Bridging the Ecclesial, the Academic, and the Political
“We will never allow anyone to build an empire inside the Ukrainian soul,” President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, on December 1, 2022, stated in reference to the need to ensure the spiritual independence of the country. He signed the decree with measures to counter religious organizations and figures affiliated with the aggressor state: the Russian…
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Four months ago, a UOC (Ukrainian Orthodox Church) Council in the Feofaniya monastery in Kyiv introduced fundamental changes into the Church’s statutes. That Council has already become a historic event—with possible implications for world Orthodoxy. But properly understanding the logic of its decisions means understanding what happened in the UOC after the Russian army’s full-scale…
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War changes many things, primarily people’s minds, but also the usual flow of time. What takes years or even decades in peacetime takes a few months, or sometimes even days, during war. On May 27, the Council of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), the highest governing body of the church, after much debate, expressed its…
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Hitler delivered his speech of September 12, 1938 to the German Reichstag a few weeks before the German tanks rolled over the German-Czech border to invade Czechoslovakia; Putin delivered his speech of February 21, 2022 to the Russian nation as he was giving orders for the Russian tanks to cross the Russian border with Eastern…
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by Angeliki Ziaka | български | Română | Русский | Српски A version of this essay was published in Greek at Polymeros kai Polytropos, the blog of the Volos Academy for Theological Studies. A Georgian translation of the Greek text is also available. When approaching the discourse on “Islam, Europe, and Democracy,” and laying aside apparent understandings and admissions, we are faced with…
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by Panagiotis G. Pavlos | ελληνικά Two hundred years have passed since the beginning of Greek Revolution of 1821, the first successful revolution, after numerous failed attempts throughout five centuries, against the Ottoman conqueror and tyrant. It is an event of universal significance that not only signifies the resuscitation of Hellenism from the lethal bonds…
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by Milan Vukomanović | български | Ελληνικά | Română | Русский | Српски When, in March 2020, Serbian Patriarch Irinej officially sanctioned Dr. Vukašin Milićević, a priest and assistant professor of the Faculty of Orthodox Theology (FOT) at the University of Belgrade, it became clear that the recent interference of higher clergy of the Serbian…
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by Ilijana Todorovic | ελληνικά | српски [This article assesses Montenegro’s controversial religion legislation approved by parliament in December, 2019.] The main subject of the Montenegrin law is ownership of religious property. Although every single article of the law has legal deficiencies, the most significant problems are presented in Articles 62 and 63. These two articles…
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An interview with Rodoljub Kubat | ελληνικά | српски After a critical statement about the situation with the coronavirus, Vukašin Milićević, lecturer at the Theological Faculty in Belgrade, was banned from speaking publicly by the Holy Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church. In this interview, his colleague Rodoljub Kubat sheds light on the background and…
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by Elena Romashko | ελληνικά | Română | српски The publication of this essay coincides with the anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, Saturday, April 26, 1986. In March 2020, we were asked to work from home because of the pandemic of coronavirus. We could not even imagine how quickly the situation would escalate to a…
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by Maria Alina Asavei April 8 is celebrated worldwide as the International Roma Day. Romani people both honour their culture across the world and commemorate the centuries of persecutions and mistreatment in light of present Romaphobia and persistent discrimination against the most vulnerable ethic group in Europe. On this occasion, the Archbishop Andrei of Cluj-Napoca…
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by Nicolai N. Petro | ру́сский On the eve of national elections in 2019, the President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, has set himself the ambitious task of dismantling the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, an autonomous and self-administered part of the Russian Orthodox Church, and creating a new, single national church out of the many Christian denominations…
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by Anna Briskina-Müller | ελληνικά | ру́сский “The Moscow University was founded on the same principles as all German universities” – so says a Russian report from the early 1770s. Because no Russian professors were available, “no theological faculty was established […] That said, it would be beneficial to establish such a faculty for the training of the…
Continue readingby Kristina Stoeckl On 23 November 2016, the European Union Parliament passed a resolution entitled EU strategic communication to counteract anti-EU propaganda by third parties. In one part of this resolution, the signatories deplore that the Russian Government is employing a wide range of tools and instruments, such as think tanks and special foundations (e.g….
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Public Orthodoxy is a publication of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center of Fordham University
