On the first Christian women

One of the tantalising things when we study early Christianity is that we have so little information about who was most attracted to it in the early days. Was it mostly the poor or was there a sprinkling of the rich from an early date? Was it mostly men or mostly women? Mostly slaves or freedmen, or mostly free people? We don’t know with any certainty, but we do hear quite regularly in early Christian sources that Christianity was attractive to women. And it may early on even have been attractive to some quite aristocratic and wealthy women who may have supported very early churches.

It’s certainly possible, and it’s certainly quite attractive to think that that might be because of the emphasis on love, on care – on care especially for the vulnerable, on care for widows and children and orphans, who might be seen as especially the concern of widows and especially the concern of the domestic sphere. So we don’t know for certain but it’s certainly a possibility.