Methodist Orthodox and Orthodox Pentecostals!

A month into my time here, and it was time to see a different side of modern Orthodoxy. Generally, I wouldn’t even put the words ‘modern’ and ‘Orthodoxy’ in the same sentence, let alone ‘different’. But then a fellow student invited me to see what they’re doing at his parish church.

The event was billed as a memorial – the traditional sharing of food in memory of the dead, which occurs in all Orthodox churches on Sundays and on other days of the week. But in this case, the church had taken seriously Christ’s injunction about inviting the poor to the banquet. Rather than simply handing out food, the church hosts a Saturday lunch in their parish hall, attended by around fifty people, mostly living in a nearby social housing block or on the streets. Staffed by volunteers, the event is an opportunity for food and fellowship, as well as practical support with issues such as obtaining identity documents.

[I thought it would be rude to take photos of the guests, so I just took a photo of this little pussy cat – ‘pisica’ in Romanian – who was also enjoying the hospitality of the parish hall]

Compared with what I’ve seen in the UK, the approach was a little paternalistic, or perhaps I should say maternalistic – the meal was accompanied by improving stories told by the priest’s mother. But the food was fantastic: for the second time since I’ve been here, I’ve sat back satisfied from my dish of filling soup, only to find there’s a whole course yet to come!

It was also an impressive example of how a church’s social action programme can be integrated into the spiritual and liturgical life of the parish. Providing meals for the homeless is hardly a novel idea; there are plenty of similar initiatives in the Church of England. But this meal had been funded by a young couple, who were present, in memory of a late relative, and the meal started with sung prayers and the censing of the food and the guests. Fr Vasile is clear that this is not just charity but an honour and a spiritual devotion. Nobody can simply donate money: they must also prepare with prayer and fasting for their role as host. The church already has sponsors signed up for every week until Easter.

[A memorial food blessing – though this one is in the church]

Fr Vasile’s church is an authorised mission-parish of the Lord’s Army. Like its near-namesake the Salvation Army, the Lord’s Army started as a temperance movement and welfare organisation amongst alcoholics, gamblers and other addicts. Members are still very careful about alcohol, although I was privileged (and somewhat amused!) to be offered wine with my lunch. Founded in the 1920s by Fr Iosif Trifa of Sibiu, the Lord’s Army focuses on personal holiness, faith, and an individual relationship with Christ. When my friend talked about people giving their lives to Christ, I could have imagined that I was in an evangelical church!

Unsurprisingly, this movement proved controversial in the Orthodox church, and Trifa was excommunicated. After his death, however, the movement was rehabilitated; they run this parish with the full support of the hierarchy. The organisation is clear that it stands for spiritual renewal within the Orthodox church.

The next day, I got to see what that means in practice. The liturgy was certainly Orthodox, but the congregation was a little different. Compared with the city-centre churches I’d mostly attended, the congregation was more gender-balanced and less affluent… and they were sitting down! Or at least they could if they wanted to, since the church has benches. It also has bible verses and Lord’s Army banners on the walls. But what made me feel most at home was collecting my service sheet as I came in! As well as the readings and notices it contained two hymns – the first time I’ve seen the congregation sing anything which wasn’t part of the liturgical text. I had the momentary impression that a bunch of Methodists had stumbled into an Orthodox church!

And the parallels with early Methodism continued. Just as Wesley’s followers initially attended services at their parish churches as well as additional Methodist meetings, the Lord’s Army meets on a Sunday evening for something quite different from the Liturgy. Gathered in the parish hall, different people took it in turns to lead bible reflections and prayers from the front – including lay people, both men and women. In between we sang hymns, accompanied by an electric keyboard. I may have been over-egging it when I called it ‘modern’ – old-school hymns with no projector and definitely no waving arms – but in the Orthodox church even playing an instrument of any kind at all during worship is seriously controversial.

The Lord’s Army is clearly doing something positive here. From the little I’ve seen, it is managing to reach groups who are less well-represented elsewhere – men, younger people, the marginalised. It is providing teaching in a church where religious instruction was once virtually impossible (the Communists liked the priests to shut up and do the services, and keep their congregations dumb). And where it differs from Methodism is that it has managed to do all this and remain within the church. The meeting in the church hall might aesthetically appear ‘protestant’ but the teaching was directly from the Fathers.

At the same time, the movement is undoubtedly controversial. It isn’t just that electric keyboard. Even I felt uncomfortable hearing the founder, Iosif Trifa, being described as the ‘prophet’. Since the 1990s, Romania has become a recruiting ground for many Protestant denominations – some of them, ironically, adopting Lord’s Army hymns – and the protestant-influenced ideas and practices which were simply alien to Romanians previously are now familiar and highly suspect. The Lord’s Army is not a liberal movement – in some senses, as a movement for greater discipline and holiness, it is quite the opposite. But can a movement which preaches individual relationship with Christ and promotes lay ministry really leave Orthodox theology and practice unchanged?

[a banner commemorating the founders of the Lord’s Army]

And the influence isn’t all one way. The next week, I accompanied the only other Anglican in Iaşi to a Pentecostal service with a difference. The Watchman Church is part of the Pentecostal Union of Romania, but it’s not a typical Pentecostal church; for a start, the leadership includes Baptist and Anglican members, and works closely with Catholic and Orthodox clergy.

Protestant denominations in Romania are sometimes accused of being un-Romanian; of importing, for instance, American worship songs. Here, they are trying to be true to the heritage of Romanian spiritual culture – which of course means Orthodox culture. The church might be a bare hall with a lectern, but the ubiquitous table of bread, cakes and fruit was here too! The extempore prayer included some familiar phrases such as “slava tie doamne” (Glory to thee, O Lord) and the hymns included settings of the Trisagion, Sanctus / Benedictus and Gloria, although of course not in their liturgical places. They even say the creed without the Filioque: “we are Eastern”.

All this might give the impression that Romania is a bit of an ecumenical melting-pot. A keyboard in an Orthodox church or a Sanctus in a Pentecostal one is little more than window-dressing – and maybe missing the point – but they are signs of deeper convergences. The Watchman church is open about having a more sacramental theology of the Eucharist than once it did, and the Lord’s Army is learning from Protestant insights. Lord’s Army hymns are apparently popular in evangelical churches here! Unfortunately, the two groups still seem to be observing each other from a distance. Ecumenism is still a dirty word for many in the Orthodox, Pentecostal and Baptist churches here; even those groups which are open to insights from outside their boundaries might stop short of describing those people as fully Christians or fully members of the Church. For now, those few who desire unity can find themselves making a choice: make peace with others, or keep the peace at home.

Taking sides: a woman’s eye view

It might have struck someone reading my earlier post on lay piety, that I referred to the congregation as if we were all female. That would not be entirely accurate, but it was a reflection of the impression I had. The congregations I’ve seen here are routinely 75% or more female, and the discrepancy is even more pronounced outside of the Sunday morning liturgy. In spite of the statistics, this is something I’ve never experienced in the Church of England.

I’m not somebody who is particularly sensitised to gender issues – surprisingly for someone who’s spent a lot of time in until-recently-all-male institutions – perhaps because I’ve never strongly identified with my own gender. So an unexpected side effect for me of being in Romania is simply being more aware of being a woman.

[men and women on either side during a festal procession]

Orthodox worship is, for want of a better phrase, gender-segregated. I’m hesitant about using that phrase, though, because it is nothing like the segregation you would see at a mosque or traditional synagogue. Women stand on the left and men on the right, but they can see one another and the action at the front equally well. And it is a custom rather than a rigid rule. Couples often stand together; on the occasions I’ve ended up on the ‘men’s side’ I’ve found other women doing likewise, because they wanted seats (at a premium in Romanian churches) or just to get near the front! True, standing on the left may carry a subtle implication of inferiority in a country where left handers (like me) are still forced to use their right hand at school. But historically the Emperor’s throne would also be on the left, so it can’t be too bad!

[a church in the countryside]

It was on my trip to the countryside that I had my first truly offensive experience as a female in Romania. We went into a small wooden church, where two children were playing at “priest and cantor” – the brother in the altar area behind the iconostasis, the little girl in the nave, singing the responses. It was a charming sight. The priest invited me to stand in the deacon’s doorway to look into the sanctuary – which I did, carefully standing on the threshold. His wife, however, was very anxious, and kept reminding me not to inadvertently step inside.

[a glance into the sanctuary – here with a bishop in the way!]

Now I knew the Orthodox rule about women staying out of the sanctuary (although I have since learned of varying practices) and never been offended by it before. It was the presence of the little girl that made me angry. I was angry that she was witnessing one woman keeping another woman out of the sanctuary, angry that she could grow up thinking that she is slightly less welcome with God than her brother. If I had been excluded because I am not orthodox or because I am not clergy, that would be fine, but no: I am excluded because I have a womb. God who was not too proud to accept the hospitality of the virgin’s womb does not, apparently, extend that same intimate hospitality to me, or even to his little virgin handmaiden who was singing his praises in the church. I have even heard of baby boys being taken into the sanctuary at baptism, whilst baby girls are left outside. We are often told, by those who oppose ordination in both genders, that the line “in Christ there is no male and female” refers to baptism. Apparently, in the Orthodox church, it doesn’t even apply there.

The second thing that shocked me was during a conversation with a young Moldovan priest. The argument he gave against female ordination – the very first thing he thought of – was that women can’t come to church during their periods. The last time I heard this was in a letter of St Gregory to St Augustine of Canterbury (in which, by the way, he says that no such rule should be imposed – see here) My female companion confirmed that this was her understanding and the teaching of most if not all spiritual directors. In addition, she should not touch the icons or other holy things during that time, because of her “bad energy”. Her spiritual father had gone so far as to advise her that women going to church during their periods would be sure to fall out with one another (presumably a slightly garbled understanding of PMT – the “P” ought to give it away that it is before the period!) On that logic, perhaps we should be excluding the people whose hormones are known to be linked with aggression, i.e. testosterone…

A quick internet search and a few (slightly embarrassing) conversations later, I had gathered several different justifications for this practice, ranging from pre-Tampax hygiene concerns to a rule – gender-neutral – against receiving communion whilst bleeding, lest the blood of Our Lord should somehow fall out. Neither really explained the prohibition on kissing icons. Others drew a parallel with male ‘nocturnal emissions’ – in other words, a direct return to OT concepts of ritual purity.

When I first became a female ordinand – or rather, when I first became an ordinand (I was female already, so that bit was rather easier) – I was satisfied that the argument for women’s ordination had nothing to do with equality or modernity. It’s only very recently that I’ve started to see that the two things can’t be separated.

Yes there are people today – some of whom I count amongst my friends – who hold what might be called an honourable objection to the ordination of women. That is, their objection is based purely on theological conviction and humble obedience to tradition, and is not combined with any argument as to women’s innate inferiority or any objection to women holding positions of responsibility outside the sacramental priesthood. Ironically, however, they are a rather modern phenomenon. Historically, the formulation of that tradition cannot be separated from a context in which women were also excluded from positions of authority and learning in the secular world – a context in which women were seen as less holy, less Christian, and even less human than men. You need only take a look at Thomas Aquinas to see how the gender assumptions and poor scientific knowledge of his day influenced the understanding of priesthood. The theological arguments cannot be separated from the anthropological.

So my time in Romania has confirmed for me the importance of female ordination as a safeguard against falling away from the truth we have in Christ: against a deficient understanding of incarnation and atonement, against once more making unclean that which God has made clean. At the same time, paradoxically, the Orthodox services give me a sense of being affirmed as a woman and in solidarity with other women that I have not experienced in the more gender-neutral space of the Church of England.

Here, I am constantly standing shoulder-to-shoulder with other women (and sometimes pushing and shoving – when the bishop came to anoint us, it was every woman for herself!) We are lined up in front of the icon of Mary on the left side of the iconostasis, with the men standing before the icon of Christ. Mary, like most of us, is depicted with her head covered; unlike us, she is also depicted in the East end apse, presiding over the whole event like a dowager empress (on which indeed this iconography is partly modelled).

Surrounded by women, it is easy to feel that church is a women’s activity. People here offer various theories on why women outnumber men so heavily in the church, but the most convincing is that it is seen as part of the traditional, domestic role of the woman. The services themselves seem to appeal to a traditional female role: food, healing, nurture. The church is an extension of the domestic sphere.

[cushions, lace and pot-plants making this icon stand look like a cosy dresser]

There are also signs that things are more flexible and open to change than they initially appear, even here in the Orthodox church. I recently witnessed a priest at a rather unusual church (of which more shortly!) taking a baby dressed in a pink jumpsuit into the altar area. When I expressed surprise, my student companion explained to me that there are exemptions to the normal rule – for instance, in most convents there is only one male cleric, so all other roles (including serving) must be taken by women. This priest had extended the principle to cover the innocence of children. The same student argued for the ban on menstruating women to be considered in abeyance, since it relates to circumstances which no longer apply.

I have not yet seen any evidence of women themselves arguing for change. Certainly I’m not expecting anyone to call for women’s ordination – why would they waste their breath? In this church, any development which would require top-down policy change is essentially impossible; the liturgy still preserves references to Byzantine practices which haven’t actually been observed in centuries. It would be like arguing whether women should have an equal right to live on Mars; nobody would be capable of implementing it even if they accepted the argument. But that doesn’t mean that change never happens. It just happens at the local level, at the level of the parish and the laity, at the level of a priest and a baby in a pink jumpsuit.

The simple life?

“Are you a very complicated person?”

That was the question my host asked me as we prepared to set off for a trip out of town. As I was wondering how much psychological self-reflection this question expected, he explained that he meant – was I a person who needed running water?

So far I had seen only the (small) city of Iaşi, where they have pretty much everything you’d expect back home, except for electric kettles and Robinson’s orange squash. True, the electricity and / or the water have gone off several times (which, along with the kettle shortage, was leading to serious caffeine depletion in the first week) and the public transport system hasn’t yet developed the concept of a timetable, but it’s definitely a modern European city.

[Palas Mall, an enormous shopping complex opened two years ago. It is named for the nearby Palace of Culture, home to four of Iaşi’s museums. Unfortunately, consumerism has replaced culture on this site; the development caused structural damage to the Palace, which remains closed]

But most Romanians – 80% according to one estimate I was given – don’t live in cities. They live in villages, such as the one I was going to: surrounded on three sides by forest, home to wild boar and probable wolves. Thirty miles of potholes and a few close encounters with horse-drawn vehicles later, we arrived at the home we were visiting. It was a brand new house with all the mod-cons, including two shiny new bathrooms with showers, sinks and toilets… except that none of it worked. The only water supply came from a pump in the well, and a combination of technical problems and low rainfall had cut it off.

We were greeted by an elderly lady dressed in what I later realised was almost a winter uniform for older women in the village: a skirt over leggings and thick socks, a knitted waistcoat over a jumper, and a woolly hat covered with a headscarf. She kissed my hand – the greeting for a priest’s wife. Well, she wasn’t far off! She had brought us something to warm and welcome us: the first of a succession of home-made alcoholic beverages.

The next morning we refreshed ourselves with some milk still warm from the cow, and set off for a walk round the village.

[Traditional houses in this part of Romania are single-storey and very colourful. They are built of wattle-and-daub with metal or wooden shingle rooves]

[We met this man, with one of the few motorised vehicles we saw, selling live fish he had brought from a lake several miles away. ]

Walking through the village felt like a step back in time. Most of these houses were home to six or eight children during the Communist era; in the winter, families still live in a single room, because the wood-burning stove can’t stretch to heating the whole house. The main livelihood for villagers, according to my host, is subsistence farming: a few chickens, a few pigs, maybe a cow or a donkey. When I was talking to a friend here in Iaşi about her family, she struggled to find the word she was looking for in English. When she looked it up, it was ‘peasant’. I had to explain that in England, ‘peasant’ is not a very common word unless you’re talking about the middle ages!

But the houses that were once overcrowded are now, in many cases, empty and abandoned. Vineyards that produced wine thirty years ago are now waste ground.

What struck me was not just the contrast with the city, but with even the most rural parts of the UK. For one thing, nothing here is permanent. The only old building in the village is the wooden church; the houses we saw, though very traditional in style, are generally not more than fifty years old. Their method of construction means they simply don’t last.

[The eighteenth-century wooden church, recently restored, is a national heritage site]

There also seems to be very little enthusiasm for development. In England, the debate is over getting high-speed broadband to the villages (peculiarly enough, that was one thing that is available in this village!) Here, according to what I was told, the older householders are not even interested in running water or power tools; mains electricity arrived in the 1970s, and mains water never has. It’s a long time since I’ve studied anything to do with agricultural history, but my grandfather used to work at a farm machinery suppliers and I remember him telling me about the few old farmers who still held out against mechanisation into the 1950s and 1960s. In this village, animal power is still the norm.

[A teenager chops wood with an axe. Wood burning stoves are the main source of heating.]

[We hired these ponies and their thirteen-year-old driver to take us back to the house]

It was a reminder that, even in Europe, the relatively uniform advance of modernisation across England is an exception. This village has been left behind by modernisation in the cities and in the rest of Europe – literally left behind. The old lady we met has six children, and five of them are in Spain. Younger people see their future elsewhere, whether elsewhere in Romania or abroad in Italy and Spain. Even if there was the money to change the living conditions here, nobody has the motivation to do so when they can just leave. It is becoming a village of old people. When my host was building his house, the builders were aged 67 and 82. The village is physically dying out, crumbling back into wilderness.

I felt that I could have responded in one of two opposite ways: I could romanticise it or be repulsed by it. There is certainly something appealing in the almost monastic lifestyle: a simple one-room home lined with icons and colourful carpets (although let’s not forget the television!) chopping wood during the day and drinking home brew at night. The houses might be dilapidated, but they had been decorated gaily and with love. We saw plenty of smiling faces.

At the same time, there’s no denying that this is a hard life. I wouldn’t want it to be my grandmother facing minus-twenty-degree winters with no indoor toilet and the nearest hospital an hour away – even assuming the roads aren’t blocked by snow. It’s also a limiting life – and most people choose to opt out of if they have the chance. The challenges of life here are driving away the younger professional people who might have the money or the sharp elbows to improve conditions. One priest told me that some rural clergy (who have little choice about where they serve) in practice live far from their parishes, for the sake of their wives’ jobs and children’s education. A student told me he’d chosen to go to boarding school at a junior seminary because his preferred subjects – maths and sciences – could not be taught properly in his village school.

This is the culture which has formed most Romanians – even those who now live in cities – but it may soon be as alien to their children as it is to me.