Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life.

In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon.

Was Jesus a feminist? What do you think? Well, it's a hard question to answer because people

have different definitions of feminism. Words mean different

things to different people. So when someone asks, was Jesus a feminist, I guess it all depends

on how you define feminism. If you mean by feminism, the advocacy of women's rights based on the

equality of sexes, then 100%. Yes, I think Jesus was a feminist. Now, maybe calling Jesus a feminist

strikes you as odd because you've heard that Christianity oppresses or controls women or

generally thinks less of women than men. But that doesn't square with the Bible or church history.

No person has been better for women than Jesus. No religion has been better for women than Christianity.

It's undeniable that women are treated better, have more opportunities, more rights, more freedom

in countries with Christian roots than in countries without them. That's not a coincidence.

Christianity has always elevated the status of women. In the ancient world, there were no feminists.

If you asserted that women were equals of men, you would have received looks of confusion and

disbelief.

And they would have asked you, on what basis did you make that claim?

Because women were believed to be inferior in every way.

The ancient Greeks observed that women were on average, physically weaker,

and concluded that they were therefore mentally and emotionally weaker. Plato said that men were

created by gods, and cowardly and unjust men would come back in the next life as women.

Plato's disciple Aristotle was even worse, if that's possible. He claimed that women were

deformed males. Did you catch that? Women were deformed males. Women were irrational, he said,

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