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Women who practice patriarchal religions in the postmodern era face a dynamic tension. On the one hand, their religion calls on them to subordinate themselves to spiritual principles and to the authorities who represent these principles. On the other hand, even in the most patriarchal contexts, women may find ways of negotiating their relationship to religion. Women in postcommunist countries encounter additional, specific issues. During decades of persecution and state-set limits on religious practice, Russian Orthodox Christianity seemed to have avoided the pressures that moved both Protestantism and post–Vatican II Roman Catholicism toward women's greater participation in church life. After the fall of communism, however, barriers shifted. While individuals now face fewer obstacles in practicing Orthodox Christianity, leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church conflate Soviet-era rhetoric and Western liberalism, rejecting both as alien and hostile to Orthodox values; many instead seek to affirm traditional gender roles as a panacea to Russia's troubles. Orthodox women in Russia are negotiating this terrain in new ways, whether as casual parishioners, as "virtuosi," as priests' daughters who become priests' wives and church choirmasters, as church lawyers and heads of parishes, or in the new religious publications industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
