The Early Christ Movement Was a Feminist Movement
Before the bishops and emperors got their hands on it, the Jesus movement was turning the patriarchal world upside down.
Women at the Center From the Beginning
If you strip away centuries of institutional edits, the earliest strata of the Jesus story reads like a revolution in gender roles. Women weren’t just present — they were central.
Mary Magdalene is named in all four canonical Gospels as the first witness to the resurrection, commissioned by Jesus to “go and tell” the male disciples — a role of apostolic authority.
Junia (Romans 16:7) is praised by Paul as “outstanding among the apostles” — not as a helper, not as a deaconess, but as an apostle.
Phoebe (Romans 16:1–2) is named as a deacon and a benefactor, entrusted to deliver Paul’s letter to the Romans — which effectively made her the first commentator on it.
Priscilla (Acts 18) is a teacher of male apostles like Apollos, and her name is often listed before her husband Aquila — a literary hint that she was the primary leader.
And then there’s the economic and social power: Luke 8:1–3 names Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Susanna as wealthy patrons funding the movement. Early Christian gatherings often met in women’s homes — Lydia in Philippi (Acts 16:15), Nympha in Laodicea (Colossians 4:15), and others — making these women de facto leaders of their local churches.
Jesus’ Radical Inclusion
In a patriarchal culture where women’s voices were dismissed, Jesus treated women as full dialogue partners and spiritual equals:
He spoke publicly with women (John 4:7–26), breaking social taboos.
He defended women against male accusers (John 8:1–11).
He learned from women, like the Syrophoenician mother whose persistence expanded his mission beyond Israel (Mark 7:24–30).
He used women in his parables as images of God — the woman searching for a lost coin (Luke 15:8–10) stands alongside the shepherd searching for the lost sheep.
This wasn’t charity; it was strategy. Jesus was forming a community where the old purity codes and gender hierarchies were irrelevant. As Paul would later write in one of his genuine letters (Galatians 3:28):
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
How the Canon Was Weaponized Against Women
The shift from radical inclusion to patriarchal control didn’t come from within the original Jesus movement. It came from an emergent proto-Orthodox faction — likely a separate group from the earliest communities and, according to many scholars, a minority in the first centuries.
Over time, this faction consolidated authority and defined itself against more egalitarian Christianities, especially those in which women taught, led, and shaped theology. By the late first and early second century, leadership roles in proto-Orthodox circles were being restricted to men, and the written record was already shifting to justify it.
By the time Constantine convened the First Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, Christianity had taken a decisively establishment-friendly turn. Constantine invited only male bishops — whether this was a deliberate exclusion of women or simply a reflection of the proto-Orthodox leadership’s male-only structure, the result was the same. The council’s purpose was less about theological exploration and more about imperial consolidation: creating creeds to unite the religion under a single, state-approved orthodoxy.1
Yet even as the institutional church closed its ranks, women continued to lead on the margins. Between the 4th and 6th centuries, the Desert Mothers — ammas who lived ascetic lives, offered spiritual counsel, and led monastic communities — flourished in the wilderness. Many of their teachings were copied and preserved by later male monks, but often without attribution, erasing their voices from the historical record.2
The Erasure in Liturgy and Memory
It wasn’t just the selection of books. Liturgical memory was reshaped to downplay women’s roles:
Mary Magdalene’s role as “apostle to the apostles” became recast as that of a penitent prostitute — a smear with no biblical basis.
Stories where women act as primary witnesses (the crucifixion, burial, and resurrection) were minimized in public worship.
Non-canonical gospels, many of which preserve female authority — The Gospel of Mary, The Gospel of Philip, The Gospel of Thomas — were labeled heretical and destroyed.
This was not accidental. It was the theological equivalent of rewriting history to suit the victors — in this case, the male clerical hierarchy.
Restoring the Canon as It Should Be
If the canon was shaped to serve patriarchy, then part of reclaiming the early movement’s vision is reshaping how we read it. That doesn’t mean erasing the New Testament we have — it means reading it alongside the voices it tried to silence.
And here’s the hard truth: calls to simply “reinterpret” the Bible to be inclusive are doomed from the start. The Bible’s canon was constructed to exclude women. Trying to reinterpret it as a document of gender equality is like reinterpreting the Confederate flag to say it doesn’t represent slavery. You can’t read around the architecture of exclusion — you have to name it and look beyond it.
A model for this already exists: A New New Testament (ed. Hal Taussig) keeps the traditional 27 books but adds 10 early Christian texts that were cherished in communities — often led by women — before they were suppressed. This includes:
The Gospel of Mary — presenting Mary Magdalene as a visionary teacher whose authority rivals Peter’s.
The Gospel of Thomas — a collection of Jesus’ sayings that preserves a radical equality of seekers.
The Acts of Paul and Thecla — in which a woman apostle rejects marriage, baptizes herself, and teaches openly.
The Odes of Solomon — mystical hymns possibly authored or preserved in women’s communities.
Reading these texts alongside the canon exposes the editorial choices that tamed the Jesus movement into a state religion. It lets us see how diverse, experimental, and radically inclusive early Christianity actually was.
Restoring these voices is not about nostalgia. It’s about truth-telling. We can’t fully understand the gospel’s challenge to power unless we let the silenced witnesses speak again.
Why Calling It Feminist Matters
Some people bristle at the word “feminist” here because it’s modern. But the values are clear:
Women held authority and leadership in mixed-gender settings.
Economic and social power was shared.
The spiritual equality of women was not just acknowledged — it was lived.
The fact that later generations had to erase these realities proves how disruptive they were. A church that remembered Mary Magdalene as the first apostle and Junia as a leader could not keep women in the pews and men in the pulpits without facing questions.
Author
, in The Mary Magdalene Oracle, goes even further — describing the Christ movement in today’s language as a form of intersectional feminism.Through years of studying Mary’s gospel and practicing kenosis (self-emptying love), she came to see these earliest Christians as embodying a love that stands with all who face discrimination and violence, even when we ourselves are not the target. In her words, the ultimate aim of this transformation is to “be here for each other, to stand together, as a beloved community.
Seen through that lens, reclaiming the original vision of the Christ movement isn’t just about restoring women’s leadership. It’s about recovering a way of life in which love refuses to limit itself to one’s own group, identity, or comfort zone — a love that shows up, stands alongside, and never looks away.
Reclaiming the Original Vision
The work now is not to impose a modern agenda on an ancient faith, but to tell the truth about its origins. The earliest Jesus communities were far more inclusive than the institution that came after.
Recovering that memory changes everything:
It reframes Jesus’ ministry as a challenge to patriarchy, not an endorsement of it.
It exposes the Pastoral Epistles as later patriarchal edits, not the heart of the gospel.
It restores women like Mary Magdalene, Junia, Phoebe, and Priscilla to their rightful place as architects of the movement.
The early Christ movement was, in practice and in spirit, a feminist movement. And remembering that is not about nostalgia — it’s about reclaiming a future in which the church looks more like Jesus’ table and less like Caesar’s throne room.
Footnotes
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The older I get the more I realize how much of this information was not shared in my faith development or graduate school. The public ministry of Jesus could not have been what it was without the contributions of many women. In reading this post, I’m feeling more curious to read some of these texts which I never have before. A thoughtful read in this post, thank you!
Another great article! Btw, have you the theory that Hebrews may have been written by Priscilla? It's a minority opinion, but an important one.