The online round table on the topic “Ecclesiastical Authority and Academic Freedom in Orthodoxy” took successfully place on Wednesday, June 7, 2023. Contributors of the panel included Dr. Pantelis Kalaitzidis, Director of the Volos Academy of Theological Studies; Dr. Ionut Biliuta, Research Associate of Gh. Sincai Institute of Social Sciences, Romanian Academy of Sciences, Bucharest, Romania; Dr. Milan Vukomanović, Professor of Sociology of Religion at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Serbia; and Mrs. Inga Leonova, MA, Editor of “The Wheel” journal, Boston, USA. The discussion was moderated by Dr. Assaad Elias Kattan, Professor of Orthodox Theology, Münster University, Germany. The round table was kind of a sequel of a panel in the 2021 EuARe Meeting in Münster with a similar topic.

Speaking first, Inga Leonova highlighted the quick escalation of censorship in all the institutions related to the Russian Orthodox Church in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Many prominent bishops and academics were forced to abstain from public speech, and theology in Russia undertook the official task of supporting ideologically the war. Many academics kept their positions under the condition of complete public silence; while many others, especially of the more liberal institutes of social and economic universities, preferred to leave their country. On the other hand, Russian Church ideologues seem to be able only to declare the absolute primacy of the state-sponsored “Russian Traditional Values” without any logically coherent or comprehensible substantiation.

Milan Vukomanović spoke on the relation between the Academia and the Church in Serbia, which changed dramatically since 2019, when the Church started intervening in the Faculty of Theology, triggering a change of the law governing the Higher Education. With the new law, the Serbian Church, a non-university and non-state institution, has been allowed to legally supervise the enrollment of students, and the selection and dismissal of the state university teachers, and this fact clearly contradicts the Serbian Constitution. Academic freedom is subjugated to the Church authorities, even in matters which are out of the theological realm, as e.g. the scientific theory of Evolution.

Ionut Biliuta in his turn presented the situation in Romania, where there is still criticism for the lack of repentance from the Orthodox Church for its undercover collaboration with the Communist dictatorship. Bishops practice the cult of personality and act towards their priests and laity as infallible in all matters, from the church construction to sophisticated theological reasoning. No theological dialogue or ecumenical undertakings are possible without the agreement and mediation of the bishops and especially the Patriarchy. Although such a decision contradicts several constitutional and even the most elementary civil rights, the Holy Synod suggests an even more conservative and authoritarian behavior of the bishops over the theological system. Such a counterproductive attitude ensured the isolation of the Orthodox faculties in the university and the academic world. It also causes a slowly but surely failure into mediocracy of the theological education system at all levels.

Speaking last, Pantelis Kalaitzidis highlighted the rising of a wave of Orthodox neo-conservatism in Greece, characterized by the idolization of charismatic elders, the increasing clericalism and the enhancement of its institutional element of the Church, the questioning of the achievements of modernity and modern science etc. Theology is one of the main victims of this neo-conservative approach, which demands that the Christian truth is expressed univocally and exclusively by the elders or the institutional Church, in a uniform way that does not leave any room for unity in diversity. In fact serious theological reflection flourished mainly in secularized societies which favor pluralism (such as France, UK, and the US), and almost never in authoritarian traditional societies or in theocratic states. Though the problems in Greece are significantly less than those in Serbia, Romania or in Russia, it is clear that the Church in Greece has to approach the issue carefully and avoid the mistakes that took place in other countries, keeping in mind that “in many and various ways God spoke to our ancestors in faith” (Heb. 1: 1), and that the Gospel was preached and embodied in a diverse, pluralistic and ecumenical environment.

The video recording of the event is available at the YouTube channel of Volos Academy and the links are https://youtu.be/49KXWiaCJ3o (in English) and https://youtu.be/1R87Jpr5MBY (in Greek).

The last event of the series of online lectures “Time for Action” for this year will take place on Wednesday, June 21, 2023, at 7:00 p.m., in Athens, in hybrid form. It will be the round table on “Theology of Religions in Orthodox Christianity and Islam” with the participation of Dr. Athanasios Ν. Papathanasiou, Editor of the journal “Synaxi”, Associate Professor of the Supreme Ecclesiastical Academy of Athens and Dr. Nayla Tabbara, President of Adyan Foundation, Professor of Islamic Studies, Saint Joseph University, Beirut, Lebanon. The event will be moderated by Dr. Pantelis Kalaitzidis, Director of the Volos Academy.