This article appears in the current issue of The Wheel (13/14 | Spring/Summer 2018). Citations are omitted below but provided in The Wheel. 

The double issue—with the theme of Being Human: Embodiment and Anthropology—features a Foreword by Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware), an Editorial by Father Andrew Louth, and articles by the following authors: Father John Behr; Marjorie Corbman, Steven Payne, and Gregory Tucker; Beth Dunlop; Brandon Gallaher; Father John Jillions; Katherine Kelaidis; Bradley Nassif; Aristotle Papanikolaou; Giacomo Sanfilippo; Father Vasileios Thermos; Father Alexis Vinogradov; and Christos Yannaras.

Click here to subscribe to The Wheel‘s print version. Click here to purchase a copy or copies of this issue.

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This essay introduces my doctoral research on Father Pavel Florensky’s “Friendship.” It represents a partial response to the questions that emerged in the weeks following the appearance of my “Conjugal Friendship” in May 2017 on Public Orthodoxy.

A facsimile of the 1914 original. Note the pre-Revolutionary orthography. As an æsthete Florensky selected the emblem and ornate typeface himself.

Father Pavel Florensky’s “Friendship,” structurally and thematically the culminating letter of the twelve which comprise The Pillar and Ground of the Truth, has proven a challenge to his readers from the time that he first wrote it as part of his master’s thesis to the present. A cursory reading in translation allows little room to imagine that it envisages “friends” in any conventional sense, of the sort that a man might have two or three or several, or that he could have such a friend in addition to a wife. In the Russian original it becomes even clearer that Florensky articulates an unmistakably conjugal form of friendship. He describes the relationship as two male bodies sharing a single soul in “the sacrament of love,” sanctified in the brother-making liturgy and the couple’s co-partaking of the Eucharist, and differing in no way from marriage in its premise of monogamy, bodily intimacy, cohabitation, common possessions, and mutual submission. The historical, cultural, and especially biographical context in which Florensky writes leaves little ambiguity concerning his personal interest in the recently discovered notion of “homosexuality” and in germinal ideas on the instability of binarial gender—long before the advent of postmodern queer theory.

 The following pages touch only briefly on these aspects, but in reverse order: the wider context of Florensky’s life and writings, his personal biography, and a few key considerations from his text. I conclude with some observations on his place—a full century later—in one of the most challenging anthropological questions demanding a thoughtful Orthodox response today. Constraints of space permit me to do no more than sketch the basic contours of the argument that I will make at length in my doctoral dissertation. Read More

21st-century Orthodox women and girls

Recently Public Orthodoxy hosted a conversation between Dr. Katherine Kelaidis and Dr. Nadieszda Kizenko on the wearing of headscarves by Orthodox women and girls in church. The initial article by Kelaidis can be read here, the response by Kizenko here.

Two things struck me most about Kelaidis’ piece: first, the decision (whether editorial or authorial, I do not know) to illustrate it with a folksy painting from 19th-century Ukraine or Russia rather than a photograph from 21st-century Ukraine or Russia; and second, the unusual assertion that American Orthodox women who cover their head in church somehow disrespect Kelaidis’ grandmother. Kizenko addresses the latter point, as well as the rest of Kelaidis’ article, with tact and nuance.

The question of headscarves was raised by the younger women in the Romanian-Canadian parishes where I served as a priest from 1990 to 1992, and again in a mission parish in the same area—on the border between Manitoba and Saskatchewan—from 1992 to 1995. To repeat, the women raised the question, not I, and this because of the continuing preponderance of headscarves among the older women.

I replied that I found headscarves for women and girls in church to be a tradition worth preserving; that I did not require them to cover their head in church; that women who covered their head in church should neither pressure the others to conform nor feel superior to those who did not; and that an elaborate, fashionable hat would seem to contravene the spirit of the headscarf as a traditionally feminine form of modesty in church. Read More

This likely represents one of the most controversial articles that Orthodoxy in Dialogue will ever publish. The dismissiveness, outrage, or mockery that it will elicit in certain Orthodox circles is entirely—and sadly—predictable. 

Conducted on June 25, 2018, this interview introduces our readers to Ms. Bringerud’s doctoral research in gender, cultural heritage, and conversion in the Orthodox Church. She invites her subject to share their experience of being Orthodox and a seminarian while not identifying as male or female.

Orthodoxy in Dialogue does not normally allow the use of pseudonyms. In this case we have made a rare exception based on the importance of Lindsey’s witness in our ongoing discussion of sexuality and gender and the need to ensure their safety and well-being in the Church. We have communicated with them directly and know their identity. 

The author provides a glossary of terms here.

Lydia: Please introduce yourself for our readers.

Lindsey: Hi, my name is Lindsey, and my pronouns are they/them/theirs. I am white, middle-class, on the autistic spectrum of disorders, and have major depression, for which I’m in treatment. I am often read as masculine. I grew up in different parts of California. My parents converted to Orthodoxy, and I grew up attending Liturgy and Vespers every week.

Lydia: You identify as “genderqueer.” Can you talk about what that word means to you, and how you came to identify this way?

Lindsey: I don’t really like labels myself, but we still have to speak a language. Gender, to me, is the meaning we give to being embodied, which is intimately linked with sex, the physical composition of our bodies. The meanings of the two may come from culture, society, family of origin…etc. None of the regulated roles contained under “male” or “female,” or anything else, really, fits my identity. I would almost prefer to think of myself as agender. I don’t experience moving from one gender expression to another; I feel outside of the  gender spectrum. There is a tendency to collapse sex and gender and use those words interchangeably, but we do ourselves a disservice there—they are ultimately inseparable, but they are very much distinct. Read More

Orthodoxy in Dialogue is pleased to introduce Jacob McNair of Toronto to our readers around the world. He is a young Orthodox Christian in the final stage of his Master of Journalism.

Jacob McNair

Mary Hynes sits with a cup of tea in a cozy, burgundy-walled studio at CBC’s Toronto offices. She’s interviewing Paul Bramadat, a professor at the University of Victoria, about his study of the spiritual demographics of Cascadia, the Pacific Northwest region encompassing British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon. It’s a segment for her radio show Tapestry, where she talks to Canadians about religion, spirituality, philosophy, psychology, and all other aspects of the “messy business of being human.” Even though Bramadat is phoning in from across the continent, Hynes keeps the tone personal—as if he’s sitting right there with her. While Bramadat’s initial answers revolve around mechanics and data, Hynes’s informal, caring tone and questions pry him away from his prepared answers. When asked about the area’s distinctive spiritual trends, he notes, “the influence of what I call ‘reverential naturalism,’ which is to say, that being out in nature is not just a place where one does a spirituality or religion, but it is a medium through which [spirituality or religion] is done.”

Hynes asks for an example, commenting, “I guess the image that’s coming to my mind is, you have everything! You have the ocean, you have the mountains. You know, this part of the world is pretty spectacular in terms of natural beauty. So how does that shape a sense of spirituality?”

“I moved here about 10 years ago, and most professors teach, and were taught, that everything is a social construction—”

“Sorry, where did you move from?” interrupts Hynes.

“I moved from Winnipeg, where I spent about 30 years of my life, but I’ve lived also in Quebec, and in the Hamilton area.” Bramadat goes on to describe how, on moving to B.C., he noticed a number of drivers unironically using a B.C. licence plate with the motto, “The Best Place on Earth,” which was offered by the government from 2007 to 2011. He believes it “does really capture the way in which people think about this place, and so it just led me to think, ‘Well, is there anything about this place which might be distinctive from the various other places I’ve lived?’ I love the prairies, I love that landscape, but it’s a place of horizontal and somewhat elusive beauty. It requires your attention. In Cascadia, the beauty doesn’t really require your attention—it reaches in and kind of grabs it.” Read More