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Is the Bible anti-women, anti-science, or anti-anyone?

Read in context, the Bible upholds the dignity of every human being. The way it's been weaponised is another story.

An oil painting of a long communal table set with bread and cups, every place lit by one warm lamp

So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

Genesis 1:27 · Berean Standard Bible

There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Galatians 3:28 · Berean Standard Bible

From a pastor

It depends what you mean. The Bible has been used by people to justify slavery, racism, and the oppression of women — and the Bible itself is one of the main reasons those things have been overturned. Wilberforce abolished the British slave trade with a Bible in his hand. Martin Luther King Jr. did not quote Nietzsche; he quoted the prophets.

The Bible names sin — including sexual sin — and is unflinching about it. It also names every human being as made in the image of God. Both go together. Tell me what specifically troubles you and we can look at it together; what you've heard in a viral clip is rarely what the text actually says.

Scholar's note

Historian Tom Holland (Dominion, 2019) — not a Christian when he wrote it — argues that virtually every value the modern West takes for granted (the dignity of the individual, equality, the protection of the weak) comes downstream of the Christian revolution, not pagan antiquity. Pagan Rome was casually brutal to women, slaves, and the disabled.

On gender specifically, the early church scandalised the Roman world by forbidding infanticide (overwhelmingly female), elevating widows, and treating women as full witnesses to the resurrection (Luke 24) in a culture that did not accept female testimony. On race, see Galatians 3:28 — written in the first century, two thousand years ahead of where most of the world has caught up.

Sources

  • Tom Holland, Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind (2019)
  • Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity (1996)
  • Sandra L. Glahn, ed., Vindicating the Vixens (2017)On the often-misread women of Scripture.

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Have you read the passages that bother you in their full context, or only as they were quoted to you?

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