Jesus Liberates Women. Zoe Williams and the Guardian Should Take Notes.

The day after International Women's Day this March, London journalist Zoe Williams posted an editorial in The Guardian provocatively entitled, "Why do we need International Women's Day?  Apart from misogyny and Christian nationalism, you mean?" 

Williams had won a “columnist of the year” award, and been short-listed for the Orwell Prize.  But having almost put the finishing touches on a two-volume series arguing that "Jesus has Liberated Women," I was shocked by how ill-informed and incoherent her contrary arguments proved to be.  

Williams began her “analysis” by complaining about the names of women in the Bible:

"On Women’s Day Eve, though – yes, that is a thing – I was attending evensong at a university college, maybe for the first time ever, and it was definitely the first time I’d heard an IWD (International Women's Day) sermon.  The Rev Marcus Green had set himself the challenge of feministly reading a book, the Bible, in which almost none of the women have a name. There are a bunch called Mary, but so few other names that 'Mary' was basically Bible-speak for 'Karen.'"

Which makes me wonder: why, in the year 2026, should a paid journalist go to the excruciating trouble of fact-checking her claims?     

I set myself the Herculean task of typing "how many women named in Bible?" and hitting the pound key.  The result?  180 women are said to have been named.  Which I can believe, since I analyzed the treatment of women throughout the Old Testament and most of the New, verse by verse.  And yes, those 15 dozen ladies do include several Marys, who however in no way resemble modern "Karen" stereotypes.  (Though I had to actually read the gospels to learn that.)  Or has some major religion led by a pope taken to calling Karen the "mother of God" while I had my nose in history books?  Or built magnificent campuses in Oxford and Cambridge and named them "Karen College?"  (As both have for Mary Magdalen?)

Girls are still given names like Anna, Deborah, Elizabeth, Esther, Eve (a person, not just a “thing”), Hannah, Leah, Miriam, Rachel, Ruth, Sarah, or Sophia, since the people they originally referred are portrayed in the Bible as remarkable ladies.  (Even Jael, the housewife who ran a tent peg through an enemy general's temple, after tucking him into bed and giving him warm milk, though her name has yet to catch on, for some reason.)     

Yes, far more men are named in the Bible, given that political leaders were almost all male, and families were traced through male lines.  Others go unnamed – Joseph's prison-mates, the Ethiopian eunuch, the centurion at the cross, the thief on the cross.  Biblical scholar Richard Bauckham suggests that some names were omitted from the New Testament to protect still-living witnesses from possible reprisals.  But I think women are mentioned positively more often than men.  One often encounters a “dull husband, clever wife” motif in the Old Testament, for instance, along with women who save their country or their city when men fail to step up. 

Perhaps the most admiring sketch of female character in ancient literature – the Woman of Noble Character, at the end of Proverbs – is not given a name, because she remains an ideal.  Entrepreneur, real estate mogul, wise teacher, kindly philanthropist, publicly praised by husband and children – try finding a mate with that sort of character and executive talent, prospective lovers who read the Bible are told.  

But Williams seems to care more about damning rhetoric than getting even the most basic facts straight:    

"The meat of the sermon was about a woman who wasn’t given a name. A Samaritan and the first female evangelist, she was the one with the five previous husbands whose relationship status, at the time of meeting Jesus, was ‘with some guy who wasn’t her husband’.  It crescendoed with the son of God telling her that she is loved, to which she inexplicably does not reply: 'Mate, I know that. Have you not seen how many husbands I’ve had?'  As a feminist parable, it lacked something in the sense-making department, but, as a Christian message of the sheer contagiousness of love and acceptance, it was a useful interruption of the drum beat."

If Williams is reporting the sermon correctly, it makes me worry even more about progressive preachers.  Because the only reason the story of Jesus and the woman at the well doesn't make sense in Williams' telling, is that either the preacher or the award-winning journalist – or both – utterly botched the story.  And again, five minutes’ scan of the original source could have kept Williams from driving over that cliff.    

Jesus did not "tell the woman at the well that she is loved."  Rather, after asking for water from her, he offered "living water" in return.  He did not patronize her, but spoke to her respectfully, if rather dangerously, across cultural and gender lines, carefully drawing back the curtain a few inches on her troubled life, but allowing her to direct the conversation onto less personal issues when she felt pressed.   

The reply Williams wishes to put into this woman's mouth makes no sense, because it depends on Jesus using the ambivalent English word "love."  (And on Jesus and the woman both being so stupid as to conflate “romantic or sexual flings” with “love.”)  But Jesus was speaking Greek or Aramaic, not English.  And no synonym for "love" is mentioned in the conversation, however vague or distorted, in English or in the original Greek.  So again, Williams' point depends on not taking the elementary precaution of reading a famous Bible story for herself, before misrepresenting it to thousands of people.  

Yet the Guardian ranks, in polls, as a highly-respected news outlet, with more than 80% of its readers expressing trust.   

Then Williams launches her most critical (and poorly-aimed) bombardment: 

"It was not just commercialized business as usual this International Women’s Day: the global backdrop was that misogyny, Christian nationalism and white supremacism have conjoined to create storyboards on the world stage that flash before your eyes, disappear and return in darker, weirder forms.  One minute, the ultra-conservative Christian US secretary of war, Pete Hegseth, is retweeting a video of the pastor Doug Wilson arguing for 'household voting,' in which married women would submit to their husbands; the next, the influencer Nick Fuentes is advocating 'breeding gulags' for all women, who would be imprisoned first and released on a case-by-case basis."

I am going to follow William's example here, and not find out what that ridiculous punk Fuentes actually said.  His opinion is to the Gospel as Norwegian rats rummaging through garbage outside a concert hall are to the music of Vivaldi.      

As for Hegseth, he is important in the Trump administration, and a few churches seem to agree with him about the male "head of household" voting for the family.  I have never heard anyone offer such an argument myself, having spoken in or visited hundreds of churches. 

Apparently Hegseth also doubts men and women should serve together aboard submarines.  The question of how to mix genders has also come up among those planning space missions.  I'll leave that issue for sociologists and psychologists to weigh in on.  Being old-fashioned, I think there is something to be said for the ancient division of labor, so to speak, by which women ran the risk of having babies, while men wrestled barbarians and wooly mammoths.    

But I am aware of no biblical mandate on females in submarines.  Deborah, one of those 180 named women in the Bible, led an army to victory on solid ground.  Jonah, the only biblical human with known diving experience, seems to have been male, but we don't know what gender was the "great fish" that swallowed him.  We only know that it listened to God's commands better than the prophet did.  

"Who’s to say what the through line is from Wilson to Fuentes? Is there a coherent reading of Christianity that takes you from the disenfranchisement of women to their (our) incarceration?"

On the contrary, I argue in How Jesus has Liberated Women that there is a "through line" from Jesus to the worldwide emancipation of women, and enrichment and lengthening of their lives -- a line called "overwhelming, well-evidenced historical causation."  I also show that G. K. Chesterton was right: "Men are mad about sex," and that that madness continues to afflict both misogynists and radical feminists.  But I bet Williams won't read my argument, either, as presumption and abiding ignorance seem to define her award-winning brand of journalism. 

As with many progressives, her contempt for and ignorance of western civilization bring about a curious contradiction in her relative attitudes towards Christianity and Islam:

"When the Reform candidate Matt Goodwin opines on the right age for women to have children, what is really animating him?  Birthrate anxiety that is really great replacement theory by another name? Or the thrill of a Handmaid’s Tale future, in which any given electoral loser is invited to pontificate on the fertility of strangers?"

Goodwin is a former political science professor who ran for office in the UK.  Williams seems to be asking whether he fears that Muslims will take over his country, or if he feels a Taliban-like desire to control women.  

The bizarre thing about these musings -- aside from William's failure to furnish evidence, again – is that one reason some Brits fear Muslim "replacement" is that Pakistani and other Muslim men have been caught abusing thousands of British girls in horrible ways.  One would think that if the well-being of her fellow females were her top priority, Williams wouldn't want men who share a certifiable "rape culture" moving next door, either.  

Williams’ confusion comes to a head in the strangely self-contradictory argument that climaxes her article:

"Is there any connection between these developments in the US and the bizarre global spectacle of gen Z men being twice as likely as boomers to think a wife should always obey her husband?  That survey was conducted across the UK, the US, Brazil, Australia and India."

Typically, Williams seems to have been too lazy to follow the link she herself provided, or else didn't read it carefully.  Do so, and you find that the percentage of people who answer "yes" to this question varies dramatically by country.  Note in which three countries people are most and least likely to say a wife should always obey:  
 
Indonesia 66%
Malaysia 60%
India 52%

Netherlands: 4% 

Hungary: 4%

Sweden: 4%

The least "macho" countries (if we read this survey that way) all have a Christian background.  (Including that international pariah, Hungary.)  The three most "macho" countries, which together have a population of 1.8 billion people, about the same as all others surveyed combined, are Muslim, Muslim, and Hindu, respectively.  And the citizens of those countries say “yes” many times as often as citizens of the United Kingdom (at 13%). 

So why is Williams attacking Christianity?  And why does she express contempt for the fear that immigration might radically alter the demographics of Great Britain, and bring with it a flood of people who disagree with her on the very question she finds so telling?  

I do not trust the survey, mind you.  I find many questions on it vague or misleading, and suspect some flaw in questions, sampling, or methodology.  But this is Williams’ prime piece of evidence.  She ought to have looked at it.  Yet here is her amazing conclusion: 

"What Christianity has to say about gender relations never used to feel like an atheist’s business. It took a feminist sermon, of all things, to remember that this is now all our business, all the time."

How bizarre that this remark should be presented as a rational conclusion from a survey that shows that men and women from countries with a Christian heritage are multiply LESS likely to say men should make all the decisions, than people in Muslim or Hindu countries!         

The full evidence that the life, teachings, and example of Jesus have liberated women around the world is vastly stronger than such simplistic surveys, I argue.  So yes, atheists should care for what Christianity says about gender relations.  Because the Gospel raised women around the world.  Even the survey you appeal to, Mrs. Williams, faintly reflects that fact.  

“Why do you eat what is not bread?”  Asked the prophet.  “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”  Asked the angel. 

 Zoe Williams proves that there is a vast, credulous audience for the non-living-bread of misinformation about religion.  Many positively love sloppy journalism that justifies scorn of the most life-giving aspects of western tradition, while displaying utter naivete towards harmful strands of Muslim or Hindu thought.