New Bern Professor Publishes Study of Sixty Women Who Shaped Early Christianity

New Bern classicist and theologian Andrew M. Garlick, has published Women of the Early Church: From the Apostolic Generation to the Patristic Golden Age, a study examining more than sixty women who influenced Christianity's development between 30 and 450 CE. The book is available now in paperback and Kindle editions.

Garlick spent years working directly with Greek, Latin, and Hebrew primary sources for the project, translating New Testament passages, patristic writings, martyrdom accounts, and inscriptions himself rather than relying on existing English editions. The result is a chapter-by-chapter account of apostles, deaconesses, martyrs, theologians, pilgrims, and church leaders whose contributions have often gone unmentioned in popular church history.

The book profiles well-documented figures such as Junia and Phoebe from Paul's letters, the martyr Perpetua, the theologian Macrina the Younger, the deaconess Olympias, and the pilgrim-diarist Egeria. Each chapter draws on the documentary record, including archaeological and inscriptional evidence, to reconstruct what can be known with confidence, what remains contested among historians, and what belongs to later legend.

"These women are not footnotes," Garlick said. "They funded missions, led house churches, faced execution, wrote theology, and traveled the empire on pilgrimage. The sources are there. Most readers have simply never been handed them."

The book also engages the historical debate over women's roles in early Christian ministry, including disputed evidence about liturgical leadership. Garlick presents the competing scholarly positions without arguing a predetermined conclusion, a deliberate choice reflecting the book's evidentiary approach.

Women of the Early Church is written for historians, clergy, students, and general readers with an interest in church history. Garlick holds training in classical languages and has spent his career working with primary texts from the ancient and late antique Mediterranean world.

Women of the Early Church: From the Apostolic Generation to the Patristic Golden Age is published by Garlick Group Publishing of New Bern and is available through Amazon in paperback and Kindle formats.

Purchase link: https://a.co/d/0aMSVb4S