Our Woman of the Week is Dina Zingaro, nominated for her work in religious journalism. You see her here in the 60 Minutes production area in a photo by Aaron Tomlinson. We asked her to tell you how she came to be in that room:
"I grew up in the Greek Orthodox church, in a loving parish in northern New Jersey. My brother and I shared rich and well-rounded experiences, signing up for Sunday School, theological oratorical contests, Greek language lessons, Greek folk dancing, and national Greek youth group. Beginning in childhood, I connected to the beauty of our rich and unchanging rituals. As I grew up, elements of our theology, such as our understanding of sin, appealed to me. Aμαρτία, the Greek word for sin, means “missing the mark” and describes a falling short and a separation from God. We are encouraged to think and act less out of fear of punishment or want of reward, than out of a desire to draw nearer to God.
"However, I also struggled with the Church’s positions on women and the queer community, which seemed just as unchanging as our rituals. Women are not permitted to enter the altar sanctuary, let alone serve as priests. The Church will not perform or recognize same-sex marriages. I felt a deep disconnect between Christ’s radical embrace of the marginalized and the exclusion of female and LGBTQ parish members from full acceptance, representation, and expression within the Church. My frustration with this disconnect may have continued to grow unfettered if it weren’t for religious studies in college.
"When I began my studies at Swarthmore College, a small liberal arts school in Pennsylvania, I intended to major in English Literature. My path shifted during my first class of my first religion course. We reread Genesis, the story of Adam and Eve, through a feminist lens. With this interpretation, Eve was not a secondary character or a temptress, but rather a protagonist with initiative, contrasted with a more passive Adam. Reading feminist and queer theology taught me that religion, reread for the people that it has traditionally marginalized, can empower those groups and help initiate change. That perspective propelled me forward and ultimately, inspired my double major in Religion and English Literature.
"For my undergraduate thesis, I lived in Greek and Buddhist monasteries in Greece and the U.S. where I tried to understand both the nuns’ and their traditions’ beliefs about physical and spiritual motherhood, and how these women foster religious community. Those interviews and fieldwork foreshadowed my later career in journalism. After graduation, I started at CBS News as a News Associate in the Evening News research department. A year later, I became the Broadcast Associate and Editorial Assistant to Scott Pelley, the anchor of the Evening News, and three years after that, an Associate Producer at 60 Minutes. Though I initially hoped to pursue a master’s in religion immediately after Swarthmore, the newsroom turned out to be a place ripe with opportunities to continue learning about religion.
"At the Evening News and 60 Minutes, I pitched, researched, and developed stories; traveled on shoots; and edited stories for air. Religion surfaced in nearly every story that I helped to produce. While some stories were explicitly about religion, such as a feature about Muslim American youth during a rise in anti-Muslim hate crimes, other stories had religion in the background, woven into people’s opinions and motivations. Whether we were reporting on a new gun law, migrants journeying across the U.S.-Mexico border, or the insurrection at the Capitol, religion was a part of the story.
"After nearly eight years at CBS News, I am now heading to Harvard Divinity School this September for a Master of Divinity. While I embrace my Greek Orthodox faith, I am also aligned with progressive America’s positions on women’s and LGBTQ rights. Led by a desire to bridge these two worlds that I love, I am curious about readings of theology that further that mission and the possibility of a place for change within Greek Orthodoxy.
"Though I will anchor my focus on women, gender, and sexuality in Greek Orthodoxy, Harvard’s emphasis on pluralism offers a space to study across faith traditions. Grounding me is a commitment to wielding religion as a progressive force in American public life and as a means for social justice and civil and human rights. For Greek Orthodox women, that mission begins with the revival of both female deacons and the honorary lay position of Archon for women."
Axia!
Dina Zingaro is our Woman of the Week, nominated for her work in religious journalism at major news outlets. We asked her to tell you about an experience reporting on a topic important in the Orthodox sphere. You see her here producing a story from a church setting in a photo by Aaron Tomlinson:
"In 2018, I was working as an Associate Producer at 60 Minutes. I was co-producing a story that I pitched in 2015 about the rebuilding of St. Nicholas, a small Greek Orthodox church in lower Manhattan, which was the only house of worship destroyed on September 11th. This project became a passion of mine. The story was the first I pitched to 60 Minutes and took five years to develop. I arranged for a rare shoot during Holy Week on Greece’s peninsula of Mt. Athos, considered by many to be the holiest site in Orthodox Christianity. I developed and researched the story, spent years finding the right people to feature, and wrote the interview questions. However, in the end, my female co-producer and I gave our 'producing' binder to a male colleague, who is not from the Orthodox tradition and was new to the story, to go in our place. Mt. Athos does not permit women on its grounds.
"The monks of Mt. Athos have offered explanations for this custom, as one father did in a 60 Minutes interview in 2011: “Here we’re concerned solely with purity and our elevation to eternity. If women are permitted, they bring their families and their children. This place would become a tourist attraction and no longer a place of silence.” Women, who could visit without their children or may not have children, are just as capable of the hesychia and reverence practiced on Mt. Athos.
"While my team witnessed Pascha services at the cradle of Orthodoxy, I remained in New York City, struggling to bring myself to attend the Holy Week services that I grew up attending. This restriction imposed by my faith tradition was so difficult, in part, because it contrasted so strongly with the opportunities I had been given in the secular workplace. In the Evening News research department, the facts and figures that I unearthed appeared on the evening’s broadcast. Working for the anchor, I represented the broadcast at the 2016 Republican and Democratic conventions. For 60 Minutes, I traveled alone at the age of 25 to find stories and the right people for our correspondent to interview. Here, my faith tradition was defining me in a way my profession never had.
"After our story aired during Easter of 2020, I heard from Greek Orthodox women who expressed gratitude to our team, and our camera crew in particular, for capturing and bringing to life the astounding beauty of the rituals of Pascha on Mt. Athos. Their appreciation was bittersweet because I knew, like me, they would never be able to experience it for themselves."
We asked our Woman of the Week, Dina Zingaro, to tell you about her morning routine:
"The most consistent element of my morning routine is that I’m an early riser with my alarm going off at 5:30 or 6:00 a.m. I have lived in New York City for over seven years and when I wake up this early, I feel like I have the city to myself before it comes to life. After two cups of coffee, I enjoy a bit of reading. Currently, I’m rereading Genesis and the Gospels, and working my way through the collection of essays, Women and Ordination in the Orthodox Church and also, Reaganland: America’s Right Turn 1976-1980 to better understand the rise of conservative Christianity in American politics. Soon after, I’ll go for a run or a spin bike ride to clear my head, center myself, or think through ideas."