International Seminar Series

 

Belonging to a church, even if in decline, still remains a widespread form of human solidarity among Christians in the twenty-first century. However, notions of what constitutes a ‘church’ vary greatly not only among confessions, but also within institutional churches. Understanding and misunderstanding what a church is influences religious and social behaviour. It has an impact on how people relate to each other.  We would like to focus on the ways in which Eastern Orthodox Christians deal with the common Christian legacy of ecclesia, exploring this subject through theology, history and practice. To do this, we would like to organise a series of online seminars with leading experts in ecclesiology, political theology, church history and religious studies. 

The seminars will focus on themes of conciliarity, synodality and catholicity in the Orthodox Church and address key concepts in Orthodox theology such as sobornost’ which remains very little understood not only by general public but also by the academic community.  The talks will be recorded and made available for further viewing on youtube in order to reach audiences beyond academia. The language of the talks will be Russian or English; in some cases, we will aim to provide a translation. 

Understanding Sobornost’: theory, history and practice. Series 1 (2021)

Webinar 1 Andrew Louth (Durham University, UK) – Sobornost’ in the Orthodox theology of the 20th century: an overview of trends, 23 February 2021

Webinar 2  Cyril Hovorun (Stockholm School of Theology, Sweden) –  “Sobornost’ and the nature of the Church”. Kirill Govorun “Sobornost’ and the nature of the Church”. In Russian, 10 March 2021

Webinar 3 Paul Valliere (Butler University, USA) – Sobornost’ in the discourse of the Russian Church in the 19th – early 20th centuries, 6 April 2021

Webinar 4 Anastacia Wooden (Catholic University of America in Washington D.C. & Marymount University, Arlington VA, USA) – Searching for the Forms of Church Life by Trial and Error, 27 April 2021

Webinar 5 Thomas Bremer (Münster University, Germany) – The “Sabori” System in Serbian Orthodoxy in the 19th Century, 19 May 2021

Webinar 6  Vladimir Shmaliy (official representative of the Russian Orthodox Church in the WCC Faith and Order Commission) – “Koinonia” in World Council of Churches’ Discussions on Christian Unity, 17 June 2021

 

Webinar 7 Sergei Kul’pinov (deacon & archivist of Irkutsk diocese) – Theory and Practices of Sobornost in Russian Renovationism in the 1920s – the First Half of the 1930s, 21 September 2021

Webinar 8  Natalia Vasilevich (Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, Germany), –  How the Pan-Orthodox Congress in Constantinople (1923) has broken Orthodoxy , 20 October 2021

Webinar 9 Sebastian Rimestad (Leipzig University, Germany) – The crisis in the Paris Exarchate, 2013-2019. A challenge to sobornost?, 16 November 2021

 

Understanding Sobornost’: theory, history and practice. Series 2 (2022)

Webinar 10 Barbara Hallensleben (University of Freiburg, Switzerland) – Primacy and Conciliarity in the Church in the Catholic–Orthodox Dialogue, 15 February 2022

Webinar 11 Andrey Shishkov (University of Tartu, Estonia) – Discussion on Primacy and Conciliarity in the Orthodox Church in the 20th-21st centuries, 15 March 2022

Webinar 12 Aristotle Papanikolaou (Fordham University, USA) – Conciliarity and the Social Ethos of the Eastern Orthodox Church, 29 March 2022

Webinar 13 Tamara Grdzelidze (Ilia State University, Georgia) – The Orthodox Church and Challenges of Modernity, 11 April 2022

Webinar 14 Vera Shevzov (Smith College, USA) –  Sobornost’ and the Discourse of Rights in Russia’s Orthodox Church

Webinar 15 Daniel Scarborough (Nazarbaev University, Kazakhstan) – Sobornost’ among the Parish Clergy in Imperial Russia, 22 November 2022

Webinar 16 Davor Džalto (University College of Stockholm, Sweden) – Sobornost: Between Freedom and Totalitarianism, 13 December 2023

 

Understanding Sobornost’: theory, history and practice. Series 3 (2023)

Webinar 17 Andrey Shishkov (University of Tartu, Estonia) – Sobornost’ in Political Theology of the Noviy Grad Movement (1931-1938), 28 February 2023

Webinar 18 Matthew Lee Miller (Northwestern in St. Paul, Minnesota), Ulyana Gutner (Independent scholar), Cyrille Sollogoub (current president of the RSCM), Barbara Martin (University of Basel), and Irina Paert (University of Tartu) – The Russian Student Christian Movement (RSCM): A Case for ‘Conciliarity from Below’, 28 March 2023