From reality respecter to Christian

In 1948, C.S. Lewis wrote an essay against ordaining women to the priesthood in the Anglican church entitled, “Priestesses in the Church?” In defense of the traditional (and Biblical) position, Lewis argued that treating men and women interchangeably in the priesthood is a revolutionary act that is contrary to Nature and the Christian tradition. Further, ignoring male-female difference flies in the face of reality and runs the risk of leaving Christianity behind altogether.

Lewis presciently warned that this radical act could remake the Christian faith by warping our perception of God and harm the institution of marriage. The danger, then, threatens the very institution God designed to picture the Christian gospel and obscures one of the divine ends for which God created our sexual differentiation.

Lewis’s essay came to mind when I heard the welcome news of British journalist Louise Perry’s conversion to the Christian faith. In her 2022 book, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, Perry argued as a non-Christian against modern feminism and in favor of gender essentialism from a sociological and rational framework. But as she revealed in a recent interview with Glen Scrivener, wrestling honestly with the reality of sex led her to consider deeper truths about reality:

There are these differences between the sexes which are important. I’m aware that the argument I’m making there ends up in the same place as the Christian argument from natural law. And I have, since writing the book, become a Christian. ... One of the reasons that I ended up becoming a Christian is because I realized that if it were supernaturally true, you would expect it to be sociologically true. And observing quite how sociologically true it is was very persuasive to me.

In other words, what Louise Perry observed about the reality of biological sex led her to explore the more fundamental truth claims of Christianity. And when she discovered that Christianity makes the most sense of the reality she observed, she embraced the supernatural Christian faith due to the light it shines on the natural world. As my friend James Wood quipped, the “reality-respecter to Christian pipeline is real.”

In this way, Perry’s conversion to Christianity is the reversal of what Lewis warned would happen if you downplay male-female differentiation. If rejecting male-female difference puts one on the road out of Christianity, embracing male-female difference might just put one on the road on in. By observing the significance of biological sex and refusing to rebel against reality in feminist rage with the spirit of the age, Perry was able to understand how Christianity promotes male-female equality and difference, alongside the goods of family and marriage—all for good natural and supernatural ends. And now she is a sister in Christ. Hallelujah!

Perry’s testimony should be yet another mark against apolitical, “third-way” Christian engagement. The Bible tells the truth about reality, about who we are as male and female, and about the purposes for which God created us for our flourishing. If someone—or an entire political party—is committed to denying reality, you don’t help them by ignoring their delusion.

It turns out that downplaying what the Bible says about male and female is not being winsome. It is cowardly. And it doesn’t remove obstacles to people coming to the faith. Instead, it could itself be an impediment on the very road God might use to bring His children home.