REFORMATION 500: WOMEN AND THE REFORMATION by Amy Welborn

3 Comments

nuns2

This is the seventh article in our Reformation 500 Series.

I do not owe you obedience and I will not obey you…I am in a good, pious, blessed, honorable, free, spiritual estate, wherein both my body and soul are well cared for…I want to stay here…I have given myself to God with full knowledge and awareness in eternal chastity here to serve Him…No one of the world can sway me….       

Anna Wurm to her brother (1524)

Anna Wurm’s brother, motivated by both financial interests and his passion for the new Reformed theology, wanted her out of the Strasbourg convent in which she had dwelt for over a decade. Anna obviously disagreed. 

It was a drama played out countless times in the 16th century as convents were closed and thousands of women returned into the world—some happily, but many others unwillingly.

Anna’s conflict with her brother provides a small, but illuminating window into what had been and what was to come in Reformation-formed societies: a world in which unmarried women would no longer have any space in which to live in acceptable and even honored ways, a world in which women would no longer have a role in public life, and one from which the feminine expression of the transcendent would be rigorously banished. Read More

AN EDITORIAL SHIFT ON SEXUALITY AND GENDER by the Editors

1 Comment

WS_Banner4

When Orthodoxy in Dialogue went to press in August we made a conscious decision to limit the number and frequency of articles on sexuality and gender. We never intended for these to be the main focus of this blog.

Yet, as things have turned out over our ten short weeks of publication, 12 (counting our two articles on abortion) of 48 articles and editorials—a full 25%—have touched on some aspect of sexuality and gender. These account for an overwhelmingly disproportionate 50% of total visits by our readers. Our top four articles by far have to do with sexuality and gender.

Hardly a week has gone by that many of our readers—whether publicly on Facebook, or in private emails and messages—have not reached out to express their appreciation not only for the content of these articles, but for their frequency. At least one supporter has noted approvingly the persistence with which we have called attention to the lived human realities of sexual desire, transgender identities and gender dysphoria, the wide range of intersex conditions, and the tragic conditions of fallen life that make the provision of legal, accessible, clinical abortion a pastoral necessity. Read More

SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT by Giacomo Sanfilippo

11 Comments
See also the more recent A Priest Forever?

This may be the most painful thing I ever write for public consumption. I proceed with the consent and encouragment of my cherished co-editor, Andrea Jarmai.

Understandably I feel a combination of awkwardness in publishing this article on what is not my personal blog, and resentment that certain of my Fathers, brothers, and sisters in the Orthodox Church choose to make sport of sufferings that have nearly crushed me to death beneath their weight many times over. I am alive today only because God, His Mother, and all His saints and angels in heaven love me so much in my abject unworthiness—whether some of you do or not. As recently as this past May and June some of you on Facebook and in various other places on the Orthonet had me contemplating suicide once again, because your trash talk following the appearance of “Conjugal Friendship” sank to such astounding depths. You know who you are. You should be ashamed of yourselves. Read More

A LESSON OF HOPE IN THE CALIFORNIA FIRES by Silouan Green

2 Comments
firehope

 

The Gospel comforts and saves. But it is not easy. It is hard. In a world where we do everything we can to make life facile and accommodating, we run from pain and search for quick cures and guilt-free pleasure. We want to be Christian and we want it to be easy. Yet, you will not find this in the testament of our faith.

From Jas 1:2-18 (NLT), written to a community of believers suffering a myriad of trials:

Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.

If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and He will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking. But when you ask Him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind. Such people should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Their loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are unstable in everything they do.

Read More