13.06.2018, 18:00 Uhr c.t.

WWU Münster, Hörsaalgebäude des Exzellenzclusters "Religion und Politik" Johannisstraße 4, Raum J101, 48149  Münster

Beyond the Balaclavas: Gender and the Russian Orthodoxy

Vortrag in englischer Sprache von Frau Dr. Irina Paert (Uni Tartu)

Orthodox Christian tradition addresses what we are as human beings, what it means to be man and woman. Is gender central to the Orthodox Christian anthropology? Is there are one or many interpretations and models? How does, for example, emphasis on pronatalism coexist with the traditional Christian ideal of virginity and abstinence? How do ordinary men and women today realise in their lives these models? Orthodox believers in Russia increasingly find themselves under the challenges of modernity and anxieties about sexuality and gender roles. Their responses are manifold including turning back to the imagined traditions of pre-revolutionary Russia or the Soviet Union, or search for individual answers. The stories of different people are under spotlight: a nun who run away from a convent, a defrocked priest who criticised the monastic authorities, a woman who argued with a priest, a provincial artist who decorates buildings and fences with her nationalistic religious paintings, a school director who worships tsarina Alexandra, and a punk feminist who fell in love with an Orthodox activist.