Thecla was not allowed to choose a life of her own. And this is critical context for us to understand before hearing her story. She was her father’s property, then she would become her husband’s. And her children would be theirs, her husband’s and father’s, not her own. It was a revolutionary act then for women within the Christ Movement to consider themselves equal to men, and equal to one another—to call each other sisters—even if one was enslaved and the other was married to a wealthy man with political power.
