Ancient Christianity Archives

Cover image of "Mothers, Children, and the Body Politic" by Nadya Williams

Mothers, Children, and the Body Politic, Nadya Williams. IVP Academic (ISBN: 9781514009123) 2024.

Summary: Parallels the Western disdain for mothers and children with ancient Rome, and what early Christians can teach us.

Nadya Williams decided in 2023 to walk away from a traditional academic career. But it was not, primarily, to freelance, or consult. She walked away to homeschool her children. As a result, she experienced the incredulity of friends and professional colleagues who tried to make sense of her choice. They confirmed her assessment that in a Western, post-Christian world it makes no economic or professional sense to do this. Having children costs a lot of money both directly and indirectly. And the choice of motherhood ahead of professional career has been increasing framed as an inferior, or even oppressive choice, even when freely chosen. Williams argues that her experience reflects a societal devaluation of the personhood of children and mothers and a disdain for maternal bodies.

In the first part of the book, Williams elaborates this argument. She begins with the experience of expectant mothers in modern ob/gyn practices. She describes practices in which the office decor features contraceptive advertising and Botox advertising to remove the after effects of pregnancy on a woman’s body. Williams contrasts it to a midwives practice to which she switched that featured pictures of babies on the wall. [My wife sees a conventional ob/gyn at which pictures of babies adorn the walls, so this must not always be so.]. But she makes the point that one must prevent pregnancy or remove its effects on the body to maintain societal ideals of beauty.

Likewise, if one has children, they are increasingly designed through fertility practices and genetic testing. Then children endure an assembly line education to prepare them to be good and productive citizens. Thus, we deny by objectification and commodification their personhood. Finally, motherhood is denigrated in comparison to being productive creatives by feminist writers.

The second part of the book looks at the parallel devaluation of life in ancient Roman culture and the counter-culture of early Christians. She contends that women were largely considered mere sex objects. The value of children depended on their status and health. Deformed children killed, and others, often girls, left exposed to die. War only underscored the devaluation of women and children, who were raped, killed, or enslaved. She contrasts the ethic of the early church that valued all persons, including the single, childless, mothers, children, and others on the margins. They rescued exposed infants, and cared for the sick abandoned by families during plagues.

What may we learn from the early church in a parallel, though distinct context? In the third part of the book, Williams answers this by appealing to three writers, two ancient, and one contemporary. First she introduces us to the prison journals of Perpetua, who along with an enslaved Christian, Felicity, were martyred. Felicity bore a child shortly before her death, while imprisoned. Perpetua’s discussion of motherhood speaks powerfully to anti-motherhood tracts of modernity.

The second was Augustine, whose City of God speaks of the theological basis for valuing lives amid the dehumanizing sack of Rome. His writing to sustain the Christian community models redemptive writing for our day. He spoke life-giving words into a culture of death. Finally, she calls our attention to Wendell Berry, whose life work has been to connect human dignity both Godward and to the land which sustains us as we seek its flourishing.

Williams concludes with arguing that to be pro-life involves far more than preventing abortions. The diminution of mothers and the commodification of children is a far cry from the human dignity a consistently pro-life stance entails. Of course, this extends across the whole spectrum of human existence. Perhaps the most powerful and counter-cultural witness our communities can engage in is to value mothers and children, as well as other members of the human community.

Williams speaks powerfully to the “we need more babies” contention. This still treats babies as a commodity. Rather, she holds out the ideal of communities who love children.

She models a mother who is creative both in parenting and writing. I do think she needs to address the “Handmaids Tale” fears of women. There is a toxic patriarchy that also “affirms” motherhood at the expense of dehumanizing women. I also know families in which men have forgone careers to raise (if not bear) children. Such men are also denigrated. I’d love to see more said about the dignity of their choices, which equally affirm the worth of children.

I also appreciate the nuance she brings to discussions of education, in which homeschooling as well as public education are part of the assembly line. Each can equally commodify children instead of treating them as image bearers. And each reflects a contest over who controls the assembly line. It often feels to me that we “machine” children to be optimal cogs in our nation’s workforce.

It seems to me that the major challenge is to create a culture of life within our Christian communities that is more compelling than the commodifying culture around us that marginalizes or kills its “non-productives.” I think it means disengaging from the conflicting political narratives of our culture. Neither dignifies life. And I think it means forging communities where we deeply connect across generations and stages of life. Superficial fellowship times over coffee don’t cut it. Nadya Williams identifies a key place where we can begin. We can value our children. We can affirm the choices of moms (or dads) to stay home to raise children. And we can be the village that helps them do it. Yes, this is a costly choice but one Christian communities can embrace. We know loving a child or valuing a mother is costly but this is what God has done.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

A Multitude of All Peoples: Engaging Ancient Christianity’s Global Identity, Vince L. Bantu. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2020.

Summary: A well-documented study of the global spread of ancient Christianity, controverting the argument of Christianity as White and western, and contending for the contextualizing and de-colonizing of contemporary global Christianity.

Often in Christian witness with people from Western countries, the challenge is whether someone can believe intellectually or volitionally, or dealing with ways they may have been put off by the church. In other parts of the world, or with people from those parts of the world or from minority cultures, the issue is that Christianity is thought of white and Western, and it would be an abandonment of one’s culture to believe. In significant part, this arises from mission efforts that have been both culturally captive to the West, and often been the Trojan horse for colonizing efforts.

This book addresses this challenge in several ways. One is that it traces how the early church in the West diverged from other believers in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. The fusion of church and state that began with Constantine marked the beginning of the separation from churches in the East. The framing of orthodox Christian belief at Chalcedon in Hellenistic language distanced believers who spoke of Christian faith in different heart languages.

Then in successive chapters Bantu traces the indigenous Christian movements in Africa, in the Middle East, and along the Silk Road. The exclusion of Miaphysites, those who would say that Christ exists as one person and one human-divine nature, separated the Africans and others from the West. What Bantu shows is the vibrant indigenous churches that developed in each of these parts of the world–the Copts in Egypt, the Ethiopian Church, the Maronites in Lebanon, and the Armenian Church, the early church in India tracing its origins to St. Thomas, and churches along the Silk Road.

The book summarizes the history of each of these indigenous movements that at one time, or even down to the present have been a vibrant Christian presence (consider the 21 Coptic martyrs brutally killed in a videotaped Isis message). The history is accompanied by images of church buildings and artifacts from these churches. The history and archaeological evidence make a strong case for the trans-cultural, global character of early Christianity that existed from the earliest centuries through the first millennium, long before western mission movements.

Likewise, the history of the interaction between the early churches of the West, and sister churches in Africa, the Middle East and Asia offer lessons for today. Chalcedon, from the perspective of these churches, rejected their understanding of Christ and the Christian faith, insisting on a Hellenistic framework for this belief. Bantu shows how indigenous churches responded to the rise of Islam, and sometimes were able to frame Christian faith in ways that were doctrinally sound and yet sidestepped the controversies surrounding God and his Son.

At the beginning of the third millennium of Christianity and the unprecedented global spread of Christianity, the message of this book more important than ever. At times, churches outside the West still struggle under Western theological and cultural domination. In other places, indigenous leadership is framing culturally contextualized yet theologically faithful approaches that advance the gospel. Will Western churches relinquish control in the former instance and affirm and learn from the latter? This book both offers historical evidence that indigenous churches may thrive, and that Christianity from its very beginnings was not exclusively white and Western.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher. The opinions I have expressed are my own.