That’s a good distinction Scott. Personally, I think that most denominations that have acceded to the spirit of the age will wither. Probably this same phenomenon will occur in those Orthodox parishes/jurisdictions that are similarly tied to modernist spirit.

George,

Don’t worry. I know you weren’t endorsing such attitudes. I was just giving an example of how such attitudes affect a parish or denomination as a whole. And the problem is not women, it’s feminism. It is very easy for people to confuse the two. Often in the media NOW and NARAL are referred to as “women’s groups”. They are, in reality, organizations which seek to further the political ideologies of feminism and abortion “rights”. Many women do not share their sentiments at all.

Unfortunately, much of the North American Church has acquiesced to a feminism-lite which causes some women anxiety at the prospect of returning to the practice of 1900 years, a practice which would prevent most of the ills mentioned in the article.

Scott, please understand, I wasn’t endorsing these biases, just reporting them. As a wannabe historian, I look for little things like these and try to figure things out. Plus, the older I get, the more dispassionate I become, trying to understand people in situ, so to speak. At times, I guess that can come across as agreement, but as for this particular observation, I can assure you I am distressed. Being a conservative I believe in devolution, not evolution 🙂 and I see where these things can go. (That’s one reason I’m vehemently against organs and pews in Orthodox churches.)

Having said that we need more traditional piety in our parishes (with a pure heart of course, otherwise we devolve into pharisaism).

George,

You’re always welcome to jump in. And I’m sure your point is valid about the variation in practice between the jurisdictions. I would mention one thing about this though. It was not always so.

About a year and a half or two years ago, I came across a series of chapters on a traditionalist orthodox website. They dealt with church etiquette and practices. Until I got about 2/3 of the way through one of the chapters, I was sure that it was written by a Slav or at least someone who had learned Orthodoxy in a Russian or Serbian parish. Then I came to a point where the author distinguished some minor practice (it may have been kissing the chalice or having wine with the antidoron, I don’t remember) and said that this was the practice in Slavic churches, but not in “our Greek parishes”. What’s interesting is that the author taught that the traditional Greek way was to stand, to cross during the litany, to cross with bows in certain places, etc.

The truth is it’s not a question of variation between the jurisdictions. It’s a question of how far this or that jurisdiction has moved from traditional practice.

Now, I’m sure that you are right that there are many women who worry about a return to the “bad old days”. Let me share a story regarding that point. Some time ago I went to a talk at an Orthodox church by a female speaker (I’m trying intentionally to be vague so as not to offend). This person gave a very well delivered talk about the differences internationally regarding the role of women. The summation of her talk was that she was glad to be an American where women have such freedom and such a variety of choices as to how to conduct their lives.

Now, she never explicitly endorsed anything that was anti-Orthodox, but the tenor of the whole talk was decidedly anti-traditional and progressive. She received an enthusiastic standing ovation from the Orthodox present.

My point is that it is possible for Orthodox in modernist parishes to delude themselves that progressive liberal ideas about the role of women are perfectly fine. They see the church has changed to accomodate “modern” sensibilities and believe that the trend will continue and their own beliefs will eventually be validated.

The original article above is about the moral decay that feminism has caused in our society. I have to take issue with Roger’s post that the article was mistitled. Yes, feminism is meant to empower women. It empowers them to leave a marriage at any time. It empowers them to kill their unborn babies at will. It empowers them to rebel against the God given authority of their husbands. It empowers them to have sex at any time with anyone they want regardless of the consequences. It empowers them to be able to have children out of wedlock even when they can’t afford to care for them. It empowers them with the expectation that they will work outside the home, just as men do, for equal pay. Setting aside for now the problem of office romances between those married to others, women are also empowered to use birth control to prevent pregnancy from interfering with their careers. This results in low birth rates and eventually will prevent a society from being able to support its aged and infirm. Also, in European society, it will result in the dominance of Islam in Western Europe. And women are empowered to dress quite suggestively and to use their sexuality (and sex, for that matter) to get what they want.

These are the ways that women are empowered. Empowerment is the problem.

You simply can’t have a society where the above empowerment is the norm and, at the same time, have a low divorce rate, low rates of out of wedlock birth, large families, low numbers of abortions, and a culture of sexual modesty.

It’s just not possible.

So, you have to decide whether traditional Christian morality is more important than the “empowerment” of women. So far the Church, for the most part, has answered that question in the negative. And that’s why all the hand wringing about the decay of Western society is just hot air. Without the determination to fix the problem, initially in the Church and then in the greater society, all the words spoken and written are meaningless, insincere babble.

Those bishops who aren’t sympathetic to feminism (and too many are) are simply too afraid of the consequences of taking a more conservative stand. They do not see that the Gospel and Orthodox tradition are inherently patriarchal and that it is an issue of the highest order.

Now, occasionally, the truth breaks through. It is when articles such as that above come out which detail the awful moral decay of our society. Yet the bishops seem incapable of calculating cause and effect or else they are unwilling to do so because the answer and remedies that might present themselves are too terrible or radical to consider. So, we fuss and moan about the decadence and do nothing of any effect to stop it.

I focus on the bishops because they, in council, have the ability to address the problem effectively. They could enact the reforms I suggested above. They won’t.

It just hasn’t gotten bad enough yet to make them pull their heads out of the sand. But it will.

Someone should remind Mrs. Geller of her own words on this subject: “Like Rand, I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

The Church to its credit, did not merely sanctify marriage as a sacrament, but often set up alms-houses and vocational schools for women so they could learn trades (such as weaving) that would enable them to escape such a life. Often, there was a parish dole in the larger churches from which widows could draw from (sort of like welfare). I’m veering off point here, but I believe that John Chrysostom got into trouble because he cut off stipends to widows who were living with men: he told them to either get married or kick out their boyfriends.

Anyway, pornography was explicit at times (such as Ledo and the Swan) but these displays were usually confined to the major cities (esp. Corinth or Babylon), where perhaps only 5% of the world’s population lived. Such activities were impossible in the small towns and rural areas where the contingencies of life made promiscuity next to impossible. The simple day-to-day drudgery of agricultural life meant that most all activity was concentrated on simply extracting a living from the earth and livestock.

as it was before the feminist revolution
If the Church had any real courage …
If the Church is interested in solving the problem, it should act. Otherwise it’s not doing any good.

I might add – – now the Church absolutely refuses to lift a finger to undo the one thing that has caused all the ills mentioned …

So, you think that the root of all the problems is the feminist revolution and the Church is doing nothing.

I believe you need to conduct extensive research. If successful you’ll find out that the root of the problems is delusion:

the self-delusion that man can live without God. This is the ideology of rationalist humanism. This developed in the eleventh century with the concept that the human reason is greater than God. This is based on the anti-Christian heresy of the filioque, the concept that the Power of God can proceed from human nature, which then takes the place of God on earth.

The fruit of this delusion was the modernism. Modernism is Anti-Church, Anti-Tradition, Anti-Saints, Anti-Monasticism, Anti-Prayer, Anti-Fasting, Anti-Services, Anti-Clericalism, and Anti-Woman. Modernism promotes(d) the anti-woman ideology perversely called ‘feminism’.

These were never promoted by the Orthodox Church.

please ignore the italics (not the words though), my mistake.

Roger, you’re right. The connection between female empowerment and licentiousness is not made in this post. However, the correlation is obvious throughout history. Simply put, the willy-nilly throwing together of women and men in the workplace, university, military, etc. while they are in their sexual prime inevitably leads to a loosening of discourse. You know, dirty jokes become commonplace, then flirtation, then physical relations. Now we’re at a point in which there is no mystery at all in the sexual act. I think that this was Geller’s point.

Being a habitue of her website, I know she’s a devotee of old movies, the kind with Barbara Stanwyck and Tyrone Power, you know, the old romances. Of course, who can forget Vivian Leigh and Clarke Gable in Gone With the Wind? The older I get, the more I appreciate the witty banter, longing looks, and platonic (or at least implied) eros of these movies. Simply put, you cannot make a comparison with classics like Casablanca and Debbie Does Dallas. Nietzsche himself predicted that the death of God would not bring happiness in the sexual realm and as anybody can tell, the present mating scenarios are more reminiscent of bonobo chimpanzees than of human beings. The attendant psychological dysfunctions are obvious as well, to say nothing of disease.

I guess the point of this was that even a non-Orthodox Christian (and I don’t know whether Geller is an observant Jew, I rather think she’s not), can decry the moral rot that the demons of feminism have unleashed on the world. Indeed, one of the great impetuses for the current Islamic rage against the West is the fear that our current licentiousness will penetrate their ordered world. This of course causes even more mysogyny in Islam. (Female genital mutilation, which causes painful intercourse for women is on the rise there.)

Now I’m not saying that most, or many of these women want to push for ordination, but they do rather enjoy the roles that they perform at present. Of course, this does not mean that they can’t or won’t be able to do any or all of the above (except ordination) but there is widespread prejudice within American Orthodoxy that goes every which way. You know what I’m talking about: the Antiochians are liberal, the Greeks are worldly, the Russians are puritanical, yada, yada, yada. None of these are true strictly speaking but they are prejudices which as most such beliefs are formed on the basis of stereotype.

Regula’s point is that more than a few women in the GOA, AOCA, or East Coast OCA parishes are discomfitted by what they perceive to be the position of women within ROCOR, Serbian, new OCA parishes, etc.

Anyway, I do believe it is up to the episcopate to get their act together, raise up a more traditionalist priesthood, and for these priests to enforce canonical discipline, including the headship of the husband within the marriage. (Caveat: “headship” does not mean abuse or tyranny, but long-suffering service to wife and children, and of course, respect for his parents and in-laws.) If this causes a mass emptying of the churches by liberals and the wooly-headed, so be it.

Yes, as it was before the feminist revolution. Men were recognized by the law as the head of the house. Divorce had to be for cause and was frowned upon by society in general. There was such a thing as coverture which was the legal principle that when a man and woman were joined in matrimony they became one person, and that person was the man. Women were legally dependent on men. Abortion was illegal except in rare circumstances.

Was there abuse? Yes, and there is abuse now. Was there a high divorce rate? No. Was there rampant promiscuity, especially among young teens? No. Was there a high rate of out of wedlock births? No. Was there rampant confusion as to gender roles? No. Was homosexuality normalized? No.

If the Church had any real courage, it would enforce – – yes, I use that term intentionally – – the patriarchy through the exercise of eucharistic discipline.

If the Church is interested in solving the problem, it should act. Otherwise it’s not doing any good. Intellectual analysis of the pathology is meaningless without action calculated to remedy the condition.

It continually amazes me that otherwise rational people balk at this. I think it’s fear of what women would say or do. Society having raised women to the status of equal authority to men – – with the acquiescence of the Church to this unchristian idea, I might add – – now the Church absolutely refuses to lift a finger to undo the one thing that has caused all the ills mentioned in the article. It is truly cowardly.

People go on about the Manhattan Declaration. Faith without works is dead. When the Church excommunicates those polititians who support “abortion rights” and “gay rights” and those who are members of “pro-choice” and “pro-gay” organizations, then I’ll take it’s statements seriously. Not one day before.

When the Church revives traditionalist practices which outwardly manifest the inward spiritual truth of the patriarchy, then I will take it seriously. When the Church refuses to recognize divorces except for serious cause and, otherwise, holds the person filing for divorce accoutable by refusing the eucharist to them, then I will take it seriously. When the Church teaches traditional Christian social order in sermons and in Sunday school even at the risk of losing some significant part of the laity (and clergy, for that matter) who have become “of the world”, then I will take it seriously.

Now, I, the worst of all sinners, have no right to look down on anyone or think myself higher in virtue than anyone. I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is that it is all empty talk without action. Deploring it verbally might make one feel better, giving one intellectual distance from it, but without serious action it is really just hot air.