How Paganism Keeps Women Down & Christianity Lifts Them Up

I just recorded a 30-minute program with the TV show Dead Reckoning. It’s led by Brian Mattson and Jay Friesen, two sharp and gifted guys. We did not talk about wine, but we did talk about women. Specifically, we discussed how Christianity in ancient times dignified and enfranchised women. It was not the Christians, and the Bible, that subjugated women. It was the pagans.

New Testament scholar Bruce Winter, for example, notes that if a woman was found guilty of adultery, by Roman law she could be exiled to an island (See Romans Wives, Roman Widows, 42). If a husband caught his wife in the act of adultery, he could kill her, per the teaching of Cato. There is much about Greco-Roman thought I admire, a tremendous amount. But the notion that Christ (and Paul) kept women down and Caesar lifted them up is not true. The church has never been perfect in its treatment of women, but Jesus and the biblical authors ennobled women, not the other way around (see Galatians 3:27, for example).

Paganism, we should also note, is still accomplishing its dastardly ends. Neo- paganismof the American kind is leading men to prey on women without moral constraints. The Christian church grieves the bitter fruits of our sexualized culture. Contra the stereotypes, Jesus offers something so much better.

In this video, by the way, my mic was a little “hot.” My voice doesn’t have a distortion effect in real life, so you know, as cool as that might be. Beyond that, here’s a shorter clip from the show. It features my never-before-unveiled Billy Graham impersonation. Consider this a Christmas gift from me to you.