God the feminist

From Walter Russell Mead’s 2012 Yule Tide Blog:

Christianity like many world religions has often been less than fair in its treatment of women.  But at the heart of historic Christianity there has always been the idea that one young single woman’s faithful choice gave God the opening he used to save the whole human race.  Christmas is a feminist holiday, a feast that celebrates the free choice of an autonomous woman.  As Christianity has risen to become the largest and most widespread religion in the world, women are coming into their own.  It cannot be otherwise; Christianity of all the world’s great religions owes its origin to the choice of a woman to cooperate with God.

God didn’t send Jesus into the world because he was satisfied with the status quo. God sent him here because things needed to change — and right at the top of the list of the things God wanted to change was the position of women. The change didn’t happen overnight, and even today we haven’t seen the full consequences of giving half the world its rightful due, but from the day that Mary answered Gabriel a new force has been at work in the world, and what we see today is the blossoming of a tree that was planted a very long time ago.