ABSTRACT
The questions of women’s participation and roles within the churches following the World Council of Churches ecumenical study, ‘The Life and Work of Women in the Church’ in 1947, and various other consultations in subsequent years, were not taken up with any feminist ideology from within the Orthodox Church. Any emancipation from age-old practices and theologies within cultures and traditions were still resisted by conservative Orthodox well into the 1980s, by churchmen and women alike. While many secular and religious feminists became widely known through their writing during these years, the names of Orthodox women still remained conspicuous by their absence. References to changes in wide-ranging ministries for women in other mainstream church traditions are important to mark the progress of the women’s movement as it permeated and evolved through the churches, whether in the West or the East. Even now, at the beginning of the twentyfirst century, it is considered controversial in the Orthodox churches that a feminist movement of women could emerge and work within the ecumenical movement to raise the issues of patriarchy, male hierarchy and authority. The planning, processes and recommendations from the 1976 Agapia Consultation – the precursor and very important event for Orthodox women; the early ecumenical debate on the ordination of women to the sacramental priesthood – together with WCC programmes introduced new concepts of ministry, beyond the traditional ‘servant and service’ expected from women, into the Orthodox context of women’s ministry and participation in the Church.
