St. John of Rila of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church28 August 2008
Women can, and should, play a bigger role in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. If only we could discuss it.
SOFIA When I returned to Bulgaria from my theological specialization at Oxford University, I wanted to deliver a series of lectures on modern Christian theology to the theological students at Sofia University. I had in mind presenting major contemporary writers from the Catholic and Protestant traditions, on the one hand, and from the modern Western Orthodox thought, on the other.
What was my disappointment when I was not allowed even to submit my project for consideration at an academic faculty meeting because, as I was bluntly told, “There is no such a thing as modern theology!” I argued that I had studied “that thing” for a whole year at Oxford and I was pretty sure it was a necessary subject because Bulgarian students should have basic knowledge on Western Christian schools of thought. To little avail, as the verdict was: “You do not have any chance to teach a course here. You obviously have forgotten that you are a woman.”
This happened more than 10 years ago. Despite the fact that at that time there already were female students in the theology department (admitted after the 1991 restoration of the communist-era Spiritual Academy to its initial status of a theological department at Sofia University), no woman was teaching there, except for one or two part-time teachers in foreign languages. The situation in the theological department at Veliko Turnovo University was much the same. However, gradually a few part-time female lecturers in disciplines other than foreign languages have been “granted” the right to teach. The fact that today there are a few postgraduate female students and even a couple of assistant professors in these departments shows a considerable shift from the radical approach to the issue of women theologians in Bulgaria. As for me, I was “allowed” to teach theological students at Veliko Turnovo an optional course on religion, nationalism, and civil society in Eastern Europe in the 2002-2003 school year, and my book, Eschatological Anthropodicy: The Human Person and History in Contemporary Orthodox Thought, as well as theological books edited or translated by me, are widely read by professors and students at both universities.
Unfortunately, prejudice and ill-advised loftiness, coupled, to my mind, with a serious amount of fear and defensiveness, prevail in academic and ecclesiastical circles in Bulgaria. Despite the fact that my university course was well attended and highly rated by students, it was discontinued without explanation. Some female theologians complain that although the negative attitude on the part of the older professors has subsided somewhat, it has been, alarmingly enough, taken on by members of the junior male faculty. When I discussed with Bishop Kallistos Ware of the University of Oxford my idea to translate and publish in Bulgarian the book The Ordination of Women in the Orthodox Church, written by him and Elisabeth Behr-Sigel, he expressed concerns as to how the book would be met in the religiously conservative Bulgaria. He was right to worry and I had to slightly change the title of the Bulgarian edition, omitting the fearful word ordination. Certainly, Ware’s visit to Bulgaria in 2002 and the lectures he gave to the academic community, attended by most of the theologians and some clergymen in Sofia, made easier the acceptance of the book and propelled its official “approval.” Now it is being sold in many churches in the country. Interestingly enough, when some time ago I talked to a person selling books at one of the churches, he mentioned that this particular book was being bought mostly by men rather than women! This small fact invites further consideration and explanation from a sociological point of view.
NOT GOING AWAY
Considering its recent history, the church’s arm’s-length embrace of women is ironic. Under communist rule the surviving church leadership opted for compromise with the regime and pledged its loyalty to the government. In Bulgaria, as in Romania and Serbia, the Orthodox Church became a committed ally in the nationalist aspirations of the state. Church attendance dropped off, as in most of the Eastern European countries; those attending church were under the surveillance of the security agencies and persistence often meant a job loss. No wonder that the churchgoers were mainly elderly women who were not afraid of persecution and who secretly brought to the church their grandchildren to be baptized. In this way in Bulgaria, as in Russia, the parish structures of the Orthodox Church survived the atheist persecution because of the faith and perseverance of those courageous elderly women. As for the monastic life at that time, it suffices to note that in 1987 there were 135 monks and 170 nuns. Today the female monasteries outnumber considerably the male monasteries: for example, the ratio in the eparchy (diocese) of Veliko Turnovo is 12-to-6.
Women are also a majority among theological students in Bulgaria. At the theology department of Veliko Turnovo University, for example, two-thirds of the students are female. Very few, however, work in the field of theology after graduation. Normally they take a second major, so they can find a job after leaving university. This only confirms that religious education that is open to women does not necessarily mean that they will enjoy more than a symbolic and rather fragmented presence in the religious job market.
Until now, the issue of women and their specific activities in the church has not been seriously discussed in Bulgaria, nor has there been a theological debate on female charismas and spiritual gifts. Such silence is part of a social ethos in which feminist themes and attitudes, on the one hand, and religious problems, on the other, are generally neglected and underrepresented. Although in Bulgaria between 1900 and the communist take-over, according to Krassimira Daskalova, one of the few feminist scholars in the country, an important “indigenous” feminist tradition had developed, this tradition has remained largely unknown, and it barely included religion-related discourses. Today, the sporadic feminist activities in Bulgaria are predominantly secular-oriented. Orthodox women tend to avoid any problematization of their place in the church. For the most part, they do not see the limitation of their activities to the field of social work (diaconia) as restrictive. Clearly, Bulgarian women are far from seeking any official recognition of these diaconical activities through the restoration of the ministry of deaconess (which was gradually abandoned in the Christian East from the sixth century onward).
Earlier, when giving talks on this topic at several international meetings, I shared my hopes that in spite of the absence of a debate on the role of women in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, and notwithstanding the hostility and misunderstanding in certain ecclesiastical circles toward women’s initiatives, a slow shift to a wider representation of women in church-related activities could be observed in the not so distant future. Today, without having given up this hope altogether, I am less optimistic.
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment