We are pleased to announce the launch of an international Reading Group on Eastern Christianity in Interfaith Contexts which will explore this diverse topic, including its interfaith contexts.
Eastern Christianity has always had a wide geographical spread, and today it is represented on all five continents. Its rich spiritual traditions are transmitted in many different languages and take on various forms, in some cases shaped by different cultural backgrounds.
One of the main aims of the Reading Group will be to explore, utilizing selected readings, aspects of the religious thought of Eastern Christianity, infused with mysticism and martyrdom, together with the variety of its ancient church traditions.
The Group will meet once a month via Zoom for an hour to discuss a specific theme related to Eastern Christianity. An invited speaker would introduce and read a short text circulated previously to those who had registered for that session. An open discussion will follow the presentation.
The Reading Group is open to anyone, and we invite you to register your initial interest below.
International Interfaith Advisory Board
Professor Sebastian Brock FBA, University of Oxford, UK
Professor Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Director of Program in Early Cultures; the Royce Family Professor of Teaching Excellence and the Willard Prescott and Annie McClelland Smith Professor of History and Religion, Brown University, USA
Dr Christine Mangala FrostđŻď¸ Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, University of Cambridge, UK
Professor Erin Galgay Walsh, Divinity School, University of Chicago, USA
Fr Dragos Herescu, Principal of Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, University of Cambridge, UK
Revd Dr. Robert Kitchen, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada
The Very Revd Archpriest Professor Andrew Louth FBA, Emeritus Professor of Patristic and Byzantine studies, Department of Theology and Religion, Durham University, UK
Professor Aristotle Papanikolaou, Archbishop Demetrios Chair in Orthodox Theology and Culture, Orthodox Christian Studies Centre, Fordham University, USA
Professor Theo Maarten van Lint, Calouste Gulbenkian Professor of Armenian Studies, University of Oxford, UK
Related Events
- Heavenly Hours: Creation and Time in the Syriac Testament of Adam
- The Monastic Homilies of Isaac of Antioch
- Christian Trees
- Dialogue and Fire in a Fragmentary Syriac Martyrdom Narrative
- The Origins of the First Anti-Jewish Good Friday Hymns
- Finding a Home: The West Syriac Context of the Clementine Epistles on Chastity
- Who was Mary, the Blessed Virgin and Mother of God? A Byzantine hagiographical narrative by the ninth-century Monk Epiphanios
- Nikos Kazantzakis and Orthodox Christianity
- The Miracle of Pilgrimage: A Coptic Journey to the Holy Land During the Ottoman Period
- Setting the Stage: The Rose of Performance in Studying Late Ancient Hymnody
- Ephrem the Syrian and a New Beginning in Syriac Poetry
- A Jew Reads the Gospels in Syriac: Azariah de Rossi’s Critique of the Vulgate (1577)
- The Manuscript Project at the Coptic Monastery of St Paul the Hermit at the Red Sea, Egypt
- Mary’s Ordeal: A Syriac Narrative Poem on Many and Joseph
- Resurrection of the Human Body according to John of Dara’s Mimro I:4
- Gregory of Nyssa: On the Human Image of God
- âConception by earâ and Redemption of the Human Sensorium in Ephrem’s Thirty-fifth Madrasha on the Church
- From Edessa to South Arabia and Back: The Syriac Story of Bishop Paul and Priest John and Models of Sanctity in the Medieval Middle East
- Wrestling with Calculating-Thoughts: Mental Training according to Evagrius of Pontus
- Returning the Ticket: God and Evil in the Brothers Karamazov
- Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras: an Orthodox Dialogue with Islam
- Matta el-Meskin/Matthew the Poor: a ‘Contemporary Desert Father’ on Christian Unity
- Signs of Miraculousness: The Inimitability of Jacob of Serughâs Teaching
- Epistolary Style in Coptic Letters from the Late Third Century to the Early Fifth Century
- Sarah and the Akedah: a Syriac Narrative Poem on Genesis 22
- The Paterik of the Kyivan Caves Monastery: Monk Polikarp in Discourse 14
- Jacob of Sarug on the Canaanite Woman (Mt 15:21-28, Mk 7:24-30): Biblical Storytelling and Models of Faith
- Commemorating the saints at Turfan: Mart Shir and Mar Barshabba
- The Opening Prayers of Saint Gregory of Narek’s Book of Lamentations
- Alexander Schmemann on Theotokos vis-à -vis Kali a Hindu Mother Goddess
- Enoch and the Fallen Angels in the Ethiopian Tradition
- Narsai on the Virgin Mary
- An Anonymous Syriac Dialogue between Mary and the Angel
- Dadisho of Qatar: Questioning the Desert Fathers
- George the Athonite on Matters of Faith and Rite, According to the Life of St George the Hagiorite
- Temple, Shekhinah and Prayer in Isaac of Nineveh’s III.VIII
- St. Ephrem’s Commentary on Genesis Ch.3
