Women in Orthodoxy

Orthodox theology affirms the full equality of women and men in the image of God, holds the Theotokos as the highest of all created persons, and venerates a great cloud of women saints — myrrhbearers, ascetics, empresses, and new martyrs. It also maintains, by unbroken tradition, a male priesthood, while the related but distinct question of the female diaconate is under active discussion. This file presents the theological anthropology, the prominence of women saints, the ordination questions handled with positions attributed to named theologians and documents, and the actual roles women hold in the Church’s life.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (questions under active discussion — positions attributed)

Theological Anthropology: Male and Female in the Image of God

“In the Image of God He Created Them”

The foundational text is Genesis 1:27: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” Orthodox anthropology reads the image of God (eikon) as belonging to the human person as such — to woman and man equally and without distinction in dignity (see Theological Anthropology). The Fathers consistently locate the image in the rational, free, self-determining soul (nous), which is shared by both sexes. St. Gregory of Nyssa treats the image as fundamentally prior to the distinction of sex: in On the Making of Man he reads Genesis 1:27 as describing two moments — the creation of humanity “in the image,” and then “male and female,” the latter being God’s provision in view of the Fall and not the deepest truth of the image (Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man 16–17 [PG 44:177–192]). The image, for Gregory, in that respect transcends sexual difference even while the embodied person is really man or woman. St. Maximus the Confessor carries this further, listing the division of male and female among the divisions of nature that Christ unites and heals in himself, so that in the eschaton the human being is restored to a wholeness in which “there is neither male nor female” (Maximus, Ambiguum 41 [PG 91:1305C]; On the Lord’s Prayer). The tradition therefore does not ground the male priesthood in any inferiority of woman in the image of God — a point the consensus itself insists upon — but in other considerations (below).

The Theotokos as the Highest Created Person

The summit of Orthodox anthropology is a woman. The Theotokos is venerated as “more honorable than the cherubim and beyond compare more glorious than the seraphim” (the hymn Axion Estin / It Is Truly Meet), that is, as the highest of all created persons, angelic or human. She is the one human being in whom the human vocation — to become the dwelling-place of God — is perfectly realized: the New Eve, the living temple, the model par excellence of communion with Christ (see The Theotokos). That the most exalted creature in Orthodox devotion is a woman is itself a primary datum of Orthodox theological anthropology, frequently invoked against the charge that the tradition disparages women: the Church’s highest honor after God is given to the Virgin Mary.

“Neither Male nor Female” (Galatians 3:28)

Galatians 3:28 — “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” — is a key text. The patristic reading, exemplified by St. John Chrysostom, takes it not as the abolition of created sexual distinction but as the equal incorporation of all the baptized into Christ: in baptism each has “put on Christ,” so that “you have one form, one character, that of Christ” (Chrysostom, Homily 3 on Galatians [PG 61:656]; trans. NPNF I/13). On this reading the verse affirms the equal dignity and equal salvation of women and men in Christ, transcending social and sexual divisions in the order of grace, without thereby erasing the embodied difference of male and female in the order of creation. Modern Orthodox theologians who urge reexamination of women’s ministries (below) appeal to Galatians 3:28 as establishing the baptismal equality from which their arguments proceed; those who defend the present discipline read the same verse as compatible with distinct, non-interchangeable roles.

The Prominence of Women Saints

Women stand at the center of the Gospel’s decisive moments and throughout the Church’s hagiography:

• The Myrrhbearing Women — Mary Magdalene, Mary the wife of Cleopas, Salome, Joanna, and the others who came to the tomb at dawn — were the first witnesses of the Resurrection and the first to proclaim it to the Apostles. The Church commemorates them on the Third Sunday of Pascha (Sunday of the Myrrhbearers), and Mary Magdalene is honored with the title “Equal-to-the-Apostles” (Isapostolos) for her preaching of the risen Christ (goarch.org, “Sunday of the Myrrh-Bearing Women”; oca.org, life of Mary Magdalene).
• St. Mary of Egypt (commemorated on the Fifth Sunday of Great Lent and April 1) is the supreme icon of repentance — a former harlot who became a desert ascetic of such holiness that the priest-monk Zosimas saw her levitate in prayer and cross the Jordan on foot. Her life, read in full during Lent, sets a woman before the whole Church as the model of metanoia (orthodoxwiki.org, “Mary of Egypt”).
• The empresses and great laywomen — St. Helen, who found the True Cross; St. Theodora, who restored the icons in 843 (the Triumph of Orthodoxy); St. Nina (Nino), Equal-to-the-Apostles, who evangelized Georgia; St. Thecla, Protomartyr and Equal-to-the-Apostles. The desert tradition preserves the ammas (desert mothers) — St. Syncletica, Sarah, and Theodora — whose sayings stand beside those of the desert fathers in the Apophthegmata, a striking witness that women exercised recognized spiritual authority and discernment in the foundational age of monasticism.
• The great martyrs — St. Catherine of Alexandria, St. Barbara, St. Marina (Margaret), St. Anastasia, St. Paraskevi, and St. Photini (the Samaritan woman of John 4, honored as Equal-to-the-Apostles) — fill the calendar, many of them young women whose courage in confessing Christ before tyrants is held up to the whole Church.
• The new martyrs and modern saints — St. Maria (Skobtsova) of Paris (1891–1945), nun, poet, and theologian who sheltered refugees and Jews in occupied Paris and died at Ravensbrück, glorified by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 2004; and St. Olga (Michael) of Kwethluk (1916–1979), a Yup’ik matushka and midwife, the first female Orthodox saint of North America, glorified in June 2025 (see The Saints of North America).

The Question of Women’s Ordination to the Priesthood

The Orthodox Church does not ordain women to the priesthood or the episcopate, and this is treated as settled tradition rather than open question. The matter is nonetheless a topic of theological discussion, and integrity requires presenting both the consensus position and the voices urging reexamination.

The Consensus Against Women’s Priesthood and Its Stated Grounds

The classic Orthodox statement of the position is the symposium edited by Fr. Thomas Hopko, Women and the Priesthood (SVS Press, 1983; rev. ed. 1999). The grounds given there and in subsequent Orthodox theology include:

1. Christ’s choice of twelve male apostles, understood as normative and not merely culturally conditioned, given Christ’s willingness to break other social conventions regarding women.
2. The priest as icon of Christ. In the Liturgy the priest images Christ the Bridegroom toward the Church the Bride; the maleness of the priest is read as part of this iconic and nuptial symbolism, not merely a biological accident (Hopko, ed., Women and the Priesthood, 1999).
3. The unbroken tradition of a male priesthood, which carries normative weight as expressing the mind of the Church guided by the Holy Spirit, not a custom alterable by majority vote.
4. Anthropological complementarity — equality of dignity in the image of God without interchangeability of role.

Voices Urging Reexamination

A minority of respected Orthodox theologians have argued that the question deserves genuine theological reexamination rather than closure by appeal to custom. Elisabeth Behr-Sigel (1907–2005), the most prominent, moved over her career from accepting the tradition to holding that the arguments against women’s ordination had not been adequately demonstrated and that the question should remain open; in The Ordination of Women in the Orthodox Church (with Bishop Kallistos Ware, 2000) she argued that the female diaconate and the priesthood should both be part of a free, conciliar theological deliberation rather than the diaconate alone (Behr-Sigel and Ware, The Ordination of Women in the Orthodox Church, WCC, 2000). Kyriaki Karidoyanes FitzGerald has likewise pressed for sustained study of women’s ministries. The St. Phoebe Center for the Deaconess advocates specifically for the female diaconate, not the priesthood (orthodoxdeaconess.org). It should be stressed that even Behr-Sigel framed the priesthood question as one to be examined, and that the great majority of Orthodox hierarchs and theologians regard the male priesthood as settled.

Priesthood and Diaconate Distinguished

The questions of women’s priesthood and women’s diaconate are theologically distinct and must not be conflated. The deaconate is a ministry of service that historically included an ordained order of women (see The Deaconess); its possible revival is supported by some who firmly reject the ordination of women to the priesthood. Even theologians who link the two (Behr-Sigel held that they should be deliberated together) acknowledge that one can consistently advocate restoring the deaconess while opposing a female presbyterate — and most advocates of the deaconess do precisely that.

Women’s Actual Roles in the Church

Within the existing order, women occupy a wide and consequential range of roles:

• Theologians and writers. Elisabeth Behr-Sigel is among the most significant Orthodox theologians of the twentieth century; St. Maria Skobtsova was a creative theologian of social Christianity; scholars such as Kyriaki FitzGerald, Valerie Karras, and Verna Harrison have shaped contemporary patristic and theological study. Mother Maria was the first woman to take courses at the St. Sergius Institute’s milieu in Paris.
• Monastics. Women’s monasteries — under an abbess (hegoumenia) who exercises real spiritual authority over her community — have been a central institution of Orthodox life since the fourth century, and many of the Church’s saints and spiritual mothers (ammas) are monastics.
• Liturgical and parish roles. Women serve as choir directors and chanters, as iconographers (a vocation of great prominence today), as catechists and church-school teachers, as parish administrators, and as members and officers of parish councils in most jurisdictions. In some parishes women read the Epistle and the Hours outside the altar where local practice permits.
• Charitable and missionary work. Women lead and staff the philanthropic and missionary ministries that the Rhodes consultation (1988) explicitly identified as the proper field of a renewed diaconate.

The Orthodox claim — made by both defenders of the present discipline and many who urge reexamination — is that the dignity of women in the Church is not measured by access to the altar but by the call of every baptized person to holiness, of which the Theotokos and the women saints are the proof.

See Also

• The Deaconess — the ancient order, its decline, and the modern revival debate
• The Theotokos — Marian theology and the highest created person
• Theological Anthropology — image and likeness, male and female
• Holy Orders — the threefold ministry and the question of ordaining women
• The Saints of North America — St. Olga of Kwethluk and the women saints of the continent

References

• Scripture: Genesis 1:26–27; Galatians 3:28; Romans 16:1–2.
• Gregory of Nyssa. On the Making of Man 16–17 [PG 44:177–192].
• John Chrysostom. Homily 3 on Galatians [PG 61:656]; trans. NPNF I/13.
• Axion Estin (It Is Truly Meet) and the hymnography of the Theotokos.
• Hopko, Thomas, ed. Women and the Priesthood. Crestwood: SVS Press, 1983; rev. ed. 1999.
• Behr-Sigel, Elisabeth, and Kallistos Ware. The Ordination of Women in the Orthodox Church. Geneva: WCC Publications, 2000.
• Behr-Sigel, Elisabeth. The Ministry of Women in the Church. Crestwood: SVS Press, 1991.
• FitzGerald, Kyriaki Karidoyanes. Women Deacons in the Orthodox Church: Called to Holiness and Ministry. Brookline: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1998.
• St. Phoebe Center for the Deaconess (orthodoxdeaconess.org).
• Conclusions of the Inter-Orthodox Consultation, Rhodes 1988 (orthodoxdeaconess.org).
• Lives of the saints: Mary Magdalene and the Myrrhbearers (oca.org; goarch.org); Mary of Egypt (orthodoxwiki.org); Maria Skobtsova (glorified by the Ecumenical Patriarchate, January 16, 2004; Paris, May 1–2, 2004); Olga of Kwethluk (glorified June 2025 — see american-saints.md).
• Topping, Eva C. Holy Mothers of Orthodoxy and Saints and Sisterhood. Minneapolis: Light and Life, 1987–1990.