Dear Members and Friends of OTSA,
Last year at this time, OTSA in collaboration with the Orthodox Christian Studies Center (OCSC) at Fordham University initiated a special project on the Great and Holy Council with the aim of fostering dialogue and reflection on the draft documents released in advance of the council. Working groups of scholars were formed to engage the various topics the documents addressed and to write short papers that were then posted online on the Public Orthodoxy blog and in a print volume published by the Ecumenical Office of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in time for its distribution to the bishops and their delegations gathered on the island of Crete.
With the same aim of fostering dialogue and reflection on matters of vital importance in the life of the Church today, OTSA in partnership with the OCSC invites your participation now in a new initiative that will again entail collaborative reflection and writing on the part of working groups of theologians and scholars but within a somewhat different framework.
We ask that you consider engaging an issue of social, economic, and/or political significance that has risen to the surface of our common life in North America in recent years or months and that could be illuminated by principles and perspectives contained in the deep and ongoing tradition of Orthodoxy. Put another way, we ask you to consider forming or joining a working group to reflect and write on a contemporary issue where you believe core Orthodox convictions or commitments to be at stake. Your working group would endeavor to show in a manner accessible to a broad audience the relevance of Orthodox Christian thought to the issue in question.
Since the pairing of “faith” and “politics” often raises legitimate concerns about politicizing the faith, we wish to clarify from the outset that we do not see value in churning out politically charged papers that may well enlist scriptural, canonical, patristic, or conciliar resources but only toward a narrow ideological end — of whatever kind. Our hope is that the present initiative will spur a deeper sort of engagement with issues at the intersection of faith and public life, a sort of engagement that must entail forms of listening and silence more characteristic of prayer than of polemics. In fact, alongside working groups that might well engage particular issues (e.g., religious liberty, the refugee crisis, ecological challenges, the right to life, global trade, freedom of the press, etc.), we also envision groups that might look more broadly at “meta” issues such as the relationship between faith and politics in an Orthodox perspective, or how to take in news in an era of deep polarization without becoming fatigued and/or hardened in one’s views. Although we seek input from a broad spectrum of OTSA members and friends such that our initiative will not be reducible to any partisan politics, we also see little or no value in producing papers so scrupulously non-committal or “neutral” on all supposedly worldly matters (anything less exalted than the doctrine of the Trinity, say) as to render our Orthodox faith altogether apolitical — which is to say, ahistorical, even disincarnate. The aim is to allow what is enduringly true in the Orthodox Christian faith to be brought to bear on a range of contemporary issues of importance in the public sphere.
Like last year, we envision papers of not more than 1,000 words, jointly or individually authored — the fruit, in either case, of dialogue among working group members. Papers to be considered for online publication on the Public Orthodoxy site should be submitted by April 30. Earlier submissions might well be posted as they are received and approved.
If you would like to participate in this initiative, please send an email by February 27, 2017 to willtcohen@yahoo.com stating the issue or area on which you would like to focus. Also indicate whether (1) you are willing to join a working group of people who have expressed roughly similar interests, or (2) you already have others with whom you intend to form a working group, and in that case, the names and email addresses of these individuals.
You will receive a response, we hope by March 6, either approving your proposal or suggesting a slight reconfiguration whether of the precise topic or of working group members, in order to accommodate as far as possible all those interested and give the initiative sufficient overall coherence to be most fruitful.
Both OTSA and non-OTSA members are welcome to participate. If you know someone who may be interested but is not already an OTSA member, please forward this communication to him or her.
We are especially eager to have Orthodox episcopal participation in as many working groups as possible, and at whatever level they have time for (even if, for example, it is only to review and comment on a draft paper prepared by others in the group), so we encourage you to reach out in particular to hierarchs you know who you think may want to join in this collaborative effort.
If you do not foresee being able to participate, but would like to suggest an issue you hope to see addressed by others who are able, we welcome your ideas.
Finally, although dependent in part on the shape and scale of response to this invitation, we are open to lending OTSA’s support to possible mini-colloquia to be organized in the months ahead, in conjunction with one or another jurisdiction or diocese and focused on issues working groups will have addressed. While initiative for a given mini-colloquium would likely have to come from OTSA members other than the officers, we mention it here so you might keep the idea prayerfully in mind as the working group project unfolds.
With all best wishes, in Christ,
Will Cohen, President
Dn. Michael Azar, Vice President
Edith Humphrey, Secretary
Teva Regule, Treasurer