Agapia 1976 and the Ministry of Women

In September 1976 the first international consultation of Orthodox women met at the monastery of Agapia in Romania, under the auspices of the World Council of Churches, and Elisabeth Behr-Sigel — sixty-nine years old, and having published nothing on the subject in her life — gave the opening address. Out of that address came a decade of lectures across three continents and, in 1987, Le ministère de la femme dans l’Église, the book by which she is chiefly known.

Tradition: Orthodox (France — Russian emigration milieu)

The Consultation

The first international consultation of Orthodox women was held at the monastery of Agapia, in Romania, in September 1976, organized under the auspices of the World Council of Churches by Orthodox members of its staff. It was the beginning of a series that ran through Rhodes (1988), Crete (1990), Damascus (1996), Istanbul (1997) and later meetings; the WCC’s own retrospective describes these gatherings as ones at which “a number of important concerns relevant to the life of women in the Church were expressed,” the resulting statements representing “the consensus of all the participants” (World Council of Churches, “Participation of Orthodox Women in the Ecumenical Movement,” oikoumene.org).

Behr-Sigel was invited to give the opening address (Orthodox Church in America, “In Memoriam: Madame Elizabeth Behr-Sigal,” oca.org, December 2005, describing her as delivering the keynote at “the first international gathering of Orthodox Christian women”; Sarah Hinlicky Wilson, interview, Eastern Christian Books, November 2013).

Two things about the occasion are worth registering.

She had published nothing on the subject. Before 1976, on Hinlicky Wilson’s account, Behr-Sigel had published nothing on women in the Church at all (Hinlicky Wilson, interview, 2013). She had been Orthodox for forty-seven years, had written on Russian sanctity, hesychast prayer, sophiology and Bukharev, and had raised three children. What she brought to Agapia was, in Hinlicky Wilson’s phrase, “a lifetime’s experience as a woman in the Orthodox church” that “was ready to erupt.”

The consultation itself owed much to Evdokimov. Hinlicky Wilson’s account attributes the impetus for Agapia largely to the continuing influence of Paul Evdokimov’s writings after his death in 1970; Behr-Sigel’s own address drew explicitly on his theology of a feminine charism, and in Hinlicky Wilson’s image Evdokimov was “present in spirit” at the meeting (Hinlicky Wilson, Woman, Women, and the Priesthood in the Trinitarian Theology of Elisabeth Behr-Sigel, London: T&T Clark, 2013; see Paul Evdokimov: The Book and Its Argument).

[Disputed: what Behr-Sigel actually said at Agapia about the priesthood. One line of report holds that Agapia 1976 was "the first time, at least on the written record, that Behr-Sigel raised the question of female priests." Another emphasizes that her Agapia argument ran on Evdokimov's categories, which yield a conservative conclusion about the ministerial priesthood, and that her position on ordination changed only in the following decade. These are reconcilable if she *raised* the question at Agapia without answering it in the affirmative — which is what her subsequent trajectory suggests — but this collection could not consult the text of the address, and no quotation from it is offered here. The proceedings of the Agapia consultation are the place to settle it.]

The Decade of Lectures

Agapia opened a period of intense activity that lasted the rest of her life. She conducted numerous conferences on the role of women in the Church — Ottawa and Tantur are among the venues named in the biographical record — and produced the stream of essays and lectures that made her, in the standard description, one of the principal voices of women in Western Orthodoxy and in the ecumenical movement (fr.wikipedia.org, “Élisabeth Behr-Sigel,” following Olga Lossky, Vers le jour sans déclin, Cerf, 2007).

The record names those who encouraged her in it, and the names matter because they are not marginal figures: Metropolitan Emilianos Timiadis, Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom) of Sourozh, and Bishop Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia; on the American side she worked alongside Deborah Belonick (fr.wikipedia.org, following Lossky). Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh in particular was among the most widely revered Orthodox pastors of the century, and his encouragement is a fact that critics of Behr-Sigel’s project have to reckon with, as her supporters have to reckon with the fact that neither he nor Ware endorsed her most contested conclusions.

Le ministère de la femme dans l’Église (1987)

The book appeared from Éditions du Cerf in 1987, some 240 pages, and in English as The Ministry of Women in the Church, translated by Steven Bigham (Redondo Beach, CA: Oakwood Publications, 1991) (fr.wikipedia.org, following Lossky; bibliographic records).

Its substance, on the accounts available, is the constructive case that follows from her theology of the person (see Person and Nature after Lossky), and it proceeds in four movements.

First, an inventory of what women have actually done. Behr-Sigel’s method is historical before it is programmatic. Her lifelong subject had been the varieties of holiness (see Prière et sainteté and the New Hagiography), and she brought the same eye to ministry: the myrrhbearers, the ammas of the desert whose sayings stand beside the fathers’ in the Apophthegmata, the deaconesses of the patristic and Byzantine Church, the abbesses exercising real spiritual authority, the women of the modern emigration. The repository’s own Women in Orthodoxy makes substantially the same inventory, and it is not a contested one.

Second, a diagnosis. The gap she identified was between what Orthodox women do and what the Church names, blesses and structures. Enormous quantities of catechesis, charity, pastoral care and theological work are carried out by women with no ecclesial form given to it. Her charge is not that women are excluded from grace but that their service is left institutionally invisible.

Third, the critique of the theological rationales. This is the part treated in The Critique of the Eternal Feminine: the rejection of essentialist accounts of feminine charisms, of the Son/Spirit correlation, and of arguments from cultural stereotype presented as ontology.

Fourth, the constructive proposals. Chiefly the restoration of the order of deaconesses, adapted to the Church’s present needs (see The Recovery of the Deaconess); and, more broadly, the incorporation of women into the Church’s teaching, catechetical and administrative life in explicit and blessed forms.

[Disputed: the internal structure and chapter contents of *Le ministère de la femme dans l'Église*. This file describes the book's argument as it is reported in the secondary literature and in the summaries of the English translation; the printed volume was not available for this collection, and no page references or verbatim quotations are given. Readers requiring precision should consult Bigham's translation.]

What the Book Is Not

Two clarifications, both required by the way the book is described in circulation.

It is not a book about the priesthood. The title is The Ministry of Women, not The Ordination of Women, and its center of gravity is the diaconate and the unstructured ministries. The priesthood question is the subject of her later work, chiefly the 1998/2000 volume with Kallistos Ware, and belongs to Section 07.

It is not a feminist manifesto, in her own account. She rejected the secular-egalitarian framing explicitly, grounding her case in the Orthodox theology of the person. Her critics reply that the disclaimer does not change the destination (see The Orthodox Criticism); the disclaimer is nonetheless hers, it is consistent across her writings, and it is not a rhetorical afterthought — it is the reason her argument takes the form it does.

The Standing of This Section’s Material

It should be said plainly, in a collection that will be read for the controversy, that most of what Behr-Sigel proposed in this section is not controversial among Orthodox. That women have exercised and do exercise very great ministries; that the ammas and the abbesses and the deaconesses are part of the Church’s own record; that women’s theological and catechetical work should be recognized; that the order of deaconesses was real, was never abolished, and could be restored — these positions are held by many who reject her conclusions about the presbyterate absolutely, and several of them were affirmed by an inter-Orthodox consultation of twelve autocephalous Churches at Rhodes in 1988 (see The Recovery of the Deaconess).

The contested part of her work is one part of it. It is the part that has determined her reputation, which is a fair description of how reputations work and not a fair description of the work.

References

Behr-Sigel, Elisabeth. Le ministère de la femme dans l’Église. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1987. English: The Ministry of Women in the Church, trans. Steven Bigham. Redondo Beach, CA: Oakwood Publications, 1991.
World Council of Churches. “Participation of Orthodox Women in the Ecumenical Movement.” oikoumene.org. (The series of consultations: Agapia 1976, Rhodes 1988, Crete 1990, Damascus 1996, Istanbul 1997; the statements as “the consensus of all the participants.”)
Orthodox Church in America. “In Memoriam: Madame Elizabeth Behr-Sigal.” oca.org, December 2005. (The 1976 keynote at Agapia.)
Hinlicky Wilson, Sarah. Woman, Women, and the Priesthood in the Trinitarian Theology of Elisabeth Behr-Sigel. London: T&T Clark, 2013; interview, Eastern Christian Books, November 2013. (Nothing published on women before 1976; the invitation to Agapia; Evdokimov’s posthumous influence on the consultation and on her address; the abandonment of his categories within a decade.)
“Élisabeth Behr-Sigel.” French Wikipedia (fr.wikipedia.org), following Olga Lossky, Vers le jour sans déclin, Cerf, 2007. (The lecture circuit after Agapia — Ottawa, Tantur; the encouragement of Metropolitans Emilianos Timiadis and Anthony Bloom and Bishop Kallistos Ware; Deborah Belonick.)
Evdokimov, Paul. La Femme et le salut du monde. Tournai/Paris: Casterman, 1958. English: Woman and the Salvation of the World, trans. Anthony P. Gythiel. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1994.