining a uniform practice. There are so few writings about women that it would seem they were invisible and their influence, negligible. 

In her book, Daughters of the Church, Ruth Tucker quotes Agnes Cunningham on the difficulty faced by those who would seek some standard in the early church in reference to the role of women: The reason for this problem is not the failure of women to participate actively and extensively int eh ministry of the Church. On the contrary, even limited historical evidence witnesses to the fact that the ministry of women flourished during the first six hundred years of Christianity, Rather, serious investigation points increasingly to the evidence that no uniform practice or policy regarding the admission of women to ministry prevailed during the early Christian centuries.”(1)

The culture in which the early church was born was one in which even mentioning a woman’s name could sometimes be taken as an insult. Quiet dignity and self-effacement was valued as a virtue among women. It was also a strongly patriarchal and highly stratified culture in which women were seen as significantly less capable than men. This contributed to an apparent social invisibility of women in the church. 

Despite its androcentric culture, Marg Mowczko concludes that there were several contexts in the Greco-Roman world that afforded women leadership roles. These culturally accepted means of female leadership then spilled over into the church.(2) One such context was in the household. The public sphere may have been the domain of men, the the household was the domain of women. In Roman society, women enjoyed great freedom and authority in their own homes. Roman men absolved themselves of all responsibility within the household.  A 1st century Greco-Roman household could be of considerable size, consisting of family members, household servants,  and employees over which women were the primary managers. This experience of managing large household affairs established their leadership in other settings, such as house churches, the primary assembly of the church during the first several centuries. The apostle John, in his letter to the elect lady, implies that she, as the householder, was responsible for the welfare of the congregation that met in her or his home, and controlled who was and who wasn’t welcome in church meeting.(2 John 10)

According to Kate Cooper, property owners were central to the survival of Christianity. It was centuries before ordained offices took the form in which we know them in the modern world. She writes, “In the early years, relatively prosperous householders who could offer meeting spaces and other resources from their own private means were among the most important of the “elders” because of the assistance they could give to the group and to its individual members.”(3)

The elect lady is not the only female recognized as hosting a church in her home. The New Testament tells of Chloe, Mary, Nympha who hosted churches, as well as Lydia whose entire household was baptized.

The patronage system of Roman society also provided a means for women of prominence to have influence. In their book, A Woman’s Place, Carolyn Osiek & Margaret MacDonald, provide substantial description of patronage from historical writings. According to them, the essence of the patronage system was “a relationship between two individuals who were not social equals, in fact the relationship of one dominant person to groups of social inferiors has always been an aspect of this relationship…”(4).

Clients could receive various benefits, such as gifts of food, money, or land. They relied on their patron to build public facilities or meeting houses. In return, the patron was named in thankful inscriptions or had a statue erected in his or her honor, was seated in a place of honor at official gatherings of the group, was appointed to an official position (which may be honorary), and was generally hailed as a VIP.(5)

The same relationship existed in the church between wealthy women and itinerant teachers or ministers of the gospel. Paul expresses one such relationship with Phoebe(Romans 16:2) She is said to be a “prostatis” of many, including Paul himself. This is the Greek word for patron, benefactor. It has other nuances and meanings as is typical of the Greek language. Phoebe likely underwrote some of Paul’s journeys, provided economic assistance, possibly even lodging. According to Craig Keener, “A patron of a religious association was normally a well-to-do person who allowed members of a religious group to meet in his or her home. The patron was generally a prominent and honored member of the group and could exercise significant authority over it.”(6) Ignatuis writes of prominent women, Tavia and Alke, who must have provided patronage for him. There is some suspicion of a woman who sacrifice family ties to support him.(7)

Rodney Stark, a sociologist, writes of the role of women in his book, The Rise of Christianity. There are several factors that contribute to the role women played in, not only the preservation of the movement, but also its rise. One factor was the fertility/birth rate among Christians. Because their faith abhorred infanticide and abortion, Christian women were having children at a higher rate than their female counterparts in the Greco-Roman society.  Furthermore, female infants were desired rather than discarded, another common practice in the ancient world.

Another factor was the attractiveness of the gospel message to those on the fringes of society, or those who were suppressed or oppressed. by those in power. This would include the poor, the servant/slave populace, but also women, many of whom were from prominent wealthy families. “It is well known that the early church attracted an unusually high number of high-status women.”(8) The combination of birth rate and female conversions resulted in higher female/male sex ratios within the church.

“The very favorable sex ratio enjoyed by Christian women was soon translated into substantially more status and power, both within the family and within the religious subculture, than was enjoyed by pagan women.”(9) As wealthy householders, these women exercised authority in the home that was extended to the churches that met in their homes. Christians differed from both Jews and pagans of their day in this respect. “They welcomed women as patrons and even offered women roles in which they could act as collaborators.”(10) While it is true that pagan women enjoyed status within their respective religious settings, these religious groups were relatively peripheral to society, whereas the church, particularly the house-church, was the primary social structure of the Christian subculture.

Tucker also affirms this status of women in the early church, citing archaeological evidence of women who held ecclesiastical offices in the first centuries of the church. Evidences include two instances of women said to be diakonos(deacons), the use of the term prebystis in reference to women, a woman called what could be translated “Madame teacher.” The conclusion of the one who compiled this information was “these texts provide a continuity of evidence for women office-holders in the church.”(11)

Women were powerful influencers in the early centuries of the church, an influence that seemed to wane as time went on. When Christianity became the dominant faith of the empire and sex ratios equalized, the roles open to women became far more limited. Tucker recorded a similar pattern in her research, “that women often had significant leadership positions during the initial pioneering and developmental stages of a movement, only to be replaced by men as the movement became more ‘respectable.’”(12)

Women seem to be invisible in the history of the church but they were a powerful influence in both the preservation and rise of Christianity from obscurity to the dominant religious force in the Western world. As Osiek and MacDonald assert, “Social invisibility is conceptual; it exists in the minds of those who articulate the ideal and may bear no resemblance to what is really going on. The fact that women may not be addressed in public settings does not mean that they were not there.”(13) The evidence for women in the history of the church demonstrates that social invisibility is not actual invisibility.