Since its founding in 1994, WOMEN has developed a grass roots membership of over fifteen-hundred women, men, and clergy worldwide who receive the St. Nina Quarterly, and who have set up a network via letters and e-mail to support each other and their ministries in their service to Christ and His Church. During that time, the WOMEN Board has discovered a fascinating diversity in women’s experience in the Church. As a result, WOMEN’s vision has evolved to recognize the distinct emphases in Orthodox women’s needs in these different settings. Unfortunately, at times this diversity gives rise to suspicion and judgmentalness among Orthodox women from different backgrounds. But we have a common impetus for our commitment to lovingly listen, learn, and understand each other better—our shared love of Christ.

Oh, strange Orthodox Church … Church of contrasts: at the same time so traditional yet so free, so ritualistic … yet so alive. Church where the gem of a prize, the Gospel, is preciously preserved, sometimes under a layer of dust … but who knows how to sing like no other the joy of Easter.
—Father Lev Gillet

Of these contrasts recalled by a great spiritual Orthodox contemporary, Archimandrite Lev Gillet (better known by his literary pseudonym “a Monk of the Eastern Church”), the status of Orthodox women provides a particularly astonishing example.

At the Last Judgment I will not be asked whether I satisfactorily practiced asceticism, nor how many bows I have made before the divine altar. I will be asked whether I fed the hungry, clothed the naked, visited the sick, and the prisoner in his jail. That is all I will be asked.¹

Mother Maria Skobtsova did not live what one usually thinks of as the ideal monastic life of constant prayer in quiet solitude. Even after she was tonsured a nun she lived and was active “in the world.”

As Orthodox Christians we always look at Scripture within the context of Tradition. However, there are times when we borrow the practice common in this country of haphazardly selecting certain passages or translations to suit our own narrow purposes.

People often wonder what attitude the Church should have toward feminism. It may be easy to offer simplistic answers, but we cannot begin to address this issue responsibly unless we are clear about what feminism is. This contentious word feminism means different things to different people, both among its advocates and among its opponents. For many today, including many Orthodox Christians, “feminist” has become a convenient insult largely empty of meaning. If people can pin the label of feminist on people or ideas they dislike, they can dismiss those people and ideas without having to give them a hearing. This can be an excuse for refusing to enter into respectful dialogue with others, thus avoiding the possibility of discovering whether they actually have legitimate concerns, and maybe even changing our own attitudes or behavior in response. Sometimes God uses the most unlikely people and situations to call us to repentance.