Understanding Feminism: A Historical Survey

Why Study Feminism?

Before we can offer a biblical response to feminism, we must understand what feminism actually is—and what it is not. Too often Christians caricature feminism as merely "women wanting to be men" or dismiss it as simple rebellion against God. This approach fails on two counts: it is intellectually dishonest, and it renders us unable to engage thoughtfully with the millions of people— including many in our churches—who have been shaped by feminist assumptions.

Feminism is not one thing. It is a sprawling intellectual and cultural movement spanning nearly two centuries, encompassing thinkers who disagree violently with one another, and producing arguments that range from the commonsensical to the radically anti-Christian. A faithful apologetic must be able to distinguish between these strands.

First-Wave Feminism (1848–1920): Rights and Suffrage

The conventional starting point for organized feminism in America is the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848, where Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott organized a gathering to discuss "the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman." The convention produced the Declaration of Sentiments, modeled deliberately on the Declaration of Independence, declaring that "all men and women are created equal."

The primary goals of first-wave feminism were legal and political: the right to vote, the right to own property, access to education, and basic legal recognition as persons rather than appendages of husbands. The movement culminated in the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, granting women the right to vote.

It is important to note that many first-wave feminists were professing Christians. The abolitionist and suffrage movements were deeply intertwined with evangelical Protestantism. Women like Sojourner Truth, Frances Willard, and many others drew explicitly on biblical arguments for the dignity of women. The temperance movement—overwhelmingly led by Christian women—was concerned with protecting families from the devastation of alcoholism, a deeply conservative and maternal impulse.

However, even within first-wave feminism, seeds of deeper philosophical rebellion were present. Elizabeth Cady Stanton herself, while using the language of equality from the Declaration, was already developing a critique of Scripture that would culminate in her Woman's Bible (1895). The first wave was never purely about voting rights—it carried within it questions about the nature of authority, the meaning of personhood, and the role of religion in defining womanhood that would fully emerge in later waves.

Second-Wave Feminism (1960s–1980s): Liberation and Revolution

If first-wave feminism was primarily about legal rights, second-wave feminism was about liberation—not merely from unjust laws, but from the very structures of family, religion, and sexual morality that feminists believed oppressed women.

The catalytic text was Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963), which described the life of the American housewife and mother as a prison of unfulfillment—"the problem that has no name." Friedan argued that women had been sold a lie: that homemaking and motherhood could satisfy their deepest aspirations. The book struck a cultural nerve and is widely credited with launching the second wave.

What followed was a rapid radicalization. Second-wave feminism drew heavily on Marxist analysis, reframing the relationship between men and women as a class struggle. Kate Millett's Sexual Politics (1970) argued that patriarchy was the oldest and most fundamental form of political oppression. Shulamith Firestone's The Dialectic of Sex (1970) called for the abolition of the biological family itself, arguing that pregnancy and motherhood were the root causes of women's oppression and should be replaced by technological reproduction.

The second wave produced enormous cultural and legal change: Title IX (1972), the push for the Equal Rights Amendment, the normalization of no-fault divorce, widespread entry of women into the professional workforce, and—most consequentially—the legalization of abortion through Roe v. Wade (1973). For second-wave feminists, control over reproduction was the non-negotiable precondition of women's liberation.

Notice the staggering contrast: Scripture calls children a blessing and a reward; second-wave feminism framed them as the mechanism of oppression. This inversion is not incidental—it flows directly from fundamentally different presuppositions about the nature and purpose of womanhood.

Third-Wave Feminism (1990s–2010s): Identity and Intersectionality

Third-wave feminism emerged in the early 1990s as a response to perceived limitations of the second wave. Critics—particularly women of color and lesbian feminists—argued that second-wave feminism had centered the experience of white, middle-class, heterosexual women and ignored the diversity of women's experiences.

The defining intellectual contribution of the third wave was intersectionality, a term coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989. Intersectionality holds that systems of oppression—racism, sexism, classism, homophobia—do not operate independently but intersect and compound one another. A Black woman, for example, experiences oppression differently than a white woman or a Black man, and feminist analysis must account for these overlapping identities.

The third wave also embraced postmodern philosophy, particularly the work of Judith Butler, whose Gender Trouble (1990) argued that gender itself is a social construction—a performance rather than a biological reality. Butler denied that there is any essential or natural "womanhood," arguing that both sex and gender are culturally produced categories. This laid the intellectual groundwork for contemporary gender theory and the transgender movement.

Third-wave feminism also distinguished itself by embracing sexual expressiveness—reclaiming pornography, provocative dress, and sexual promiscuity as expressions of female empowerment rather than degradation. This "sex-positive" feminism put it at odds with many second-wave feminists who had been critical of pornography and the sexual exploitation of women.

Fourth-Wave Feminism (2012–Present): Digital Activism and Cultural Power

Fourth-wave feminism is the feminism of social media, hashtag activism, and institutional capture. Its defining moments include the #MeToo movement (2017), the Women's March (2017), and ongoing campaigns around sexual harassment, body positivity, and gender-inclusive language.

The fourth wave is characterized by several features that distinguish it from earlier waves. First, it operates primarily through digital platforms—Twitter, Instagram, TikTok— giving it an unprecedented ability to shape public discourse, enforce social norms, and punish dissenters through online shaming and cancellation. Second, it has achieved significant institutional power, with feminist assumptions embedded in corporate HR departments, university administrations, media organizations, and government policy.

Third, and most significantly for our purposes, fourth-wave feminism has fully absorbed gender theory. The claim that biological sex is a spectrum, that gender is entirely socially constructed, and that individuals have the right to define their own gender identity apart from their biological reality has moved from academic theory to mainstream cultural orthodoxy with remarkable speed.

Common Threads Across the Waves

Despite their differences, certain commitments run through all four waves of feminism:

Autonomy as the supreme value. From Stanton to Butler, feminism consistently elevates individual self-determination as the highest good. Any external authority—God, Scripture, husband, nature, biology—that constrains a woman's autonomous choice is suspect and must be challenged.

Patriarchy as the fundamental problem. All waves agree that male authority structures are oppressive by nature. They differ on what "patriarchy" means and how deep it goes, but none affirm that male leadership in any sphere could be good, God-given, or beneficial.

The personal is political. This slogan, coined by Carol Hanisch in 1969, captures feminism's insistence that private life—marriage, family, sexuality, child-rearing—is not a separate sphere but a site of political power and therefore subject to political revolution.

Suspicion of received tradition. Feminism reads history, religion, literature, and culture through a hermeneutic of suspicion—assuming that inherited institutions and ideas serve the interests of male power and must be deconstructed to reveal hidden oppression.

What Feminism Got Right

Intellectual honesty requires us to acknowledge that feminism has identified genuine injustices. Women have been denied education, legal personhood, property rights, and basic protections against abuse. In many cultures and historical periods, women have been treated as property rather than as image-bearers of God. The church itself has sometimes been complicit in these failures—a painful reality we will address in a later lesson.

Christians should have been the first to champion the dignity and protection of women, because our theology demands it. When we failed to do so, we created a vacuum that feminism filled with its own answers. Understanding this history keeps us from the twin errors of wholesale acceptance and wholesale rejection, and positions us to offer something better: not a return to injustice, but a vision of manhood and womanhood rooted in the character of God Himself.

Looking Ahead

We have surveyed the landscape. In the lessons that follow, we will examine the specific philosophical and theological claims of feminism, contrast them with biblical teaching, and develop a positive vision of manhood and womanhood that honors God's design. But first, we must look more closely at what feminism's most influential voices have said about the Bible and the Christian faith—because this is not a movement that is merely indifferent to Scripture. From its earliest intellectual architects, feminism has targeted the Bible deliberately and by name.