Is Christianity the source of our belief in gender equality? Alex O'Connor absolutely does not think so.
SPEAKER_01There is absolutely no way that you can look at the Bible or the history of the church and think that there is I think even an embryo, the idea of something like our modern conception of gender equality that's indebted to a feminist movement. So people people of Tom Holland's Ilk like to say that the feminist movement is essentially Christian in origin, and I think that the justifications for such a view is is essentially roundabout.
SPEAKER_00Hi, I'm Glenn from Speak Life. We like to see all things through the lens of Jesus. This is my dialogue with Alex O'Connor, which Alex has just put out on his channel. Earlier it came out on Justin Briley's channel. We talked for two and a half hours about whether Christianity is the source of our values in the modern West. We discussed Tom Holland and his book Dominion, and we get onto the subject of gender equality. Let's hear Alex keep going here.
SPEAKER_01So why don't we focus in? Most people today, when you ask them, do you think that men and women are equal? They don't just say they both have equal worth in the sense that neither should be killed. They don't just say that they have equal worth and that, you know, if you have a child, you can you shouldn't, you know, abort one just because it's a woman. They say that there's a sort of equal societal standing of men and women. And I'm wondering if you can identify where in the Christian tradition that comes from.
SPEAKER_00What they want to also say is difference, right? And and the cultural wars that are tearing us apart. How do we affirm both the difference of male and female and their ontological equality? It depends what you consider to be like the Western the Western position on the equality of women. Trevor Burrus, And it depends what you consider to be the feminist movement, because there's not just one feminist movement. Like, are we on wave five? Which wave are we on? And it just goes to show that actually difference and equality is really difficult. And it's not as though the year 2025 is the the utopian the We're at the Platonic ideal of how to relate equality and difference. And in fact, things are going back and forth with Supreme Court ruling. But you understand what I'm driving at, right? Like in a second, we're going to see how Tom Holland actually answers this question and answers it beautifully. But my first response to Alex is to talk about difference and equality, because what do we even mean by equal? And an equality that means interchangeability is not really an equality that is worth a name. My first instinct was to raise that issue, but Alex presses on.
SPEAKER_01Like famously, Paul, who is the most important early Christian writer to the extent that his letters, and some letters that were probably not written by him but claim to be written by him as well, found their way into the scriptural canon and explicitly tell us things like women should remain silent in churches. If they've got a question, they should go home and ask their husbands, for it's a disgrace, a disgrace for a woman to speak in church. That's right.
SPEAKER_00And then earlier in chapter 11. Talking about prophesying. Or, but you know, perhaps the word gune, which means wife and woman, is is that's what he's saying. That's what's he saying? That there was a problem within Corinth. Worship services were an utter zoo. Um you have people speaking in tongues, you have people getting drunk at communion, and were there wives speaking over their husbands as they were preaching, right? And he's like, well, sort that out at home. Okay. I think that that is the sort of interpretation of 1 Corinthians 14 that actually makes sense of 1 Corinthians 11.
SPEAKER_01Um I disagree with that, of course, I disagree with that. I think the interpretation that makes sense is that Paul didn't write that verse and it found its way into the scriptural canon as a mistake because somebody had read 1 Timothy 2, 11 onwards and was making a note in the margin and it found its way into the text. It's the only it's the only part of Paul's letters which move around in early manuscripts. It's really interesting. There's a lot of really good scholarship on why that wasn't actually written by Paul. Interestingly, I, as a skeptic of of the biblical tradition, am able to absolve Paul and say Paul was not a sexist because he didn't write those words, whereas the Christian has to own them. It's in there. It's part of the scriptural canon, right? It doesn't just say and and by the way, you could say, right, this was, you know, like Timothy was written to like a church in Ephesus, and you had like the cult of Artemis, and yeah, there were women who were taking authority that wasn't rightfully like maybe, but we don't have that. We've inherited a scriptural tradition which has quite clearly been interpreted throughout history as saying that women, for a start, certainly can't hold church office. Now the Protestants changed their mind about that, but I don't know how they square that with what's in the scripture. What I'm saying is that, like, you don't think that the inequality between men and women might have been somehow bolstered by these kinds of biblical injunctions.
SPEAKER_00Now, Alex has a vision of male-female equality that somehow Christianity comes along and worsens, makes more unequal the gender relations. He actually seems to think that Christianity worsens gender relations or somehow exacerbates inequality. Let's listen to that sentence again.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell You don't think that the inequality between men and women might have been somehow bolstered by these kinds of biblical injunctions.
SPEAKER_00You might think that's just nitpicking. It probably is just nitpicking, but I do think we're quite ahistorical in the way that we look back at the past and imagine some kind of secular liberal utopia, and then Christianity came along and spoiled a secular liberal egalitarian utopia. In a second, we're going to have a look at what Tom Holland says using the Apostle Paul and the revolutionary sense that the Apostle Paul brought to the ancient world. And Christianity came into a world that was not a secular liberal egalitarian utopia. It came into a brutal world and gave all of us the kinds of sensibilities that both myself and Alex share now. And as we'll see, Tom Holland puts it so much better, and we'll we'll see Tom Holland putting it there. But here's me in the moment saying what I say. You don't think that the the reason why we are so interested in gender equality in the West has anything to do with Christianity.
SPEAKER_01Depends what you mean by anything to do with Christianity. Because no, because I think that when you look at the history of rights, you're not looking at a blossoming of Christian tradition. I think what you're looking at is people beginning to assert their own self-interest.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Ross Powell Having spoken more generally about rights, I then ask this question. If the gender equality concerns of 2025 are important to you, in which culture or civilization would you rather live? One that has a Christian tradition behind it or one that has not? Well, it depends. I mean, what other kind of traditions are you talking about? Well, there's Islam around the world. I wouldn't want to live there. I wouldn't want to live there, says Alex. Okay. So it's very important that we compare a Christianized civilization to other civilizations and not just to some kind of idealized utopian secular liberal values that we might dream up in the year 2026. The Christianized history that we have should be compared to other places in the first century, other places in the 10th century. If Christianity has done a poor job, poor compared to what? Compared to Islam? No, he seems to prefer Christianity to Islam. Okay, let's keep going. I think I wouldn't mind living in a Buddhist uh tradition, for example. In in terms of gender equality, in terms of rights speak and so on.
SPEAKER_01Well, there's not the same kind of right speak in the world. It's not, exactly.
SPEAKER_00And that's really the thesis. But do you do you that is really the thesis? That is the whole thesis. Like, um, we have been so profoundly Christianized that the values that we take for granted have been given to us by the Jesus Revolution, and that's been a warts and all experience down through the years, because the church has gotten many, many things wrong. But if the question of this debate was, is Christianity the source of our moral values in the West, then admitting that there are other sources, other tributaries into this river, but I think predominantly it has been a Christian flow that has gotten us to where we are. Now that's a hard thesis to swallow if you are presupposing that the church are the bad guys and the enlightenment is the savior riding in on a white horse. But I do think that Alex has that kind of view of history, that the the Enlightenment comes to give us what we truly prize in modern Western values. And so Alex says this.
SPEAKER_01Do you think, for example, that the feminist movement, you know, women having the right to vote, representation in power, even being allowed to run for office as well in the first place? Do you think that that would have happened, would have gotten off the ground, if women themselves hadn't just tried to assert it with themselves?
SPEAKER_00Aaron Ross Powell Running for office, well, I mean, you first have to have parliaments and you first have to have a democratic movement. You first have to conceive of politics the way that the West has conceived of politics to even consider the question of female suffrage. And again, the questions that we're asking around all these kinds of issues are profoundly Christianized kind of questions. But Alex continues.
SPEAKER_01Do you think, in other words, if they'd have done what the Bible tells them to do and to essentially stay silent and ask their husbands at home, instead of coming out and saying, you know, we've got something that we want and we're going to throw ourselves under horses until we get it. So female suffrage. So female suffrage. Do you think that men on their own, that that like Christian men of of the Enlightenment era era would have just sat around and gone, you know what? You know, it's been hundreds and hundreds of years that we've been Christian, and I think I think, and there's all these verses that we've been writing, but I think we've been getting it wrong, and I think we should we should we should give women the right to vote. Do you think they would have just done that on their own because of the enhanced Christianity?
SPEAKER_00Well, here I launch into a a number of different verses from the New Testament that were very surprising in a first-century kind of setting and that set a trajectory for the ways that men and women were to relate in the church and on down into culture. But I don't do anywhere near as good a job as Tom Holland does in a minute, because what Tom Holland does is set these scriptures and set the Christian movement in the context of the culture that Christianity was confronting. And Alex and I are in a rapid fire kind of conversation and me rattling off a few different verses. I mean, I think these verses are really important, but I don't find me rattling off these verses particularly persuasive in the way that Tom Holland's storytelling was persuasive. We'll see that in a second. But here, here's Glenn having a go anyway.
SPEAKER_01Listen, what I mean just read through the book without the protests of women.
SPEAKER_00Read through the book of Acts, and you you will see Philip's got his four daughters who are all evangelists. You have Priscilla and Aquila, she's she is named first in this house church. She is correcting Barnabas when he's going off on one. He he gets the end of the book of Romans, and Romans chapter 16 is just talking about all his co-workers and the there's there's women everywhere. There's there's Junior who is outstanding among the the apostles, there's Phoebe the deacon. Um this is extraordinary. And and so taking taking that trajectory and moving it forwards, um I I I think the most obvious explanation for why universal suffrage has had a Western intellectual genealogy is surely Christianity. I still think that's true. The most obvious explanation for why universal suffrage has a Western tradition to it is surely Christianity. But Alex says this.
SPEAKER_01But you like, as in, do you think those were the conversations that men of their own accord were having? Like, absent the protests of women who were getting fed up with their material conditions. You think that men were just sitting around having these conversations, going, you know, you know, Junior and Phoebe were really important, and you know, Paul seems to say that she's an apostle, and so maybe we should give women the right to it. You think that that would have just happened without the assertion that people like I think that's Oh, but I I I think that's fine.
SPEAKER_00Without that, you think that it would have happened?
SPEAKER_01Do you think that it would have been successful? I think if you look at the history of rights.
SPEAKER_00What do you mean? Well, you you seem to think that I would have a problem with suffrage coming because there was there were women agitating for the vote. I don't have a problem with that.
SPEAKER_01And I don't I don't see how they were doing so because they were sort of going to church and learning that they should emancipate themselves from the pulpit. Well rather than just being a bit fed up with the material conditions that they found themselves in. Oh, I think it's a bot. I mean so for so for example, the only the only one.
SPEAKER_00Let Glenn just all women everywhere might be fed up with patriarchal societies. Um who has overturned patriarchy more than Western societies? If it's important to you to overturn patriarchy, well, which societies have overturned patriarchy? Which? It it seems to me that the default position is when we look back at our our Christianized history, um when we when we look at other cultures and notice that they have not had those same developments, um you might imagine that there is some alternative history that could have got us to where we we got to. But that seems to me an implausible story, and that seems to me an untestable story. Yeah, that's been my takeaway from this conversation that I had with Alex. I I think the counterfactual history that people want to say about, well, without Christianity, we would have gotten to this position, that position, the other position, that is the untestable position. That is the utterly implausible position. To imagine that you can tell a story about how we would have gotten to gender equality in the year 2026, without Christianity, it's just that is the untestable position. And I recognize that in the mythology of the Christian versus atheist universe, in the mythology of how Christians and atheists are meant to interact, I understand that the Christian is meant to play the part of the person forwarding a very implausible, untestable proposition, while the skeptical atheist says, nah-uh, don't think so. In this conversation, it is entirely the other way around, if you ask me. I think that Alex and all those who think we would have gotten to hear without Christian history, they are forwarding an entirely implausible and untestable story. And it seems to me that the default hypothesis is simply that in the year of our Lord 2026, it has been Christianity that has been the predominant force that has shaped our moral sensibilities. With a whole bunch of non-Christian and anti-Christian and post-Christian thinking thrown in as well. But even the ways that we have processed those tributaries into the Christian river, even the ways we've processed those other contributions to our moral intuitions, has been through some pretty Christian-ish lenses. And imagining that we would have gotten to secular modern liberal values. Without 20 centuries of Christianization behind us, that is the implausible story. That is the untestable story. Anyway, in a second, we'll get to Tom Hollands and Tom Holland saying what I should have said in this conversation. But for now, I just want to go to the last little bit that I talk about gender equality and the ways in which Christianization really did shape our sensibilities. We end up in 1 Corinthians chapter 7, and after a conversation about mutual consent there, I say this about how that very chapter and Matthew 19 has utterly shaped the moral sensibilities of the West. I think the rest of that chapter is the marriage and family program that has absolutely changed our moral sensibilities. And so, you know, you've got Joseph Hendrick writing the The Weirdest People in the Worlds saying that it's it's precisely that chapter, and together with Matthew 19, is the Christian sexual revolution that has completely upended our ideas of the human person and of the individual and of equality. And I don't think you get feminism of the kind of variety that we get without this intellectual genealogy. So it's it's it's it's a good I think they would have done it anyway. We I think those women would have They would have done that anyway. See, that's the untestable hypothesis, right? That is that is to say, we've had we've had history A behind us. I'm going to tell another story, however unlikely that that story is. And I think we would have gotten to here anyway via that other route. We haven't got to that other route.
SPEAKER_01So I just think it's that unlikely. And maybe I'm wrong, and maybe it's unfalsifiable or unprovable, but maybe that is just the nature of history.
SPEAKER_00Yes, we have great agreement on that. That is the nature of history. We do not have a whole bunch of different possible histories behind us. We only have the past that has led to where we are. And in the year of our Lord 2026, that past has been a profoundly Christianized past. And Alex, as an ethical emotivist, has derived the emotions that he feels about gender equality largely from some Christian-ish kind of sources. And imagining that there is a grounding for gender equality outside of that story and existing somewhere else in the ether, and that history might not have taken a Christian bath, but might have found its way somehow towards the kind of gender equality that Alex O'Connor prizes in the Year of Our Lord 2026. That is absurd. That is utterly implausible, it's completely untestable. I don't think it fits with Alex's ethical emotivism at all. As though gender equality of the kind that modern Western liberals prize is hanging in the ether, waiting to be discovered, like it's the law of gravity, and we just need an Isaac Newton. And if Isaac Newton didn't, then Jenny O'Brien would do it instead. Are the moral ethical concerns of modern Western liberals in the year 2026, are they of the same kind as gravity? Are they really so objective that no matter what religious background you've got, you cannot but arrive at that kind of ethical ideal? I I I don't get the impression that that's Alex's moral outlook. And I don't think he believes in these kind of ethical inevitabilities that hang in the ether and wait for us to discover them, whether it's by Christianity or some other route. But anyway, that's what I said during this debate about gender equality, and it was a fruitful discussion, I hope you think so. But you know what I should have said? I should have said what Tom Holland says in this panel conversation about Christianity and its impact on the ancient world. If you don't think that our modern sensibilities about gender relations are not indebted to Christianity at a profound level, just listen to Tom Holland.
SPEAKER_02And I also think the understanding of of sex and gender is is very, very uh distinctive, again, in a way that we tend not to see in the West. Because the idea that um that the the the the ideal form of a human relationship is a man and a woman uh living in a lifelong monogamous relationship, which has been the basis for um relations between the sexes uh you know throughout Christian history. I mean this is a very odd way of organizing your life. Um so there were Muslims in the early Middle Ages looking at at how Christians lived their lives. You know, the form of marriage practiced by Christians who who said this is insane, it's impossible. How could anyone do this? Um and likewise Jews adopt it because in in Europe because they are they're they're picking it up from the Christian model. You're referring to Ephesians five, uh I suppose. Yeah. But but it's but I think it's specifically it's Paul's idea that you know it's it's better to marry than to burn.
SPEAKER_00Ephesians five by Paul, and then Tom's gonna mention one Corinthians seven by Paul. If you've if if you can't live without sex, then you need to have marriage.
SPEAKER_02Um and the model that he sees is Christ's relationship to the church. So the man is Christ and the church is the woman. Um and that obviously imposes uh enormous demands on men and women within a marriage. You know, if you're you know, he's writing to Roman house householders, to male Roman householders who are absolutely in the habit of uh using their dependents any way that they like sexually. And he's writing to them and saying, Well, you can't do that because you're Christ. And Christ doesn't go around, you know, raping the scullery maid or the page boy. Um and the demands that this imposes on Christians by the standards of the classical past is very, very intense. And in the long run, um this idea that the relationship of a man and a woman should properly um resemble the relationship of Christ in the church also serves to break the power of clans, which again have have basically been uh uh uh taken for granted in all pretty much every human culture. The idea that that a family isn't to be defined as a man and a woman and their children, but the the far kind of broader community of cousins and uncles and so on, and that a clan leader has the right to say who in his clan should marry who, you know, you keep it in the family. Um this is something that that the Roman church in in the Middle Ages is incredibly hostile to. It defines it comes to define incest as being within kind of seven degrees. Um and uh the reason for that is basically that if if if the relationship of a man and a woman is but that between Christ and the church, then it's up to the man and the woman to choose each other. So, in a sense, the cr i it it it's Paul's teachings that give birth to the ideal of romantic love, the idea that a man and a woman should choose to live with one another rather than having their relationship chosen for them by a kind of clan leader. Would you put this in contrast with how a woman was viewed in the Roman society? Well, it it it's not specific so for us, but because of Christianity, I mean I think every society has had an idea of binaries that you know the the the the i in i in in sex there are there are kind of you know there are Two roles that people have to play to have sex. And for us, it's based on gender, it's based on the idea of there being men and women, and that's again an inheritance ultimately from Genesis, God creating men and women separate. But for the Romans, that wasn't the case. For the Romans, the binary was between the male Roman citizen and everybody else. And the male Roman citizen could do what he liked to everybody else. I mean, you know, so so so people within his family, his his wife and his children, if if you attack them, that was an offence. That was uh what what the Romans called stuprum. Um, it was a a terrible sexual offence, it was criminal. But everyone else, you could do what you like with. So, you know, you're a Roman slave owner, you can do what you like to your slaves sexually. Any it doesn't matter what the what the gender of the slave is, it doesn't matter what the age is, you can just treat them as you want. And of course, Christianity radically, radically changes that. And and you know, and if you are, say, um, a scullery maid in a Roman household, a bit like a Yazidi girl in an in an ISIS household, there's nothing to stop you being raped every day. Nothing to stop you. No legal power, I mean no no sense of moral disapproval at all. Um and so you can imagine the radical effect of of getting a letter from Paul and being told you are like a you know, you are the like the church.
SPEAKER_00It's it it's utterly transformative. So you've got two radically different visions of what Paul has done to the world. In one vision, Paul has come into a society and exacerbated gender inequality. But the question is, what are we assuming about gender relations that Paul is speaking into? I think Tom Holland gives us the historical context. The assumed supremacy of the Roman elite male to give vent to his libido in whatever way he so chooses. That is the context into which Paul and the teaching of Jesus in Matthew 19 grabs hold of men and restrains rampant sexual violence. It ties men to their women and to their children in lifelong monogamy, and it turns marriage from a clan-based thing to a proclamation of Christ and the church. It's the most exalted vision for marriage, and from it, over the centuries, of course you get men and women starting to think about one another in profoundly different ways to non-Christian cultures. Now, I understand Alex's suspicion of there being true moral progress in which the powerful restrain their privileges for the sake of those who do not have such privileges. I too am very suspicious of anyone who claims to be so other centered. But the Christian marriage and family program is precisely the restraint of rampant male sexuality. So that for Jesus and Paul and for the early church, the man was to be as restrained and restricted in his sexual expression as women had always been expected to be. Gender equality goes right back to the first sexual revolution, the sexual revolution of Jesus back in the first century. It discipled men and women within Christendom century after century after century after century. If you're looking for a cause for why gender equality became important in the West, the washing machine might be one answer to that question. I think we need to go a lot further back and a lot higher up to a vision for sex and marriage that is as glorious as Christ and the church. And it's this vision that has shaped our sensibilities more than we know, perhaps. Well, I wonder what you think about all this. Do let us know in the comments. And uh, have you checked out 321? We always love giving a plug to 321. It's a way of immersing yourself in the Jesus story, immersing yourself in the great romance in which Christ the bridegroom gave himself for us the bride. It's the love story that has shaped the world. It's the love story that could shape your world if you give it a try. Go to 321course.com and check it out. Well, that will do for us on this video. If you've got this far, surely it deserves a like and a share around the place. And do subscribe so that we can catch you on the next video. God bless.