Stories of women in early Christianity, Part One

If the leading voices of our post-Christian culture are to be believed, Christianity is an outmoded belief system that treats women as second-class citizens. The church was created, they claim, by patriarchal men who twisted Jesus’ teachings, and it has been maintained ever since by men of a similar stripe. While Jesus welcomed and respected women, these men have built a system that oppresses and drives them away.

Admittedly, one doesn’t have to look far for evidence that gives strength to such criticisms. Disrespect and abuse directed at women persists in some corners of the contemporary church. Expressions of misogyny can be found within the writings of prominent churchmen, past and present.

But in the words of Jesus, it was not so from the beginning. God created both men and women equally in his image, and Jesus drove home this truth through his words and actions. The Gospels are filled with stories of women who played vital roles in Jesus’ mission, a pattern that continued in the book of Acts and beyond. Women, including many from socially prominent backgrounds, flocked to Christianity in droves, to the point that they made up about two-thirds of the church in its first few centuries. This article, the first of two, examines some of their stories. The second article is available here.

Lydia of Thyatira

According to Luke, who wrote the book of Acts, prominent wealthy women played a vital role in support of the Gospel as it spread from Judea into the Greco-Roman world. By all accounts, few of these women were as wealthy or prominent as Lydia, the first Christian convert in what is now Europe.

Originally from Thyatira in Asia Minor (modern Turkey), Lydia was an agent of the lucrative dye and fabric industry based in that city. Thyatiran purple was renowned throughout the empire and reserved for emperors and other high-ranking officials. Accordingly, Lydia ran her business from Philippi in Macedonia (modern northern Greece), a Roman colony for retired politicians and military leaders. She moved among and did business with the rich and powerful of Rome. If there had been a Forbes index of top female CEOs in the empire, Lydia would’ve ranked high on the list.

Like the Roman centurion Cornelius before her, Lydia was a gentile attracted to the God of Israel. Once she was converted to faith in Jesus, she placed her home and considerable resources at the disposal of Paul and his ministry team, even after they had been imprisoned and released. In doing so, she provided a bridgehead for the apostle’s mission as it moved down into Greece and eventually across Europe.

Damaris at the Areopagus

After taking his leave of Lydia, Paul travelled to Athens, where he was brought before the Areopagus to present his teaching in a formal academic setting. The Areopagus was a court where intellectuals and other cultural elites would meet to critique new ideas.

As a result of Paul’s speech, several people at the meeting came to faith, including Damaris, a woman notable enough for Luke to mention by name without offering further details. Her name suggests a connection to an old ruling house from Sparta. Her presence at the Areopagus is a mystery because women weren’t typically allowed. The main exception was for hetaerae, well-educated courtesans who provided company and intellectual conversation for prominent men. Damaris may well have been such a hetaera before her conversion. She may also have been a philosopher of the Epicurean or Stoic school, both of which allowed women among their membership.

In any event, just as Lydia moved in the lofty circles of Roman commerce and industry, Damaris held her own in the rarefied air of Greek academia and high culture. These two women, leading lights of Greco-Roman society, would have been able to speak truth and minister in avenues that were off limits to most believers of their time.

Priscilla, of “Priscilla and Aquila”

Compared to Damaris or Lydia, Priscilla occupied a relatively modest niche in 1st-century Roman society. Together with her husband, Aquila, she ran a small business in Corinth making tents. In modern terms, Priscilla and Aquila were artisans or tradespeople. They were also a cross-cultural couple; unlike her husband, Priscilla likely wasn’t Jewish but a Roman woman from an upper-class family, judging by her name. After meeting and working with Paul, the well-travelled duo became valued members of the apostle’s missionary team.

Unusual for the time, Priscilla and Aquila are always mentioned together, suggesting they were equal partners in life, business and ministry. Even more unusual, Priscilla is almost always named first, indicating hers was perhaps the higher-profile role within the church.

In Ephesus, the couple met an educated Alexandrian Jew named Apollos, who taught accurately about Jesus, but with an incomplete understanding of baptism. Priscilla and Aquila then took Apollos aside and explained the Gospel to him more fully. It’s hard to imagine this scene with Priscilla standing off to the side while the men chatted. Given the description, it’s evident she took an active role in training Apollos, preparing him to be a powerful advocate for the Gospel in Ephesus, Achaia and beyond.

Phoebe the deaconess

At the end of his letter to the Romans, Paul attached a lengthy list of personal greetings, about a third of which are addressed to women whom Paul valued as friends and partners in Gospel ministry. Before the greetings, however, Paul first commended a woman named Phoebe to the Roman church, asking them to welcome her with honour and assist her in whatever she may require.

Paul used a pair of Greek words that express his high regard for Phoebe to the Roman church. The first, diakonos, is the root of the English word, deacon, although many English translations merely render it as “servant” in Phoebe’s case. The second word, prostatis, means patron or sponsor, but is once again softened to “helper” in many English versions of the Bible. Nevertheless, several early church fathers as well as modern biblical scholars have argued that Phoebe’s role was more significant than these tame translations would suggest.

Phoebe was a deaconess of the church in Cenchreae, a port east of Corinth on the Saronic Gulf of the Aegean Sea. She was also a woman of high social standing and financial means who supported Paul as Lydia had done, and as Mary Magdalene and her friends had done for Jesus. Paul had entrusted her with delivering the original copy of his longest and most theologically rich letter across the Mediterranean to the church at Rome. Once there, she read it publicly to the church, explaining its nuances, then paying to make copies by hand that would be distributed to churches in the region and beyond. As such, it would be hard to overstate Phoebe’s vital role in the formation of the New Testament Scriptures.

Thecla the protomartyr

With the story of Thecla, we step for the first time beyond the New Testament and into the world of the post-apostolic church. The account of her life is recorded in The Acts of Paul and Thecla, an apocryphal work written in the 3rd century. Thecla was a noble Egyptian woman living in Iconium (present-day Turkey) who was converted upon hearing the apostle Paul preach. She was then inspired to leave her life of privilege for one of asceticism, devoting herself to teaching and healing.

The account contains many fantastical elements concerning miracles, persecutions, near-death escapes and travel adventures with the apostle. Although some scholars dismiss the story as entirely fictional, others believe it contains a core of truth that was later embellished in the apocryphal work. Early church fathers also thought Thecla to be a historical person, describing her teaching centre and hospital located at Seleucia in southern Turkey. Excavated in 1908, this was a massive complex that had been in active use for at least 1,000 years, well into the medieval period.

Thecla is a shadowy figure who straddles the line between history and legend, between the apostolic and post-apostolic eras. Like Lydia, she came from wealth, and like Damaris, she was highly educated. Unlike those women, she chose a life of harsh asceticism not taught in Scripture but embraced by the early church. Nevertheless, her devotion to teaching and healing amidst suffering for her faith made her the template – the protomartyr – for women (and men) over the first five centuries of Christianity.

Perpetua and Felicitas

Vibia Perpetua was a Roman noblewoman from Carthage in North Africa (modern-day Tunisia) born around AD 181. She was from a prosperous pagan family but came to faith in Christ along with her slave girl, Felicitas, at a time when converting to Christianity or Judaism was illegal. Both women, along with some friends, were arrested and imprisoned; Perpetua had just given birth to a baby boy and Felicitas was eight months pregnant.

As young mothers, Perpetua and Felicitas endured brutal treatment and hellish conditions in prison. Perpetua’s father pleaded with her to renounce her faith, but she refused. The church in Carthage paid the warden to give the women slightly better quarters, so Perpetua could see and nurse her baby. When Felicitas gave birth to her daughter, the guards taunted her, but she told them Christ was with her in her pains. The two women, both about 22 years old, were taken to the arena, tortured and executed around AD 203 to celebrate the birthday of the Roman emperor Septimius Severus.

The account has survived thanks to Perpetua, who kept a diary while in prison awaiting execution. She provided details about her sufferings, especially as a nursing mother deprived of her child, and about dreams and visions she had that encouraged her faith. Before her martyrdom, she gave her diary to a friend who finished it with an eyewitness account of her death. Known as The Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicitas, it is the earliest biography of specific women in the church outside the New Testament, and the earliest surviving literary work written by a Christian woman.

The second article in the series moves beyond the post-apostolic era and explores the stories of women who made significant contributions to church history in the centuries that followed.

Sources and further reading

Lynn H. Cohick and Amy Brown Hughes, Christian Women in the Patristic World: Their Influence, Authority, and Legacy in the Second through Fifth Centuries, Baker Academic, 2017.

Karen Engle, “20 Christian women who shaped church history,” Logos, March 16, 2023.

Jessica C. Hughes, “The forgotten disciples: The faithful witness of women in Early Christianity,” Eleutheria, Volume 5 Issue 1, May 2021.

Catherine Kroeger, “The neglected history of women in the Early Church,” Christian History, Volume 7 Number 1, Issue 17, 1988.

Michael J. Kruger, “How Early Christianity was mocked for welcoming women,” Canon Fodder, July 13, 2020.

Joshua J. Mark, “Ten should-be famous women of Early Christianity,” World History Encyclopedia, March 28, 2023.

Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries, HarperOne, 1997.