Universalist Orthodox Church in Toledo certainly isn't biblically orthodox

The red flags that identify the church mentioned in the following article as being unbiblical are so glaring and numerous that I'll leave it to the reader to notice and count them. As reported by Nicki Gorny of the Toledo Blade, July 1, 2019:

With its chanted antiphons and sweet-smelling incense, a divine liturgy at Toledo’s Joy of All Who Sorrow Parish is in some ways like any other in Eastern Orthodoxy.

In other ways, it’s decidedly not.

A commitment to full social, structural and sacramental inclusion of all people – regardless of their gender and sexuality – positions the parish outside the mainstream church hierarchy. While they remain true to what their founding bishop sees as an authentic expression of Eastern Orthodoxy, they’re carving out their own space in the ancient faith tradition.

“What do you do when such an integral part of your identity is in direct conflict with your values?” the Rev. Mother Maeve Leroux asked in a recent interview. “I definitely think the only option for me was to make the space.”

Mother Maeve, who established Joy of All Who Sorrow Universalist Orthodox Church in 2016, celebrates the first anniversary of her consecration as a bishop on Sunday. She described a winding path to that moment, one that gives her great familiarity with the struggle of loving and identifying with a faith tradition that – in one way or another – is also a source of conflict.

She said she was never eager to pursue ordination in the way that she has, which runs against a restriction in her tradition that only men enter the priesthood. Mother Maeve is transgender; her ordination is not recognized by the mainstream church. She said she felt called to the role as a way to create the inclusive Orthodox space she and others did not find anywhere else.

“It became pressingly apparent to me that, unfortunately, if we wanted any kind of inclusive Orthodox space, I would kind of have to do it,” she said. “Which was not a comforting thought. I don’t particularly like talking publicly. I don’t particularly like being in the front of any room.”

“But that was kind of the only way forward,” she said.

Mother Maeve came to Eastern Orthodoxy as a child, recalling a wind-knocked-out-of-her moment during a liturgy at a local church when she first she first felt the presence of God. By the time she was 18, she was essentially set on becoming a priest or a monk, options that were open to her in the mainstream structure of the tradition because she had not yet come out as female.

Once she made it to the monastery, though, she described an increasing disillusionment, much of it related to the hypocrisy she saw in her church in regard to issues of inclusion. Some of it was related to sexuality, she said; Eastern Orthodoxy is theologically opposed to homosexual acts. She said she also struggled with the restriction on women serving in the altar.

Even with a thorough reading of church canon, it just didn’t make sense to her, she said. In her understanding of the tradition then and in the understanding that she brings to her ministry now, she looks to the inclusiveness that she sees in the early church, if not necessarily in some of its canons. Orthodoxy is not as unchanging as it’s perceived to be, she said, describing historical pushes for women in ministry, even an early rite believed to be for a same-sex marriage.

“Inclusion is not innovative within ancient Christianity,” she said. “Inclusion is usually more authentic.”

It wasn’t that she hadn’t thought about what would become these internal conflicts before she entered the monastery. But “it’s kind of like any relationship where you fall in love,” she explained. “You fall in love and you think, ‘There are some issues … but this is what I want. Maybe it’s not that big a deal. These people seem good. Maybe it’ll work out.’ And you kind of put it away from your mind for a while, because you’re enamored.”

When she finally reached the point where she couldn’t justify wearing the monastic robe anymore, she left the monastery. Adrift without the faith tradition that had been such a firm anchor for so long in her life, she said she spent some time looking for a spiritual fit in others, first in Christianity, then in other traditions altogether. None of them felt like hers.

Then came a turning point. At a local interfaith service, she came across the Rev. Beverly Bingle, a Roman Catholic Womanpriest who pastors Holy Spirit Catholic Community in Toledo.

Roman Catholicism, like Eastern Orthodoxy, does not allow for the ordination of women. The Rev. Bingle describes her ordination as “valid, but not legal,” meaning that she is ordained in a valid line of apostolic succession, but her ordination is not recognized by the Catholic Church.

For Mother Maeve, the encounter sparked an idea.

“It really kind of inspired me to think: Orthodoxy doesn’t have to be confined into the boxes that history has put it in over and over,” she said. “I had always assumed that I had to accept Orthodoxy on its own terms, and that’s it,” she continued. “So I started thinking about it. I started looking: If there’s a Roman Catholic Womanpriest movement in Catholicism, does Orthodoxy have something like this? Have people gotten fed up?”

“The answer is no,” she said with a laugh. “Not really.”

It would fall to her, then, she decided. She sought a bishop to ordain her in the Independent Sacramental Movement, a network of self-sustaining faith communities that operate outside the structures of mainstream churches, but that retain the same apostolic succession of these same mainstream churches. As with the Rev. Bingle, the mainstream church hierarchies generally do not recognize the ordinations of clergy in the Independent Sacramental Movement, even though the lineages of these clergy – who ordained whom ordained whom ordained whom – can be traced back to the same foundational ministers.

Mother Maeve admits she herself had initial qualms about tying herself to the Independent Sacramental Movement. But when individuals began reaching out after her ordination as a priest, sharing their own stories of excommunication or their denial of the priesthood – stories, like hers, of those who felt marginalized by their own faith tradition – she found herself leaning further into it.

She began to pursue ordination as a bishop, believing she would hold a greater capacity to address these types of situations in this role.

“You have people coming to you. You have people who want to learn the liturgy from you, learn the tradition from you, they just want to take communion again after a decade of not being able to take communion anywhere,” she said. “So you kind of say, Who cares what I think? Or who cares what other people think? If it’s needful, you should do it.”

A year into her consecration as a bishop and three into the establishment of her parish, she today ministers to a modest community at Joy of All Who Sorrow. She and her partner, Jess Bernal, who as an ordained priest is known as Presbyter Theophan, said they typically hold services for only a handful of parishioners on Sunday.

Some are local, some drive hours for a divine liturgy. Sometimes it’s just the two of them.

Presbyter Theophan typically leads the service, her voice blending with Mother Maeve’s in the litanies and antiphons. When it comes time to consecrate the Eucharist, it’s her at the altar, behind the icons that are a standard in any Orthodox worship space – even one that’s a temporary setup each Sunday. They meet in the chapel of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church.

Their reach and ministry stretches beyond Toledo, though, in several satellite parishes in other cities and in those with whom they connect through their website or social media. Their stories of feeling drawn to the faith tradition or desiring to remain in it despite the roadblocks they see in gender, sexuality and other issues keep coming.

“There are definitely out there,” Mother Maeve said. “And a lot of them experienced what I experienced, where you look and you look and you look [for an inclusive community] and there is nothing. Then suddenly, you look, and there is one thing that pops up. … So it’s been rewarding for people to kind of be for people what I had wanted in the first place.”