Timeline

Here’s a big-picture, historical sweep of how Christian societies have moderated or reformed on the specific issues you listed: slavery, monarchy, veiling/head-coverings, executions for apostasy/blasphemy/sexual offenses, and “obedience” of wives.

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1. Very high-level timeline

Key periods (West, roughly):

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2. Slavery: from taken-for-granted to officially rejected

New Testament and early church (1st–4th c.)

• The NT assumes slavery exists and gives instructions to masters and slaves (e.g., Ephesians 6, 1 Peter 2) but doesn’t call for abolition.
• Some church fathers recommend manumission as charity and insist slaves are spiritually equal, but the institution itself is not structurally attacked.
  Late antiquity–Middle Ages
• In much of Western Europe, chattel slavery slowly declines into forms of serfdom, but slavery never disappears entirely; it persists in frontier regions and in the Mediterranean.
• Popes and bishops sometimes free slaves or discourage enslavement of Christians, but there’s no general Christian ban on owning slaves.
  Age of exploration and Atlantic slavery (15th–18th c.)
• Some papal bulls in the 15th century (e.g., by Nicholas V) explicitly authorize Portuguese rulers to subjugate and enslave non-Christians in new territories, and Christian rulers heavily participate in the Atlantic slave trade. (Medium)
• At the same time, there are counter-voices: e.g., Bartolomé de las Casas and others condemn enslavement of indigenous Americans on Christian grounds.
  Abolitionist turn (18th–19th c.)
• From the late 1700s, Christian abolitionism becomes a major force:
  • Quakers are among the first groups to say slave-holding is incompatible with Christianity.
  • Evangelicals like William Wilberforce and the Clapham Sect drive the British Abolition of the Slave Trade Act (1807) and Slavery Abolition Act (1833).
• In the Catholic world, popes gradually pivot from toleration/ambiguity to explicit condemnation. A run of papal documents from 1435 to the 19th century denounces various forms of enslavement; Gregory XVI’s In Supremo Apostolatus (1839) strongly condemns the slave trade, and Leo XIII links Catholicism to abolition in texts like In Plurimis (1888). (Catholic Answers)
  20th–21st c.
• All major Christian traditions now officially reject slavery as a grave moral evil and often emphasize human dignity and human rights in explicitly theological language (imago Dei, etc.).

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3. Monarchy, divine right, and Christian moves toward democracy

Medieval Christendom

• Kingship is seen as a normal, even God-willed, political form, but:
  • Kings are said to be under God’s law and the moral oversight of the church.
  • In England, Magna Carta (1215) already frames the king as bound by law and contract, not absolute. (Dallas Baptist University)
    Post-Reformation absolutism (16th–17th c.)
• The classic “divine right of kings” doctrine flourishes after the Reformation in parts of Protestant Europe, especially under figures like James I of England (“Kings are not only God’s lieutenants upon earth…”) (Wikipedia)
• At its peak (roughly 1610–1789) divine right says a king’s authority comes directly from God and he is not accountable to earthly institutions.
  Christian resistance and constitutional theory
• Reformed thinkers (Calvin, Beza, Knox, Rutherford) develop resistance theory: rulers are accountable to God’s law; if they become tyrants, lesser magistrates or the people may resist or depose them. (The Times of Israel Blogs)
• In the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution (1688), many Protestants argue that constitutional limits and the right to resist tyranny are consistent with biblical teaching.
  Enlightenment & revolutions
• The American and French Revolutions decisively undercut divine-right monarchy. Many pastors and theologians in the new United States argue that republicanism and popular sovereignty are compatible with Christian principles of justice and covenant.
• By the late 18th–19th centuries, divine right is discredited; monarchy survives mostly in constitutional form.
  Modern era
• Today most Christian theologians who defend monarchy do so as a historical or symbolic form, not as an absolute, God-guaranteed authority. Churches widely affirm democracy, human rights, and the idea that political authority is accountable to both law and conscience.

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4. Apostasy, blasphemy & sexual “crimes”: from capital offenses to religious freedom

4.1 Heresy, apostasy, and blasphemy

Late Roman / Medieval period

• Once Christianity becomes the empire’s religion (4th c.), heresy and blasphemy gradually become civil as well as ecclesiastical crimes.
• Influential theologians such as Augustine, later Aquinas, and then many Reformers accept that obstinate heretics may, as a last resort, be executed by the state for the protection of the community’s faith. (emissio.net)
  Early modern
• Catholic and Protestant states both use imprisonment, exile, and sometimes execution against heretics, blasphemers, and “seditious” religious speech.
• In Britain, the last known execution for blasphemy is Thomas Aikenhead (1697) in Scotland. (atheistscholar.org)
• After that, prosecutions continue, but death becomes rare; penalties shift toward fines, imprisonment, or civil disabilities.
  Enlightenment to 19th c.
• Enlightenment thinkers (many from Christian backgrounds) argue that coerced belief contradicts the nature of faith.
• Written constitutions like the U.S. First Amendment (1791) enshrine religious freedom and bar federal punishments for apostasy or blasphemy.
• By the 19th century, most Western Christian-majority states have abolished the death penalty for religious offenses and gradually de-emphasize blasphemy laws, though some remnants linger on the books well into the 20th century. (Wikipedia)
  20th-century theological shifts
• The definitive Catholic turn is Vatican II’s Dignitatis Humanae (1965), which teaches that no one should be coerced into belief and that religious freedom is grounded in human dignity.
• Mainline Protestant bodies had generally moved in that direction earlier, tying religious liberty to the Reformation idea of conscience and to modern human rights language.

4.2 Sexual offenses (esp. homosexuality, adultery, etc.)

Medieval–early modern

• Many Christian legal codes treat sodomy and sometimes adultery as capital crimes.
  • In England, the Buggery Act (1533) makes sodomy a capital offense; executions continue into the 19th century. (Wikipedia)
  • The last known executions in England for sodomy were James Pratt and John Smith in 1835. (Wikipedia)
    19th–20th c.
• Throughout the 19th century, the death penalty for sodomy is abolished (in the UK, it remains a potential capital crime until 1861, but no executions after 1835). (Wikipedia)
• Criminal penalties remain (imprisonment, hard labor) well into the 20th century in Christian-heritage countries; full decriminalization of homosexual acts in much of Western Europe and North America mainly occurs from the 1960s onward.
• Most churches maintain traditional teaching on sexual ethics, but the idea that the state should execute or imprison people for consensual acts steadily loses Christian support.

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5. Veiling / head-coverings: from strong expectation to (mostly) optional

Biblical and early church context

• 1 Corinthians 11 expects women to be covered and men uncovered in Christian worship; in the 1st-century Mediterranean world, a covered female head signaled modesty, respectability, and often marital status. (Christ Over All)
• Early Christian practice appears to follow this norm; in many places, married women veiled in public generally, not just in church.
  Medieval–early modern
• Throughout Latin Christendom, women’s head-coverings in church are the norm, reinforced by custom and local ecclesiastical law.
• In Orthodox lands, various forms of veiling or head-scarves continue as marks of modesty.
  19th–20th c. shift
• As Western fashion changes, Christian women still often wear hats or veils to church, but the practice becomes cultural rather than legally enforced.
• In the Roman Catholic Church, the 1917 Code of Canon Law required women to cover their heads at Mass; the 1983 Code dropped this requirement, effectively ending a universal legal obligation, though some traditionalists still promote it. (Christ Over All)
• In most Protestant churches head-coverings faded from standard practice during the 20th century, though some conservative Anabaptist, Pentecostal, and Reformed groups still expect them.
  Today
• In historically Christian countries, veiling is almost never state-mandated; where Christian women veil, it’s typically framed as voluntary devotion or identity, not compulsion.

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6. “Obedience” of the wife: from legal subordination to contested theology

New Testament baseline

• Household texts speak of wives submitting to husbands and husbands loving wives as Christ loves the church (Ephesians 5; Colossians 3; 1 Peter 3).
• In the 1st-century Greco-Roman world, legal and social patriarchy is already assumed. Some scholars argue these texts moderate that patriarchy by imposing sacrificial love and mutual care rather than simple domination. (Stant Litore)
  Christian legal structures pre-modern
• Most Christian legal systems enshrine coverture or similar ideas: the husband is legal head of household; the wife usually cannot own property or contract fully in her own name.
• Church law typically expects wife’s obedience and husband’s provision/protection.
  19th–early 20th c. legal reforms
• Industrialization and liberal ideas of individual rights lead to major changes:
  • Married Women’s Property Acts in Britain and similar laws elsewhere allow women to own property and contract independently.
  • Divorce laws and custody rules gradually move away from absolute male control.
• Many Christian thinkers begin reframing marriage as a partnership of equals, even if they retain language of “headship.”
  Late 20th–21st c. theological split
  Two broad camps emerge in evangelical and many conservative Protestant/Catholic contexts:

1. Complementarianism
   • Men and women are equal in dignity but have distinct roles; the husband is head, the wife is called to submit, especially in home and church.
   • This view was systematized in the late 20th century (e.g., Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood) explicitly as a response to feminism. (The Shepherd’s Church)
   • Complementarians typically insist this is not license for abuse and emphasize sacrificial leadership by husbands.
2. Egalitarianism
   • Argues that, in Christ, authority in marriage should be fully mutual, and that “submit to one another” (Eph 5:21) cancels hierarchical readings.
   • Sees legal patriarchy as a cultural accommodation that the gospel ultimately undercuts.
     In law and practice today

• In Western legal systems with Christian heritage, the legal subordination of wives has been abolished; spouses have equal legal rights.
• Within churches, practices range from strict male-headship models to fully egalitarian leadership and marriage norms. So “obedience of the wife” survives mainly as an internal theological teaching in certain traditions, not as an imposed civil rule.

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7. Pulling it together

If you zoom out, the arc in Christian-majority societies looks roughly like this:

• Early and medieval periods: Christianity largely baptizes existing social forms (slavery, monarchy, patriarchy) but tries to moralize them—call rulers and masters to mercy, forbid arbitrary divorce, stress duties of husbands to wives, etc.
• Reformation to Enlightenment: Confessional churches still back strong state power and moral enforcement, but internal debates and theological developments (resistance theory, conscience, natural rights) create seeds for later liberal reforms.
• 19th–20th centuries: Under pressure from both Christian revivalism and secular liberalism, Christian institutions themselves help drive or later endorse reforms—abolition of slavery, end of divine-right monarchy, rollback of executions for religious/sexual offenses, expansion of women’s civil rights.
• Today: In almost all Christian-majority polities, slavery is banned, monarchy (if present) is constitutional, religious freedom is formally affirmed, veiling is voluntary, and wives are legal equals to husbands—while churches continue to argue among themselves about how much of the old hierarchy is still theologically binding.

Pinker’s “benevolent hypocrisy” — when behavior reforms faster than profession

After reviewing Christian Europe’s justifications for torture and persecution, Pinker asks why modern Christians who affirm much of the inherited faith do not infer a duty to burn heretics or coerce conversion. His answer is that practice has been constrained by newer norms of nonviolence and toleration while difficult texts and doctrines are reinterpreted, compartmentalized, or left inactive. He calls that gap a “benevolent hypocrisy.”

This is a useful challenge to simple continuity stories, but it does not by itself prove that reform came wholly from outside Christianity. As the timeline above shows, believers also contested coercion using conscience, dignity, charity, and other resources internal to Christian traditions. The historical question is which mixture of internal reinterpretation, institutional change, pluralism, and external criticism moved practice in each case. Chapter 1, PDF pp. 45–46 (file not included in this release)

If you want, next step could be:

• making separate timelines just for slavery, or for religious freedom, with key Christian figures and documents; or
• a comparison chart between historical Christian norms and classical Islamic fiqh on the same issues.

Not just caused by Enlightenment

Short answer: a lot of the reforms crystallize in the 18th–19th centuries and the Enlightenment plays a big role — but they are not just “because of the Enlightenment.” They’re the product of a long interaction between:

• older Christian ideas (person made in God’s image, conscience, equality before God, limits on rulers), and
• newer Enlightenment moves (natural rights, social contract, secular reason, critique of tradition).
  Let me break it down by theme.

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1. Slavery & abolition

Not just Enlightenment.

• Enlightenment thinkers contributed (natural equality, universal rights, etc.), and some were strongly anti-slavery.
• But many Enlightenment figures accepted slavery or were personally involved in it; and some of the earliest, fiercest abolitionists were explicitly Christian (Quakers, evangelical Protestants, some Catholic voices).
  What happens in practice:
• 1700s–1800s:
  • Evangelical revivals and Quaker movements create a moral horror at slavery rooted in the Bible, conversion experience, and the belief that all souls are equal before Christ.
  • Those Christians then use Enlightenment categories (rights, liberty, personhood) as a language to argue in politics and law.
• So abolition is best seen as an alliance: Christian moral energy + Enlightenment political-legal language.
  If you say “the Enlightenment ended slavery,” you erase the distinctly Christian abolitionist movements. If you say “the church did it alone,” you erase the role of rights-talk, revolutions, and secular campaigns. Both together were crucial.

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2. Monarchy, divine right & democracy

Here the Enlightenment is more clearly central, but still building on older Christian disputes.
Long before 1700 you already have:

• Medieval ideas that kings are bound by God’s law and can’t simply do whatever they want.
• The English Magna Carta and later resistance theories from Reformed thinkers (Calvinist “lesser magistrates,” etc.) arguing that tyrants can legitimately be resisted.
  The 17th–18th c. Enlightenment then:
• Systematizes social contract theory (Locke, Rousseau), popular sovereignty, rights of man, etc.
• Undermines the intellectual prestige of “divine right of kings.”
• Provides a strong secular or natural-law argument for constitutionalism, separation of powers, and representative government.
  But again, most of the actual people pushing these changes in Britain, America, parts of Europe are Christians using Enlightenment tools:
• American revolutionaries quote Locke and also the Bible.
• Many preachers present republicanism or constitutional monarchy as more faithful to biblical justice than absolutism.
  So: the move from “God wants kings” to constitutional democracy is heavily Enlightenment-shaped, but it grows out of centuries of Christian arguments about law, conscience, and tyranny.

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3. Religious freedom & ending executions for heresy/blasphemy

This is probably where your question “Is it the 1700s Enlightenment?” feels most tempting. But again, it’s mixed.
Pre-Enlightenment Christian roots:

• Early Christians themselves argued to pagan Rome that faith can’t be coerced and that conscience must be free — when they were the persecuted minority.
• In the Reformation, some groups (e.g., Anabaptists, some Baptists) argued for soul liberty and against state-enforced belief on explicitly Christian grounds.
• Others, of course, did the opposite and endorsed state punishments.
  What the Enlightenment does:
• Tries to generalize religious freedom as a rational, universal principle, not just a plea from whichever group is currently losing.
• Writes it into constitutions (U.S. First Amendment, French declarations, etc.).
• Reframes the argument as one about individual rights, social peace, and the limits of state power, not just about true doctrine.
  Then in the 19th–20th centuries, Christian theology itself shifts:
• Catholic teaching at Vatican II explicitly affirms religious freedom as grounded in human dignity.
• Many Protestant and Orthodox theologians come to see coercion in religion as a betrayal of the gospel, not a defense of it.
  So the end of burning heretics, executing blasphemers, etc., is:
• Enlightenment pressure from outside +
• Christian self-critique from inside, partly in response to Enlightenment arguments and partly in response to centuries of bloody religious conflict.

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4. Sexual law (especially execution for “sexual degeneracy”)

Historically, harsh penalties for sexual offenses (especially sodomy) came from Christian moral codes fused with pre-modern state power. The Enlightenment starts bending that arc, but a lot of the real decriminalization happens later:

• 1700s–1800s: Some Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thinkers argue for more privacy and less state involvement in consensual adult sex.
• 1800s–1900s: Penalties are lowered (e.g., death penalty for sodomy abolished), then gradually replaced by fines/imprisonment, and finally decriminalized in many places only in the late 20th century.
  Theologically, churches mostly kept traditional sexual ethics long after the criminal law softened. In other words:
• The state backed away from executions and harsh punishments earlier, under Enlightenment and liberal influence.
• Church teaching on what was a sin changed much more slowly, and in many traditions hasn’t changed at all, even though they no longer want the state to kill or jail people for it.
  So here, Enlightenment/later liberalism is doing more of the heavy lifting on the legal side, while Christian teaching is more resistant and only partially “reformed” in some denominations.

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5. Veiling/head-coverings & modesty norms

Head-coverings were never as embedded in state law as, say, blasphemy or sodomy laws. They were:

• Biblically justified (1 Corinthians 11),
• reinforced by custom and church regulations, and
• riding on broader cultural patterns of modesty.
  What changes them is:
• 19th–20th century fashion and cultural modernity (not just “Enlightenment” proper)
• combined with a more individualistic sense of piety and freedom.
  The Catholic Church’s legal requirement for women to cover their heads in church survived the whole Enlightenment and only disappeared from canon law in 1983. Protestants mostly dropped it through cultural drift, not because the 18th-century philosophes wrote about hats.
  So here the story is less “Enlightenment revolution” and more “long-term Western modernization + shifting Christian interpretation.”

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6. Obedience of wife to husband

Again, the Enlightenment is part of a longer story.
Before the 1700s you already have:

• Christian emphasis on mutual love and sacrificial leadership by the husband, within a very patriarchal legal framework (coverture, property law, etc.).
• Occasional Christian voices (from late medieval mystics to some early moderns) highlighting spiritual equality of men and women.
  The 18th–19th c. bring:
• Enlightenment ideas of individual rights and contractual relationships.
• Rise of companionate marriage (emphasis on affection, partnership).
• Early feminist movements, some secular, some explicitly Christian, arguing that patriarchy violates both reason and the gospel.
  Legal reforms (married women’s property acts, divorce reforms, etc.) are driven by:
• Liberal/Enlightenment ideas about individual equality +
• Christian social activists, especially in the 19th–20th centuries, who see those reforms as expressing Christian justice.
  Today you get:
• Complementarians, who claim continuity with historical Christian teaching on male headship;
• Egalitarians, who say the deeper trajectory of the gospel (mutual submission, equal dignity) supports full legal and practical equality.
  Here, Enlightenment/liberal ideas about equality and contract clearly shaped the laws, but Christians are internally divided on how far the theological reform goes.

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7. So… how much credit goes to the Enlightenment?

If you zoom out:

• Many legal and political reforms (abolition of divine-right monarchy, written rights, decriminalization of blasphemy/apostasy, softer sexual laws, equal civil rights for women) are hard to imagine withoutEnlightenment and post-Enlightenment developments.
• Many moral impulses and categories that made these reforms feel compelling (universal human dignity, equality of souls, suspicion of unchecked power, the priority of conscience) are deeply Christian in origin and were already present long before the 1700s.
  A decent way to put it:

  The Enlightenment is where a lot of these reforms get their philosophical vocabulary and political machinery, but the moral raw material and many of the most motivated activists came out of Christian traditions.
  If you want, I can map this into a quick table: rows as reforms (slavery, monarchy, religious freedom, sexual law, marriage), columns as “Christian roots,” “Enlightenment push,” “modern secular/human rights push,” with examples under each. That might give you a clean visual you can drop into Obsidian.