I am reading now
the brilliant The
Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World's Largest
Religion written by the sociologist Rodney Stark, one of the most active
proponents of the Rational Choice Theory in the sociology of religion.
Although I am
not a fan of this approach (to be discussed later) I came to the very
intriguing chapter 7, where Stark affirms that women were, for a variety of
reasons, crucial to the survival and later expansion of Christianity in the
Roman Empire.
Here I present
in a concise form the 6 major claims:
1. Women in the early Christian communities
were considerably better off than their pagan and even Jewish counterparts. They
enjoyed more security and equality in marriage.
“Hellenic women
lived in semi-seclusion, the upper classes more than others, but all Hellenic
women had a very circumscribed existence; in privileged families the women were
denied access to the front rooms of the house. Roman women were not secluded,
but in many other ways they were no less subordinated to male control. Neither Hellenic
nor Roman women had any significant say in who they married, or when. (…) Roman
wives had very limited property rights; Hellenic women had none. Neither could
be a party to contracts. (…)
Everywhere
Jewish girls were married very young to whomever their father chose, they were
easily and quite often divorced by their husbands, but wives could not seek a
divorce except under very unusual circumstances, such as the husband being
impotent or a leper.”
2. Because of the widespread among Pagans
practice of infanticide, to which female babies were more exposed than male
babies, substantially more Christian (and Jewish) female infants lived.
In Pagan
families female babies were routinely killed because boys were favored. In
contrast, Christians condemned the infanticide by considering it murder.
3. Christian women were married at a later age
when they were more mature physically and emotionally.
4. Pagan and Jewish women were divorced frequently
without having any say in the process. In contrast, Christianity has explicitly
condemned the remarriage and adultery, making it a sin for a male to
divorce his wife: “And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for
unchastity, and marries another, commits adultery” (Matt. 19:9).
5. Devout Christian married couples may have
had sex more often than did the average pagan couple, because brides were more
mature when they married and because husbands were less likely to take up with
other women.
6. There was a shortage of women in the Roman Empire in the first three centuries of Christianity
mostly because of infanticide. It is being estimated that “there were 131
males per 100 females in Rome, rising to 140
males per 100 females in the rest of Italy,
Asia Minor, and North Africa while Christians
had their rates of females not affected by infanticide… If women made up 43
percent of the pagan population of Rome
(assuming a ratio of 131 males to 100 females), and if each bore four children,
that would be 172 infants per 100 pagans, making no allowance for exposure or
infant mortality. But if women made up, say, 55 percent of the Christian
population (which may well be low), that would be 220 infants per 100
Christians—a difference of 48 infants.”
All these demographic and gender factors combined, argues Stark, have helped Christianity not only to survive in the short term (immediately after the death of Jesus the community of his followers numbered not more than 30-40 people), but in longer term to become the religious group with most adherents and to become the official religion of the Roman Empire.
