News from the Profession

JONATHAN SUTTON

Conference Report: Orthodox Christianity and ContemporaryEurope, an International Conference convened at the University ofLeeds, England, from 25 to 28 June 2001.

This conference was the fruit of a joint initiative by three institutionsactive in the analysis of religious life in post-Soviet Russia and alsoCentral Europe: the Universities of Leeds, Nijmegen and Utrecht.Each fosters an inter-disciplinary approach to the cluster of complexproblems touching on religion in the European states emerging fromCommunist rule. The conference was conceived as an opportunityto examine the Orthodox tradition in its contemporary Europeansetting, its capacity for affirming and/or shaping values in present-day Europe, its political underpinnings, and its readiness – or lackof readiness – to engage in dialogue with other faith traditions.

The ‘call for papers’ attracted a pleasingly broad range ofpaper proposals on topical issues such as nationalism, globalization,human rights, and ecumenical dialogue, as well as proposals onspecific countries with an Orthodox tradition including: Armenia,Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine. Participation inthe conference was not confined solely to academics and clergy; astoo often happens, though, interest from the press and media wasvery slight indeed, which may itself be a measure of how secular-minded journalists tend to be. However, the conference was fullyreported by the BBC’s Russian Service, on whose behalf Dr OlgaSmirnova obtained interviews with many participants, including alengthy interview with Dr Hilarion Alfeyev on the Moscow Patri-archate’s analysis of the current state of Orthodoxy, and with DrEleonora Sablina, of Chiba University, Japan, who had travelledfurther than any other participant to be in Leeds. One especiallywelcome feature of the conference was the active interest andinvolvement of a rising generation of well-informed students, youngpostgraduate and postdoctoral researchers, including Dr Kaisamari

Studies in East European Thought 54: 219–221, 2002.© 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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Hintikka from Helsinki (working on Romania), Reverend RichardBryant from North Carolina (working on Armenia), Leeds-basedPeter Petkov, originally from Sofia (working on legislation on reli-gion in the traditionally Orthodox countries of the Balkans), andChristopher Selbach, based in Tübingen and concerned with religionin post-Soviet Russia.

The conference progamme included four keynote addresses andforty non-plenary papers spread over three days. Representing theRussian Orthodox community in Britain, the Right Reverend BasilOsborne, Bishop of Sergievo, gave the Opening Address. He setOrthodoxy in the context of a sustained tradition of reflectionabout values in Europe, which included several noteworthy thinkersnormally regarded as ‘secular’ rather than ‘religious’. A noteworthyfeature of the conference was the high level of Roman Catholicparticipation, with a keynote paper by His Eminence CardinalEdward Idris Cassidy who, for eleven years (from 1990 to 2001)served as President of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion ofChristian Unity. Cardinal Cassidy affirmed that, quite apart from thevarious complexities of ecumenical dialogue in the decades sinceVatican II, the Churches of the East and West all need to takevery seriously the problem of globalization. He cited words spokenby His Holiness Pope John Paul II in April 2001 regarding theincreasing, now near-worldwide dominance of the market economy,“a kind of victory of the market and its logic,” which is experi-enced by many, especially the marginalized, as an ‘imposition’ anda new form of colonialism. In the face of globalization the value ofdistinct and different human cultures needs to be affirmed, as does“the inalienable value of the human person.” It is these two prin-ciples, taken together, which underpin an ethical, and fundamentallyChristian, evaluation of globalization as a phenomenon in our realworld. This accords entirely with notions of the ‘person’ and of‘personal dignity’ enshrined in many of Europe’s social and politicalinstitutions, current welfare policies, legislation, and so forth.

In his keynote address Dr Hilarion Alfeyev, representing theMoscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, focusedparticular attention on his Church’s Social Doctrine, formulatedduring its August 2000 Council of Bishops. He expressed thehope that other Orthodox Churches would, in time, formulate

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a Social Doctrine of their own and thus contribute further toserious and sustained theological reflection in this area. Thecontent and implications of the Russian Orthodox Church’s SocialDoctrine were considered in two other papers, those by AlexanderAgadjanian (Department of Religious Studies, Arizona StateUniversity) and Philip Walters, Director of Research at Keston Insti-tute, Oxford. The final keynote paper was delivered by the religiousphilosopher and author Professor Kalin Yanakiev, who lecturesat the St Kliment Okhridski University, Sofia. In the presence ofMs. Aglika Markova, the Bulgarian Cultural Attaché in Britain,Professor Yanakiev delivered a paper which could be described ascharacteristically ‘Orthodox’ in its sustained focus upon the innerworld of the individual believer. Professor Yanakiev’s paper servedto remind those present that discussion of present-day Europe asa ‘space’ for inter-religious dialogue and co-existence would besorely deficient if it omitted to hold at its centre recognition of the‘inner space’ where individual believers draw on, and nourish them-selves by, their tradition. As it proved, his paper served as a verygood ‘bridge’ between other papers and the final plenary discussion,during which a large amount of time and attention was given to thenature of tradition as such.

It is hoped – and even intended – that recent work undertakenin Leeds, Nijmegen, and Utrecht might complement the valuablework being done at established research centres in the field such asKeston Institute, Oxford, and Glaube in der Zweite Welt in Zürich.This research already feeds into postgraduate and undergraduateteaching programmes at all three universities. (In the academic year2000–2001 Leeds’s undergraduate lecture and seminar course on‘The Encounter between Orthodox Christianity and Islam’ attractedthirteen students, as compared with four students in the previousyear.) At Leeds, Utrecht, and Nijmegen the historical dimensionalso is very well covered: Leeds is the base of the historian ProfessorSimon Dixon, specialist in church-state relations in imperial Russia,while Utrecht and Nijmegen are the base of historian Professor Wilvan den Bercken, author of Holy Russia and Christian Europe (1999in the English translation) and co-organiser of this conference.

University of Leeds, UK