No. Women can’t be ordained to the priesthood or episcopacy in the Orthodox Church. This isn’t up for debate, and it’s not changing.
That answer probably sounds jarring if you’re coming from a mainline Protestant background where women’s ordination has been normal for decades. Or maybe you’re relieved to hear it stated plainly. Either way, you deserve to understand why the Orthodox Church holds this position and what it actually means for women in the life of the Church.
Why the Church Says No
The Orthodox Church doesn’t ordain women to the priesthood because Christ didn’t, and the Apostles didn’t, and the Church has never done so in two thousand years. We’re not being stubborn or behind the times. We believe the Church can’t change what was given to her. The priesthood isn’t ours to redesign.
There’s a theological reason that goes deeper than precedent. The priest stands at the altar in the person of Christ, the Bridegroom of the Church. This isn’t about men being better than women or smarter or holier. St. Mary of Egypt was holier than most priests will ever be. It’s about the icon. A priest is an icon of Christ in a specific way that requires maleness, just as only a woman could be the Theotokos. These aren’t interchangeable roles.
Fr. Alexander Schmemann put it clearly: the Church’s opposition to women’s priesthood rests on dogmatic, canonical, and spiritual grounds, and it has nothing to do with women’s inferiority. Nothing.
Some people point to 1 Timothy 2, where Paul talks about women not teaching or having authority over men in the assembly. That’s part of it. But the Orthodox understanding goes beyond proof-texting. It’s about the order (we call it taxis) that God established in creation and that the Church maintains in her sacramental life. We don’t get to vote on it or update it for modern sensibilities.
What About Deaconesses?
Here’s where it gets interesting. The early Church did have deaconesses. They were ordained in the altar with a rite similar to male deacons, and they received the grace of the diaconate. They assisted with women’s baptisms (remember, adults were baptized naked by full immersion), anointed women, and did pastoral care among women in a culture where gender segregation was the norm.
But deaconesses weren’t priests. They didn’t serve at the altar during the Liturgy, they didn’t hear confessions, and they didn’t bless or excommunicate. The order faded out by the eleventh century as adult baptism became less common and cultural needs shifted.
Could the Church restore the order of deaconess today? Canonically, maybe. Some theologians think it’s possible. But it hasn’t happened in the Antiochian Archdiocese or most other jurisdictions, and even if it did, it wouldn’t be a stepping stone to the priesthood. That’s a different conversation entirely.
What Women Do in the Church
If you’re a woman reading this and feeling like you’re being told to sit down and shut up, hold on. That’s not what’s happening here.
Women in the Orthodox Church teach. They run Sunday schools and catechism classes. They serve on parish councils and diocesan assemblies. They’re theologians, iconographers, choir directors, and monastics. Some are spiritual mothers whose counsel is sought by priests and bishops. St. Photini (the Samaritan woman at the well) is called Equal-to-the-Apostles. So is St. Mary Magdalene.
Here in Southeast Texas, you’ll find Orthodox women doing everything from organizing the church festival to preparing families for baptism to visiting the sick. These aren’t consolation prizes. They’re real ministry.
The Church doesn’t say women can’t lead. She says women can’t be priests. There’s a difference.
How This Differs from Other Christians
Most mainline Protestant churches ordain women now. They read Galatians 3:28 (“there is neither male nor female in Christ Jesus”) as erasing gender distinctions in church leadership. We read that verse as describing our equality in the Kingdom, not as a blueprint for the priesthood.
The Catholic Church doesn’t ordain women either, though their reasoning sometimes sounds different from ours. They emphasize the priest acting in persona Christi (in the person of Christ). We’d agree with that, but we frame it more in terms of unchanging Tradition. Rome sometimes talks about this as a discipline that could theoretically change but won’t. We don’t see it that way. It can’t change because the Church doesn’t have the authority to change it.
Living with This Teaching
I won’t pretend this is easy for everyone. If you grew up seeing women pastors and you’re exploring Orthodoxy, this might be one of the hardest things to accept. You might have questions about fairness or equality or whether the Church is just stuck in the past.
What I’d ask is this: give yourself time to understand what the Church actually teaches about men and women before you decide it’s oppressive. Read the lives of the female saints. Talk to Orthodox women who’ve embraced this and found freedom in it, not limitation. Visit a Liturgy and watch the whole Body of Christ, men and women, clergy and laity, functioning together.
The priesthood isn’t the pinnacle of Christian life. Holiness is. And the Church has never taught that you need to be ordained to become a saint.
