Rethinking Gender in Orthodox Christianity

By Thomas Arentzen and Susan Ashbrook Harvey

What is the role of gender in Eastern Christianity? In this volume, Orthodox experts of different disciplines and cultural backgrounds tackle this complex question. They engage critically with gender issues within their own tradition. Rather than simply accepting pervasive assumptions and practices, the authors challenge readers to reconsider historically or theologically justified views by offering nuanced insights into the tradition. The first part of the book explores normative positions in Orthodox texts and contexts. From examinations of Scripture and hagiography to re-evaluations of monastic, patriarchal, and legal sources, it sheds new light on gender issues in Orthodox Christianity. The second part considers how gendered expectations shape individuals' participation in Orthodox liturgical life and how ecclesial contexts inflect gender theologically. The chapters reflect diverse Orthodox voices brought together to foster new understandings of the ways gender shapes Orthodox religious lives and beliefs. Rethinking what has been inherited from tradition, the authors proffer new perspectives on what it means to be a man or woman within Orthodoxy in the twenty-first century.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Release date: Nov 9, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666755282

Book preview

Introducing Gender and Orthodox Christianity

Ashley Purpura and Thomas Arentzen

Holy and Almighty God, who . . . sanctified the female, and not to men alone, but also to women bestowed grace and the advent of your Holy Spirit. Such were the words prayed by Byzantine archbishops over the heads of women at the altar when women were ordained deaconesses.¹ For centuries, women were consecrated and bestowed with the orarion that deacons and deaconesses wore during liturgical celebrations. But this does not happen anymore. Today, Orthodox women are, as a rule, not seen at the altar.

What does it mean to be a woman? And what is a man? Do these two represent variations on the same theme, or do they, as it were, constitute two separate types of beings with different properties and capacities? Such questions have haunted and excited modern people since Romantic winds swept across Europe in the nineteenth century. Yet modernity did not invent these questions. Just as to St. Paul there was no longer male and female in Christ (Gal 3:28), negotiations of gender surface ubiquitously in early Christian sources. For instance, Basil of Caesarea upholds that

the virtue of man and woman is one, since also the creation is of equal honor for both, and so the reward for both is the same. Listen to Genesis [

1

:

27

]: God, it says, created the human; in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And the nature being one, their activities also are the same; and the work being equal, their reward also is the same.²

Despite such clear expressions of gender parity and the emphasis on equal value both from the apostle of Tarsus and from one of the so called Great Hierarchs of the Church, Christian communities have typically assigned distinct activities to men and women and given value-laden interpretations to gender roles. Of course, the categories and terms used to construe human gender have changed dynamically between places and times, including within Orthodox history. In this book, we study conceptions of gender and differences of the body in relation to the practices, beliefs, and values of Orthodox Christianity—in contemporary parishes, but also in wider historical contexts.

More than one and a half millennia ago, the desert ascetic Amma Sarah—who was not always well-treated by monks—exclaimed to her anchorite brothers: It is I who am a man, you who are women.³ This laconic statement exemplifies the gnomic style of the ascetic desert literature of late antiquity, but it reveals more than that. It shows that even ascetics were subject to gender norms. Amma Sarah’s words demonstrate the peculiar early Christian tendency to describe engagement in spiritual struggle in terms of manliness.⁴ Her playful comment suggests that the categories of man and woman had less to do with bodies and more to do with behavior—Sarah certainly did not insinuate that the monks had female genitalia, nor that she herself was bearded. Being male, to Sarah, meant being spiritually strong and persistent. A man was something you could become, not something you were born.

To another important early Christian thinker, Gregory of Nazianzus, being a man or a woman apparently had everything to do with bodies—gender was a corporeal phenomenon unrelated to character. In a funeral oration praising his sister Gorgonia, he cried out: O nature of woman overcoming that of man in the common struggle for salvation, and demonstrating that the distinction between male and female is one of body not of soul!⁵ The Cappadocian theologian thought, in other words, that the distinction between the sexes resided in the physical form, whereas in souls there was no differentiation. Male and female souls were ultimately identical. Similarly, Palladius of Galatia, lauding the Constantinopolitan deaconess Olympias, wrote: "Do not say ‘woman’ [about her], but ‘what a human being [anthropos],’ for she is a man in contrast to the form of her body.⁶ Olympias the Deaconess was, to Palladuis, such a splendid person that she exceeded her female form. However, while Palladius’ intention appears to be transgressive, his language slips—as he is looking elsewhere—into a place where woman cannot actually be synonymous with human. Even when gender does not reside in human bodies, it often glides off human tongues. While gender may have been fluid in relation to physical sex, what was not fluid was a value hierarchy: to most early Christian voices, man denoted a more perfected form than woman."

The distinction between woman and man has to a large degree determined how history has dressed people, placed people in various spaces, including churches, and ritually integrated people into parishes. This is especially true for women, whom many cultures construct as second, other, or extra, and who have seldom been allowed to ignore gender expectations. Throughout the history of the Orthodox Church, one’s gender-category has scripted one’s ecclesiastical prospects and provided fundamental boundaries for one’s life. At the same time, if women can become male, or be men in contrast to the form of [their] body, it is not easy to grasp what gender is, precisely, or how the boundaries can be viewed as impenetrable.

Despite the various ways we might interpret Paul’s post-gender rhetoric in Galatians 3:28, ecclesiastically supported values have historically justified or reinforced particular gender expectations. The preceding Pauline verse—As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ—is used to initiate everyone, regardless of gender, in the same baptismal font, to the same Eucharistic chalice (Gal 3:27). In baptism and communion, all are equal. Yet, as Orthodox theologian Elisabeth Behr-Sigel has pointed out, in some parishes during the churching rite of an infant (often preceding or proximate to the infant’s baptism), the priest carries male babies to the altar—but does not carry female ones.⁷ Admittedly, there is a great deal of variation in this practice in modern times, but the sex-based distinction still prevails in many Orthodox churches.⁸ The equalizing ideal intrinsic to the sacraments, and expressed by St. Paul, does not necessarily carry through in the practical gendered life of the Church.

Issues related to gender—as issues with religion—always intersect with cultural and political discourses. This is especially evident when political rhetoric draws on religious culture to justify a specific regional interpretation of human rights and religious freedom—today, often aligned with current global conservative values—over and against what is perceived as secular, liberal, or anti-Christian ideologies.⁹ While Orthodox households and communities have historically been organized in a variety of ways—exclusively male or female (e.g., monasteries), or with mixed genders, led by women or by men (e.g., families)—the modern political label of traditional values gives the impression of a (once-)stable gender-world of men and women neatly divided into nuclear families with one or two cars. Clearly the early Christian examples above offer a less stable vision of gender than modern traditional politics do.

The Orthodox Church has a hierarchical structure. Since only celibate men can become bishops, the top-level leadership is almost exclusively male. Historically speaking, the model has been somewhat more flexible. In Byzantine times, for instance, even the highest-ranking bishops might be eunuchs,¹⁰ a group which were perceived as a third gender, or as part of a more fluid gender spectrum.¹¹ In the current moment, however, such castrated leadership in the Orthodox Church is hardly an option. And in any case, this never paved the way for female bishops. The male leadership of the Church shapes sentiments and conversations regarding gender in particular ways, which means that certain forms of gender privilege are integral to the model, even as many women take on great responsibilities on a parish level. Religious gender expectations rely on the tension between, on one hand, local, cultural, and historically contingent circumstances and, on the other, doctrinal positions that appear more or less unnegotiable to many believers. Both the case of St. Paul and that of eunuchs exemplify, however, how such positions are also ultimately flexible.

Many historical sources of Orthodox Christianity display overt discussion of gender. Scripture, liturgical rites, hymns, hagiography, canon law, patristic commentaries, monastic documents, icons, and pastoral instructions provide resources for understanding gender within Orthodox traditions. For Orthodox Christian theology, however, Tradition is not some sort of closed canon of historical sources, but a dynamic ongoing reflection on and witness of the Holy Spirit at work in the Church.¹² It may be true, for example, as Ashley Purpura critiques in this volume, that Orthodox tradition is marked by a certain type of clerical patriarchal privilege. Yet there are resourceful ways of rethinking gender’s significance within this historical tradition, emphasizing women’s agency and paths toward greater realizations of equality. Stavroula Constantinou’s chapter demonstrates that Byzantine women’s monastic communities fostered empowering lineages of female spiritual strength, while Susan Ashbrook Harvey invites us to recognize how gender—far from being a stable or discrete category—has been used rhetorically throughout Christian history to navigate a range of embodied social circumstances. Our current historical moment is witnessing an increased interest in the role of gender within Orthodox Christianity, and this book attempts to participate innovatively in that engagement.

Church and Conversation

The modern conversation about gender within Orthodox Christianity has primarily focused on the status of women in the Church. Most notably, the Inter-Orthodox Theological Symposium at Rhodes in 1988 admitted that Christian communities have not always and in all places been able to suppress effectively ideas, manners and customs, historical developments and social conditions which have resulted in practical discrimination against women.¹³ This meeting, convened by the Ecumenical Patriarch Demetrios I, was one among several twentieth-century gatherings that carried out vital groundwork regarding the participation of women in church life and identified modes of discrimination. Many of the meetings were prompted by Orthodox women’s involvement in the interdenominational World Council of Churches.

In the last few decades of the twentieth century, women themselves began to gain a voice as theologians in the Orthodox Church, even if their numbers were still minuscule. This volume discusses two of them: Elisabeth Behr-Sigel (b. 1907–d. 2005) and Anca Monolache (b. 1923–d. 2013). Both were involved in such ecumenical encounters, which offered avenues for exposure to the status of women in other Christian churches and prompted reflections on the varying roles of women in different cultural milieus within the Orthodox Church. Since the mid-1970s, Orthodox women have participated in international conversations that have drawn on theological and practical insights to produce a series of recommendations to improve the opportunities for women in the Orthodox Church. Several improvements have been implemented, such as increased access for women to theological education. In other fields, measures remain insufficient and discrimination persists.¹⁴ The chapters in this volume addressing issues of prayers and practices related to birth, as well as appropriate pastoral and liturgical involvement of women, indicate that concerns raised in earlier ecumenical discussions largely remain unresolved. Carrie Frederick Frost points to the theological dissonance that greets a new mother after birth, and Eirini Afentoulidou reconsiders the historical evidence for such prayers and practices.

In tandem with the ecumenical conversations of the twentieth century regarding Orthodox women, the question of restoring the female diaconate has gained prominence in public ecclesial and academic discussion.¹⁵ Historians agree that a female diaconate existed in premodern Orthodox churches. While some Oriental Orthodox churches have now included female deacons in their modern communities, the Eastern Orthodox churches have shown more hesitation. In 2004, the Church of Greece officially decided to restore the female diaconate, and yet it is unclear whether any woman has actually been consecrated as deaconess following the decision. In 2016, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theodoros II of Alexandria consecrated five deaconesses in Kolwezi (DR Congo), but later clarified that these were in fact rather consecrated catechists.¹⁶ Nevertheless, the female diaconate and the possibility of women’s ordination remain divisive issues, interconnected as they are with cultural gender norms and religious values expressed in gendered terms.¹⁷ This volume provides discussion of female deacons as they relate to the broader participation of women in the liturgical and pastoral life of the church, in different traditions. Donna Rizk-Asourdian considers the distinctive features of female deacons in the Armenian and Coptic contexts and the inconsistency of their reception, while Teva Regule provides a case for a full restoration of the female diaconate in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Scholarship and Other Conversations

As people in the twentieth century grew progressively aware that modern humans were in some kind of gender trouble, theological reflections often came to address such an awareness. Questions regarding the ontological significance of gender, the possibility of a particularly feminine divine charisma, the soteriological significance of gender complementarity, and the relation between vocation and sex were raised—without significant consensus—among Orthodox theologians, as they grappled with the growing gender diversity and gender equality around them.¹⁸ This grappling notwithstanding, much is left to be desired. While critical theory has become vital in order to understand how gender functions, shapes, and expresses identity for many contemporary conversations, Orthodox scholarship has proven tardy in adopting—or even responding to—theoretically informed perspectives. Several authors in this volume evince the resourceful ways theologians may employ critical theory to consider gender essentialism, gender transition, and the significance of gender for molding religious belief and practices. Gender theories enable us to shed new light on how Orthodox Christianity is gendered and explore previously unconsidered dimensions of Orthodox believers’ embodied experiences.

Anglophone scholarship on gender in contemporary Orthodox Christian contexts remains limited. Leonie B. Liveris’ 2005 Ancient Taboos and Gender Prejudice: Challenges for Orthodox Women and the Church and Helena Kupari and Elina Vuola’s edited volume Orthodox Christianity and Gender: Dynamics of Tradition, Culture and Lived Practice from 2019 represent a few of the important exceptions to that rule, as does Carrie Frederick Frost’s corporeal theologizing in Maternal Body: A Theology of Incarnation from the Christian East, from the same year. These books herald a newfound interest to which this volume also attests. The scholarship on gender in various historical sources of Orthodox Christianity, on the other hand, is vast.¹⁹ Recent decades have witnessed an intensified attention to gender in late antiquity and Byzantium, prompting new understandings of how femininity, masculinity, celibacy, and the angelic life were constructed and performed in various religious settings. How such historical insights might more directly inform conceptions of gender and its relevance for contemporary Orthodox Christians—who continue to invoke sources from these eras as authoritative—is still a question ripe for reconsideration. Arguing that the Orthodox Christian protection of human rights is indeed consistent with the historical tradition of the Church, Lena Zezulin’s chapter presents historical examples of how the early Byzantine Church adopted secular values and norms with regard to marriage.

In recent years anthropological and sociological scholarship has contributed significantly to the exploration of relations between gender and religious identities. While the findings of social scientists or historians may not be intentionally constructive, these disciplines can provide us with a more accurate perception of how people in diverse Orthodox contexts have negotiated, subverted, and employed gender expectations to engage their religious values and practices.²⁰ The lived life of Orthodox communities is never irrelevant to theological reflections. It has been an explicit goal for this volume to provide space where different types of knowledge and expertise regarding gender can be thought alongside each other. Many of the chapters bridge modes of thinking in order to address realities of gendered life that are not yet sufficiently understood in existing scholarship or ecclesiastical practices. Some chapters reflect on personal experiences in ways that bring to light the concrete, personal relevance of their conclusions. Studying gender in specific lived contexts helps us appreciate the ways in which religious ideals are fashioned by and applied to individual lives. Some contributors also draw conclusions that may be directly pertinent to understanding and potentially reshaping gender constructions in Orthodox Christian communities.

Several international conferences have lately attempted to bridge the ecclesial and the academic perspectives, moving beyond the narrow conversations regarding the role of women in church. These recent meetings have brought together Orthodox scholars, practitioners, and pastoral leaders to foster conversations about sexuality and gender.²¹ Among other things, the conversations have demonstrated how fruitfully ecclesiastical and academic perspectives may cross-fertilize each other regarding such complex topics. The meetings and their contentious reception underscore the need for ongoing scholarly research and ecclesiastical discussion about gender and sexuality. Among Orthodox Christians—lay as well as ordained—these conversations are unfortunately still largely taboo, as if cementing particular historically contingent gender roles constituted the very core of the Christian gospel.

The Present Volume

The present volume is the fruit of a series of conversations that took place in Oslo from 2016 to 2018 as part of the project Gender and Sexuality in Orthodox Christianity, which was organized by Thomas Arentzen, Michael Hjälm, Cyril Hovorun, Pantelis Kalaitzidis, Aristotle Papanikolaou, and Ashley Purpura within the framework of the Oslo Coalition on Freedom of Religion or Belief. Attempting to create a protected space for intra-Orthodox dialogues, the project facilitated charitable encounters between international Orthodox scholars, hierarchs, and people with leading roles in Orthodox communities. Included were both those for whom gender issues had a particularly professional relevance and those whose personal lives the issues had shaped and affected in a profound way. The project conducted both pastoral and academic conversations aimed at countering religious discrimination based on gender.

The essays chosen for this book emerge from the issues raised and perspectives shared during the project; it does not, however, amount to a proceedings volume. The contributors represent a variety of approaches and cultural backgrounds that shape and diversify their understandings of gender and Orthodox Christianity. As already mentioned, some of them reflect deeply felt personal experiences; others maintain a degree of scholarly distance. While the volume offers new directions for thinking about gender within this tradition, it constitutes a dialogical publication whose ambition is to foster conversation both within and beyond Orthodox tradition. The chapters contained herein highlight ways of thinking that complicate existing generalizations about Orthodox women and gender constructions. This book offers scholars and practitioners of other religious traditions opportunities to develop more complex understandings of Orthodox Christian sources and communities, and avenues for exploring parallels or points of discontinuity.

The authors’ assumptions, conclusions, and driving concerns in each chapter are far from uniform, and the book as a whole does not provide one unanimous answer as to how the whole gender issue may be solved, nor indeed to what the problem itself might be. Similarly, the chapters do not feature full conformity with regard to spelling and terminology. This reflects the complexity of both the issues at stake and the perspectives that inform their understanding. Each chapter speaks uniquely to historical, intellectual, or theological resources, moving the conversation about gender in the Orthodox Church into productive dialogical terrain. Approaching it from different angles, the following pages ask what Church tradition means by man and woman, and how Orthodox Christians have constructed and currently construct ideas about gender—not necessarily on theological foundations. Although the book discusses gender and gender-related issues, it does so primarily with reference to the status of women. This is intentional, as women and their religious opportunities and experiences are often determined with reference to the more dominant and normative man, as Amma Sarah exemplified, and their freedom to conduct their religious lives is more liable to be restricted than that of men. That is not to say, however, that the book is only for or about women—nor is it exclusively by women. It addresses the situation, agency, and construction of women in traditional sources; it carefully reconsiders pastoral and liturgical issues particular to women; it reevaluates gender constructions and assumptions in theological, historical, and modern contexts; and it highlights the legacies of female theologians. It also discusses gender expressions that challenge binary assumptions. Rebecca Wiegel’s chapter, for instance, provides an argument for reading trans narratives within Orthodox tradition in a way that yields a deeper understanding of Orthodox gendered lives. Neither the lives and concerns of women nor the general topic of gender is something that can be isolated from the broader theological or ecclesiastical discourse.

We have organized the volume into two sections. The first section, Rethinking Assumptions, brings together seven chapters that explore and challenge conventional assumptions, prompting a new discussion about gender and Orthodox Christianity. We begin by reevaluating the voices of women in the New Testament, then turn to reconsider the significance of gender assumptions in other historical sources. Such assumptions have shaped traditions, practices, and expectations, yet at the same time traditions, practices, and expectations—even in our own era—contribute to the shaping of assumptions. This is how tradition works, and thus working with tradition means rethinking assumptions. Thus, the first section of the book pays attention to how women and men align with, transgress, and are formed by religious norms. Gender roles and gender expectations are integral to how societies and communities function, but they are also constantly negotiated and renegotiated. Historical sources clearly show that a kneading and reworking of these categories has been part of the Church from its earliest days.

The second section, Gender and Participation, includes six chapters that examine how ritual and theological practices can configure gender expectations, and how such expectations in turn may configure religious participation and script gendered life in the Orthodox Church. As chapters in this section show, women’s participation in the church is tied to values of bodily purity and expectations of birth-giving. Thus Afentoulidou, Frost, Rizk-Asourdian, and Regule incite a rethinking of women’s pastoral care, the status of the newborn and unborn in relationship to their parents, women’s relationship to ecclesial offices, and the relevance of certain liturgical practices. Likewise, in describing the views and contributions of women theologians, Turcescu and Lossky invite the reader to consider the role of the laity in enriching the life of the church and how gender might particularly shape (or even restrict) that calling. The chapters move the reader through a rich landscape of views, considerations, and experiences of gender in the Orthodox Christian world.

While acknowledging the importance of the groundwork laid before us and contributions on these topics in other conversations and publications, we try to avoid merely regurgitating women’s concerns in a different context; thus, we seek new approaches to and insights on issues that may indeed have been raised previously.²² The volume considers not only the life of women, but also the construction of gender in Orthodox contexts more broadly. It submits both reconsiderations of the past and recommendations for the future. It challenges our assumptions and assumes new challenges. We wish to offer an original contribution regarding what is at stake in naming or identifying as a man or woman.

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8

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3

.

9

. See, for example, Burgess, Unexpected Relationship.

10

. Even some patriarchs of Constantinople, including Ignatios the Younger and probably Germanos I, were numbered among the eunuchs. See Tougher, Eunuch; for the patriarchs, see

70–71

.

11

. Tougher, Eunuch,

110–11

.

12

. Lossky, Image and Likeness of God, especially chapter

8

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141–68

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2

, The Church as Tradition,

9–36

.

13

. Limouris, Place of the Woman,

29

.

14

. FitzGerald, Orthodox Women Speak; Kasselouri-Hatzivassiliadi et al., Many Women Were Also There; Liveris, Ancient Taboos and Gender Prejudice.

15

. A recent overview of the arguments for and against the female diaconate and ordination can be found in Ladouceur, Modern Orthodox Theology, especially chapter

16

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378–406

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16

. Theodoros II, Πατριαρχικό Μήνυμα.

17

. Narinskaya and Thomas, Women and Ordination.

18

. Behr-Sigel, Ministry of Women; Evdokimov, Woman and Salvation; Karras, Patristic Views; Behr, Ontology of Gender; Hopko, Women and the Priesthood; Patitsas, Marriage of Priests; McDowell, Seeing Gender.

19

. The range of historical and geographic contexts in which Orthodoxy and gender can be studied is vast. The numerous books emerging on the topic gender in Byzantium provides an example of the proliferating historical interest in this area. See, for instance, James, Women, Men, and Eunuchs; Garland and Neil, Gender in Byzantine Society; Herrin, Unrivaled Influence; Connor, Women of Byzantium; Constantinou and Meyer, Emotions and Gender; Neville, Byzantine Gender.

20

. See, for example, Sandfort and Stulhofer, Sexuality and Gender; Kizenko, Feminized Patriarchy?

21

. Notably, the following meetings did not specifically focus on women, but rather gender and/or sexuality with greater diversity. For example, New Directions in Orthodox Thought and Practice: Gender and Sexuality in Orthodox Christianity, Oslo

2016–18

; Symposium on Pastoral Care and Sexuality, Amsterdam

2017

; and Contemporary Eastern Orthodox Identity and the Challenges of Pluralism and Sexual Diversity in a Secular Age, Oxford and New York

2017–20

.

22

. FitzGerald, Concerns for Today and the Future,

38

.

Part I

Rethinking Assumptions

1

Women Should Be Silent in the Churches (1 Corinthians 14:34)

When Stereotype Meets Gender

Eleni Kasselouri-Hatzivassiliadi

Women are not the silent majority but the silenced majority in Christianity. Throughout the centuries the authority of the apostle Paul has been invoked against women’s preaching and teaching in the Church: Women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak but should be subordinate (1 Cor 14:34) and Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor (1 Tim 2:11–14). Women’s silence in the Church is still reinforced today. Although women can study theology, become professors and teachers of religion, and have an active and important role in society, they are not permitted to speak with official teaching authority in most Orthodox Churches. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza wrote in 1993 that