The sources and practices of Orthodoxy perpetuated and endorsed across generations as spiritually beneficial and divinely inspired, present partial and problematic religious constructions of women. Well-educated men, often ordained or monastic, overwhelmingly influence the textual sources and control the liturgical rites most significant for Orthodox Christianity. In one of the hymns that commemorate the resurrection Gospel readings of Orthros before Sunday Divine Liturgy, for instance, Orthodox affirmingly hymn Mary Magdalene as a “herald” of the resurrection, but only after attributing her mistaking of Jesus for the gardener (John 20:15) to the worldliness and inferiority of her gender, saying, “her thinking was still mundane, as a weak woman that she was.” Such negative gender constructions are theologically problematic because Orthodox believe there should be a correlation between what is believed (“lex credendi”) and what is prayed (“lex orandi”). Consequently, prayers that invoke limiting tropes about women (and other demographics for that matter) are theologically problematic because they show either that Orthodox are praying in words that they do not believe (e.g. that women are inherently weak), or they do believe these partial androcentric representations of women and therefore deny women’s full equality. Similar words and practices that subtly and overtly diminish the status of women may be significantly disconnected from women’s self-understanding and agency in their religious communities, but are idealized in the liturgical context nevertheless. Imagine a young girl who is told by family and school teachers that she is strong, smart, and capable of achieving her dreams, and that same girl loves church and learns to chant, only to be discouraged by encountering a gendered “put-down” in the words of a hymn that would be intolerable in any other context. The commemoration of women in an androcentrically limited way, even if just reflective of historically normative attitudes presents the patriarchal constructions of women as conducive to or reflective of Orthodoxy. This is what I refer to in the title as the “patriarchal woman” of Orthodox tradition.
In more recent years, the androcentric trajectory of Orthodoxy has been maintained through an exclusively male hierarchy even as women continue to fill churches and use unofficial ecclesiastical positions to shape the traditions of their faith. Even though there have been multiple initiatives to restore the female diaconate, the ordination of women to this office has failed to be widely realized throughout global Orthodoxy. The reason for this lack of action is complex, but cannot be said to be unrelated from a type of latent misogyny and limited view of women’s “roles” pervasive in Orthodox cultural and ecclesial contexts. The reasons for individual and communal positions regarding gender and the status of women within Orthodox Christian communities are socially entangled and cannot be limited to singular sources or simplistic religious interpretations. However, the possibilities for arguing for women’s equality and opportunities within Orthodox Christianity will remain limited if the patriarchal-ness of its historical past and present tradition are not addressed first. That is, any argument on behalf of women that draws on or appeals to tradition will always be constrained by the androcentrism of the past and its situation in a patriarchal religious system. This book responds to the tension between theological values of equality and the ecclesiastical maintenance of patriarchy. I suggest in the chapters that follow, that the historical constraints of patriarchal androcentrism can be loosed by prioritizing a theological view of God united to humanity (women included) and approaching tradition as a revelation and promotion of that theological confession.
Orthodox Christians past and present bring with them a plethora of perspectives and diverse range of identities that simultaneously resist uniformity and polarization even within local parish communities. Historian Judith Bennett’s observation, that “patriarchy might be everywhere, but it is not everywhere the same,” certainly resonates when one examines the breadth of Orthodox Christian communities across the world (and even across a single town). Regardless of the ways one might observe the patriarchal nature of the church, many Orthodox women exercise significant agency in their parishes, pervasively teach the faith, and devoutly practice in ways that may ignore, accept, transform, or meaningfully interpret any patriarchal androcentrism experienced in their Orthodoxy. Yet, even such authority and autonomy in women’s religious identities and participation are still dependent on a certain degree of conformity to an ecclesiastical tradition that disproportionately privileges and empowers men. Women who perform their genders within the boundaries of patriarchal expectations may have significant influence, but it cannot be forgotten that this influence is still bound by expectations that if transgressed place women at a disadvantage. Some women within Orthodox Christianity constantly negotiate their own “patriarchal bargain” where they give up some level of autonomy in order to gain authority through visible conformity. Other Orthodox women may assume traditional and even subordinate roles within religious contexts, but increasingly expect and participate in more egalitarian values in secular spaces. For some, this may present a type of troubling double identity, but others may find performing traditional gender roles to be the most empowering and meaningful expression of their religious identities. Even if the majority of Orthodox women are perhaps untroubled by the gender dynamics of their faith, or have impressive determination of their own religious lives, this does not undo the imbalance of power that is still gender-dependent. A 2017 Pew Research Center survey found that,
On balance, Orthodox women are more supportive of women’s rights than are Orthodox men. In most countries, women are less likely than men to agree that a wife is obligated to obey her husband. And in several countries, women are less likely than men to agree that men have greater employment rights than women, especially when jobs are scarce. But women are not always more supportive of liberal positions regarding gender roles. In the majority of countries surveyed, women are about as likely as men to agree that they have a social responsibility to bear children. They also are as likely as men to agree that a traditional marriage, where women are primarily in charge of household tasks while men earn money, is ideal.
Such findings suggest that women who identify as Orthodox Christian are perhaps more conservative (or at least contextually more supported in expressing conservative views) on gender issues than their non-religious peers, but also differently minded on several issues of gender equality than the Orthodox men surveyed. Although the lived experiences and numbers of religious Orthodox women may seem to contradict the notion that the Orthodox Church is patriarchal in any problematic or dominating way, the commemorative and liturgical sources of this tradition continue to privilege particular types of androcentric perspectives as universal, and the patriarchal control of the church persists with resistance to women’s ministerial inclusion and leadership.
(excerpted from introduction)
