Historical Evidence for Women Leaders in the Early Church

And Nijay Gupta's Wonderful Work

Hi friends,

This post will be a little bit shorter than usual, however you can rest assured that I am currently working on a new piece about the Gen Z revival that seems to be brewing in the UK.

While that is still being finished, I wanted to take this opportunity to respond to some of the comments and private messages that I received from my last two essays about women in the church.

If you haven’t read them yet, you can do so here:

A number of you have written to inform me that women in antiquity lived in a strictly patriarchal society, and it is therefore unthinkable that they may have been leaders, preachers, or entrepeneurs/patrons for the early church.

While it is true that women did live under strict patriarchal norms, this does not necessarily mean that God was ok with that. In fact, there is mounting evidence that the church gave women much higher status than we might have imagined, and for their cultural context, this was considered revolutionary.

While there are many authors I could draw your attention to, today I would like to highlight the work of

Nijay K. Gupta

, and his book, Tell her Story. You’ll be pleased to know that this is not a lofty high-brow academic book; rather Gupta has taken the stories of women in the early church, and distilled them into an easy-to-read format so that lay people can read and enjoy.

I would also like to draw your attention to his new online course on Seminary Now, which is a deeper dive into the historical evidence that women have been leading, preaching and pastoring since 33AD.

This course launches on the 14th May, 2025.

Here is a quick preview:

Enjoy!

S