As Euan Cameron notes, "Unless a religious movement is to remain fixed and confined to one time and one culture, it must sooner or later find itself among a group of people whose language and outlook are not those of its first founders."[1] Interestingly, in the case of Christianity, from the time of Christianity's first followers in Jesus' day to the age of Reformation, Christianity has effected changes in the societies in which it was found more often than the other way around. Although Christianity transected many cultures and many historical periods, it has remained relatively stable at its core while transforming the cultures and historical periods it made contact with.
Among Jesus' first followers, Christianity radically transformed both people and their society. One example of this was that of the female Christian martyrs Blandina, Perpetua, and Felicitas. These women evinced incredible strength in their refusal to renounce Christ, and their courage changed the way women were viewed-not as weak but as incomparably strong. Blandina, for example, was brutally and unconscionably tortured. She was not only whipped and clubbed, burned with red-hot irons, stripped naked, covered with "see-through netting," and "exposed to the attack of a bull," she was also "tied to a post and exposed to wild animals that were let loose on her...But none of the animals would touch her, so she was taken down, and returned to prison."[2] Shaw reports that "Blandina was filled with such power that even those who were taking turns to torture her in every way from dawn to dusk were wearied and exhausted...that they were beaten, that there was nothing further they could do to her."[3] Blandina's "entire body had been broken and torn," yet she continued to survive until she was gored and "thrown about until she was senseless," finally dying.[4] The effect of female martyrs on society was that women enjoyed a new level of respect as ...