Online lecture

Rev. Dr. Cyril Hovorun

TOWARDS AN ORTHODOX POLITICAL THEOLOGY OF THE FUTURE

Monday, May 12, 2025, 7 pm Athens time

The next event of the “Time for action” series for 2025 will take place on Monday, May 12, 2025, at 7 pm Athens time (EEST). Rev. Dr. Cyril Hovorun, Professor of Ecclesiology, International Relations and Ecumenism at Sankt Ignatios College, University of Stockholm, and a Director of the Huffington Ecumenical Institute at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, will present the topic “Towards an Orthodox Political Theology of the Future.” The lecture will be in Greek, and it will be moderated by Dr Athanasios N. Papathanasiou, Associate Professor of Missiology, Intercultural Christian Witness and Dialogue at the Supreme Ecclesiastical Academy of Athens, and Editor in Chief of the journal “Synaxis”. The link for attending via the Zoom platform is https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83006119860

Although it is generally believed that political theology is a Western invention, in fact it has origins in the East, going back at least to the time of Eusebius of Caesarea. Leading Church Fathers, such as Saints Athanasius of Alexandria, Maximus the Confessor, and Photius of Constantinople, have contributed to political theological thought. When political theology began to flourish in the West in the 20 ^th century, the East treated it with reservation, but contemporary developments in the world and in ecumenical Orthodoxy encouraged theologians to engage with it at an ever-increasing place. Eventually, it is gradually recognized as a legitimate field of Orthodox theology. The lecture will examine some structures of political theology and explore how it can stay in tune with contemporary political and social realities.

Archimandrite Cyril Hovorun is a Professor of Ecclesiology, International Relations and Ecumenism at Sankt Ignatios College, University of Stockholm, and a Director of the Huffington Ecumenical Institute at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. A graduate of the Theological Academy in Kyiv and the University of Athens, he accomplished his doctoral studies at Durham University under the supervision of Fr Andrew Louth. He was a chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, first deputy chairman of the Educational Committee of the Russian Orthodox Church, and later a research fellow at Yale and Columbia Universities, and a visiting professor at the University of Münster in Germany. He is an international fellow at Chester Ronning Centre for the Study of Religion and Public Life at the University of Alberta in Canada, an invited professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, and guest professor at the Institute of Sino-Christian Studies in Hong Kong.