Notes from our recent WATERtalk with Christian Orthodox women-- very informative.
Mary Hunt
Follow-up to Ashley Purpura
Women in the Orthodox Tradition: Feminism, Theology and Equality
(University of Notre Dame Press, 2025)
Wednesday, April 15, 2026, 1 PM ET
WATER welcomed Dr. Ashley Marie Purpura to discuss her new book, Women in the Orthodox Tradition: Feminism, Theology and Equality, as well as Rachel Contos, the respondent. We thank them both and delight in the collegiality of our Orthodox siblings.
Here is the PowerPoint Presentation: WATERtalk Women in the Orthodox Tradition Slides April 2026.pptx
The video can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hX3jurE7eE .
The program began with a land acknowledgement. We also took a moment to acknowledge the difficult times in which we find ourselves as wars rage, and human and planetary rights are violated worldwide. WATER’s commitment to non-violent efforts to stem the tide is shared by so many people. We can learn about important dimensions of Orthodox Christianity from today’s teachers as one small way to move along together, hand in hand, toward a peaceful world.
Mary E. Hunt’s Introduction to Ashley Purpura
Welcome to Dr. Ashley Purpura, Associate Professor of Religious Studies in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies and the director of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Purdue University. She received her Ph.D. in Historical Theology from Fordham University and an MTS from Harvard Divinity School. Thank you, Ashley, for accepting our invitation. And thank you for a book that has many very broad implications for feminist studies in religion.
Ashley writes that “Her research focuses on exploring how Orthodox Christian traditions and theology have historically shaped, and can be critically engaged to reshape, Christian values about gender, freedom, power, and difference. She is the author of Women in the Orthodox Tradition: Feminism, Theology, and Equality (Notre Dame, 2025) and God, Hierarchy, and Power: Orthodox Theologies of Authority from Byzantium (Fordham, 2018).
She is also a co-editor of Orthodox Tradition and Human Sexuality (Fordham, 2022) and Rethinking Gender in Orthodox Christianity (Wipf & Stock, 2023). Additionally, Dr. Purpura serves on the international expert committee of the “New Directions in Orthodox Christian Thought” and a human rights project sponsored by Oslo Coalition on Freedom of Religion or Belief. Ashley co-edits the “Orthodox Christianity and Contemporary Thought” book series at Fordham University Press. For 2024-2029, she has been appointed as a McDonald Senior Distinguished Fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University.
It is so exciting to learn from and with Orthodox women who have been laboring in the vineyard, many unsung and unknown. Now through your work, Ashley, we know more of and about them and more about all of us. This is an enormous contribution. Welcome to WATER.
Dr. Purpura’s remarks can best be accessed on the video. We were treated to a thorough overview of the volume. She noted that a number of Orthodox women have done this work before her.
Her goals:
• Demonstrate androcentric patriarchal-ness as a theological problem
• Suggest reclamation of tradition by women
• Show that “tradition” and theology have potential for affirming women’s equality
• And for rejecting normative androcentric bias and patriarchal privilege
The chapters unfold as follows:
Introduce how feminist and Orthodox thought can be and are already in dialogue
• Ch. 1: Explain that patriarchy and androcentrism are problems limited theology
• Ch. 2: Show the commemoration of women still reflects patriarchal control of women
• Ch. 3: Demonstrate ‘universal’ spiritual ideals disadvantage women and equality
• Ch. 4: Argue for women’s full equal humanity as dogmatic confession
• Ch. 5: Approaches for addressing patriarchal privilege in Orthodoxy
• Ch. 6: Resources for women’s advocacy from tradition
Given the patriarchal nature of Orthodoxy, it is key to understand how women and men are understood and treated differently. She concludes:
• Much more work to be done
• Shows the potential for Orthodox feminist theological engagement
• Why stay? question remains individual
• Feminist critique but also: work of recognition, repentance, and growth to become more like Christ at the heart of Orthodoxy
This is a very important book for feminist religious conversation. WATER is indebted to Ashley Purpura for this fine scholarship.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mary E. Hunt’s Introduction to Rachel Contos
I am so delighted to welcome my friend and colleague Rachel Contos. Rachel is a PhD student in Theological and Social Ethics at Fordham University expecting to finish in 2027. We met initially through the Marquette University Mentors Program. Rachel was in the Trinity Fellows Program doing an MA in Theology. She had served in AmeriCorps for 4 years in the non-profit world and worked on ending homelessness.
When I saw Ashley’s book, I thought immediately of Rachel. Her research interests lie at the crossroads of theological method and activist practice, particularly intersectional method and praxis and how they interact with Orthodox Christian theology. There is no one better to respond to Ashley from a similar, but of course different, Orthodox feminist perspective. As Rachel completes her PhD, we can look forward to her own publications and maybe Ashey will respond to her in a future lecture. Welcome to my friend Rachel Contos.
Racel Contos’ Insightful and Empowering Remarks
Rachel described her early interest in intersectional theological method to which she brings the resources of Orthodox theology for mutual critique. She appreciated Ashley’s book enormously because women’s experiences exist on the Cross, in the Tomb, and hopefully, with Resurrection. Orthodox women live bifurcated lives—professional and work life separated from their life in the church.
Lives of saints make clear that women, even the best of them, are limited by men. The story of one saint who was raped leaves one cold. The myrrh-bearing women who went to the tomb to anoint Jesus found that he was not there. But in Orthodoxy, generations of women have tried to influence their tradition. This book gives women language for what was in their hearts: the possibility of resurrection—“the breaking in of liberation from the power of everything that proclaims death” and women as myrrh-bearers offering solidarity and support to one another.
This book brings life, breath, and love.
Discussion ensued with Ashley Purpura (AP) on this very important volume.
1. The moderator noted that this volume will be useful for many people in and beyond Orthodoxy. Naming the highly problematic issues in a graceful way is very helpful. Comments on aspects of Orthodoxy that are patriarchal leave one to think that if you take patriarchy away from Orthodoxy there is not much left. (p. 59). What about those who leave Orthodoxy? Where do they go?
AP replied that most stay in the larger Christian tradition. Some who are called to ordination go to Anglican/Episcopalian churches which have a high liturgical tradition. For some queer women, since Orthodoxy rejects same-sex marriage, there is a thorough rejection by the church despite the women’s interest in staying in the tradition. Such women are not considered “Orthodox” so they are not invited to work in church theology projects.
Catholic women say they didn’t go anywhere but the church left them. How can others help to support Orthodox women who are excluded from their own community?
2. One colleague who was drawn to Orthodoxy spoke as a gay man about the experience he had with Orthodoxy. The lack of a pope means things are not as centralized. The church he attends has a priest whose daughter is a lesbian who is included in the community.
AP replied that some local practices are accepted or sometimes ignored. But because there is a Communion of Bishops, there is hesitancy to act progressively in an open way for fear of a rupture in the larger body.
If this is so, the moderator asked about the ordination of the case of Angelic Molen, who on May 2, 2024, was ordained deacon in Harare, Zimbabwe (p. 206 footnote 12) with the support of the Alexandrian Synod. How does this work? Is it a regional decision? Is she recognized as a deacon in places where she would not be ordained? What can others learn from this as Roman Cartholics, for example, struggle with this question? Is deaconate perceived as a stop along the way to presbyterate or an order all its own?
AP notes that this act was dismissed as a cultural, geographical thing that happened in Africa so not necessarily for or by the whole church. There is racism on top of sexism, as well as colonialism. There is also no sense that this form of diaconate is related to future presbyteral ordination. A movement to revive the diaconate for men and women in the Orthodox Church is underway.
The St. Phoebe Center for the Deaconess (https://orthodoxdeaconess.org/ ) called out those who would not support the deacon effectively dealing with class, race, West/East consciousness albeit not under the banner of feminism.
3. Another person described visiting a Greek Orthodox Church as part of her Roman Catholic training after having a co-worker who was Greek Orthodox. She described how hard working the women are.
AP said that even with lack of ordination, women are still very active in the life of the church. Women are relegated to some traditional roles, and limited from serving in all of the ways in which they feel called. Nonetheless there are many Orthodox women flourishing in their own ways.
4. Another participant raised the question of why anyone stays in the church despite the limits set on women.
AP underscored that men as well as women need to be involved in the changes needed to be made in churches.
5. The moderator asked how are people in Orthodoxy responding to AP’s view that a woman gave Jesus his full humanity. Since there is, according to the story, no biological father then Mary as a fully human person, as a woman, was all the humanity Jesus got, and seemingly all he needed. On the Roman side, what is in the balance in terms of ordination is "women do not bear a natural resemblance to Jesus in the eucharist.” Women’s full humanity is not recognized if women cannot be ordained. Is this so in Orthodox theology as well?
AP said that people will affirm the theological issue of human equality but still allow many inconsistencies between what they believe and what they do. While the Orthodox church does not have the same theological claim as the Roman Church about “natural resemblance” and “nuptial imagery,” perhaps the sense that seeing Jesus as a male makes it easier to see him as Christ. This is the argument from iconicity, adding strength to the claim that when patriarchy is taken away there is not much left to Orthodox Christianity.
AP was grateful to be among colleagues and thanked Rachel for her theological response. Further discussion of Holy Women lies ahead, especially challenging the notion that women who were more like men were holier. Our conversation among women from a range of Chrisitan starting points is just getting started!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes from the Chat:
1. The publisher, University of Notre Dame Press, is offering a 20% discount to WATER readers at: https://undpress.nd.edu/9780268209223/women-in-the-orthodox-tradition/ Go to the site and use 14FF20 as the Code.
2. Rachel Contos suggested Cristie Traina’s article about her feminist engagement with Orthodoxy, “A Catholic Feminist’s Journey with Orthodox Saints,”
https://publicorthodoxy.org/2024/09/11/catholic-feminists-journey-with-orthodox-saints/
3. Axia Women is a group of Orthodox women “dedicated to raising up one another’s gifts for our own salvation and the well-being of the whole Church.” https://www.axiawomen.org/ .
4. Gender Essentialism and Orthodoxy: Beyond Male and Female by Bryce E. Rich (Fordham University Press, 2023). Rich traces complementarianism in the Orthodox Church, https://academic.oup.com/fordham-scholarship-online/book/51291.
Co-director
Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual (WATER)
8121 Georgia Ave. #310
Silver Spring, MD 20910-4933 USA
301 589-2509 | 301 589-3150 fax
mh...@hers.com
Pronouns: she, her, hers
www.waterwomensalliance.org