21st Annual Conference
University of St Andrews
Centre for Russian, Soviet, Central and East European Studies
21st Annual Conference
Orthodox Ecclesiology and Modernity
Saturday 17 March 2012
Arts Lecture Theatre, Arts Building, The Scores, St Andrews
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As the Soviet Union and Soviet bloc countries fell in the 1990s, a space opened up for national Orthodox churches to regain, or forge anew, the spiritual and political domain that had been suppressed in preceding decades. Recent developments in the Middle East and North Africa have also placed the ancient Christian traditions of that area before a series of existential dilemmas, which may yet have ramifications for their future trajectory in newly constellated nation states. In both contexts, Christian communities whose central column has been the preservation and articulation of Tradition have had to adapt to increasingly fluid and volatile situations. This conference will concentrate on the ecclesiology of Orthodox Christianity, focussing in particular on the relation between its various envisionings of what it means to 'be Church' and the transition of such theological content into policy and action. 150 years after the publication of Fyodor Bukharev's 'On Orthodoxy in relation to Modernity', it seeks to highlight the ways in which Orthodox communities have remained faithful to patristic ecclesiology, as well as the ways in which they have creatively adapted, or diverged, from the same. Its principal goal is therefore the elucidation of how the theology of Church continues to influence the wider context of modernity in the Christian East.
Organisers: Dr Oliver Smith (Russian); Dr Mark Elliott (Divinity)
