The headline from the official news agency of the Romanian
Patriarchate read, “Patriarch Theodoros II of Alexandria performs first
consecration of deaconesses.”
There were mostly heartened and hopeful
responses on my Facebook feed. I “liked” the page in the formal if
shallow Facebook sense. As such news inevitably takes time to digest,
those with keen eyes began to weigh in. “This is not an ordination but a
consecration,” one scholar reminded us, noting critical differences
between the words cheiriothesia (blessing) and and cheirotonia
(ordination). Another pointed out that, given the photographic
evidence, this rite was more akin to ordination of a subdeacon, a minor
order. Was this then a minor occurrence? Some might wish that.
The whole thing took me back to days of the Soviet Union, when
Western observers were forced to determine who was out of the capricious
Soviet inner circle solely by looking at photos of waving Politburo
members at the annual May Day parade. And this was amusing because we
now live in the 21st century, and it’s not as though this
liturgy was occurring in North Korea. I began to wonder, Wouldn’t it be
amazing if there were some mechanism by which the various autocephalous
Orthodox Churches could communicate with one another? Wouldn’t it be
something if there was a global forum whereby Orthodox laypeople and
clergy could assemble, discuss topical issues affecting the Church and
world today, and propose solutions to problems great and minor? And this
got me thinking about last summer’s fraught “Great and Holy Council,”
with its absent patriarchs and rationalizations for sin that would get
called out by any good father confessor. I was returned to a summer of
so many missed opportunities—and for reckoning with hard truths about
Orthodoxy today, as it really exists.
Patriarch Theodoros II and those he leads in Africa are obviously
taking care of the felt needs of Orthodoxy in a landmass that could
comfortably fit the United States, Eastern Europe, India, China, and
Japan. Whether it was “consecration” or “ordination”—an important
distinction, but still inside baseball to most—the point is that the
decision reflects a verity about the Church in Africa: it is growing,
just as it is for the Roman Catholic Church and the many Protestant
churches, to say nothing of the rapid growth of Islam. Christianity is
now well into a major demographic shift whose implications most have yet
to fully comprehend. It is a fact now popularized in books by Philip
Jenkins in The New Faces of Christianity (2006) and The Next Christendom
(2011) that the geographical locus of Christianity has shifted to the
world’s Southern and Eastern Hemispheres. Consider that in 1910
Christians in sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 10% of the total
population; by 2010 that figure had risen to 63%. The Democratic
Republic of Congo, location of the consecrations, has one of the top ten largest Christian populations in the world,
with some 63.15 million believers. (Germany has 58.24 million
Christians). While this shift may be lost on many non-Global Southerners
and Easterners who spend much time hand-wringing over emptying and
desiccated churches, it is apparently not lost on African Orthodox who
have work to do and quite often lack the human and material resources to
do it.
Frankly, some will never be convinced enough about the female diaconate to do anything about it here.
It is curious that in the church that so prizes the normative weight of
beliefs and practices of the early church, a time of active
deaconesses, the burden of proof is placed on those seeking female
diaconal restoration. Yet by our own historical reckoning, the burden of
proof should fall on those arguing against the female diaconate and on
those doing nothing to actively reinstate it. It is they who need to
reasonably explain why deaconesses should no longer be part of Orthodox
ecclesial life.
Throughout North American parishes male clergy are often forced to
try to do almost everything by themselves. The married priest is
liturgist, financial planner, spiritual father, biblical scholar,
teacher, social worker, hospital chaplain, parish secretary, biological
father, and husband. These men are understandably exhausted. Some leave
the ministry altogether; I know them. Meanwhile, women are also doing
the serious work of church—but they usually don’t get recognized for it.
Why then do we not formalize their ministry, inspiring other women (and
men) for a life of ecclesial service? Speaking about the women,
Patriarch Theodoros explained, “We need them.” Do we not?
The female diaconate is not about mere or more recognition. It’s
about meeting needs often left unaddressed because they go unmentioned,
or because resources are tight, or because we are deaf to those voices
refusing to shout. It’s about the normalization of lack and becoming so
accustomed to the status quo that we fail to envision how enriched we
would be by deaconesses in our midst. It is, as Carrie Frederick Frost argued in Public Orthodoxy, a failure of imagination. It is also a failure of leadership.
We are observing the Patriarch and African Synod do the needful.
Admittedly, I am much more familiar with South Asia, but I can imagine
these new deaconesses serving both women and men in various ways. See
them traversing villages, seeking medical attention, visiting the sick,
catechizing, remonstrating against abusive husbands, even (wait for it)
praying out demons. They are doing diakonia—and one need not
serve in the altar to do that. So why don’t we follow the lead of the
African Church? What’s the hold up? All excuses now ring hollow. The
refusal of the Church in North America to deal with the pressing needs
of our parishes and society are calling the truth claims of our
tradition into question. When the gap between the ideal and real widens
to such an extent that the cognitive dissonance simply cannot be shaken,
we are in real trouble. People become disillusioned. They leave without
the fanfare of a podcast.
When I reflect upon the photo of those earnest women facing the
iconostasis in expectation, I cannot help but think we are watching a
Church embracing its mission. It is a Church more fully appreciating the
contributions of more than half its members. It is the Church of the
future and, as the numbers show, the present.
Meanwhile, here on this side of the world, one fears we are letting
opportunities pass us by. Dubious notions of inevitable “progress”
aside, there is certainly no guarantee Orthodoxy in North America will
ever flourish. And we are way past the rhetoric of Orthodoxy being
America’s best-kept secret. It’s not such a secret any more. Last
summer, news of our Council spread far and wide. One Roman Catholic
theologian told me he used to point to Orthodoxy as an alternative model
of conciliar polity. “Now we’re not so sure,” he said soberly. In the
age of the Internet, things are perhaps more public than we would want.
There is then no place for triumphalism here, just the hardest thing to
do in the world—to see things as they really are in our selves,
communities, country, world, and Church. We cannot do it alone. Africa
can show us the way. Ss. Tatiana, Olympias, and Foebe, pray for us.
Kerry San Chirico is Assistant Professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University.