The cultural battle is currently the No. 1 political issue in the Western world. This was clearly demonstrated in the recent U.S. elections, when a number of historic Democrats and ethnic minorities shifted their vote to the Republican camp for fear of seeing the political triumph of woke theories, which challenge the most universal anthropological and biological principles. Relations between men and women, their intrinsic nature and differences, are a fundamental part of these societal debates, which have dangerously polarized the West in recent years. 

Radical feminism — which has spread to almost every major university in the U.S. and Europe in recent years and sees the white man and patriarchy as the origin of all women’s suffering — has greatly destabilized the institutions of family and marriage. This, in turn, has contributed to the phenomena of declining birth rates and massive atomization of youth, accelerating at the same time the process of de-Christianization in the West. 

The great historian and medievalist Régine Pernoud anticipated these drifts when she wrote Women in the Times of the Cathedrals in the late ’70s, wisely recalling that nothing has been more empowering and liberating for women than the advent of Christianity in ancient times and that the great women of history never needed to resort to Marxist rhetoric of class and gender struggle to achieve their destiny. Without indulging in anachronism, Pernoud draws from the history of the Middle Ages, which represented a Golden Age for Christianity in Europe, the keys to reconciliation and healthy complementarity between the two sexes. 

For beyond ephemeral ideological movements, Christianity teaches immutable and timeless truths about human nature, which alone are the bearers of the universality that binds peoples together. 

The widely shared desire of Western men and women to rediscover common sense and a semblance of social cohesion is an opportunity that Christians should not hesitate to take advantage of, starting by rearming themselves intellectually.