In Rome in the third century, where women had no rights, the Church grew rapidly because it welcomed women, and gave them meaningful responsibilities. The Church was in the vanguard of women’s rights movements in the early days, as it was during the suffrage movement in America.

This revolutionizes the status of women, who in pre-Biblical times, were regarded, as they are in Islam today, as inferior to men. The early Church in Rome spread fastest among women because the Church offered them protection against abuse and exploitation. The Church also denounced divorce, incest, marital infidelity, and polygamy, as well as abortion and infanticide. Christians remained on the front lines of movements for women’s liberation such as the suffrage movement in the United States which was led by such active Christians as Antoinette Blackwell, Lucretia Mott, and Anna Howard. All three were ordained ministers; the former slave Sojourner Truth, and of course Susan B. Anthony.

Similarly, the Church fought against racism in its most blatant form: slavery. It started in biblical times—Paul’s letter to Philemon was about setting a slave free, and in his letter to Timothy he condemned adulterers, perjurers, and slave traders. When the Spanish conquerors came to the western world, papal edicts were issued threatening excommunication of anyone who owned slaves. The eighteenth- and nineteenth-century campaign against slavery was magnificently fought by Christian parliamentarian William Wilberforce, who brought about the abolition of slavery in 1833 in England, and soon thereafter in America. The Civil Rights movement in the 1960’s in America was led by Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., who drew upon the resources of the Christian community.

I would argue that it is the duty of every Christian to fight against racism and sexism, and the record of the Church in doing so, despite some conspicuous lapses, has been exemplary.