Just how faithful is Fox's 'The Faithful: Women of the Bible'?
"The Faithful: Women of the Bible," a multi-episode biblical drama from Fox, spends a good deal of its run time on Sarah and Hagar. But important details stray from Scripture — and it matters.,"The Faithful: Women of the Bible," a multi-episode biblical drama from Fox, spends a good deal of its run time on Sarah and Hagar. But important details stray from Scripture — and it matters.
2 days ago
Some news coverage is examining how accurately Fox’s The Faithful: Women of the Bible represents biblical women and their stories, focusing on the show’s faithfulness to the source material. 1
The piece centers on the question of how faithfully Fox’s The Faithful: Women of the Bible aligns with biblical accounts. 1
The coverage frames its inquiry around the show’s portrayal of “women of the Bible,” using “faithful” as the lens for evaluating accuracy. 1
Assess Catholic fidelity in modern biblical women portrayals
Modern portrayals of biblical women—whether in preaching, Bible-study materials, art, or media—can be faithful to Catholic teaching or can drift into distortions. Catholic fidelity is not measured by whether a portrayal “matches modern tastes,” but by whether it respects (1) women’s equal personal dignity, (2) the integrity of Scripture’s meaning and genre, and (3) the Church’s reading of those meanings in their canonical whole. The Church also warns against projecting cultural assumptions into biblical/theological images of women and Mary.
Catholic teaching insists on the unity and dignity of man and woman while also recognizing that their personal vocation includes a real “specific diversity and personal originality.” Pope John Paul II states that even rightful resistance to “male domination” must not lead to “masculinization” of women or to “appropriat[ing]… male characteristics contrary to… feminine ‘originality.’”
So, a portrayal is fidelitous when it can affirm that women are fully human persons, called by God, while still portraying biblical role-distinctions without turning them into either (a) inferiority or (b) interchangeable identity.
The Pontifical Biblical Commission (PBC) treats feminist approaches as diverse, but it gives a key criterion: approaches can become tendentious if they proceed from a “preconceived judgment.” It warns that feminist exegesis “runs the risk” of interpreting texts in a “tendentious and thus debatable manner,” sometimes relying on “arguments ex silentio” (reasoning from what is not said).
A portrayal therefore becomes less than Catholic if it uses Scripture mainly as a tool to confirm an external ideology rather than as inspired divine testimony that must be understood in its own textual and theological integrity.
A further interpretive principle (presented in an introductory survey of the PBC’s 2014 document on Scripture) stresses that interpreters must avoid a fundamentalist reading that ignores historical and literary context and that they must not isolate single passages. It notes that difficult moral revelations in Scripture should not be treated as complete in one verse but evaluated in relation to the fullness of revelation in Jesus and within a “canonical reading of Sacred Scripture.”
This is directly relevant to portrayals of women in the New Testament: fidelity requires that depictions of “silence,” “submission,” or restricted roles be presented as part of Scripture’s larger revelation of Christ and the Church’s teaching, not as standalone cultural slogans.
The PBC also connects questions about women and power to the Gospel’s moral logic: feminist exegesis can be useful only if it does not ignore “evangelical teaching concerning power as service,” a teaching addressed by Jesus to all disciples, “men and women.”
Thus, portrayals that treat biblical women merely as political symbols in a power struggle risk missing the Gospel criterion that power must be understood as service.
The PBC explicitly recognizes that some older interpretations were tendentious and sought to “justify the male domination of women.” It says feminine sensitivity can “unmask and correct” such interpretations.
So Catholic fidelity is often missing when a portrayal reduces women to passive objects, assumes women’s dignity is secondary, or ignores Gospel evidence of Jesus’ respect and esteem toward women.
At the same time, the PBC warns that feminist hermeneutics can misfire when it proceeds from a preconceived judgment, rejects the inspired text in favor of hypothetical reconstructions, or builds conclusions from what the text does not explicitly say.
A portrayal fails Catholic fidelity when it effectively asks, “How can we make the biblical text say what our ideological narrative already demands?” rather than, “What does the inspired text—read correctly—really teach?”
For portrayals dealing with problematic passages, the PBC-style interpretive caution is crucial: interpreters should not absolutize single texts detached from context and genre, and they must integrate them within the fuller revelation of Jesus.
For example, modern depictions may flatten complex first-century ecclesial and social settings into universal timeless roles without the contextual constraints the Church’s approach highlights.
Even specifically regarding Mary, Paul VI warns that difficulties in popular Marian images can come not from the Gospel image or doctrine, but from the fact that “succeeding generations of Christians in differing sociocultural contexts” express sentiments in ways that “reflected their own age.” The Church “does not bind herself” to any particular cultural expression of Marian devotion, even while Marian devotion remains valid.
So a portrayal fails fidelity when it uses Mary merely as a screen for modern cultural agendas—rather than presenting her as the Gospel-centered “virgin, wife and mother” model that the Church has drawn from Revelation.
John Paul II teaches that Christian understanding of women is formed by Jesus’ “attitude of respect and esteem” toward women and by meditation on Mary as model of “virginity and motherhood, of faith and active social concern.”
A faithful portrayal therefore does not depict Jesus as dismissive, or women merely as scenery; it highlights Gospel moments where women hear, believe, serve, and bear witness.
John Paul II links a woman’s dignity to the love she receives and gives in return, and he urges women to keep alive awareness of their fundamental vocation: finding themselves by giving love to others with their “genius,” including sensitivity to human beings because they are human.
So faithful portrayals emphasize personhood, vocation, and love—not only stereotypes or symbolic roles.
Catholic fidelity to the “equality without interchangeability” principle shows up in teaching that recognizes equality of personal dignity while maintaining that roles and functions need not be the same.
One source presented here argues that Jesus lifts up women’s dignity while not making the Twelve—including apostolic headship—interchangeable with women’s discipleship; it describes the Catholic idea as “Equality, Not Sameness.” While this is used in a particular scholarly argument context, it supports a general Catholic hermeneutic point: dignity ≠ identical role assignments in every social function.
Accordingly, portrayals should not treat role distinctions as denials of dignity, nor should they treat every difference as humiliation.
The PBC’s warning is balanced: it acknowledges the legitimacy of questions about women and power, but insists that any helpful hermeneutic must not lose sight of the Gospel’s teaching that power is service to others, addressed to both women and men.
So portrayals that frame women only through domination/resistance dynamics—without the Gospel “service” lens—tend to become non-fidelitous.
When modern portrayals deal with “silence” texts (e.g., in the Pauline corpus), Catholic fidelity requires contextual interpretation, not blanket modern leveling.
The provided survey of the PBC’s approach notes that in 1 Corinthians 14, women were given opportunities to prophesy (citing 1 Corinthians 11:5 and 14:31), and thus the prohibition in 14:33–35 is read in that setting as a command for wives to show respect in the Church’s assembly.
So a faithful portrayal should avoid narrating these passages as if they were simply “women are not allowed to speak,” and instead should communicate the situational and ecclesial meaning the Church’s interpretive approach suggests.
Similarly, for 1 Timothy 2, the survey states that the prohibition addresses “only teaching and administrative offices,” while discussing that the Genesis-based justification is situated in Jewish precedents.
Thus, faithful portrayals should distinguish between (1) a restricted ecclesial-office question and (2) the fuller biblical affirmation that women participate actively in the life of faith and witness (which the Gospel narrative itself shows).
The survey candidly notes that we can “regret” Paul did not clearly assert equal social status for believing spouses, and explains why his approach may have been constrained by accusations of undermining social order—while also affirming that the exhortation to husbands “has not lost any of its actuality and its truth.”
A Catholic-fidelitous portrayal therefore should not treat “submission” as timeless permission for abuse; it should present the texts within their moral and historical horizons, and it should integrate them into the broader Gospel revelation.
When presenting Mary, Catholic fidelity includes doctrinal continuity: Mary as virgin, wife and mother, model of faith and active social concern. At the same time, devotion is not bound to one culture’s imagery: Marian devotion has continuity, yet the Church does not bind itself to a specific cultural epoch or anthropological framework underlying popular expressions.
So portrayals should be careful not to reduce Mary to either a purely romantic ideal, a purely political icon, or a purely private religious figure detached from her Gospel character.
A portrayal is likely more Catholic-fidelitous if it:
Catholic fidelity in modern portrayals of biblical women means holding together three commitments: women’s equal dignity and vocation, faithful interpretation of Scripture within the Church’s canonical and contextual method, and Gospel-centered understanding of authority and power as service. When modern portrayals either (a) absorb patriarchy into the text’s meaning or (b) instrumentalize Scripture to satisfy ideological agendas—or (c) flatten context and genre—they drift away from Catholic fidelity.