I wonder if you have had a chance yet to discuss this with Khouria Fredericka, and what she said.
Also, I have met the Antiochian Western Rite Vicar, before he had that title. He married my son and his wife, in the Antiochian rite, and I had a long interesting discussion with him at the reception. He is a man both learned and kind, and certainly not some kind of ogre standing in the way of women having a bible study!
However certain comments made by amberpep, if she will forgive me, show that her thinking was formed in the Evangelical tradition and that quite naturally she hasn't yet completely absorbed an Orthodox way of thought. I think it makes sense to make sure the priest, or someone he delegates, guides the study, to make sure it is a study within the Orthodox tradition. Amberpep may think that when she studied the bible as an evangelical, she was just studying the bible, but there too, she was reading it within a tradition. There were bibles with footnotes in that tradition. There were people there who had been to bible studies led by people who had been to bible studies led by prominent evangelical teachers. Explanations of passages were provided by these folks, and those meanings became hooked to those passages, so that it is hard to read them as possibly meaning something else. Well Orthodoxy has such a tradition also, only it is a much older and longer tradition. You might find that some passages are understood quite differently. Of course you should be able to say "But I thought it meant this...." And there should be someone there who can give good account of why Orthodoxy reads it the way it does.
Anyway, please tell us what Fredricka said.
Susan Peterson
