Introduction: Over the last ten years I have been very involved in a group called Orthodox People Together, a network of Orthodox Christians dedicated to united witness in North America. The objectives of OPT are to promote grass roots networking, and provide a clearing house of information between persons doing lay ministry in the Church. During that time I met men and women from all jurisdictions in diverse geographic locations. Two years ago, with OPT doing well, an outgrowth of that work was to start a new network called WOMEN, the Women's Orthodox Ministries and Education Network. This decision was in response to a painful need revealed over those ten years of OPT, for a similar global network dedicated to the concerns of women in the Church. As OPT's Chair, I heard countless stories of sorrow and frustration from dozens of women who felt ignored, harassed, or left out in their efforts to serve the Church. For those of us involved in WOMEN, the flood of grief continues. This paper summarizes the basic themes repeated throughout their stories.

The message of God's love for us and His call to salvation through His Son has been carried forward in time for 2000 years by the power of the Holy Spirit, and is the unchanging truth 'in which the Orthodox Church is rooted. At every hour, and in every season throughout those 2000 years, God has lifted up pious Orthodox theologians, teachers, hierarchs and saints to carefully articulate and clarify the ongoing Tradition of the Church. To each generation, including our own, the prophetic, redemptive call continues- the call to be the whole church, full of the Holy Spirit. Each age seems to bring new questions never raised before. To address these questions, Orthodox Christians rely on the Spirit's ongoing presence in Church Tradition. They also rely on God's lifting up persons to seek out words adequate to further articulate the unspeakable fullness of Truth.

The subject of sexuality in general, and gender issues in particular, appears to be very popular in North America and Western Europe today. The rise in the last 25 years of Western political feminism resulted eventually in a diversity of agendas collectively labelled under the ambiguous title "feminist" 'in many Western Christian churches. Information from the women's spirituality movement has acted as an ecumenical gadfly among Orthodox women, inspiring questions and conversations, particularly among women living in pluralistic settings. These discussions are feared by some who have hastily retreated into Orthodoxy, unhealed of painful confrontations with angry radical feminists in other religious traditions. Nevertheless, the continuing process of further articulating the fullness of Truth demands and assures that authentic discernment about these subjects can result from dialogue and action rooted in faith.

Sexuality has been part of the Church as long as there have been People of God. Questions and problems about sexuality are just as old. As Orthodox Christians we have always been blessed with an incarnational theology that seeks and finds the good in all things, including our sexuality in all its expressions. An integral part of all persons and their behaviours, our sexuality is understood to be one of many God-given opportunities for expressing and participating in His creative energies and agape love. Of course, we know this opportunity can become misfortune, if it is separated from goodness and isolated from God. We can use it to demean ourselves and possess others as objects for our own satisfaction. Too often we can allow the partial truths of sexual stereotypes to masquerade as our gospel. Then we might proclaim this gospel by clubbing our conscience with rationalizations, clubbing others with blame, and deceiving our communities with lies. Too frequently sexist discrimination is encoded into life practices. The sustained psychological effect on Orthodox women can work to undermine their spiritual life and their appropriate role in the family.

This paper will only briefly lift up six areas of current discussion arising in various settings of the Church.

The first and broadest is gender equality issues. Many current gender issues are in fact age-old moral and ethical questions about treating each other as persons instead of objects, questions which were addressed by Christ himself, and by many of the Church Fathers. Sexual double standards are certainly part of the issue when Christ deals with the adulterous woman and the crowd of men ready to stone her. We know from the Gospel's that Christ regularly interacted with all types of people. His message impacted in a special way on those subjected to persecution and oppression due to racism, sexisn-4 or social and economic stereotyping, many of whom were women. Over and over we see Christ's healing presence lift servants, prostitutes and even his faithful women followers from the second class status accorded them by Hellenistic society, calling them to full human personhood, alongside the men. Christ's life and message suggests that gender equality does not seem to be an issue in the Kingdom of God, and equal respect for all persons is to be our norm.

At the same time, a "given" in the Orthodox world has been that there is an essential distinction between male and female, and an essential relationship of harmonious complementarity between them. This given has not yet undergone systematic critical reflection to determine if and/or how it truly expresses the theology of the Church historically. Much theological clarity is needed for serious future discussions about gender from Orthodox theological, ontological and anthropological perspectives.

Is the theology of the Fathers truly egalitarian, or does it in fact express that there is a fundamental difference between men and women? Are the characteristics attributed to males and females an essential part of their human nature? Do they describe reality or just social practice? Are they descriptive in an open ended way, inviting the spontaneity of the Spirit? Or are they prescriptively pointing to an authentic bottom line that may not be moved? Could they do both? What kind of human nature are we using in our typological arguments? Could we be projecting our fallen nature, the broken anthropological reality of this world, into our theological definitions? Or would the truth be better articulated as the redeemed or essential nature, where there is no slave or free, Greek or Jew, male or female? Is biological resemblance an authentic measure of the priesthood? Does the Bishop, who stands in for Christ in the Church, do so with the same ontological reality that is expressed by the revealed names of the Trinity? Or should we be speaking on a metaphoric level, as in the various scriptual descriptions, parables and analogies of what God, His Kingdom and the Holy Spirit, are like? What would it mean to understand "the Church is the Bride of Christ" as a mystical metaphor? What would be the criteria for differentiating authentic mystical metaphors from arbitrary interpretations arising from hardness of heart?

The job of winnowing out heretical socio-cultural incursions from the faith requires a willingness on the part of both genders to acknowledge the sin of sexism when it occurs. Even with consistent dialogue, the Church could easily spend a century clarifying the true answers to these and many other questions, answers already present but not yet articulated in our Faith.

Second, some of today's questions are in fact really new, particularly in the area of bioethics and technology, eg. in-vitro fertilization and surrogate motherhood. Some are couched in Western categories irrelevant to Orthodox thought and are non-issues in Orthodoxy at large, Contemporary pro-life and pro-choice dichotomies are not in keeping with or adequate to express the holistic attitude of Orthodoxy. Yes, the Church holds an absolute position of pro-life. At the same time, the Church acknowledges that in the fallen world we are sometimes forced into situations that cause us to choose the lesser evil. To understand the Orthodox view of abortion as being identified with the fundamentalist pro-life philosophy is simply inadequate. The mercy of God includes prayers in Orthodox prayer books that pray forgive-ness and healing for the loss of an unborn child, whether voluntary or involuntary. The principle of oikonomia, unique to Orthodoxy, reveals the Faith's gentle attitude of reconciling justice towards those who truly repent. This is a far cry from the militant, condemnatory attitude of many pro-lifers.

Third, some things have long existed in the Church, but never been questioned before. The most sensational topic is ordination to priesthood. But at several Orthodox conferences over the last thirty years, many other areas of focus have been identified. One is the presence of unnecessarily demeaning references and practices toward women in some of the prayers, hymns and rituals within the Church. In addition, in many Orthodox countries, unchristian social and cultural practices sometimes take precedence over the teachings of the Church with regard to women's right to be respected, safe, and agents of choice. Battered women 'in some countries have sometimes been counselled by Orthodox priests to whom they have turned for help to "go home where you belong' even when the home situation is life-threatening

Fourth, some positive things which once existed in the church have, for various historical reasons, ceased to exist, and left a void where there once was a vital service to the Church. I am referring of course to the ministry of the ancient order of Deaconess in the Church. The deaconesses provided social service ministries blessed with the ecclesial authority of the Church. In this age of shrinking numbers of candidates for priesthood, it seems an obvious oversight to delay in restoring this important resource to Church and community life. This also could pertain to varieties of lay ministries according to gifts and graces, as practiced in the early Church. One of the most blatant failures of good stewardship in today's Church is the wasting of theologically and professionally trained resources. Orthodox women and men trained in areas of service which could be of value to the Church are working for other churches or in secular settings due to the lack of acceptance of lay ministry in Orthodox parishes.

Fifth, more education could help many married Orthodox Christians to come to terms with what they often perceive to the second-class askesis of marital fidelity, compared to the ideal example of sexual asceticism, epitomized by monastic life. A disproportionately small amount of energy in the Church has been expended in teaching or praising sex education and the virtues of holy behaviour between husband and wife.

Finally, clergy sexual abuse is a pressing and critical reality of moral abuse and legal vulnerability for the Church. There is at this moment an unresolved case in one Archdiocese in America, regarding a priest who engaged in sexual activity individually with two different married women from his own parish throughout an eight year period. The women have disclosed the details 'in therapy, and also in confession to another priest. They refuse to testify in ecclesial or civil court, for fear of their identities being revealed to their families and community. The priest has been privately confronted by the second priest to whom the women confessed, but would only discuss the matter in confession, so there is nothing concrete to take to the bishop. The offending priest has been transferred to another unsuspecting parish. The priest who will replace him is inheriting whatever has been left behind.

Although there is a committee to establish policy and procedures for clergy sexual misconduct, the Orthodox Church does not at this time have any standard policy in place with regard to healing for the victims or for the community. The priest claims he is paying for his own psychiatric treatment, in his words, 'to protect the Church from himself in the future'. Both women have undergone extensive therapy at their own expense, and both have taken their families and left the Orthodox Church forever. There is only speculation as to whether the fifteen other married and single women who silently disappeared from the parish during the course of this man's pastorate had similar reasons for leaving

Let us never forget that there are many beautiful Christian marriages and families in the Church, just as there are many pious men, women and clergy, doing good, and living in relationships of Christian love by creatively transforming and expressing their sexuality as a freedom to love many, not just one. Let us also be aware that there are instances of extremism and abuse against Orthodox men and children, as well as women, by persons whose lies, relationships and actions are seriously flawed by sin.

Our first task is to celebrate and continue to support, teach, and model healthy expressions of sexuality. At the same time, as committed Christians, we cannot overlook repeated instances of abuses within the Church. It is imperative that we approach these issues with a right heart, asking to be instruments of God's peace. We must take action against abuses if we come across them, yet that action cannot be motivated by self-aggrandizing fantasies that it is up to us to purify the entire Church. Anger, revenge and retaliation are never the right spirit for promoting holiness. God's perfect love casts out fear, and zeal for holiness not zeal for reform, is what can and will reveal and cast out evil in our midst.

The sin of sexism is one of many sins that cause us to fall down. Nevertheless, it is unique in that it is targeted at half the population of the church. In the truths lie the challenge for an Orthodox psychology of sexuality and the Church. But that is not the end of the challenge. The task in our generation as never before is not only to articulate transformed reality, but to live it.