Ancient Taboos and Gender Prejudice

Challenges for Orthodox Women and the Church

Leonie B. Liveris

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351958455
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This book explores the struggling genesis of a women's movement in the Orthodox Church through the ecumenical movement of the twentieth century at a time when militant conservatism is emerging in Orthodox countries and fundamentalism in the diaspora. Offering an understanding of the participation of women in the Orthodox Church, particularly during the 50 years of the membership of the Orthodox churches in the World Council of Churches, this book contributes to the ongoing debates and feminist analysis of women's participation, ministry and sexuality in the life and practice of the Church universal. The book reveals both the positive contributions to ecumenism and the difficulties confronting Orthodox women wishing to participate more fully in the leadership and ministry of their church.

Chapter 1
The Orthodox Church, Women's Movements and Ecumenical Relationships

The Golden Charter of Orthodox ecumenism was addressed by the Ecumenical Patriarchate encyclical in January 1920 to ‘all the churches of Christ, where-so-ever they be’, and stated that ‘… a mutual understanding between the several Christian churches is not prevented by the doctrinal differences existing between them’.¹ This statement opened the way for ecumenical dialogue on all matters of Christian faith, including controversial and necessary discussions on the participation and ministry, and decades later the sacramental ordination of women in the Church. In this first chapter, a brief and general historical overview of the structures and relevant teachings of Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches is placed in the context of a new relationship within the World Council of Churches from 1948, the development of the women's movement and feminism in the West through the turbulent political changes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the participation of Orthodox women in the early programmes and studies organized and promoted by and within the Women's Unit of the ecumenical movement.

The Orthodox Church has not experienced the same influences of the Middle Ages or undergone Reformations or Counter-Reformations of the Western churches. The Orthodox Church experienced canonical divisions following the Third and Fourth General Councils held in Ephesus in 431 and at Chalcedon in 451. At the Third Council following the condemnation of Patriarch Nestorius, the Christians of Mesopotamia and Persia formed the Nestorian Church, now referred to as the Assyrian Church of the Near East. Following the Chalcedon Council, the Oriental (or Monophysite) churches of the East differed in their understanding of the Nature of Christ and were not present at subsequent Councils. Kondothra M. George, Malankara Syrian Orthodox Church, suggests that it was not so much the Christological disagreement which led to the separation, but rather the cultural-political element which led to the revolt of Asian and African churches against the dominant Graeco-Roman civilization attempting to impose its power on the Orientals.² Centuries later, within the ecumenical movement, this analysis is not beyond serious consideration when observing the relationship between Eastern and Oriental participants in consultations and assemblies and their shared contemporary attitudes to ecumenism on a global dimension. However, despite theological and cultural differences, the hierarchical structures, male authority and omnipresent militant conservatism unite all the Orthodox churches in a brotherhood steeped in tradition and sustained by patriarchal cultures, whether enforced or absorbed.

The Eastern Orthodox Church comprises the four ancient Patriarchates: Constantinople (The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople has special honour for historical reasons, but has no legalized rights to interfere in the internal affairs of other Orthodox churches), Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. There are 11 auto-cephalous (self-governing) churches in Russia, Serbia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Poland (Slavonic); Greece, Cyprus, Sinai (Greek), Romania, Georgia and Albania. The churches in Finland, Japan and China have ‘autonomous’ status; and there is the Orthodox diaspora³ in Western Europe, North and South America, Australia, New Zealand and some African countries, including Kenya, Uganda and Ghana. The diaspora churches have an archbishop or Metropolitan, bishops and clergy, and are in turn ‘spiritually’ administered from the patriarchates of the home country. The Oriental churches include the Coptic Orthodox Church (Egypt), the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, the Syrian Orthodox Church, the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Malankara Syrian Orthodox Church (India) and the Assyrian Church of the East found in Iraq and the diaspora. Together, it is estimated that the Orthodox Church worldwide encompasses between 250 million and 300 million believers.

Timothy Ware,⁴ who converted from the Church of England in 1958, writes the following in his publication, considered in the West as a clear and concise introduction to the Orthodox Church:

The primary elements that make up the Tradition of the Orthodox faith are: (i) The Bible, as the verbal icon of Christ, which ‘is not set up over the Church but as something that lives and is understood within the Church, and all the liturgical services. Whilst the Church is the authoritative interpreter of Scripture it does not forbid the critical and historical study of Scripture’; (ii) the Seven Ecumenical Councils which determined the doctrinal statements of the Church, though queries Ware, ‘to say there can be no more Fathers of the Church (to determine the doctrines as resolved at the Councils) is to suggest that the Holy Spirit has deserted the Church’; (iii) the Fathers of the early centuries who are living witnesses and contemporaries of the church today; (iv) the inner Tradition of the faith as preserved in the Liturgy through the sacraments; (v) the Canons of the Church, ‘often perceived as rules of great strictness and rigour that attempt to apply the dogma of the Councils to practical situations in daily life’; and (vi) Icons, the Orthodox Christian receives a vision of the spiritual world wherein the iconographer must reflect the mind of the Church.⁵

For both the cradle-Orthodox and the neo-Orthodox, these basic understandings are synonymous with being a member of the Orthodox Church.

In 1821, the War of Independence liberated Greece from 400 years of Ottoman oppression. In the decades following, other Balkan states were also liberated from Turkish rule and all looked to the future in order to re-establish their place in the world, economically and socially, but more especially to be returned to the Christian world where the Orthodox Church would again play a significant role in the development and progress of the people. In the small Orthodox countries of Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia and Greece, the changes over the next 100 years were conservative, beset by economic constraints and internal conflicts among those who desired power and control over the country. Poverty was commonplace and became a major impetus for migration to Western Europe and the New World in order for families to survive and provide for the future. Whether from Greece, Romania or the Ukraine, for example, the Orthodox Church sustained the people throughout the Turkish rule and against the influences of Islam through national culture and traditions, icons, candles, prayer and memorized liturgies, and this Church travelled with the migrant to the New World. In the diaspora small communities turned in on themselves for survival and focused on the Church as the centre of their lives, the place of refuge and familiarity, the place of being at home. In the diaspora the Church sustained the migrant through the nineteenth century and long past the early decades of the twentieth century.

During the nineteenth century there were many social and political changes in Europe and within the vast empire of Russia in particular. The Russian poet N.A. Nekrasov described his country's condition of the times as highly contradictory: ‘You are both poverty stricken and rich; You are both mighty and weak, Mother Russia.’⁶ For Russia, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were times of growth and contradictions in all spheres of life, and a time of radical reassessment of values and far-reaching changes leading ultimately to the 1917 Socialist Revolution. The great powers that emerged in the early decades of the nineteenth century were Britain, France, the Habsburg Empire, Prussia and Russia. The Western countries were increasingly industrialized, there was expansion in production, trade and finance, and in both personal and national wealth. Industry expanded with new labour-saving technology, the standard of living for the masses was rising along with population growth, and improved sanitation and medical care increased the longevity of populations. Combined with the rise of the ‘petty bourgeoisie’, trade unions and more efficient production, all factors contributed to a changing society at large. However the increased prosperity was not evenly shared by the great nations, and antagonisms developed over territorial claims and objections to military expansion by some powers resulted in confrontation.

The expansionist policies of Russia, a desire for a Pan-Slavic nationalism to embrace the nations speaking Slavic languages and the desire to rule the city of Constantinople, the centre of the Holy Orthodox Church, led Russia into various conflicts with Turkey. After defeating various Turkish forces in the Balkans after 1806, supporting Greece in the 1820s and Romania in 1848, the Russian czars secured recognition of Russia's right to intervene diplomatically on behalf of Orthodox Christians living within the Ottoman Empire. A passion to maintain their prestige on a matter of religious privilege by the Russians after a minor dispute in the Holy Lands led to the Crimean War in 1854, a war against the West that was lost, and set in motion various political scenarios for future turmoil that affected Russia well into the late twentieth century.

The wars of the early nineteenth century in which Russia was embroiled meant hard times for the nation and intensified poverty among the masses. Patriotic enthusiasm, heroism and unselfish labour by civilians could not counterbalance the impoverishment and weakening of the state. The defeat of Russia was a defeat of the czar, who had failed to deliver the promise of protector and defender of the faith. The legend of invincibility and great strength was destroyed. And yet, states Michael Florinsky, ‘the vast Russian masses remained attached to their country and their czar by notions of patriotism, superstition, false expectation of the czar's beneficence and perhaps sheer apathy’.⁷ Their stoicism in the face of unbelievable hardships is possibly the most remarkable feature of Russian history.

Some reforms introduced by Czar Alexander II (1818–81) were influenced by social changes in the West and included the emancipation of serfs, civic reforms, academic freedoms and the growth of an intelligentsia. The reforms were associated with liberal thinking and eventually were suppressed by another regime following Alexander's assassination. Revolutionaries were either exiled or executed, universities lost autonomy, there was censorship, and religious dissenters were persecuted.⁸ The Russian intelligentsia from the educated and professional classes and political activists were the idealists of the nineteenth century who shaped much of Russian thinking of the time. However following the political constraints, the emergence of the secret police and the forced exile of thousands of men and women to Siberia, many activists, men and women, were forced into self-exile and sought asylum in the West, particularly in France, Germany and ...