Jean-Claude Larchet has a new book out entitled Renewing Gender: An Orthodox Perspective. It is not a very Orthodox book, however. How can you be Orthodox and publicly accuse the Orthodox Church of having been wrong all along, even now, in denying women complete equality with men?

Larchet does that, accusing the Apostles and Fathers of imitating the ancient world in its “asymmetrical” gender relations. They only did this, he says, to “render unto Caesar” so as not to be dismissed by the world as too radical. The Orthodox have a name for that these days: It is called Sergianism, after Patriarch Sergius of Moscow, who in 1927 called on his flock to be “faithful citizens of the Soviet Union, loyal to the Soviet government” such that “Any blow directed at the Union . . . is recognized by us as a blow directed at us.”

In making his case against “asymmetry” and for “transfiguring gender,” Larchet leans heavily on St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Maximus the Confessor. No surprise there. Feminists in the Orthodox Church have been doing that for decades, and Larchet has always been a devoted Maximian. The only surprises in the book are the extremes to which he goes to dismiss and ignore the “ambiguities and contradictions” in the Apostles and Fathers that are inconsistent with his old-fashioned, different-but-equal feminism.

My full review of Larchet’s book has been published in two parts by the Union of Orthodox Journalists. The first part can be found here. Or you can read and download the entire review from the Articles page of this website here. Please like and share. The faithful need to know.