Gender Essentialism and Orthodoxy

Beyond Male and Female Orthodox Christianity and Contemporary Thought

eBook, 272 pages

English language

Published May 15, 2023 by Fordham University Press.

ISBN:
9781531501549
ASIN:
B09RGJ97XT
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Within contemporary orthodoxy, debates over sex and gender have become increasingly polemical over the past generation. Beginning with questions around women’s ordination, arguments have expanded to include feminism, sexual orientation, the sacrament of marriage, definitions of family, adoption of children, and care of transgender individuals. Preliminary responses to each of these topics are shaped by gender essentialism, the idea that male and female are ontologically fixed and incommensurate categories with different sets of characteristics and gifts for each sex. These categories, in turn, delineate gender roles in the family, the church, and society.

Gender Essentialism and Orthodoxy offers an immanent critique of gender essentialism in the stream of the contemporary Orthodox Church influenced by the “Paris School” of Russian émigré theologians and their heirs. It uses an interdisciplinary approach to bring into conversation patristic reflections on sex and gender, personalist theological anthropology, insights from gender and queer theory, and modern …

1 edition

Subjects

  • Gender politics of Eastern Orthodox Church