Tag: Ashley Purpura
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Beyond the Binary: Hymnographic Constructions of Orthodox Gender
by Ashley Purpura | ελληνικά | ру́сский Much like gender itself, Orthodox understandings of gender span a spectrum of diverse views. Many who address “the problem of gender” or the “role of women in the church” rely on an assumption that any theological interpretation of gender is necessarily situated along a cisgender binary. Simply, individuals with male […]
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Challenges for Restoring the Byzantine Female Diaconate for Present Times
by Ashley Purpura Pope Francis’s recent call for a commission to explore the possibility of reinstating the female diaconate in the Catholic Church resonates with over a century of similar calls among leaders and laity of the Orthodox Church. These calls for restoring the female diaconate within the Eastern Orthodox Church have been supported by […]
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Blessing Canonically Anomalous Marriages: The Need for Consistency
by Ashley Purpura (This essay was originally delivered as a public talk at the June 2015 Fordham/OTSA conference on the upcoming Great and Holy Council of the Orthodox Church. It was part of a panel on canonical impediments to marriage.) According to Orthodox canon law and theology, the ideal Christian marriage among laypeople is union between faithfully […]