Our Faith
Orthodox Women’s day: women's oppression in Church - myth or reality?
By Fr. Andrey Kuraev
May 7, 2006, 01:05

Not many people today know that the Orthodox Church celebrates its own international mothers’ or women’s day. The traditional stereotype attributes to it the oppression of women. It falls on the second Sunday following Pascha. It is devoted to those women who were among the closest disciples of Christ. On the third day after the crucifixion, according to tradition, they brought funeral spices and ointments to finish committing Christ's body. They were the first to see the empty tomb and were instructed by the risen Lord to bring the joyful news to the apostles.

The widespread myth tells us that the Orthodox Church oppresses and humiliates women. These accusations mainly come from the impossibility for a woman to enter the altar of the Church, the impossibility for a woman to become a member of the clergy.

For those who fight for “equality by all means” such a statement clearly indicates obvious discrimination. And today we can observe a struggle against this principle: in modern feminist theology one can find the following statements – a woman being created of Adam’s rib is the wreath of creation and man is not more than an intermediary in this process. In fact, these words have their own truth: Adam was indeed created from ash, then Eden is planted and only after that Eva is created. Thus she is created already in heaven.

And now the most important question: how can a woman be humiliated by the Church which says about one Woman “More precious than the Cherubim / more glorious than the Seraphim”? What dogmatic humiliation do we mean when we see that a woman is praised more than the closest to Lord angels.

Both men and women are called to salvation, to the union with God, to deification. The two millenium history of Christianity knows many women who achieved sanctity, whom priests and even bishops were asking for advice. The day of the Myrrh-bearing women is the glorification of all women who had followed Christ, This day is the  reminder not of artificial feministic liberty but of the spiritual liberty to be unique oneself

Translation: Anna L'ubimova