1. Changes in Character and Condition:
Tertullian mentions the modest garb worn by Christian women (De Cult. Fem. ii.11) as indicating their consciousness of their new spiritual wealth and worthiness. They no longer needed the former splendor of outward adornment, because clothed with the beauty and simplicity of Christlike character. They exchanged the temples, theaters, and festivals of paganism for the home, labored with their hands, cared for their husbands and children, graciously dispensed Christian hospitality, nourished their spiritual life in the worship, service and sacraments of the church, and in loving ministries to the sick. Their modesty and simplicity were a rebuke to and reaction from the shameless extravagances and immoralities of heathenism. That they were among the most conspicuous examples of the transforming power of Christianity is manifest from the admiration and astonishment of the pagan Libanius who exclaimed, "What women these Christians have!"
The social and legal status of woman instantly improved when Christianity gained recognition in the Empire. Her property rights as wife were established by law, and her husband made subject to accusation for marital infidelity. Her inferiority, subjection and servitude among all non-Jewish and non-Christian races, ancient and modern, are the severest possible arraignment of man's intelligence and virtue. Natural prudence should have discovered the necessity of a cultured and noble motherhood in order to a fine grade of manhood. Races that put blighting restrictions upon woman consign themselves to perpetual inferiority, impotence and final overthrow. The decline of Islam and the collapse of Turkey as a world-power are late striking illustrations of this fundamental truth.
2. Notable Examples of Christian Womanhood:
Woman's activity in the early church came to its zenith in the 4th century. The type of feminine character produced by Christianity in that era is indicated by such notable examples as Eramelia and Macrina, the mother and sister of Basil; Anthusa, Nonna, Monica, respectively the mothers of Chrysostom, Gregory Nazianzen and Augustine. Like the mothers of Jerome and Ambrose they gave luster to the womanhood of the early Christian centuries by their accomplishments and eminent piety. As defenders of the faith women stand side by side with Ignatius and Polycarp in their capacity to face death and endure the agonies of persecution. The roll of martyrs is made luminous by the unrivaled purity, undaunted heroism, unconquerable faith of such Christian maidens as Blandina, Potamiaena, Perpetua and Felicitas, who, in their loyalty to Christ, shrank not from the most fiendish tortures invented by the diabolical cruelties and hatred of pagan Rome.
In the growing darkness of subsequent centuries women, as mothers, teachers, abbesses, kept the light of Christian faith and intelligence burning in medieval Europe. The mothers of Bernard and Peter the Venerable witness to the conserving and creative power of their devotion and faith. The apotheosis of the Virgin Mother, though a grave mistake and a perversion of Christianity by substituting her for the true object of worship, nevertheless served, in opposition to pagan culture, to make the highest type of womanhood the ideal of medieval greatness. The full glory of humanity was represented in her. She became universally dominant in religion. The best royalty of Europe was converted through her influence. Poland and Russia were added to European Christendom when their rulers accepted the faith of their Christian wives. Clotilda's conversion of Clovis made France Christian. The marriage of Bertha, another Christian princess of France, to Ethelbert introduced Roman Christianity into England, which became the established religion when Edwin, in turn, was converted through the influence of his Christian wife. The process culminated, in the 19th century, in the long, prosperous, peaceful, Christian reign of Victoria, England's noblest sovereign.
3. Woman in the 20th Century:
The opening decades of the 20th century are witnessing a movement among women that is one of the most remarkable phenomena in the history of mankind. It is world-wide and spontaneous, and aims at nothing less than woman's universal education and enfranchisement. This new ideal, taking its rise in the teaching of Jesus regarding the value of the human soul, is permeating every layer of society and all races and religions. Woman's desire for development and serf-expression, and better still for service, has given birth to educational, social, eleemosynary, missionary organizations and institutions, international in scope and influence. In 75 years after Mary Lyon inaugurated the higher education of woman at Mt. Holyoke College, in 1837, 60,000 women were students in the universities and colleges of the United States; nearly 40,000 in the universities of Russia; and increasingly proportionate numbers in every higher institution of learning for women in the world; 30,000 were giving instruction in the primary and secondary schools of Japan. Even Moslem leaders confessed that the historic subjection of woman to ignorance, inferiority, and servitude was the fatal mistake of their religion and social system. The striking miracle occurred when Turkey and China opened to her the heretofore permanently closed doors of education and social opportunity.
This universal movement for woman's enlightenment and emancipation is significantly synchronous with the world-wide extension and success of Christian missions. The freedom wherewith Christ did set us free includes her complete liberation to equality of opportunity with man. In mental endowment, in practical ability, in all the higher ministries of life and even in statecraft, she has proved herself the equal of man. Christianity always tends to place woman side by side with man in all the great achievements of education, art, literature, the humanities, social service and missions. The entire movement of modern society toward her perfect enfranchisement is the distinct and inevitable product of the teaching of Jesus. The growing desire of woman for the right of suffrage, whether mistaken or not, is the incidental outcome of this new emancipation. The initial stages of this evolutionary. process are attended by many abnormal desires, crudities of experiment and conduct, but ultimately, under the guidance of the Spirit of God and the Christian ideal, woman will intelligently adjust herself to her new opportunity and environment, recognizing every God-ordained difference of function, and every complementary and cooperative relation between the sexes. The result of this latest evolution of Christianity will not only be a new womanhood for the race but, through her enlightenment, culture and spiritual leadership, a new humanity.
Dwight M. Pratt