Can Women Be Priests or Pastors? The Debate and the Orthodox Answer

Few questions divide Western Christians today as sharply as whether women may be ordained. Some churches now have women priests and bishops; others have split over the question. Visitors to an Orthodox church notice that every priest and bishop at the altar is a man, and many ask whether this is simply an old custom waiting to change.

It is not. This article sets out what Scripture and the early Church say, what the ancient deaconesses were and were not, what has happened recently in the Patriarchate of Alexandria, and why the Orthodox Church ordains only men to the priesthood. The Church's honor for its women saints belongs to that answer.

In brief

From the apostles to the present day, the Orthodox Church has ordained only men as bishops and priests. Christ chose twelve men as apostles, the apostolic writings restrict teaching authority in the assembly to men, and early witnesses such as St Epiphanius rejected women priests, pointing out that even the Theotokos never acted as a priest. The early Church did have deaconesses, among them St Phoebe and St Olympias, but their ministry did not include offering the Eucharist, blessing or baptizing. A 1988 inter-Orthodox consultation recommended reviving the order, and the Patriarchate of Alexandria has taken tentative steps since 2016 whose standing remains unsettled. Many Anglicans, Lutherans and Methodists began ordaining women in the twentieth century; Rome and the Southern Baptist Convention have refused.

Thesis: The Orthodox Church ordains only men to the priesthood and episcopate because this is the apostolic order received from Christ and kept without a break, and the ordination of women as priests is a departure from that order, not a legitimate development of it.

What the New Testament says

The site's article Paul and Women in the Church: Phoebe, Junia, Head Coverings, and 'Women Keep Silent' treats the Pauline texts and the scholarly debates about them in detail; the main points are these.

The Gospels record that Christ, after a night of prayer, called His disciples "and from them He chose twelve whom He also named apostles" (Luke 6:13). Women followed Him and were the first witnesses of His Resurrection, yet none was among the Twelve. Two apostolic texts restrict women's authority in the assembly: "Let your women keep silent in the churches" (1 Corinthians 14:34) and "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence" (1 Timothy 2:12, which grounds the rule in the order of creation). The same Paul also writes, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28).¹

The Church has never read these texts against one another. Galatians speaks of equal membership in Christ through baptism; the others speak of order in worship. The question is not who may be saved or honored, but whom Christ and the apostles appointed to stand at the altar.

What the early Church did

The early Church knew of groups with women priests and rejected the practice. The Apostolic Constitutions, an ancient church order compiled under the apostles' names, forbids women to baptize and asks: "how will any one allow them, contrary to nature, to perform the office of a priest?" It adds that "if baptism were to be administered by women, certainly our Lord would have been baptized by His own mother, and not by John."²

St Epiphanius of Cyprus, writing against the Collyridians, women who presumed to offer sacrifice in honor of the Virgin Mary, made the same point. In the English translation given by the Greek theologian Vlasios Phidas, he says that "no woman has at any time or place served God as a priest," and that if women had been commanded to serve as priests, "it would have been rather necessary for Mary herself to have done some priestly function in the New Testament."³

The fourth-century Council of Laodicea ruled that "Presbytides, as they are called, or female presidents, are not to be appointed in the Church." What these were is uncertain; the council historian Karl Joseph Hefele admits that "It is doubtful what was here intended."⁴ When the Church of Greece's hierarchy discussed women's ministry in 2004, its rapporteur, Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Chalkida, said the Church's conscience never wavered before groups such as the Gnostics and Montanists who gave women priestly roles, and called this "the permanent and stable ecclesiastical tradition spanning from the apostolic era to the present day."⁵

{{very-strong: No canonical bishop of the Orthodox Church has ever ordained a woman as a priest or bishop, and the early Church explicitly rejected women priests where it met them.}}

The deaconesses

Women did have an ordered ministry. Paul writes: "I commend to you Phoebe our sister, who is a servant of the church in Cenchrea" (Romans 16:1). The word translated "servant" is diakonos. The Church commemorates her on September 3 as St Phoebe the Deaconess; the OCA's life of the saint cites St John Chrysostom, who says Paul "added to her rank by mentioning her as being a 'deaconess'."⁶

Later sources describe the order clearly. The Apostolic Constitutions instructs the bishop to "lay your hands upon her in the presence of the presbytery, and of the deacons and deaconesses," and gives a prayer to God "who replenished with the Spirit Miriam, and Deborah, and Anna, and Huldah." It also sets the limits of the office: "A deaconess does not bless, nor perform anything belonging to the office of presbyters or deacons, but only is to keep the doors, and to minister to the presbyters in the baptizing of women, on account of decency."⁷ The Council of Chalcedon (451) ruled that "A woman shall not receive the laying on of hands as a deaconess under forty years of age, and then only after searching examination," and the Council in Trullo (692) repeated the age of forty.⁸

The best-known deaconess is St Olympias, whom the Church commemorates on July 25. According to the OCA, "Holy Patriarch Nectarius (381-397) appointed Saint Olympias as a deaconess," and she gave her fortune to the poor and the churches. When her friend St John Chrysostom was driven into exile, he took leave of her "and the other deaconesses Pentadia, Proklia and Salbina." She was later fined and imprisoned, and reposed in 409.⁹

{{strong: The early and Byzantine Church had an order of deaconesses who received the laying on of hands from the bishop and served especially at the baptism and pastoral care of women; they did not offer the Eucharist, bless or baptize.}} Over the following centuries the order fell out of use. Whether its laying on of hands was an ordination in the full sense (cheirotonia) or a blessing to a lesser ministry (cheirothesia) is argued among Orthodox today.

The deaconess question today: Rhodes, Alexandria, Zimbabwe

In 1988 the Ecumenical Patriarchate convened an inter-Orthodox consultation on Rhodes on the place of women in the Church and the question of their ordination. According to a participant, Kyriaki Karidoyanes FitzGerald, it recognized that women have not been ordained as presbyters or bishops in the Orthodox Church, and its statement said: "The apostolic order of deaconesses should be revived. It was never altogether abandoned in the Orthodox Church though it has tended to fall into disuse."¹⁰ The Church of Greece took a narrow step in 2004, leaving it to the "discretion of the local bishop to ordinate the female elders of the holy monasteries of his province for the needs of the holy monastery alone."¹¹ Earlier, St Nectarios of Aegina had ordained, or blessed, two nuns for liturgical service, an act whose description is still argued (see Who Was St. Nectarios of Aegina?).

In November 2016 the Holy Synod of the Patriarchate of Alexandria decided to restore the institution of deaconesses and formed a committee to study it. On February 17, 2017, at Kolwezi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Patriarch Theodoros II consecrated the catechist Theano as "Deaconess of the Missions" and read the prayer for entering "ecclesiastical ministry" for three nuns and two catechists, to assist especially at adult baptisms and in catechism.¹² The scholar Carrie Frederick Frost judged from the published photographs that "It appears that they were not ordained into a major order," since the rite took place at the end of the Liturgy and at the patriarch's throne rather than at the altar; it was more likely a blessing to a minor order, "more like the sub-diaconate."¹³ {{debated: Whether the 2017 Kolwezi rite was an ordination to the diaconate or a blessing to a lesser ministry has not been settled by the Patriarchate of Alexandria.}}

On May 2, 2024, Metropolitan Seraphim of Zimbabwe ordained a deaconess, Angeliki. The Patriarchate responded on May 11 that the synod's decision had been "referred for further examination" and that "this decision has yet to be activated as the examination of the matter by the Synod has not been completed for a final decision." It added that "deaconesses have not been designated as women ministers of the Holy Mysteries."¹⁴ Metropolitan Panteleimon of Maroneia, a representative of the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece, said that the ancient institution "did not involve chirotony, but rather chirothesy," and that in his church "the practice of having deaconesses, let alone distributing Holy Communion, has never been established."¹⁵

Whether to revive deaconesses is a question of discipline, which synods may decide. Whether women may be priests or bishops is another question, which no Orthodox synod has opened.

Why the Orthodox Church ordains only men

The Orthodox answer begins with Holy Tradition. A priest answering the question for the Orthodox Church in America wrote that "the Orthodox Church precludes the ordination of women to the priesthood and episcopacy. It is a matter of Holy Tradition."¹⁶ The practice of Christ and the apostles, kept everywhere for two thousand years, is not an accident of culture.

Second, the priest stands at the altar as the icon of Christ. Fr Alexander Schmemann, dean of St Vladimir's Seminary, put it this way in a 1973 letter to an Episcopalian friend: the priest "has no 'ontology' of his own" but exists "only to make Christ himself present," and "if the bearer, the icon and the fulfiller of that unique priesthood, is man and not woman, it is because Christ is man and not woman."¹⁷ The Son of God became incarnate as a man, the Bridegroom of His Bride the Church, and the priest who offers the Eucharist in His name images Him.

Third, the priesthood belongs to Christ. "This priesthood is Christ's, not ours," Schmemann wrote. "None of us, man or woman, has any 'right' to it."¹⁸ Hebrews says of the priesthood that "no man takes this honor to himself, but he who is called by God, just as Aaron was" (Hebrews 5:4).¹⁹ The OCA answer says Orthodoxy "does not understand ordination to the priesthood as a matter of justice, equality, political correctness, or human rights."

Fourth, the example of the Theotokos. As the Apostolic Constitutions and St Epiphanius argued (above), if any woman were to be a priest it would have been the one who carried God in her womb, yet she never offered sacrifice or baptized. Her greatness is of another kind, and greater than any priest's.

Fifth, this has nothing to do with women being lesser. Schmemann insisted that the non-ordination of women "has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with" any supposed inferiority, and that in the Kingdom of God there is "neither male nor female."²⁰

The honor of women saints

The clearest sign of how the Church regards women is whom it places highest: it sings of the Theotokos that she is "more honorable than the Cherubim, and beyond compare more glorious than the Seraphim," and Schmemann pointed to this hymn when he explained the Church's practice.²¹ No priest is honored as she is (see Mary in the Early Church).

The Church gives the title "Equal of the Apostles" to women who carried the Gospel to whole peoples or bore witness to the Resurrection: St Mary Magdalene, the Myrrhbearer who first announced the risen Lord; St Thekla, Protomartyr and Equal of the Apostles; St Helen, mother of St Constantine; St Nino, Enlightener of Georgia; and St Olga of Kiev, grandmother of St Vladimir.²² It honors women teachers such as St Macrina, eldest sister of St Basil the Great (see Who Was St. Macrina the Younger?). The OCA's answer recalls that in the Soviet years, when clergy were forbidden to teach religion, grandmothers handed on the faith and "had a far greater impact on the life of the Church than the clergy of their day."²³

How Western churches changed

The ordination of women is recent and came from the Protestant West.

• Methodists. According to the United Methodist Church, "In 1956, The Methodist Church granted women full clergy rights."²⁴
• Lutherans. Elizabeth Platz, ordained on November 22, 1970, after women's ordination was approved that year, was the first Lutheran woman ordained in America.²⁵
• The Episcopal Church. Eleven women were ordained irregularly in Philadelphia on July 29, 1974; the 1976 General Convention then resolved that the canons on ordination "shall be equally applicable to men and women."²⁶
• The Church of England. The General Synod approved women priests on November 11, 1992, and 32 women were ordained in Bristol Cathedral on March 12, 1994. Women bishops followed in 2014.²⁷ (See the infographic The Anglican Tradition.)

Other Western Christians did not follow. In Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (1994), John Paul II wrote that priestly ordination "has in the Catholic Church from the beginning always been reserved to men alone. This tradition has also been faithfully maintained by the Oriental Churches," and declared that "the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women."²⁸ The Orthodox Church agrees with the substance but grounds it in the Tradition of the whole Church, not a papal declaration. The Southern Baptist Convention's Baptist Faith and Message (2000), as amended in 2023, states: "While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor/elder/overseer is limited to men as qualified by Scripture."²⁹ On June 10, 2026, in Orlando, messengers gave first approval (6,028 to 2,026, 74.66 percent) to Albert Mohler's constitutional amendment stating that cooperating churches do not endorse a woman as pastor; it needs a second vote in 2027.³⁰

These Protestants are brothers and sisters in Christ, many sincerely seeking to follow Scripture. But the churches that ordain women as priests or pastors have departed from the apostolic order, and that departure is an error. Schmemann warned in 1973 that the step would mean, "at least for the Orthodox, the end of all dialogues."³¹ Protestants who keep a male pastorate, such as Southern Baptists, ground it in Scripture alone, without the sacramental priesthood and apostolic succession that the Orthodox Church has kept (see the infographic Holy Orders and The Priesthood of All Believers). Their conclusion is right, but the Church's foundation is the whole apostolic Tradition, of which Scripture is the heart.

Objections and replies

"Galatians 3:28 abolishes the distinction."

Galatians speaks of baptism: all the baptized are one in Christ, and the Church baptizes, communes and glorifies women and men alike. The same verse mentions Jew and Greek, a distinction Paul did not deny. The Church that read Galatians kept the priesthood male.

"Jesus was bound by His culture."

Christ broke the customs of His time freely when He chose: He spoke with the Samaritan woman (John 4), let a sinful woman anoint Him (Luke 7:36-50), and sent women to announce His Resurrection. The Apostolic Constitutions observes that the pagans ordained "women priests to the female deities," a practice that was "not one of the constitutions of Christ."³² To call His choice of twelve men cultural blindness is to accuse the whole apostolic Church of sharing it.

"Phoebe and Junia prove there were women clergy."

Phoebe was a deaconess, and the Church honors her as one. Junia is greeted with Andronicus as "of note among the apostles" (Romans 16:7, NKJV), and whether that means "outstanding apostles" or "well known to the apostles" is debated (see the article on Paul and women). Neither text describes a woman presiding at the Eucharist as bishop or presbyter.

"Some Orthodox theologians call it an open question."

That is true. As Paul Ladouceur reports, Elisabeth Behr-Sigel favored women's ordination, and Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, who had opposed it, wrote in a 1999 revision of an earlier essay that it should be considered "an open question." Ladouceur himself argues that it should no longer be treated as a theological issue at all but as a pastoral one.³³ But theologians do not speak for the Church. No Orthodox synod has accepted these arguments, every Orthodox Church keeps the apostolic practice, and the Church's mind is known by what she has always and everywhere done. The opinions of a few scholars do not make that practice "open."

What we can say confidently

• Christ chose twelve men as apostles, and the apostolic writings restrict authority in the assembly to men.
• The early Church rejected women priests where it met them (the Apostolic Constitutions, St Epiphanius), and no Orthodox Church has ever ordained a woman as priest or bishop.
• There was a real order of deaconesses (St Phoebe, St Olympias, the canons of Chalcedon and Trullo) whose ministry did not include offering the Eucharist, blessing or baptizing.
• The 1988 Rhodes consultation recommended reviving the deaconess order; Alexandria decided in 2016 to restore it but said in 2024 that the decision was not yet activated.
• Rome (1994) and the Southern Baptist Convention also reserve the priesthood or pastorate to men; many Anglican, Lutheran and Methodist churches ordain women.

What remains disputed

• Whether the ancient deaconess's laying on of hands was an ordination in the full sense (cheirotonia) or a blessing (cheirothesia), and exactly why the order faded.
• What the "presbytides" forbidden by the Council of Laodicea were.
• The status of the 2017 Kolwezi rite and the 2024 Zimbabwe ordination.
• Whether Junia is called an apostle in Romans 16:7, and the textual history of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35.

Conclusion

The Orthodox Church does not ordain women as priests or bishops because she has received the priesthood from Christ as He gave it, and she has no wish to remake it. This is not a verdict on women's worth. The same Church that keeps the altar for men in holy orders sings that a woman is more honorable than the Cherubim, keeps the memory of deaconesses like St Phoebe and St Olympias, and gives the title "Equal of the Apostles" to women who brought whole nations to Christ.

The calling that matters most is open to every baptized person: to become by grace a partaker of the divine nature. In that calling there is "neither male nor female," and the priesthood exists to serve it.

Notes

1. Luke 6:13; 1 Corinthians 14:34; 1 Timothy 2:12; Galatians 3:28 (NKJV), https://www.biblegateway.com.
2. Apostolic Constitutions 3.9, trans. James Donaldson, ANF 7, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/07153.htm.
3. St Epiphanius, Panarion 79 (against the Collyridians), as translated in Vlasios Phidas, "The Question of the Priesthood of Women (part 1)," Theologia 66 (1995): 240-274, English version at Apostoliki Diakonia of the Church of Greece, https://apostoliki-diakonia.gr/?p=31162 (Phidas's footnote prints the heresy number as "59"; the Collyridians are heresy 79 in the standard numbering); compare Hefele's note on Laodicea canon 11 (see note 4), citing Panarion 79.4.
4. Council of Laodicea, canon 11, trans. Henry Percival, with the commentary of Karl Joseph Hefele printed there, NPNF2 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3806.htm.
5. Efi Efthimiou, "Patriarchate of Alexandria's shilly-shalling regarding the ordination of a deaconess," Orthodox Times, May 12, 2024, https://orthodoxtimes.com/patriarchate-of-alexandrias-shilly-shalling-regarding-the-ordination-of-a-deaconess/.
6. Romans 16:1 (NKJV); "Saint Phoebe the Deaconess at Cenchreae near Corinth" (September 3), Orthodox Church in America, https://oca.org/saints/lives/2017/09/03/102481-st-phoebe-the-deaconess-at-cenchreae-near-corinth.
7. Apostolic Constitutions 3.16; 8.19-20; 8.28, ANF 7, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/07153.htm and https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/07158.htm.
8. Council of Chalcedon (451), canon 15, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3811.htm; Council in Trullo (692), canon 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3814.htm, trans. Henry Percival, NPNF2 14.
9. "Holy Woman Olympias (Olympiada) the Deaconess of Constantinople" (July 25), Orthodox Church in America, https://www.oca.org/saints/all-lives/2024/07/25.
10. Kyriaki Karidoyanes FitzGerald, letter to The Tablet, May 29, 1999, reproduced at https://womenpriests.org/tradition/deac-cor-letters-concerning-women-deacons-published-in-the-tablet/.
11. Orthodox Times, May 12, 2024 (see note 5).
12. "Patriarch Theodoros of Alexandria consecrates first deaconess," OrthoChristian.com, February 27, 2017, reporting the Patriarchate's official site, https://orthochristian.com/101395.html.
13. Carrie Frederick Frost, "Women Willing to Offer Themselves: The Historic Consecration of Deaconesses in Africa," The Wheel, March 2, 2017, reproduced at https://panorthodoxsynod.blogspot.com/2017/03/women-willing-to-offer-themselves.html.
14. Patriarchate of Alexandria and All Africa, announcement of May 11, 2024, as published in Orthodox Times (see note 5).
15. Metropolitan Panteleimon of Maroneia, interviewed in Orthodox Times (see note 5).
16. "Ordination of Women," Questions and Answers, Orthodox Church in America, https://www.oca.org/questions/priesthoodmonasticism/ordination-of-women.
17. Alexander Schmemann, "Concerning Women's Ordination: A Letter to an Episcopal Friend," St Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 17, no. 3 (1973), text at http://www.episcopalnet.org/TRACTS/ConcerningOrdination.html.
18. Schmemann, "Concerning Women's Ordination" (see note 17).
19. Hebrews 5:4 (NKJV); "Ordination of Women," OCA (see note 16).
20. Schmemann, "Concerning Women's Ordination" (see note 17).
21. Schmemann, "Concerning Women's Ordination" (see note 17), quoting the hymn to the Theotokos.
22. Orthodox Church in America, Lives of the Saints: "The Holy Myrrh-Bearer Equal of the Apostles Mary Magdalene" (July 22); "Protomartyr and Equal of the Apostles Thekla" (September 24); St Helen, "the Equal of the Apostles" (May 21); "Saint Nino (Nina), Equal of the Apostles, Enlightener of Georgia" (January 14); "Saint Olga, Equal of the Apostles" (July 11), https://www.oca.org/saints/lives.
23. "Ordination of Women," OCA (see note 16).
24. "When did the church first ordain women?" Ask The UMC, United Methodist Church, https://www.umc.org/content/ask-the-umc-when-did-the-church-first-ordain-women.
25. "Elizabeth Platz," Lutheran Women's Ordination project, St. Olaf College, https://pages.stolaf.edu/lutheranwomensordination/?p=264.
26. The Archives of the Episcopal Church, "Irregular Ordination" and "The Vote," exhibit Episcopal Church Women, https://exhibits.episcopalarchives.org/s/episcopal-church-women/page/irregular-ordination and https://exhibits.episcopalarchives.org/s/episcopal-church-women/page/vote.
27. Church of England, "Celebrations mark 25 years of women's ordination to the priesthood" (2019), https://www.churchofengland.org/node/25272/printable/print.
28. John Paul II, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis 1, 4 (May 22, 1994), https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_letters/1994/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_19940522_ordinatio-sacerdotalis.html.
29. The Baptist Faith and Message 2000, article VI, https://bfm.sbc.net/bfm2000/.
30. "Mohler amendment to SBC Constitution passes," Baptist Standard, June 10, 2026, https://baptiststandard.com/news/baptists/mohler-amendment-to-sbc-constitution-passes/.
31. Schmemann, "Concerning Women's Ordination" (see note 17).
32. Apostolic Constitutions 3.9 (see note 2).
33. Paul Ladouceur, "The Ordination of Women to the Priesthood: A Theological Issue or a Pastoral Matter?" in Gabrielle Thomas and Elena Narinskaya, eds., Women and Ordination in the Orthodox Church: Explorations in Theology and Practice, 166-67, PDF at https://trinityorthodox.ca/documents/Ladouceur-OrdinationWomen.pdf.

Bibliography

Primary sources

• The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.
• Apostolic Constitutions. Trans. James Donaldson. Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 7. Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1886.
• The Seven Ecumenical Councils (Laodicea, Chalcedon, Trullo). Trans. Henry Percival. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 14. 1900.

Orthodox and patristic sources

• Phidas, Vlasios. "The Question of the Priesthood of Women." Theologia 66 (1995): 240-274 (includes St Epiphanius, Panarion 79, in translation).
• Schmemann, Alexander. "Concerning Women's Ordination: A Letter to an Episcopal Friend." St Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 17, no. 3 (1973).
• Orthodox Church in America. "Ordination of Women" (Questions and Answers), and Lives of the Saints (Phoebe, Olympias, Mary Magdalene, Thekla, Helen, Nino, Olga).
• Patriarchate of Alexandria and All Africa. Reports of February 2017 (via OrthoChristian.com) and announcement of May 11, 2024 (via Orthodox Times).
• Efthimiou, Efi. "Patriarchate of Alexandria's shilly-shalling regarding the ordination of a deaconess." Orthodox Times, May 12, 2024.
• FitzGerald, Kyriaki Karidoyanes. Letter to The Tablet, May 29, 1999 (on the 1988 Rhodes consultation).

Other scholarship

• Frost, Carrie Frederick. "Women Willing to Offer Themselves: The Historic Consecration of Deaconesses in Africa." The Wheel, 2017.
• Ladouceur, Paul. "The Ordination of Women to the Priesthood: A Theological Issue or a Pastoral Matter?" In Thomas and Narinskaya, eds., Women and Ordination in the Orthodox Church: Explorations in Theology and Practice.

Sources from other traditions

• John Paul II. Ordinatio Sacerdotalis. 1994.
• Church of England. "Celebrations mark 25 years of women's ordination to the priesthood." 2019.
• The Archives of the Episcopal Church. Episcopal Church Women online exhibit.
• United Methodist Church. "When did the church first ordain women?"
• St. Olaf College, Lutheran Women's Ordination project. "Elizabeth Platz."
• Southern Baptist Convention. The Baptist Faith and Message 2000 (amended 2023); Baptist Standard report on the 2026 annual meeting.