Reform Movements in Eastern Christianity: Renewal, Heresy, and Compromise

Third Biennial Conference

Sponsored by ASEC, Inc. and The Ohio State University’s Center for Slavic and East European Studies, Resource Center for Medieval Slavic Studies, the Hilandar Research Library, and the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Literatures

THURSDAY, 1 OCTOBER 2009

6:30-7:00 PM Registration

7:00 PM Opening Plenary Talk (Pfahl Hall, Room 140):

Catherine Wanner (Penn State University), “Southern Challenges to Eastern Christianity: New Pressures for Reform in Contemporary Ukraine”

8:00 PM Reception

FRIDAY, 2 OCTOBER 2009

7:45—8:00 AM: Registration, Pfahl Hall, Blackwell Hotel, 1st Floor

8:00—10:00 AM:  Compromise, Renewal, and Rejection in Eastern Christianity in the Early Modern Period

  • Chair and Discussant: Daniel E. Collins (Ohio State University)
  • Andrew J. Kier (Ohio State University), “Four Non-Canonical Prayers in a South Slavic Trebnik (Hilandar HM.SMS 378)”
  • Alfons Bruening (Institute of Eastern Christian Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands), “Peter Mohyla’s Reforms in Seventeenth Century Orthodoxy: Catholic Pseudomorphosis or A Step Towards Orthodox Confessionalization?”
  • Barbara Skinner (Indiana State University), “From Heresy to Humor: The Kievan Academy Spoofs the Uniate Church”

10:15-12:15: Popular Religious Practices in Eastern Christianity: Adaptation, Revival, and Representation

Chair and Discussant: Christine D. Worobec (Northern Illinois University)

  • Charles Arndt (Union College ) “The Image of the Spiritual Wanderer in Leskov’s Enchanted Wanderer and Dostoevsky’s The Adolescent”
  • Daria Safronova (Ohio State University), “From the Far North to the Far East: Pomor Old Believers in the Altai Region”
  • Amy Slagle (University of Southern Mississippi), “Celtic Orthodoxy and the Limits of Nostalgia: The Twentieth Century Celtic Revival in Eastern Orthodoxy”

1:30-3:45 PM: Theological and Foreign Policy Issues in Modern Eastern Christianity

Chair and Discussant: Russell Martin (Westminster College)

  • Mara Kozelsky, (University of South Alabama), “Archbishop Innokentii (Borisov) and Russian Moral Theology”
  • J. Eugene Clay (Arizona State University), “The Apocalyptic Prophecies of Maksim Gavrilovich Rudometkin”
  • Walter N. Sisto (University of St. Michael’s College), “Sophia and the Problem of Evil: A Theology of Moral, Demonic, and Natural Evil”
  • Lucien Frary (Rider University), “Russian Policy towards the Change of Dynasty in Greece, 1862-64”

4:00-6:00 PM:  Twentieth Century Reforms in Orthodoxy in Russia, Europe, and Eastern Europe

  • Chair and Discussant: Lucien Frary (Rider University)
  • Scott Kenworthy (Miami University of Ohio), “Monastic Reform and the Russian Church Council of 1917-1918”
  • Heather Bailey (University of Illinois at Springfield), “Orthodoxy in Paris and Russian Church Reform in the Nineteenth Century”
  • Nicolas Prevelakis (Lecturer, Harvard), “Neo-Orthodoxy as Religious Reform in 20th Century Greece”

SATURDAY, 3 OCTOBER 2009 

8:00 – 10:00 AM: Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Reform in the History of Eastern Christianity

  • Chair and discussant: John-Paul Himka, Ph.D. (University of Alberta: Department of History and Classics)
  • Joel Brady (University of Pittsburgh: Cooperative Doctoral Program in Religion), “Transnational Reforms: Greek Catholic Converts to Russian Orthodoxy in America and Eastern Europe, 1890-1914.”
  • Roland Clark (University of Pittsburgh: Department of History), “Dressing Fascism as Religious Reform: The Legion of the Archangel Michael in Romania.”
  • Andy Cole (University of Pittsburgh: Cooperative Doctoral Program in Religion), “Christ, Church, and Culture: Religious Education and Identity for Eastern Orthodox Children in America”

10:15-12:30: The Fundamentalist Movement in the Contemporary Russian Orthodox Church: From Heresy to Compromise

  • Chair and Discussant: Catherine Wanner (Penn State University)
  • Marat Shterin (Kings College London), “Facing the Armageddon: Contemporary Millenarian Movements within the Russian Orthodox Church”
  • Jeanne Kormina (St. Petersburg Branch of the Higher School of Economics), “Contesting the Sacred: Debates About Faith at the Grave of the Starets
  • Stella Rock (University of Sussex), “The Revival of the Cross Procession in Post-Soviet Russia: Renewing Orthodoxy or Promoting ‘Marginal Mindsets’?”
  • Katja Tolstaja (VU Institute for the Study of Religion, Culture and Society, Amsterdam), “From Orthodoxy to Obscurantism? Theological Frictions in the Contemporary Russian Orthodox Church”

1:30 – 3:30 PM Religious Issues in Contemporary Russia

  • Chair and Discussant: Eve Levin (University of Kansas)
  • Charles J. Halperin (Independent Scholar), “Would You Believe SAINT Ivan the Terrible? Reforming the Image of Tsar Ivan IV”
  • Page Herrlinger, (Bowdoin College), “An Unorthodox Approach: How the Followers of Brother Ioann Churikov Utilize the Web to Defend their Faith”
  • Martha Kelly (University of Missouri-Columbia), “Olga Sedakova and the Revision of Russian Orthodox Identity”

3:45-5:45 Conversations in Exile: Trans-Cultural Aspects of Twentieth-Century Russian Religious and Intellectual Life

  • Chair and discussant: Martha Kelly (University of Missouri, Columbia)
  • Matthew Miller (Northwestern College), “The Russian Student Christian Movement and the American YMCA:  St. Petersburg, Paris, and Beyond, 1900-1940”
  • Erich Lippman (Bethany College), “The Personalist Alternative from French and Russian Perspectives”
  • Chris Stroop (Stanford University), “Father Sergii’s Apocalypse: Tragic, Exilic, and Eschatological Motifs in Sergei Bulgakov’s Late Theological and Autobiographical Writings”