Orthodox Christianity and Gender
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Orthodox Christianity and Gender The Orthodox Christian tradition has all too often been sidelined in conversations around contemporary religion. Despite being distinct from Protestantism and Ca- tholicism in both theology and practice, it remains an underused setting for aca- demic inquiry into current lived religious practice. This collection, therefore, seeks to redress this imbalance by investigating modern manifestations of Orthodox Christianity through an explicitly gender-sensitive gaze. By addressing attitudes to gender in this context, it fills major gaps in the literature on both religion and gender. Starting with the traditional teachings and discourses around gender in the Orthodox Church, the book moves on to demonstrate the diversity of responses to those narratives that can be found among Orthodox populations in Europe and North America. Using case studies from several countries, with both large and small Orthodox populations, contributors use an interdisciplinary approach to ad- dress how gender and religion interact in contexts such as iconography, conversion, social activism, and ecumenical relations among others. From Greece and Russia to Finland and the USA, this volume sheds new light on the myriad ways in which gender is manifested, performed, and engaged within contemporary Orthodoxy. Furthermore, it also demonstrates that employing the analytical lens of gender enables new insights into Orthodox Christianity as a lived tradition. It will, therefore, be of great interest to scholars of both Religious Studies and Gender Studies. Helena Kupari is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Cultures, Faculty of Arts, University of Helsinki, Finland. She has published a monograph entitled Lifelong Religion as Habitus: Religious Practice among Displaced Karelian Ortho- dox Women in Finland (2016) and has contributed chapters and articles on Religious Studies to various publications in the field. Elina Vuola is Professor of Global Christianity and Dialogue of Religions at the Fac- ulty of Theology, University of Helsinki, Finland. She has been a visiting scholar at the Women’s Studies in Religion Program of the Harvard Divinity School (2002–2003) and at the Religious Studies Department at Northwestern University (2014–2015). She has written multiple chapters and articles and lectured widely on the interaction of Orthodox Christianity and Gender: Dynamics of Tradition, Culture and Lived Practice. Her most recent monograph is The Virgin Mary across Cultures: Devotion among Costa Rican Catholic and Finnish Orthodox Women (2019). Routledge Studies in Religion Said Nursi and Science in Islam Character Building through Nursi’s Mana-i harfi Necati Aydin The Diversity of Nonreligion Normativities and Contested Relations Johannes Quack, Cora Schuh, and Susanne Kind The Role of Religion in Gender-Based Violence, Immigration, and Human Rights Edited by Mary Nyangweso and Jacob K. Olupona Italian American Pentecostalism and the Struggle for Religious Identity Paul J. Palma The Cultural Fusion of Sufi Islam Alternative Paths to Mystical Faith Sarwar Alam Hindi Christian Literature in Contemporary India Rakesh Peter-Dass Religion, Modernity, Globalisation Nation-State to Market François Gauthier Orthodox Christianity and Gender Dynamics of Tradition, Culture and Lived Practice Edited by Helena Kupari and Elina Vuola For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge. com/religion/series/SE0669 Orthodox Christianity and Gender Dynamics of Tradition, Culture and Lived Practice Edited by Helena Kupari and Elina Vuola LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 selection and editorial matter, Helena Kupari and Elina Vuola; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Helena Kupari and Elina Vuola to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-1-138-57420-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-70118-8 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra Contents List of figures vii List of contributors ix 1 Introduction 1 HELENA KUPARI AND ELINA VUOLA PART I Negotiating tradition 23 2 Gender and Orthodox theology: vistas and vantage points 25 BRIAN A. BUTCHER 3 Women in the church: conceptions of Orthodox theologians in early twentieth-century Russia 47 NADEZHDA BELIAKOVA 4 Obedient artists and mediators: women icon painters in the Finnish Orthodox Church from the mid-twentieth to the twenty-first century 63 KATARIINA HUSSO 5 What has not been assumed has not been redeemed: the forgotten Orthodox theological condonement of women’s ordination in the 1996 Orthodox and Old Catholic consultation on gender and the apostolic ministry 80 PETER-BEN SMIT vi Contents PART II Lived Orthodoxy 95 6 How to ask embarrassing questions about women’s religion: menstruating Mother of God, ritual impurity, and fieldwork among Seto women in Estonia and Russia 97 ANDREAS KALKUN 7 Enshrining gender: Orthodox women and material culture in the United States 115 SARAH RICCARDI-SWARTZ 8 Tradition, gender, and empowerment: the Birth of Theotokos Society in Helsinki, Finland 131 PEKKA METSO, NINA MASKULIN, AND TEUVO LAITILA PART III Crises and gender 147 9 Shaping public Orthodoxy: women’s peace activism and the Orthodox Churches in the Ukrainian crisis 149 HELEEN ZORGDRAGER 10 On saints, prophets, philanthropists, and anticlericals: Orthodoxy, gender, and the crisis in Greece 171 ELENI SOTIRIOU 11 Russian Orthodox icons of Chernobyl as visual narratives about women at the center of nuclear disaster 190 ELENA ROMASHKO Index 211 Figures 4.1 The artist Martha Neiglick-Platonoff conserving an old icon of the Mother of God in the 1950s 66 4.2 The language of ancient iconography was studied through art history. The artist Ina Colliander painting an icon of the Mother of God of Kazan in 1968 67 4.3 Marianna Flinckenberg-Gluschkoff painting an icon of Christ the Almighty at her home in 1968–1969. Following Ouspensky’s teaching, she mixed the colors in the palm of her hand 69 4.4 The art historian Aune Jääskinen and Hierodeacon Joona in front of the icon “The Mother of God of Konevets.” The icon was covered by an enigmatic riza prior to the research that led to its restoration in the 1960s 70 11.1 The icon “The Mother of God of the Victims of Chernobyl” is carried through the demonstration Chernobyl Way in 2017 191 11.2 “The Madonna of Chernobyl” by Mikhail Savitsky 197 Contributors Nadezhda Beliakova, PhD, is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Science, and Assistant Professor at Sechenov Medical University, Moscow, Russia. Brian A. Butcher, PhD, is Research Fellow in Eastern Christian Studies in the Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies in the University of St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto, Canada. Katariina Husso, PhD, is Postdoctoral Researcher in the Faculty of Hu- manities and Social Sciences in the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Andreas Kalkun, PhD, is Research Fellow at the Estonian Folklore Ar- chives of the Estonian Literary Museum, Tartu, Estonia. Helena Kupari, PhD, is Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Cul- tures of the Faculty of Arts, University of Helsinki, Finland. Teuvo Laitila, PhD, is University Lecturer in Orthodox Church History and Comparative Religion at the School of Theology, University of East- ern Finland. Nina Maskulin is a PhD candidate in the Doctoral Program of Theology and the Study of Religion, University of Helsinki, Finland. Pekka Metso, ThD, is Associate Professor of Practical Theology at the School of Theology, University of Eastern Finland. Sarah Riccardi-Swartz is a PhD candidate (ABD) in the Department of Anthropology at New York University, USA. Elena Romashko is a PhD candidate at the department of Religious Studies at the Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen, Germany. Peter-Ben Smit is Professor of Contextual Biblical Interpretation at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands, Professor (ao.) of Systematic and Ecumenical Theology at the University of Bern, Switzerland, Professor by special appointment of Ancient Catholic Church Structures and the x Contributors History and Doctrine of the Old Catholic Churches at Utrecht Univer- sity, Netherlands, and a research associate in the Department of Theol- ogy, University of Pretoria, South Africa. Eleni Sotiriou is a sociologist