During Jesus' lifetime, while men studied the scriptures and performed their work, women generally confined themselves to their homes, grinding flour, preparing food, washing clothes, and caring for families. As Jewish women, they were not educated and had no right to engage in discourse about their ancient scriptures the way their men did in the Temple. Still, women would have been expected to kindle the Sabbath candles on Friday night, observe the purity rituals, and train their children to keep God's commandments and to observe Jewish cultural and religious practices.

Jesus brought a shift in thinking about the roles of women. He didn't set out to change their traditional roles, but in many ways women did change. His teachings spoke powerfully to those who had been abused, oppressed, ostracized, and condemned. It is not surprising that these women chose to follow him. After his death, Jesus' followers continued to engage in their Jewish religious and cultural traditions. Simultaneously, they also embraced his more radical and egalitarian ideas. Eventually, Christianity evolved away from its infant identity as a Jewish sect. It remained an illegal religion, however, until A.D. 313 when Roman Emperor Constantine granted religious freedom and Christians could openly celebrate and practice their faith.

Roles of Men and Women

Men and women participated in co-leadership of the house churches (private homes of those loyal to Jesus where the faithful gathered for fellowship, prayer, and a meal). Some scholars and feminist theologians have said that women were especially effective in evangelizing other women and that they served the church well as preachers, teachers, and organizers of fellowship sessions.

Feminist theologian Susan Haskins has observed that by the end of the second century, the early church father Tertullian, amazed that the women of the Gnostic sects were accorded the right to discuss religion, exorcise, heal, and baptize, wrote in opposition to the practices that (in the orthodox Christian churches) women were forbidden to speak in church, baptize, or offer the communion. In other words, women were not to usurp men's tasks. Eventually only Christian men would serve as priests, bishops, and popes, but in Gnostic churches women, even today, serve as hierophants, the equivalent of bishop in the Roman Catholic Church. In ancient Greece, a hierophant was someone who proclaimed and explained ancient sacred rites of worship or who interpreted sacred mysteries. Some modern Gnostics consider that Jesus was a hierophant, inasmuch as he imparted mysteries.

As the size of Christian congregations began to grow in the first few centuries, larger accommodations had to be found. The patriarchal literalist Christian communities resisted women preaching in public, so when groups of Christian faithfuls moved into larger public places, leadership positions for women declined as men increasingly took over the preaching and the administering of sacraments. Among Jesus' faithful, Mary Magdalene surely emerged as a powerful spiritual role model because of her proximity to Jesus while he was alive and as eyewitness to the Resurrection after his death. As with the male Apostles, she attracted a following and was especially revered by the Gnostic Christians and followers of John the Baptist. Did she and other women conduct baptisms and administer communion? It's a point scholars are still debating, but some feminist theologians believe that women did fully participate in the administering of sacraments.

Many sacramental rites celebrated in the early Christian congregations, including baptism and communion, are still part of church services today.

Baptism

One sacrament central to the new Christian faith was baptism. Just as circumcision was seen as a seal upon God's chosen people in the centuries preceding the birth of Christianity, baptism by water and the Holy Spirit — the latter involving speaking in tongues (Acts 10:44–48) — set apart the followers of Jesus from nonbelievers. However, the rite of purification and sanctification by water was found in many cultures before the first century, and it certainly existed in Judaism long before John the Baptist immersed Jesus in the Jordan River. For example, the Jewish tradition of the mikveh or immersion in a water bath for ritual purification is a very old practice predating Christianity. During the time of Jesus, Christians believed that the baptism by water represented a symbolic washing away of sin but, more importantly, that baptism by the Holy Spirit brought the supplicant into a sacred covenant with Christ, conferring salvation and the promise of eternal life.

The Holy Eucharist

Another Christian sacrament, the Holy Eucharist (communion with bread and wine), had its origins in the Jewish Passover seder (meal or banquet). Some churches call the communion sacrament the Last Supper. Jesus, at his last Passover meal in Jerusalem, asked his disciples to eat bread in remembrance of his body and to drink wine in remembrance of the blood he would shed. Historical scholars debate whether or not Jesus, in linking the redemption symbols of the Jewish Passover meal with the Christian Eucharist, created the new sacred rite where his words were repeated or whether the early Church just attributed those words to him, incorporating them into the liturgy, after the rite was already established.

Catholic doctrine states that Holy Communion is “essential for human salvation.” Catholics believe that the communion bread and wine are Jesus Christ, while most non-Catholics believe them to be only a symbol of Christ.

Marriage

Many of the followers of Jesus were married, including some of the Apostles and later bishops and even popes. In Jewish culture at the time of Jesus, men were expected to take a wife and have children and to not do so was considered unnatural. In taking a wife, men were following the commandment that God gave Adam and Eve.

Marriage during the first-century, whether Christian, Jew, or Gentile, was more about family, business, and tribal alliances and ownership of property (wives and children) than it was about love. For followers of Jesus, the emphasis shifted to the taking of one wife and remaining faithful, underscoring a respectful treatment of women that went against patriarchal norms of the day. At a time in history when it was culturally acceptable for husbands to get rid of a wife through divorce or impeachment of her reputation, Jesus showed on numerous occasions his consideration of and concern for the lot of women. We know Jesus must have approved of weddings because he attended one at Cana, which happened to be the location of his first miracle in John's Gospel — turning wine into water.

That miracle was written in the Gospel of John, but not in the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). Today, Holy Matrimony is one of the seven sacraments found in the Roman Catholic Church. Spouses bestow the sacrament upon each other with the priest and family members and friends as witnesses. In Eastern Greek Orthodox tradition, marriage is viewed as one of the Mysteries.

Some of the practices of the early Christians had their origins in Jewish ritual. For example, the antiphonal and responsive singing still practiced in many churches today had its roots in Judaism as an ancient method of performing music. This is also true for prayer and discussion sessions, something that Jesus, as a young Jewish boy, did in the Temple. Some students of biblical history also point out that the pre-Christian Jewish Temple service was made up of four key elements, namely, reading, discussion, singing, and prayer. Early Christians likely adopted the practices, incorporating them into their services.