Joyfully Pursuing the Gospel: Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Dr. John Barnet

Dr. John Barnet is Associate Professor of New Testament at St. Vladimir’s Seminary, where he teaches courses in New Testament and biblical Greek—but the details of his life almost read like something out of a spy novel. His path to the Seminary took him from Italy to the United States, from the West to the East Coast, from a Navy submarine to the CIA, from St. Vladimir’s Seminary to Duke University, and back again to St. Vladimir’s. It should come as no surprise, then, that someone with his impressive range of experiences and expertise has contributed to the mission of St. Vladimir’s Seminary in numerous ways over the years, both in and outside of the classroom. Yet you wouldn’t know it by his always-joyful, humble demeanor. In fact—as any of his students or seminary colleagues could attest to—he rarely if ever speaks about himself or his life (maybe he is a spy after all…). But mention the Gospel in passing in any setting, and you’re in for a lengthy, impassioned conversation. 

St. Vladimir’s Seminary is once again drawing upon Professor Barnet’s love of the Gospel and his diverse skillset as he takes up his appointment as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. The appointment gave us an opportunity to chat with him about his work and his blessed, fruitful history with the Seminary.

Dr. Barnet, you have seen and been a part of so much at St. Vladimir’s Seminary. But I can’t recall ever hearing much about your history with this place. What first brought you here as a seminarian?

Well, there are some classified stories in there, but I guess I’ll have to tell you about it [smiles]. 

I was born of a Roman Catholic father and an Orthodox mother, and they were actually married by Fr. Georges Florovsky! They were married at Holy Virgin Protection Orthodox Cathedral in Manhattan. I grew up with the photos of the wedding and everything, and it wasn't until much later that I recognized the priest in that picture. My father was at West Point, and he was president of the Russian club at the Military Academy. There was absolutely no reason for him to be president of the Russian club, except that when he was in high school he loved reading the Russian novelists and learned the language. Through that club, someone arranged a blind date with this Russian woman, my mother. For my grandfather, who fought in [General Pyotr] Wrangel’s army during the Russian Civil War and had to leave through Constantinople when the White Army was defeated, it couldn’t get any better than his daughter marrying a graduate of West Point, the preeminent Military Academy! When my parents got married, the Orthodox were absolutely delighted, and the Catholics were absolutely delighted, but the Orthodox played hardball and said, “This is great. We would love to have this man married in the Church. But the kids are going to be Orthodox.” My father was stationed in Trieste, Italy, and so right after they got married they went there, and I was born. 

We returned to the States not long after my birth, though. I always say, “I’m Italian. I know pasta,” but then my wife will say, “You only lived there until you were ten days old!” We moved to Monterey, California, where my father was then prepared to be an intelligence officer following the Soviet Union. We moved around a lot, which probably contributed to my being kind of restless about things.

There was a formative time when I was in the third and fourth grade. We were living with my very Roman Catholic grandparents. I think my grandfather managed to cut a deal with God, because my grandmother had been very ill. He said that if she was healed, then he would go to church every day. And she was healed, so every day after that he would go to the daily Mass on the way to work. When I spent my summers there later, when I was in high school, the routine was get up and no breakfast, because we had to go to Mass. But when I was in third and fourth grade, we used to have to come to class and recite prayers that we were memorizing. When I got up and crossed myself, as the Orthodox kid, a nun scolded me for crossing myself incorrectly. I tried a second time, and she said, “No,” again—I hadn’t even gotten to the prayer yet! The third time I crossed myself the “right” way. Of course, I went home and discussed that with my mom. She talked to the rector, and the rector had a conversation with the nun, so it was all good in the end. But I ended up being very involved, knowing the Latin responses at Mass, and learning a lot of stuff. My friends and I started playing pretend Mass before one of the parents found out and shut us down. Then we had to take the operation underground [laughs]. So those years were pretty formative for me.

As you can imagine, with that experience, but also growing up Russian, with Russian as my first language, going to the Orthodox Church but having no idea what was going on, there I was trying to figure things out. There’s a part of me that wishes I had studied philosophy as an undergraduate, but I went on to do economics. I went from college to the Navy for four years as a supply officer on a submarine. I went and got an M.A. in Russian Literature at Michigan, then went to work at CIA. During that time, I met Bishop Basil (Rodzianko), a Serbian bishop who had been imprisoned. He was also doing a ministry into Russia, the Soviet Union at the time. I also got to know some of the monks at New Skete Monastery. This was my moment of meeting with remarkable men. At that point, I decided I was going to leave CIA after four years and just do something else. I wanted immersion in a deeply religious culture. At the last minute, I heard about a presentation from [St. Vladimir’s Seminary alumna and longtime librarian] Eleana Silk, who was from the parish in Washington D.C. where I was at the time. She presented her M.Div. thesis to the parish. I said, “Oh, you were at St. Vladimir’s Seminary? I know Fr. Alexander Schmemann’s For the Life of the World! You mean you can go to seminary and not have to be a priest?” So immediately, my direction shifted. I submitted an application in the middle of summer and came that August, in 1986.

 

Fr. Paul Tarazi was my teacher in the first class of my first day as a seminarian. I was like, wow, he’s making sense for me. My second semester, Fr. Tom Hopko came back from sabbatical. He asked me how old I was. I said, “thirty-three,” and he said—memorable moment—“The age to be crucified!” 

I didn’t feel particularly called to priestly ministry, but had encouragement to continue my studies from Professor Veselin Kesich, Fr. John Breck, and Fr. Paul Tarazi, in particular. And so I did in Scripture, New Testament, after I graduated from the Seminary in 1989.

What brought you back to the Seminary a few years later?

I had just finished my doctoral exams and I got a call from Fr. Tom, who had by then become the dean. He needed a teaching assistant for the dogmatic sequence. So I became his TA for the dogmatic sequence in the first year, then for a course he did on Russian literature, and I was TA for the pastoral theology sequence. 

 

Fr. Tom was, of course, a hugely popular speaker and was traveling a lot. What’s the best travel day when you’re giving a retreat on Saturday? It’s Friday. What’s the best departure time? Probably Friday morning, exactly when the PT class I was TA for was scheduled. So, my gosh, I ended up having to prepare the lectures for about half the classes one year!

While I was here, I met my wife, Laura. She was completing her M.A. in liturgical music at the Seminary at the time. She graduated in ’95 and we were married in ’96. She then became the choir director at Holy Resurrection in Wayne, NJ for fifteen years. Our first son was born in 2000, our second in 2002.

 

After I had finished assisting Fr. Tom and Fr. John Erickson became the dean, I approached Dave Drillock and Ted Bazil and said, “Do you need me to do anything? I used to be a supply officer on a submarine …” The jobs I had after that were varied. They really needed someone to help Glen Mules, an extraordinarily talented guy who was a member of the board at one time, did all the wiring for the campus, website work—my gosh—everything. So some of my work also involved tech. Eventually Fr. John Erickson asked me to be his “special projects guy.”  I later got involved in grant proposals and the 2003 Self-Study [related to ATS accreditation]. When Fr. John Behr became Dean and Fr. Chad Hatfield became Chancellor in 2007, Fr. John asked me to be his associate dean. I was Associate Dean for Academic Affairs for ten years.

 

So now is the second time you’re serving as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs!

Yes, it is really interesting to come back and see some of the things I helped put in place and think, “Who the heck came up with this?”

I look at things now, with the needs of the Seminary having evolved and in different times, and say, “This is complicated.” One of the things I want to do is to try approaching things saying, “Can you keep everything pretty simple?” In the Navy we used to say, “Does it pass the drop test?” If you hold it from here, drop it, and it doesn’t break, it passes the drop test. If it breaks, it’s too complicated. So my approach is, can it be simple? And I’m seeing that already with the way [Dean] Dr. Tudorie has approached things. And that is encouraging.

I had no intention of doing anything other than teach moving forward, but I kept getting called in to do some things here and there over the past year. Because of all the good things I’ve seen Dr. Tudorie do, I said to myself that if he wants me to do something extra I’ll do it.

So we are preparing for the next Self-Study, and are also building a system of conducting ongoing evaluations of the Seminary’s programs. That will allow us to assess the strengths and weaknesses of things like, for example, our parish ministry and clinical pastoral education (CPE) for our seminarians. Those programs in particular are immensely important, because they challenge us to ask whether we actually take seriously our charge to love our neighbor. All our academic programs here should remind us that we serve the other. If you understand this, you’ll certainly get an A on my midterm!

 

Assembling the right team who can determine what the challenges are and how to address them—knowing that we don’t have unlimited resources—is always a challenge. Here at the Seminary we still bear in mind the image of the babushka who sends in $10 every month to support the school and the seminarians. We are caretakers of that trust. But while we can’t be extravagant, we also want to make sure that when people leave mother, father, brother, sister, career, and bring their family to the Seminary that we are taking care of them. And there is a real renewal happening with the commitment to keep the Seminary here in Yonkers—about investing in the campus and improving how we approach everything for the sake of the families and mission entrusted to us by the Church. So I’m very excited about being able to introduce these improvements, in keeping with our ongoing commitment to the residential model of Seminary formation and education.

There always seems to be so much on your plate—what do you and the family do when you do have downtime?

One of our sons is in grad school, and the other is working in the private sector, specializing in building decarbonization and battery storage. Laura is no longer directing choirs, but she’s teaching, and she has a full load teaching in two music schools. She teaches violin and early childhood music. 

Laura and I recently went to Saratoga Springs, and we knew the places you could go with a dog and so on. Then we went to Manchester, Vermont, which is not far from New Skete Monastery. My sister's up there with her husband, so we spent some time there as well, so that was one of the relaxing things. 

Do you share her love of music?

Yes, I do! In my family growing up everyone did piano. 

Do you still play?

I don’t—I mean, I’ll sit down and play the first part of the Moonlight Sonata. But you know, it’s a percussion instrument. And although beautiful music is clearly made and everything, it's not the violin. The violin is as close as you get to reproducing the human voice. So anyway, yes, I'm in love with my wife and the violin.

One of the things I’ve always appreciated about you is that you are always joyful and excited to talk about your craft and teaching. How do you maintain that joy and passion?

Well, thank you for saying that. I think it has to do with coming to the Seminary at “the age to be crucified,” because I had a question: Why am I an Orthodox Christian? I still remember liturgies at St. Nicholas, the cathedral in Washington, where my younger brother used to lock his knees. And when it's warm and there’s a lot of incense, and you're standing and you lock your knees, the blood doesn’t flow, and I would have to then go sit with him in the car until he recovered. So, I mean, I had no idea what was going on then, you know, but it made an impression on me, and I wanted to understand. And so I came to seminary to understand why I was an Orthodox Christian. I came to understand the answer to that question was the Gospel, and that led to the question “What is the Gospel?” And that main question leads to other questions. For example, this year, I redid the syllabus for the New Testament, the Gospel course. I revisited a quote from Fr. Alexander Schmemann that I've been using before, but I played with it a little bit. He says, the genuine sermon is not about your erudition. It's not about, you know, whatever. It's the Gospel itself. It's the preaching of the Gospel itself. And that's a big deal for me, because I grew up without hearing that. I grew up hearing a paraphrase of what was just read. So I try to get it right, and try to figure out how to also persuade others that it’s important. To have a chance to continue to work on that—man, it doesn’t get any better than that.