With God and Goddess: Is It Possible to Be an Orthodox Feminist?
There is a widespread belief that religion is incompatible. with progressive ideas: the times when it helped develop science, are long gone, and even some modern initiatives cannot correct the situation. There is a lot of talk about the place and role of women in ancient religions like Christianity and Islam - and that in the patriarchal religious system, women will never be comfortable.
But all is not so clear. In the sixties of the last century, feminist theology appeared - a trend in theology that affects several religions, which rethinks the dogmas of the church from the standpoint of women. Many believe that religious feminists need the world to cope with the age-old inequalities in the church and build a new religious system in which anyone will be comfortable, regardless of gender, gender identity or sexual orientation. We talked with five women who profess Christianity, whether it was easy for them to combine religious and feminist convictions, about the role of women in the church, and whether they faced discrimination.
I always believed in God. It is just obvious to me that the world as a whole is intelligent, that there is a certain logic, a narrative in how things are arranged. But for a long time I was a violent anticlerical. During one depressive episode, my believer friend advised me to "pray and fast." I laughed, but since he was the only one who supported me then, and there were no other ideas, I began to read the Orthodox network publications. And she realized that in general she had wrongly imagined Orthodoxy and church life. Half, if not more, of religious formulas and dogmas are actually metaphors or tracing notes. As long as you take them literally, it seems to you that this is some kind of darkness. When you get into the hands of a good translation with comments, you understand that this is poetry, very beautiful, subtle and clever. Or, for example, it turned out that Orthodoxy does not believe in the power of rituals - all this is for the most part simply a way of symbolically expressing what you believe inside, and not trying to bargain with God for some favors for a candle.
It is impossible to say that I immediately rushed into religion: everything was very rational and lasted for a year or two. It's funny that by the time my “appeal” coincided with the Pussy Riot case. I was on the move between two fires: in the Orthodox forums, I continuously defended Pussy Riot, in atheistic public tables I dispelled the myths about the Church. They kicked me both there and there.
Gradually plunging into Orthodoxy, I understood several important things. First, I must agree with the Church on fundamental theological issues; if I do not agree with the basic principles, it means that I was mistaken by religion. But in matters of private and topical I have the right to my own opinion: the only criterion is my conscience. Secondly, Christianity is based on free will. If this were not so, we would still live in Paradise, because Adam and Eve simply could not accomplish what they were kicked out of for.
Thirdly, you can condemn any actions, but you can not condemn the people who commit them. That is, one can say: “This is unacceptable for me as a Christian,” but to remember that we never know what exactly led a person to a particular situation. Fourth, the Old Testament texts can not be taken literally. Fifth, the saints were also mistaken. The church is very heterogeneous. Despite the general conservatism, there is a place for liberal views (and if you judge conservatism by Vsevolod Chaplin and the patriarch, then you have not yet seen real conservatives!). The church as an institution is not equivalent to faith. The church is called the "body of Christ" - but every body is sick.
All this allows me to combine religiosity with feminist views. Religion puts restrictions on me, but I am free to accept them. I do not demand the same from others. Sometimes religion requires me to oppose what my conscience opposes - in these situations I “solve” the question “for two” with God. That is, I am doing what I think is necessary, and I am preparing to speak at the Last Judgment (it is assumed that the court will be extremely fair and my position will be heard).
When it comes to religion and feminism, everyone is immediately interested in what is there with the real position of a woman. Everything is bad. But the reason is not so much in religion as in society: it is conservative in itself. Religion is just convenient to justify anything, nadegav scattered quotations from Scripture. This is possible because the gospel itself is very contradictory. I read Andrei Kuraev the idea that if religion offers a ready answer to any question, you need to run away. The contradictory nature of Christianity may at first alienate, but it does not allow us to become stifled. My feminist views inflate this contradiction to the skies, but I always doubt it. It is mentally hard, but my conscience never sleeps.
I have never experienced discrimination in the Church because I do not lead an active community life. On the contrary: most of my friends are atheists, and just from them I occasionally get it. It happens very disappointing. By the way, the outrage that feminists experience when they encounter uncomplicated sexism is very similar to what the Orthodox feel from time to time when atheists begin to talk about religion. The sensations are absolutely the same - I know, because I constantly experience both.
I was baptized in infancy - they say, I screamed in such a way that my father rather noticed that the demons were crawling out of me; it seems to me that the whole thing was in an unfamiliar atmosphere, new smells and cold water, but oh well. Religious upbringing has since been sporadic: here we are forced to teach "Our Father" (Church Slavonic version) in a secular kindergarten, so they buy me my aluminum cross, on which all parts are smeared beyond recognition over time, so I get a great pastel My first The Bible. " Contrary to the Soviet propaganda, in my family the piety towards Christianity was preserved, however, no one really read the sacred texts and God searched for everything by touch, while doing very unchristian things, like scandals from scratch and manipulations with each other.
It is clear that over the years it has only alienated me from formal religion. Like any normal teenager, I questioned her: I could not understand why a loving God would allow war and blame a woman if she came to church without a headscarf or, horror, during menstruation. Without an open and meaningful dialogue, rituality for a long time seemed to me a silly obligation, which in no way reflects my inner, personal feelings, and organized religion is a tribute to herd feelings and the manifestation of existential horror.
In fact, as with any system of beliefs and attitudes, everything depends on the lack of education. Feminists love to represent the men of women with fire in their eyes, the Orthodox - militant opponents of abortion, advocating corporal punishment. As is usually the case with stereotypes, they have little in common with reality. Feminism is based on ideas of equality and mutual respect, Christianity is based on love for one’s neighbor, what’s the contradiction here? Unfortunately, especially in Russia, the line between the church as an institution and religion as faith is particularly blurred, but one should not forget that the opinion and behavior of individual clergymen are not absolutely obliged to reflect mine. They are the same people as everyone else, and just like everyone else, they can be wrong, and none of them can detract from my personal faith.
Further, a long and respectful conversation is needed. At one time, Christianity gave the world a new morality, which taught not to kill for murder, for example, in the XXI century, this morality can be as progressive as it once was. I stand on the other side, advocating the legalization of same-sex marriages and do not think that a wife should obey her husband without question. But at the same time I identify myself as an Orthodox - and there are many reasons for this as situational (as it happened that I grew up in Christianity).
And those who identify themselves as Christians, and those who despise Christianity, need first of all to pull up the materiel: most modern sensations happen because of ignorance of the subject. It is important not to forget that many things that have become axioms in everyday life are either semi-pagan superstitions or interpretations - and what interpretation to believe is a personal matter for everyone. The grandmothers hissing in the corners of the church do not bother me anymore: if I come to the service, then I do it for myself, not for them. Faith is a complex evolving process, a path that has no end. For me, progress is already - to talk about it openly. In the modern world, it is customary to accompany erudition and advancement with militant atheism - and this makes it more difficult for me to understand myself than from the need to put on a scarf. In the end, I believe that God loves everyone, and only with those who marries who we will understand ourselves.
I came to faith at the age of twenty (now I am thirty-five). It was a conscious decision that turned out to be very painful; at that moment it was important for me to radically rebuild my life. This was not the plugging of an existential hole, as is often the case in such cases. I experienced true repentance, joy from communion with God, forgiveness of sins and purification of the soul. I fell in love with Jesus and tried to take the path of salvation, as understood by Christians. I have long shared faith in God and faith in the church, as if they were two different things. There were different periods in my life when I moved away from the church, even tried to search for the truth in other faiths, for example in Judaism, but now I try to reconcile with the church and visit it, participate in its sacraments, pray.
Yes, I faced discrimination against women in the church, and this was a great temptation and disappointment for me. I met men who said that a woman should and can be beaten so that she would be obedient; men who resented the idea that a woman has the same rights as they; men and women who humiliated women; preachers who taught that women should not share their spiritual and spiritual experiences in the church. All this, unfortunately, pushes people away from the church, therefore it is necessary to pay attention to this.
The teaching of the church is an extensive tradition in which one can often find different answers to the same questions. Attitudes toward women in Christianity can be called rather ambivalent. It seems to me a mistake, firstly, to rely on ideas that are relevant in the Middle Ages, because it is more important to develop the processes that are now taking place in the church and in the reality around us. Secondly, I believe that in the teaching of Jesus there is a place for every person, regardless of gender. Of course, there is a great temptation to think of Jesus as a feminist, but we can only say that his attitude towards a woman is different from what was accepted in his midst at that time.
I dedicated the book "Woman and Church. Problem Statement" to the study of gender issues in Christianity and the women's issue in the church. I think that the role of women in Christianity is still underestimated. And although there are priests and preachers in Protestant denominations now, prejudices often prevent a woman from realizing her spiritual potential in the church.
I was baptized as a child, and faith gradually grew in me myself. In my family it was not customary to go to the temple, and I did not take any special Christian wisdom from it. But she made a lot of things about a girl who should correspond to something, about the fact that the girl was not fit, and so on, sometimes mixed up in biblical scenes. But I never confused these two attitudes: it was a kind of inappropriate “humiliation” of God and faith when it all comes down to external circumstances. Christianity is about the way of a person, alive, with all his weaknesses and passions, humility and mercy, strength and talents. Why should a woman go the Christian way and additionally follow some earthly scenario?
When I met my future husband and we coincided in this regard to faith, a new stage began - we entered the temple as a couple, although we did not become part of the parish. And here began an interesting. On the one hand, the church protects me as a woman and my choice is to be a mother and a wife. On the other hand, this is pure coincidence. I will refuse to have more children, the church will say to me: “Fi,” because a woman is saved through childbirth. I am not satisfied with the Orthodox understanding of the family as having many children, because, having two children, I know what kind of work it is. Did any of those monks and fathers who teach Christians know about this? No matter how much I would like to be an obedient Christian, my experience cannot simply be written off.
This is the gap between the maintenance of church tradition and man. My feminism is the value of a woman’s choice and responsibility. When people have this experience with women, it can be transferred to any other group of people. If you remove the woman from the church, God will remain. If you remove a woman - there will be no church left.
I was baptized in the Orthodox Church when I was five years old - but to say that I had already come to faith already, naturally, was not necessary. Then we went to America, where I grew up. I attended many churches: Baptists, Presbyterians, Lutherans. For a long time I went to the Greek Orthodox Church, quite progressive. For two years I lived in the east, then I worked in Russia for seven years and in Moscow I was married to a Russian husband.
I have been performing some religious rituals for a long time, since adolescence. I can’t say that religion plays a very big role in my life, probably I have less church ideas about God. I want to look at God, at the spiritual life from the point of view of outer space, of which we are a part. Life is much more complicated and interesting than it seems, and it is in these difficulties that I see God. I do not have the feeling that He is a bearded man, who sits on a cloud and strictly looks at us, shaking his finger.
For me, equality means that you should not mock each other, hurt each other. It is not normal to consider half of humanity, billions of people, to be flawed, because they were born as women. I think this installation has a lot of violence. From the point of view of Orthodoxy, my position, most likely, will not suit many people - probably, therefore, I don’t really like a “church-like” life. In Russia, the problem of domestic violence is very relevant. Often, if a woman comes to a confessor and says that her husband beats her, he replies: “You provoke him yourself. Christ tolerated us and told us.” Of course, there are churches, Christian communities that behave differently. In America, for example, there are a lot of them - there if a husband, God forbid, raises his hand to his wife, they will try to save her, advise the crisis center.
If we talk about religion in general, it is always created not under divine ideals, but under the realities of society. For example, before they got rid of slavery in America, what people bought and sold slaves was considered normal - the Bible also refers to slaves. The official part of religion always adapts to society, and any society is imperfect.
I consider myself a feminist and I think that it is not necessary to idealize any world religions, to consider that everything is in order and everyone is equal. It seems to me that our spiritual systems are abstract and irrational, we are adjusting them for ourselves. But I'm not one of those who believe that if you call yourself a feminist, you have no right to go to the temple and read the Holy Scriptures. I think a person can choose what to do. It is necessary to learn not to simplify difficult things, but religion and its relation to a woman is quite difficult.
Photo:igorkol_ter - stock.adobe.com, goldyg - stock.adobe.com, dmitrydesigner - stock.adobe.com, afanasyeva_t - stock.adobe.com