Within contemporary orthodoxy, debates over sex and gender have become increasingly polemical over the past generation. Beginning with questions around women-s ordination, arguments have expanded to include feminism, sexual orientation, the sacrament of marriage, definitions of family, adoption of children, and care of transgender individuals. Preliminary responses to each of these topics are shaped by gender essentialism, the idea that male and female are ontologically fixed and incommensurate categories with different sets of characteristics and gifts for each sex. These categories, in turn, delineate gender roles in the family, the church, and society.
Gender Essentialism and Orthodoxy offers an immanent critique of gender essentialism in the stream of the contemporary Orthodox Church influenced by the -Paris School- of Russian -gr-heologians and their heirs. It uses an interdisciplinary approach to bring into conversation patristic reflections on sex and gender, pers
