Major Addresses by
The primary
purpose of the conference is to explore the public presence of the
Orthodox Church in a pluralistic world. By "public presence" we refer
to those aspects of the Orthodox Church's life that can be seen and
heard by everybody, having the widest possible publicity and,
furthermore, whatever we understand to be the world, which is common to
all and is distinguished from our own private place in it. A secondary
purpose is to examine ways in which Orthodox Churches have in the past,
and can continue in the present and the future, contribute to the
reconciliation of communities, which for religious, ethnic, political
and other reasons find themselves in opposition to one another. Here,
the obvious regional areas of Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Middle East where
Orthodox Christians are in conflict with others can server as case
studies of Orthodoxy's contribution to reconciliation.
Because of
the Orthodox understanding of creation, the human person, community and
the universality of the Christian gospel, Orthodoxy must be in constant
dialogue with the society in which it lives. The effectiveness of such
active presence depends not only on what Orthodoxy has to offer to the
modern world, but also from how the Orthodox churches interact and
converse with the world. For this reason, the conference will be
interdisciplinary, brining together theologians, church hierarchs,
government officials and social scientists in an effort to learn from
each other how the place and the witness of the Orthodox church remains
in dialogue with the modern pluralistic world.
Location: The Maliotis Cultural Center on the campus of Holy Cross
Greek Orthodox School of Theology, 50 Goddard Avenue, Brookline, MA USA
