It sometimes seems that the multiple discursive currents, confluences, and divergences on questions of gender leave no place for a positive account of masculinity. We hardly ever hear it mentioned without its being qualified as toxic. This can have the subliminal effect of making us suppose that no other kind of masculinity exists. Our “Orthodoxy, Sissies, and the Performance of Masculinity: Part One” of March 3 (for which the promised sequel has yet to be written) elicited so much interest that it stands in 6th place among 261 articles, editorials, and open letters. Can we speak legitimately about a crisis of masculinity, not only socially and psychologically, but for our purposes indeed theologically and spiritually?  What does it mean—and not mean—to be a male bearer of the divine image and acquirer of the divine likeness? For all its brevity the present article, written from one woman’s perspective, may suggest directions for an Orthodox theological exploration of these kinds of questions.

I burst out laughing the other day while reading a friend’s Facebook status. He explained that he and his two grade school sons were watching Anne of Green Gables when they came to the part where Anne and Diana have a conversation while standing on a cliff overlooking the sea. The youngest son suddenly blurted out, “Anne better watch out, Diana might push her off the cliff.”

In amazement, my friend looked at his son and asked if he thought girl friendships were the same as the physical, often rough-and-tumble one which existed between him and his brother. The conversation ended in hysterical laughter as all three of them recognized just how different male interactions are from female ones.

I thought of this story when I came across a piece by Heidi Stevens in the Chicago Tribune. Stevens, the mother of a nine-year-old boy, recently noticed how intense and troubled her son’s friendships are with other little boys. Curious, she reached out to psychologist Wendy Mogel to find out if her son was an anomaly. Mogel assured her he was not and that many other little boys wrestle with “existential questions,” including: Read More

On March 18 Orthodoxy in Dialogue published Aidan Hart’s “Icons and Culture: Transformation or Appropriation?” In response Irina Gannota wrote “Iconography as Byzantine Portraiture,” which we published earlier this week. Mr. Hart has submitted the following brief reply to Ms. Gannota.

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Father Andrew Louth came to Toronto at the invitation of a local Anglican parish for part of the first and second week of May 2018. On Wednesday the 9th, he participated in an informal public conversation at Trinity College with Dr. Christopher Brittain, Dean of Divinity. The next morning, I had the pleasure and blessing to enjoy an extended breakfast à deux with Father Andrew. The following encapsulates some of the things that we covered.

Giacomo Sanfilippo, Editor 

Giacomo: Father Andrew, it’s such a pleasure to chat with you today. Thank you so much for making time for me.

Father Andrew: Glad to be in touch. It was a great privilege to see you when I was in Toronto, so in a way this is a continuation of our conversation then.

Giacomo: The title of your public conversation with Dr. Brittain here at Trinity College was “Discerning the Mystery: The Nature and Task of Theology Today.” What are some of your general thoughts on what Orthodox theology ought to be doing as we approach the third decade of the 21st century?

Father Andrew: I am never very clear what to say when asked what “Orthodox theology” ought to be doing today. I don’t think abstract nouns do anything. What Orthodox theologians ought to be doing today: there again, why should anyone tell us what we ought to be interested in?  In my view, Orthodox theologians (or theologians in general) have various roles:

• Many of them are academics trying to pursue a career in a not-very-hospitable climate—they have to teach, engage in research, and so on in whatever way seems fit, which will vary from person to person;
• If they call themselves (or allow others to call them) “Orthodox” theologians, this must mean, to some degree, that they have a duty to the Church, they are not free-thinking intellectuals, though their duty to the Church must involve witness to the truth, or rather to the One who said, “I am the Truth;” but their function as Orthodox theologians is not “rightly to discern the word of the truth” (cf. 2 Tim. 2:15)—that is the role of the bishop, as the acclamation Ἐν πρώτοις [Among the first] in the eucharistic anaphora affirms, though not a role to be exercised in isolation, but precisely as bishop within the Christian laos, listening, as well as teaching—but is rather a kind of prophetic witness within the Church (as Newman suggested), a matter of helping the Church in its teaching to remain faithful to the breadth and depth of the Tradition, and not get distracted, as is all too easily the case, by simply repeating what we have “always said and believed.” One who, in reality an “Orthodox” theologian all his life, though only towards the end of it embracing explicitly the Orthodox Church, Jaroslav Pelikan, somewhere said that “traditionalism is the dead faith of the living; tradition is the living faith of the dead.” It is an important aspect of the role of the Orthodox theologian to discern what that means.

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This is the second article in Orthodoxy in Dialogue’s Faith & the Arts series.

Elisabeth Moss as June/Offred

The Hulu Original series, The Handmaid’s Tale, is almost excruciatingly painful to watch, but not so much for its aesthetic as for its premise. Based on the 1985 novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood, the story places us inside the oppressed regime of a misogynist, totalitarian theonomy: the new state of Gilead has overthrown American democracy and prevailed. 

We follow the protagonist, Offred (whose real name is June, but she is the property of Fred), a handmaid specifically used for her reproductive agency in a landscape where—for unclear reasons—sterility has become a problem and children are a valuable commodity for those in power. Ritualized sex and procreation that completely dehumanizes the handmaid, valuing her only for her fertility, becomes the right and approved method of procreation for privileged couples.  The consistent display of state sanctioned misogyny pulls no punches, which is what makes this sometimes a difficult and almost effortful show to watch.

When the United States is overthrown, June (Offred) is separated from her husband and child and subjugated to sexual slavery as a handmaid, whose only value is her capacity to give birth. Social constructs that define moral ideas such as right and wrong suddenly conform to a distorted view of religious propriety, and the terrors of this oppression are made known: loss of freedom, the public execution of rebels, the tearing apart of families, religiously sanctioned rape, and more. Read More