Frederica Mathewes-Green is a wide-ranging author, whose work has appeared in such diverse publications as the Washington Post, Christianity Today, Smithsonian, the Los Angeles Times, First Things, Books & Culture, Sojourners, Touchstone, and the Wall Street Journal. She is a regular columnist for the multi-faith web magazine Beliefnet.com, and she writes movie reviews for National Review Online and Christianity Today Movies.
She has published eight books, including Facing East: A Pilgrim’s Journey into the Mysteries of Orthodoxy and The Illumined Heart: The Ancient Christian Path of Transformation. In the past, her commentaries have been heard on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered and Morning Edition. Her essays were selected for Best Christian Writing in 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006, and Best Spiritual Writing in 1998 and 2007. She has published over 600 articles.
She has also appeared as a speaker over 400 times, at places like Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Wellesley, Cornell, Calvin, Baylor, and Westmont; at the Smithsonian Institute, the Aspen Institute, Washington National Cathedral, the Los Angeles Times Book Festival, the American Academy of Religion, the Veritas Forum, the Family Research Council, and the National Right to Life Committee.
She has been interviewed on PrimeTime Live, the Diane Rehm Show, the 700 Club, PBS, CNN, NBC, Fox News, and by Time, Newsweek, the New Republic, USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the New York Times.
She lives with her husband, the Rev. Gregory Mathewes-Green, in Baltimore, MD, where he is pastor and she is “Khouria” (“Mother”) of the church they founded, Holy Cross Orthodox Church. Their three children are grown and married, and they have nine grandchildren. Since 1997, Frederica has been recording books for the blind with the Radio Reading Network of Maryland.
You can also listen to Frederica teach via her podcast at Ancient Faith Radio.
Featured
The Lessons of Roe
By Frederica Matthewes-Green
I was what the sociologists call an "early adopter" of feminism. Soon after arriving at college, in 1970, I knew that it was the religion for me. I had discarded the religion I grew up with, Christianity, as an insultingly simpleminded thing, but feminism filled the gap. Like a religion it offered a complete philosophical worldview, one that displayed me as victim in the center, a feature with immeasurable appeal to a female teenager. Feminism had its own gnostic analysis of reality, by which everything in existence was decoded to be about the oppression of women; it had sacred books, a secret vocabulary, and congregational gatherings for the purpose of consciousness-raising. It even had a habit and tonsure, in a sense; we didn’t don wimples, but we cast off oppressive undergarments and shunned the razor.
