International Conference

RESILIENCE: SPIRITUAL PRACTICES AND THEOLOGICAL INSIGHTS
IN DIFFERENT RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS

Prague, Czechia, May 29 - June 1, 2025

The four-day International Conference “Resilience: Spiritual Practices and Theological Insights in Different Religious Traditions” took place in Prague from May 29 to June 1, 2025. The Conference was organized by the European Regional Development Fund project “Beyond Security: Role of Conflict in Resilience-Building”, the Charles University Centre of Excellence “Theological Anthropology in an Intercultural Perspective” and the Faculties of Protestant, Catholic and Hussite Theology of the same University.

The Director of the Volos Academy of Theological Studies Dr. Pantelis Kalaitzidis presented a paper on “Resilient Striving for Peace and Unholiness of Killing in Orthodox Interpretation of War”. In his presentation, Pantelis Kalaitzidis referred to the problem of ethno-phyletism as the greatest problem of Orthodoxy since the fall of Byzantium, as the ethnocentric ecclesiology has replaced the ecclesial community with the ethno-cultural one. He emphasized that this trend has taken on unprecedented and uncontrolled dimensions with the aggressive theory of the “Russian world”. However, he stressed that there is also the opposite example among the Orthodox, with the efforts of enlightened hierarchs such as the Metropolitan of Mount Lebanon Georges Khodr, the late Serbian Patriarch Paul (1914-2009) and the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, who adopt a peace-loving stance of the Church beyond states, nations and conflicting camps, a stance that rejects violence and the blessing of war waged in the name of God.