Mary Wollstonecraft is an inappropriate role model for Christian women due to her anti-Christian beliefs and leftist ideology
Source: Carrie Gress. "Critics Of My Book Miss The Plot On Mary Wollstonecraft." March 4, 2026. thefederalist.com
The Gist
The author argues that Mary Wollstonecraft shouldn't be held up as a hero for Christian women because she rejected core Christian beliefs and embraced leftist politics. She thinks other scholars are wrong to try to make Wollstonecraft seem compatible with Christianity, and that we should focus on today's problems instead.
Conclusion
Mary Wollstonecraft should not be considered an appropriate role model or intellectual heroine for Christian women, contrary to what some contemporary Christian feminist scholars argue
Premises
- Wollstonecraft was the first leftist woman and disciple of leftist Richard Price, opposing conservative Edmund Burke
- She was anti-Catholic and supported the French Revolution's violence, believing Catholicism had infantilized the French people
- She rejected mainstream Christianity, adopting Dissent then Unitarianism, which denies Christ's divinity and the Trinity
- She believed any male mediator between women and God, including Jesus Christ, was an obstacle to women's potential
- Contemporary figures like John Adams vehemently opposed her work, particularly on the French Revolution
- Modern scholars like Bachiochi and Dumler-Winckler make philosophical errors by misunderstanding how Wollstonecraft used key terms like 'virtue' and 'reason' differently from Christian tradition
- Critics focus too narrowly on defending Wollstonecraft while ignoring larger contemporary issues like the inability to define womanhood and rising mental illness
Assumptions
- Christian women should have role models whose beliefs align with Christian doctrine
- Historical context and theological beliefs are more important than isolated progressive ideas when evaluating role models
- Leftist ideology is fundamentally incompatible with Christian values
- Contemporary feminist reinterpretations of historical figures can be anachronistic and misleading
- There are more pressing contemporary issues for Christian women than rehabilitating 18th-century feminist figures