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Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.

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Speaker 1: It's Tuesday, September two, twenty twenty five. The identity of

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Speaker 1: a woman accused of spying for China will stay under wraps.

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Speaker 1: That's after her barrister invoked at the rape trial of

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Speaker 1: former Liberal staff at Bruce Lahman. The Laman trial was

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Speaker 1: aborted due to DURA Misconduct Act. Chief Magistrate Lorraine Walker

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Speaker 1: says a potential future DURA in the Chinese woman's trial

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Speaker 1: could search for information if a suppression order was lifted.

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Speaker 1: The woman has pleaded not guilty to espionage chargers. Those

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Speaker 1: stories alive right now at the Australian dot com do au.

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Speaker 1: Mary Mother of God is suddenly a streaming sensation. Jesus

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Speaker 1: and his followers are going off on YouTube as new

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Speaker 1: generations rediscover the gospel. On screen, author Greg Sheridan revealed

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Speaker 1: how women and girls were pivotal to the explosion of

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Speaker 1: Christianity around the world. That's today's episode.

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Speaker 2: I don't know, but I was chosen for this.

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Speaker 1: This is Mary. Love will cost you dearly, It will

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Speaker 1: pierce your home, but in the end.

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Speaker 2: Love will see thora.

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Speaker 1: She's this central figure in a Netflix movie that also

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Speaker 1: stars Anthony Hopkins as King Herod.

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Speaker 2: They didn't be understood.

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Speaker 1: I I Am Your King. A series about the story

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Speaker 1: of Jesus called The Chosen, has gathered more than half

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Speaker 1: a billion downloads and is hitting its fifth season, despite

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Speaker 1: the fact its creator Dallas Jenkins, couldn't get a single

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Speaker 1: studio to pick it up and had to crowdfund the pilot.

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Speaker 1: I am not doing the work of my father, and

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Speaker 1: do not believe me, but by my work you should understand.

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Speaker 2: The Father is in me, and I am.

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Speaker 1: In the Father. New generations are rediscovering the Gospel on screen,

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Speaker 1: and there's a new book out by our own foreign editor,

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Speaker 1: Greg Sheridan, in which he explores the lives of the

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Speaker 1: early Christians, including the truly radical ways they thought about women.

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Speaker 1: One of the stars of Greg's book is Lydia, a

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Speaker 1: wealthy woman in the fashion business who lived in what's

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Speaker 1: now Greece. She met Paul, one of Jesus' disciples, and

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Speaker 1: their encounter changed the world.

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Speaker 2: Lydia is one of my favorite characters in the whole

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Speaker 2: of the scriptures Old Testament. Knew was a pivotal figure

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Speaker 2: in history. So Paul went to Greece, and he went

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Speaker 2: to the town of Philippi, and he went to the

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Speaker 2: place where people prayed. Only women were there, no men,

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Speaker 2: and he preached to them and Lydia converted. She was

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Speaker 2: on fire where the message of Jesus that Paul gave her.

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Speaker 2: So she founded a church and that was the first

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Speaker 2: church in Europe. Lydia is a really interesting character. She

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Speaker 2: was a merchant, she was a trader in fine cloth.

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Speaker 2: She brought her household to later see Paul and to

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Speaker 2: embrace Christianity. If she was the head of the household,

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Speaker 2: it was probably an all female household. So this was

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Speaker 2: the first church in Europe, and it was the first

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Speaker 2: Christian church in Europe. And everything in Christianity comes from that.

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Speaker 2: That's all down to Lydia.

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Speaker 1: What's been your view or what's been your perspective and

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Speaker 1: looking at the early Christians about how involved women were

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Speaker 1: and why do you think women were sort of pushed

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Speaker 1: to the fringes a little bit in the church as

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Speaker 1: it grew.

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Speaker 2: We tend to idealize the Roman Empire. Now, God alone

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Speaker 2: knows why the ancient Greek and Roman worlds were profoundly violent,

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Speaker 2: profoundly misogynists, utterly hierarchical. Husbands owned their wives, fathers owned

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Speaker 2: their children, masters owned their slaves. And if you own someone,

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Speaker 2: you could do anything with them. You could exploit them sexually, physically,

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Speaker 2: work them to death, you could kill them. I mean,

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Speaker 2: it was such a misogynistic, such an anti woman society

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Speaker 2: that it was absolutely routine to leave girl babies out

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Speaker 2: to die because boy babies were more valuable. I quote

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Speaker 2: a Roman soldier. I mean, a lot of Roman marriages

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Speaker 2: were very bad. Relations between the sexes were terrible. But

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Speaker 2: there is a Roman soldier who's a loving husband and

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Speaker 2: he's going away and he writes to his wife and

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Speaker 2: he says, darling, I'll never forget you. You know, you'll

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Speaker 2: always be in my heart, and I'll come back to you.

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Speaker 2: And the wife is pregnant, and he just says to her,

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Speaker 2: as a matter of course, if it's a boy, named

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Speaker 2: him such and such, if it's a girl, discarded. So

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Speaker 2: the first great sexual revolution was the Christian sexual Revolution,

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Speaker 2: which preached the equality of the sexes, that women and men,

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Speaker 2: slaves and property owners. As Paul famously said, there is

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Speaker 2: neither jew nor gentile slave, nor free male and female.

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Speaker 2: You're all one in Christ Jesus, this radical universalism and egalitarianism.

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Speaker 2: It just turned the ancient world upside down. In terms

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Speaker 2: of women, there's overwhelming archaeological and textual evidence that Christianity

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Speaker 2: attracted many more women than it did men. You know,

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Speaker 2: there are ruins and remains of Christian dormitories where there

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Speaker 2: are so many more female tunics than male that the

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Speaker 2: first church we know has seven prominent members of the

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Speaker 2: church inscribed in a mosaic, five of them are women.

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Speaker 2: In the early Christian community because they didn't kill their

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Speaker 2: girl babies, and indeed they rescued girl babies who were

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Speaker 2: left out to die in the elements, they had many

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Speaker 2: more girls than pagan families, so as a result, obviously

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Speaker 2: they were much happier. You know what a horrible world

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Speaker 2: it would be if it was just blokes. There was

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Speaker 2: a tremendous shortage of women in the ancient Grugo Roman

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Speaker 2: world because so many of them were killed as kids.

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Speaker 2: So the pagan men married Christian women and converted. But

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Speaker 2: even if you go right back to the Gospels, the

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Speaker 2: first person to hear of Jesus is Mary, a woman.

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Speaker 2: The first person to proclaim Jesus is Mary, a woman.

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Speaker 2: The first person to hear Jesus proclaimed is Mary's cousin,

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Speaker 2: whom she goes to with the news that she used

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Speaker 2: to bear the son of God. And at the end

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Speaker 2: of Christ's life at the cross, all the men have

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Speaker 2: run away, they're missing in action, they're cowards, except John

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Speaker 2: is standing at the foot of the cross. But there's

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Speaker 2: a whole group of women, Mary, Jesus Mother, Mary Magdalene,

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Speaker 2: and a whole lot of other women. So the women

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Speaker 2: are much more courageous than the men, which doesn't really

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Speaker 2: surprise you. And then when Jesus rises from the dead,

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Speaker 2: the person he chooses to reveal himself to first is

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Speaker 2: Mary Magdalene. Women's testimony was disregarded in legal proceedings in

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Speaker 2: the ancient Roman world. It was regarded as having only

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Speaker 2: a tiny fraction of the worth of the male testimony.

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Speaker 2: And you know, if the Christian authors will make you

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Speaker 2: up a fictional story and they wanted to be convincing,

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Speaker 2: they wouldn't have Jesus appearing to Very Magdalene. Now, it's

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Speaker 2: true that in church governance and so on, men took

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Speaker 2: the lead. You might well say that Christian churches haven't

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Speaker 2: gone far enough in understanding and appreciating the genius of women.

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Speaker 2: But they were a pro woman, a revolutionary, pro woman,

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Speaker 2: pro girl movement in early Christianity. Very very very soon

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Speaker 2: some Christians debated themselves entirely to the religious life for

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Speaker 2: the desert fathers and so on. And the minute this

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Speaker 2: became established monasteries and the like, there were miles more

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Speaker 2: women than men devoted to the religious life. I mean,

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Speaker 2: and the Catholic trais has always been vastly more nuns

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Speaker 2: than there are priests and brothers. It's certainly the fact

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Speaker 2: that there were more women in the early Christian movement

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Speaker 2: than men. And it seems to be an impressionistic fact

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Speaker 2: that women have upheld Christianity over two thousand years a

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Speaker 2: bit more than men.

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Speaker 1: Coming on, So, could you call Jesus a feminist? More

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Speaker 1: of my chat we Greg Sheridan, author of How Christians

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Speaker 1: Can Succeed Today, which is out now. Was Jesus a feminist?

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Speaker 2: Well, I think that's an anachronistic question without disrespect, because

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Speaker 2: the term doesn't exist. It's certainly the case that Jesus

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Speaker 2: subverted all hierarchies, and many of the hierarchies of his

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Speaker 2: time were male hierarchies. So he certainly stood up for

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Speaker 2: women and children. So there's the famous occasion of the

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Speaker 2: woman caught in adultery, and the misogyny of the age

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Speaker 2: is that the man apparently caught with her, he suffers

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Speaker 2: no harm or judgment, but the crowd is going to

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Speaker 2: stone the woman to death. They bring her before Jesus,

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Speaker 2: and one of the most moving passages in the Gospels,

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Speaker 2: he says that him among you, who has never sinned,

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Speaker 2: pick up and throw the first stone, and all of

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Speaker 2: the men know just what sinners they are, and they

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Speaker 2: all slowly melt away. Even more radical is his elevation

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Speaker 2: of children, because children, even worse than women, had no

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Speaker 2: power or status in the ancient world. They just belonged

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Speaker 2: to their father or their slave owner, and nobody gave

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Speaker 2: any regard to childhood as such. Yet the most ferocious

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Speaker 2: things that Jesus says are about people who abuse children.

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Speaker 2: If you should lead one of these little ones astray,

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Speaker 2: it was better that you had a millstone tied around

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Speaker 2: your neck and you were cast into the ocean. This

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Speaker 2: is really the most severe threat that Jesus makes, and

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Speaker 2: he's very, very radical. In the ancient Roman world, you

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Speaker 2: can see why a lot of Roman writers are very

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Speaker 2: entertaining in the way they write about Christianity, because they said,

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Speaker 2: what a bunch of freaks these Christians are. They don't

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Speaker 2: run away in plagues, they stay and help. They bear

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Speaker 2: persecution with a smile. They're kind to their persecutors. They

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Speaker 2: don't sleep around, they treasure children, they free slaves, some

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Speaker 2: of their bishops of former slaves. What a bunch of

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Speaker 2: radical ne'er do wells these folk are. But of course

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Speaker 2: this approach to life, as I say, apends the ancient

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Speaker 2: world and catches fire with the whole population.

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Speaker 1: On Netflix right now, greg's a movie about Mary. It's

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Speaker 1: just called Mary, and Anthony Hopkins plays King Herod. It's

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Speaker 1: quite a good cast, and there seems to be a

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Speaker 1: flurry of screen adaptations of the Christian story. Now, why

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Speaker 1: do you think they're resonating with audiences? In twenty twenty five, by.

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Speaker 2: Profile Dallas Jenkins, the founder of The Chosen. He crowdfunded

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Speaker 2: The Chosen. It's now in its fifth series. It's a

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Speaker 2: TV series about the life of Jesus. It's very good

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Speaker 2: and Hollywood wouldn't fund it because they thought it wouldn't

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Speaker 2: make any money.

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Speaker 1: Not.

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Speaker 2: They weren't being religious bigots or anything. And it's now

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Speaker 2: been viewed by more than five hundred million people, and

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Speaker 2: this has changed Hollywood's view of Bible stories. One little

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Speaker 2: message of my book is that there is a huge

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Speaker 2: Christian market out there which the gatekeepers of contemporary culture

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Speaker 2: are missing out on if they think it's a drag

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Speaker 2: or something to portray Christian stories Christian themes.

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Speaker 1: Greg is one of our regular guests here on the

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Speaker 1: Front and of course he's also The Australian's Foreign editor.

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Speaker 1: You can read his insightful journalism anytime by joining ours

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Speaker 1: subscribers at the Australian dot com dot au