> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://mereorthodoxy.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Something 'Wicked' This Way Comes - URL: https://mereorthodoxy.com/something-wicked-this-way-comes/ - Published: 2026-08-31T11:00:04.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-31T11:00:03.000Z - Description: Gress doesn’t deliver on her promise of a rigorous, methodical takedown of feminism as an ideology. Her account is partial at best, and misleading at worst. - Author: Mere Orthodoxy - Tags: Book Reviews, Sexuality, Family, Culture, Beatrice Scudeler, Journal, Summer 2026 **Carrie Gress.** [***Something Wicked: Why Feminism Can’t Be Fused with Christianity***](https://sophiainstitute.com/product/something-wicked/?ref=mereorthodoxy.com)**. Sophia Institute Press, 2026\. $21.95\. 256 pp.** Carrie Gress’ new book certainly begins on an ominous note. Her central argument, as the subtitle has it, is that “feminism can’t be fused with Christianity.” It’s either God or the devil. Choose at your own peril. The story goes something like this. Once, before Enlightenment rationalism and revolutionary ideals took over—replacing faith in God and in God-given hierarchies—Western people lived peacefully. Women accepted patriarchy as ordained by God in his wisdom, and the relationship between the sexes was harmonious. When Mary Wollstonecraft joined forces with the big bads of Enlightenment philosophy (Hume et al.), she threw the “woman issue” into the mix. Over two hundred years later, feminism has repeatedly aligned itself with dangerous ideologies, from Marxism and communism to occult practices, and more recently to the pro-choice movement. It’s time to eradicate this way of thought and free women from their feminist shackles. Only then will Christianity prevail once again. *Something Wicked* proposes an attractive intellectual history of feminism. Yet overly tidy narratives are often untrue. I believe it’s important for Christians to consider arguments both in favour and against any given ideology, but we should focus on the best of those arguments, so that we may develop our capacity to reason well. Unfortunately, Gress doesn’t deliver on her promise of a rigorous, methodical takedown of feminism as an ideology. Her account is partial at best, and misleading at worst. This would not particularly matter, were it not for the fact that Gress has considerable public credibility: she holds a PhD from the Catholic University of America (where she is a fellow at the Institute for Human Ecology), she is a former fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and has several books already under her belt (including her popular *Theology of Home* series). *Something Wicked* has been endorsed by well-respected scholars such as the psychiatrist and philosopher Ian McGilchrist, and Gress regularly promotes her books on Catholic media outlets. She has enough influence over young Christian women that we must engage with her ideas, if only to decide that we won’t be recommending *Something Wicked* to our sisters, nieces, and daughters. ## A False Premise The book’s greatest flaw is that it is based on a false premise. Gress claims that Christian women have been fooled into trying to reconcile two incompatible ideologies, feminism and Christianity. As feminism has grown more powerful, Christianity correspondingly declined. There are several problems with this claim. First, it posits Christianity and feminism as competing ideologies. This is false. While feminism fits the description of an ideology (i.e., a set of beliefs which can be used to shape social, economic, or political action), Christianity can only be considered an ideology if viewed as a cultural set of practices and morals (what one might call “thin Christianity”). By contrast, “thick” Christianity is a practice of faith. It’s an all-encompassing worldview—in the words of C.S. Lewis, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” Of course, some ideologies are more dangerous or, conversely, more aligned with the Christian faith than others; but anything good to be found in any given ideology (whether that is conservatism, socialism, etc.) will inevitably be contained within Christianity. There is no competition there, Gress implies. There is, however, a choice for Christians. They may choose to retreat altogether from the political issues of secular society as they view engagement as futile or even corruptive. Or they may choose to engage with particular political ideologies that they judge to be conducive to the fostering and spreading of Christian faith, doctrine, or moral teaching. This will inevitably lead to disagreement. Some have objected to the Marxist influence on 20th century Catholic liberation theology. Others point out that Christianity has repeatedly been weaponized by far-right governments (most famously, of course, during Hitler’s regime). But as long as it remains clear that our true “citizenship is in heaven” (Philippians 3:20), Christians can engage in public life by subscribing to specific sets of political goals. It is, in theory at least, entirely possible for individuals to identify as “feminists” while retaining their overarching, inalienable allegiance to the Kingdom of God. The question, then, is not actually whether Christianity can be fused with feminism, as Gress claims, but whether feminism is worth supporting. Gress very confidently answers in the negative. She sees such a vast divide in how philosophers pre- and post-Enlightenment envision ideas of virtue, duty, and faith, that any post-Enlightenment social and political movement, such as feminism, is in the grip of secularism. Thus it can’t contribute anything morally acceptable to faithful Christians. This is a compelling narrative, because it provides a simple solution to a very complex problem. But here we stumble upon the second issue with Gress’s central claim: Correlation does not necessarily imply causation. Gress has correctly identified the inverse correlation between the rise of Enlightenment philosophy and the decline of Christianity. It is the rest of her argument that gets muddled. Two of her main targets, Mary Wollstonecraft and Erika Bachiochi, exemplify her view of the role of feminism within this decline. She blames Wollstonecraft, an 18th-century writer who advocated for improved female education within the developing philosophical context of human rights, for promoting a genderless idea of woman. And she blames Bachochi, a contemporary legal scholar who has argued in her book *The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision* that Wollstonecraft in fact presented a view of rights based on mutual duties and responsibility, for trying to merge feminism with Christianity. ## The Enlightenment Chasm Gress requires her readers to make several assumptions as part of this blame game. First, we would have to agree that feminism began with Mary Wollstonecraft. Next, we’d have to accept that Wollstonecraft was irredeemably immersed in rationalistic and empirical philosophy, to the point that her views on women’s rights and her political priorities more broadly can’t be separated from her Enlightenment-style abandonment of God and the embracing of Deism. We would also need to agree that she did, in fact, abandon a belief in the divine. Then, we would have to prove that all the figures associated with the women’s rights movement and with subsequent waves of feminism accepted Wollstonecraft’s views and continued directly on that path, and that the views of contemporary feminists are indeed a direct result of her ideas. Gress simply doesn’t substantiate these claims. The first inconsistency is her treatment of the industrial revolution. She is not unaware of the legal and technological changes which contributed to the sweeping changes of the 18th century. In her introduction, she *does* name industrialization, marriage and property laws (which left women unable to support themselves if their husbands passed away or if they were abusive), secularization, and middle to upper class women being treated as ornamental as relevant factors. And yet, she promptly forgets all this. In the second part of *Something Wicked*, she goes into a little more detail, claiming that “Homelife was significantly disrupted by a surge in factories and the mechanization of work, as small cottage industries were swallowed up by enormous factories. The home ceased to be the locus of activity.” This is a well-known phenomenon in social history, with which I entirely agree, and to which Christopher Lasch devoted much of his seminal book *Women and the Common Life*. But the next step in Gress’s argument is a historical non sequitur. “The Industrial Revolution,” she continues, “coupled with the disvaluing of female gifts created a vacuum that the feminist ideology easily moved into. The simultaneous loss of home and mother eliminated the glue that holds Western civilization together.” Gress does not take into consideration the fact that many “feminists” (though the term is anachronistic for the late 18th century) in fact campaigned against the injustices and inequalities that arose as a result of said technological changes. As English society became more industrial and less agrarian, women were still expected to contribute to the household economy, but now they worked long shifts in factories, away from the home, and often were paid less than men (another change was that wage work became the norm). Small children were often brought along and had to start working while still very young until child labour laws kicked in in the latter half of the 19th century. None of this is the consequence of “feminist ideology.” Under such conditions, is it surprising that women started to campaign for fair wages? Or for the right to purchase property in their own right? The less interdependent society becomes, the more harm women and children incur. On that, Gress and I agree. But why, I kept thinking as I read this book, does she not put two and two together, and realize that figures of the women’s rights movement were in large part critiquing a situation not of their own making? When it comes to middle- and upper-class women, Gress admits that in the 18th century their role was often ornamental. That is precisely Mary Wollstonecraft’s complaint, and yet Gress fails to notice any affinity between Wollstonecraft’s thought and her own. Her argument instead rests on the premises that 1) Wollstonecraft is the mother of feminism, and 2) she sowed the seeds of all the societal evils we see today. ## Witch Hunting Gress’s first wicked witch is Mary Wollstonecraft. She is not the first woman to write about female education (Christine de Pizan and Mary Astell are two prominent predecessors, though neither is mentioned), but Gress takes Wollstonecraft’s work as the beginning of all the evils of feminism. One reason for this is that, along with the French proto-feminist Olympe de Gouges, Wollstonecraft was an early supporter of the French Revolution, which Gress takes to signify a wholesale rejection of any notions of hierarchy or authority. Sadly, she neglects to mention that writers such as de Gouges were ultimately guillotined for criticizing Robespierre’s Reign of Terror, and that Wollstonecraft herself became disillusioned with the excesses of the revolution. Gress also criticizes Wollstonecraft’s promotion of female education as opposed to Christianity, despite the fact that Wollstonecraft’s *Female Reader*, an anthology for young girls, includes many scriptural passages. Her greatest accusation, however, is that Wollstonecraft has an erroneous understanding of virtue. She believes that Wollstonecraft followed David Hume, who saw morality as merely based on feelings of approval or disapproval and as detached from divine authority. This allows Gress to discredit the entirety of Wollstonecraft’s thought as being severed from the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition of Christian philosophy. However, Wollstonecraft’s account of the virtues does not, in fact, square with Hume’s. She simply doesn’t advocate for moral relativism in the way that Gress needs her to do, in order to prove that feminism was rotten from the very beginning. Many other witches follow Wollstonecraft in Gress’ account, from those who engaged in occult practices, like Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, to those who were hostile to Christianity, like Matilda Gage; from the terrorist UK suffragettes like Emily Pankhurst, to the abortion rights advocates of second-wave feminism like Kate Millett and Shulamith Firestone. Yet for each of these figures, there are women whom Gress neglects. Many first-wave women’s rights advocates, contrary to Gress’ claim that “Feminism is abortion’s engine,” openly opposed abortion. Susan B. Anthony and Mary Fenn Davis are just two of the examples Monica Klem and Madeleine McDowell discuss in *Pity for Evil: Suffrage, Abortion, and Women’s Empowerment in Reconstruction America* (2023). Not all feminists were irreligious, either. The 19th\-century abolitionist and women’s suffrage activists Sarah and Angelina Grimké, for example, were devout Quakers. In the UK, between the late 19th\- and early 20th\-centuries the suffragettes were opposed by the *suffragists*. While also seeking women’s suffrage, the suffragists campaigned peacefully under the leadership of Millicent Garrett Fawcett. Among their ranks was Josephine Butler (not to be confused with the contemporary gender theorist Judith Butler), a devout Anglican Christian who, among other efforts, also campaigned for the abolition of child prostitution and human trafficking. Closer to our time, Gress ignores Andrea Dworkin, who radically (and unpopularly) condemned both prostitution and pornography in the 1970s and 80s, just as sex-positive feminism was gaining momentum. These women don’t deserve to be forgotten. ## The Decay of the Christian West The purpose of Gress’s witch-hunting is to prove that all kinds of contemporary social ills, including porn addiction, transgender ideology, single-sex parents adoption, child trafficking, prostitution, and drug addiction (her list, not mine) can be blamed on feminism. Men bear no blame in this calculus. According to Gress, men are rejecting marriage because women have made themselves too sexually available after the sexual revolution; the existence of the manosphere, while unfortunate, is a predictable reaction against feminism; domestic violence has become “commonplace,” but that is also, somehow, the fault of women. As we have seen, Gress is arguing that Christianity declined because of feminism, and that the only way for it to flourish again is for feminism to be eradicated. Just as the original fall is (reminds Gress) about Eve’s sin, so has our contemporary decline been at the hands of women. *Something Wicked*’s target readership is young girls and mothers, and I doubt that coming this close to outright misogyny is a helpful strategy for the supposed goal of converting women’s hearts. It’s very difficult to read such an account and not walk away with the suspicion that *Something Wicked* is somewhat of an example of grifting. Given the number of commentators who have recently argued in favour of cultural Christianity as a means to reclaim traditional Western culture, Gress’s book catches the zeitgeist of a certain right-wing, religious-adjacent subculture. For example, she extensively engages with (and praises) the thought of Jordan Peterson—who, while very open about the West’s need for the Christian faith, has not openly converted. She likewise praises Erica Komisar, who, as of 2022, was openly opposed to restrictions on abortion in the wake of the overturn of Roe v. Wade (a view which should be anathema to Gress). Yet on the other hand, she accuses “a new group of Catholic women” of trying to “forge together” the teachings of Pope John Paul II with those of feminists and proto-feminists like Mary Wollstonecraft. Gress even comes dangerously close to slandering one of said women, Erika Bachiochi, by claiming that the blending of Catholicism and secularism—as evidenced the fact that Catholic women “contracept” and “abort” at similar rates to secular women—is best seen in Bachiochi’s work. This could easily be interpreted by unaware readers to mean that Bachiochi herself approves of contraception and abortion—but, in fact, she is a Catholic mother of seven who is publicly pro-life. If not outright slander, this is at best an *ad hominem* attack. My point is not that Gress isn’t allowed to take secular thinkers seriously—there is indeed a long Christian tradition of doing precisely this—but rather that her intellectual allegiances reveal a confused set of priorities. Why would Gress close off potentially fruitful debate with fellow Christians in such a vindictive manner? Ultimately, Gress will leave readers unsure of whether the goal is to develop a truly Christian vision of womanhood, or to restore political patriarchy and with it the “Christian West.” Gress would undoubtedly see these goals as interdependent, but they are not necessarily so. I wholeheartedly agree with Gress that women and children have historically been most cherished and safeguarded in those cultures where the influence of the Christian faith has been stronger. But this is because of the very tenets of the Christian faith. Contrary to Gress’s claim that we needed political patriarchy for the “dissemination and maintenance of Christianity,” Christianity had already been spreading before Constantine I made it the official religion of the Roman empire, in part because its insistence of equal dignity was so attractive to women. And to Gress’ claim that “civilization depends” on finding a road out of feminism, I would retort that it depends on finding a road out of secularism instead. St Augustine argued that Rome fell because of its own moral decadence, and that peace can only be found in the city of God. So, too, we should remember that adopting the Christian faith should not be a matter of civilizational flourishing, but rather of belief. It’s disappointing to see Gress, a sincere Christian, tap into the trend of cultural Christianity. Whether the intention is the genuine flourishing of a Christian society or merely the restoration of the Christian West, a movement as diverse in both political aims and philosophical underpinnings as feminism is the perfect scapegoat. I share Gress’ desire for motherhood and domestic work to be once again valued. But I can’t take *Something Wicked* seriously as a work of scholarship, because it is lacking in rigour and riddled with logical fallacies. In fact, its greatest flaw is not that it fails as an intellectual history of feminism (though it does that, too), but that it will inevitably teach its intended audience (i.e., young women) to reason badly. Itteaches them to look for single-factor, simplistic causes to explain complex social phenomena spanning centuries. And it teaches them to adopt a tribal outlook in their intellectual life, dismissing any thinkers who don’t neatly fall into the group who hold the “right opinion,” rather than examining thinkers individually, their good and bad ideas alike. I will not be giving this book to my daughter once she is old enough. I *will* expose her to arguments both for and against feminism so that she may grapple with them and come to her own conclusions, but *Something Wicked* won’t be my book of choice.