Title: The emancipation of women as a challenge to the church
Abstract: It is an unquestionable fact that the astounding progress of the natural sciences at the end of the eighteenth century and the application of their findings to industry have changed human history in unparalleled ways. We can even speak of the beginning of a new epoch. The industrial revolution brought with it fundamental shifts in the structure of the economy which in turn influenced general legal understandings, shook established customs and usages, and demanded of the church that it take a position in relation to the structure of society, on a new basis unknown in the four previous millennia. Authoritarian structures of the family, education, government, and economy have all been called into question, together with the formerly predominant place of the lord and master, the father, the husband, the teacher, the employer, and the manager. First women and then young people have forcibly demanded control of these roles in all effective organs of society. The rebellion of women occurred as a by-product of the French Revolution, although the global feminist movement emerged only at the end of the nineteenth century. This struggle justly demanded a worthy treatment of women in society and a corresponding recognition of fundamental human rights: with regard to work, to education, to a role in politics, to equality with husbands in matters of finance and the household. The majority of Orthodox peoples in Europe found themselves at the time of these important social changes still living under a four- or five-hundred year Ottoman rule. A few nations had, after difficult struggle, won their independence. The economies of the Balkan nation-states at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth can in no way be likened to the developed economies of western Europe. The traditional agrarian economies of the region began to industrialize only after the Second World War. In Greece, women won the right to vote in 1953. At the same time, women who lived in the cities could gain a secondary education. A tertiary education was less common. The reason for this lay in the economic situation of the people and in the preferential treatment given to boys when families were faced with the choice of which of their children to allow to study. In the 1960s new employment opportunities were created for women, while the mass emigration to the factories of Western Europe shook the agrarian foundations of the patriarchal family and the undervalued hard work of women on the land and in the family. The new role of women in society was an unquestionable reality, and what came to be known as the emancipation of women was an essential demand. The Orthodox Church could in any case not deny this new reality. The people of God struggled from the 1950s to consolidate themselves from the torments of the Second World War and the unrestrained carnage of civil war. The need for work was urgent. Women were indispensable in this many-sided economic and social reconstruction. The pastors of the church did not in general respond to the demands of the times, and their pastoral contribution was not unified. Some limited themselves to the formal exercise of their priestly duties; others ardently defended the traditional image of women who devoted themselves exclusively to children and kitchen and left the house only to go to church. Many of these pastors were unprepared for the ministry demanded by an industrial society in the growing urban centers. But there were also those who strove to pursue the societal changes attentively and to support women in the achievements and burdens of their new roles, and in their conflicting duties. Today, in the final years of the twentieth century, all women in our country (Greece), whether they be enlightened or traditional Orthodox, have access to all types of education. They vote and can be elected, exercise various vocations in society, and step by step take the strongholds of male power such as the judiciary, the diplomatic corps, parliament, and public service. …
Publication Year: 2002
Publication Date: 2002-07-01
Language: en
Type: article
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