With faith in Christ and hope in the resurrection, we share the news of the repose of longtime friend and supporter of St Vladimir’s Seminary, Anthony “Lew” Scott (M.Div. ‘75), who fell asleep in the Lord on Monday, September 2, 2024. After a full life in the service of God and the Orthodox Church, he underwent an arduous struggle with dementia and deteriorated rapidly in the last several months. His passing was a peaceful one and he was attended to by family and friends.
The Seminary and the Board of Trustees send their sincere condolences to the Scott family and offer their prayers for the repose of Anthony Scott.
According to Theodore Bazil, Senior Advisor to the Office of Advancement, "Anthony Scott, the former Director of Advancement, played a significant role in leading and securing the most successful capital campaign in the Seminary's history. The campaign resulted in the construction of the John G. Rangos Building, major campus infrastructure improvements, construction of the Erickson and Hopko buildings, and new faculty housing. Through Anthony Scott's efforts, the campaign was additionally credited with advancing alumni relations, establishing programmatic initiatives, and assisted to recruit a new generation of professional, committed Orthodox lay leadership to the Board of Trustees.
Anthony Scott was a vibrant, articulate leader who brought great energy and passion to his position. The Seminary acknowledges his leadership, commitment, and achievements. St Vladimir's Seminary is deeply grateful for the work of Anthony Scott."
Aside from a life of service in the Church, Anthony was known for his love of family, nature, the arts, travel, and adventures. His family is grateful for his life and that he is now at peace. Anthony is survived by his daughters Stephanie Scott and Katherine Scott Dirkes (Stephen), and his son, Alex Scott.
Further information about the life of Anthony Scott will be posted as it becomes available.
Below is information for the funeral service, his burial, and donations.
Funeral Service and Reception
Friday, September 6, at 10 a.m., followed by a light reception
After graduating from St Vladimir’s Seminary, Fr Joshua Burnett (M.Div. '15) was sent to St George Antiochian Orthodox Cathedral in Wichita, Kansas, where he served as assistant priest for three years. He is now the proistamenos of Holy Cross Church (Antiochian Archdiocese), just south of Baltimore. He and his wife Khouria Meredith have ten children in their care.
Remembering the arrival at St Vladimir’s Seminary
My father had been diagnosed with brain cancer, and two months into our first semester at seminary, he died. About a week after he died, Hurricane Sandy hit… It was a turbulent first semester! But it was also formative. Fr John Behr was the dean at the time, and his whole understanding of suffering and death—the centrality of the Cross to our Orthodox faith—informed the way I began to speak about my father’s death. When I gave the eulogy at his funeral, it was the first time I had the sense of speaking as an Orthodox Christian from an Orthodox perspective.
After seminary, I was sent to St George Cathedral in Wichita, a very large parish, where they had a funeral every week. Serving so many funerals was cathartic. Every death had its own particularity and grief, but it also carried within it, for me, echoes of my father’s death. Serving funeral after funeral helped me become aware of my own grief, and the comfort offered by the Orthodox funeral service became a comfort that sunk into my bones week after week.
Memories of Seminary
Family! We came to SVOTS with three kids and thought, “I guess we’ll have to wait for three years to have another kid.” Then, we saw all the families on campus, learned that there were midwives in the area and that insurance pays for them, and decided, “This is the perfect place to have a baby,” so our son was born halfway through seminary.
My wife didn’t expect me to be gone as much as I was. We went traveling with the bishop quite a bit. That was more of a burden than we were expecting. And I had a lot of growth points related to the bishop. Before I came to seminary, I had gone to the cathedral in Pittsburgh when (then Father and now) Bishop John was there. He was very laid back. He made me a subdeacon and had me help in the altar. I was so green, I wouldn’t even kiss his hand when I handed him things! I’d hand him the censer as if to say, “Here you go.” I think he must have been chuckling a little to himself, but he never insisted I pay him special honors.
So, I got to seminary and it was mind-blowing to learn all the protocols. When my dad died I simply wrote an email to my bishop notifying him that I’d be gone for the funeral, and he wrote back—very kindly—but saying, “OK, but this is how you address a bishop. You don’t TELL him, you ASK him!” (laughter) There was this whole world of hierarchy and courtesy that I had never been exposed to in my days as an Evangelical Protestant, but at seminary I learned—quickly!
Another aspect of seminary that I remember was the community service assignment. My wife asked me to try to get assigned to prosphora-baking most semesters because that was something that she could help me with at home (or, in most cases, do entirely on her own!). Because she did my community service, I had a little extra time with the family, and she had an opportunity to join me in service. This pattern followed us into the parish after seminary.
Life after seminary
I was at St George Cathedral for three years and it was lovely. I wish everyone could be given an assistant position right after seminary. You learn really valuable things in seminary but they aren’t what you learn as an assistant in a parish. At St George, Bishop Basil was there (he’s also a SVOTS alumnus) and his regimen was very similar to the SVOTS chapel. “We don’t mess around, there is an order to things, you should not be moving or talking, this is the altar of God.” He taught me this. He was both serious but warm and hospitable at the same time.
What I gained from SVOTS
During those years in Wichita, I had a Lutheran friend who talked about his seminary experience, saying, “Seminary just gave me the tools to give a Bible study off the cuff or maybe even a sermon. That’s basically what I got from seminary.”
And I certainly got that from seminary too; I could walk into a Bible study mostly unprepared and still be able to give something because of my seminary training. I gained confidence, and things to say without having to look in a book because we’d read deeply and widely.
But I received more than just a few pat answers from St Vladimir’s Seminary. I received a good academic education, something I’ve appreciated more and more as the years have gone on. I learned how to interact both with the Fathers and with modern scholars. That was helpful in terms of trying to figure out how to walk this line between what the Academy knows and what we know from our experience as Orthodox Christians. At SVOTS, I received a “critical appropriation” of the Christian tradition. Yes, we learned that there are things we receive dogmatically without giving it a second thought. But we weren’t led to believe that the deposit of faith is simply an inanimate thing that people pass on from generation to generation without any kind of interaction with it. We bring questions from our experience of the world, and being honest about those questions is important. It guards us against becoming too abstract or too blindly ideological. For me, SVOTS was like a gymnasium. It trained me to grapple—in an embodied, personal way—with the truth of our faith.
What have been the joys and challenges of clergy life?
We became foster parents in Wichita and had several children placed with us; we ended up adopting the final two children placed with us. We were moving away from Wichita and had to decide whether to adopt or to send them back into the system. That decision required a lot of prayer and deliberation. Foster kids have experienced a lot of trauma, and that trauma often gets expressed in troubling ways. For instance, our now daughter would get up to the sink and wash her hands and leave the water running, and then say “Susie!” (Susie was a little younger than her.) “I left the water on for you, you can wash your hands!” But what she had done was leave just the hot water on, and it was scorching hot, and Susie would put her hands up under the water and scream! Our kids were pretty peaceable but suddenly, with the introduction of these foster kids, our house felt like a war zone. We struggled as parents, especially as we watched our kids struggle. When it came time to make the decision to adopt, we went around and asked our biological children, and one of them said, “You know, I think it’s going to be very hard, but it will provide us an opportunity to exercise self-control.”
I believe this child had absorbed some of the teaching that we had received in seminary: that it is through our suffering that we are united with Christ’s suffering, and that the suffering we would go through, with and for these kids, would be good for us and, of course, good for them too. We were opening up the possibility for God to transform them and us, and so we prayed and hoped for that possibility.
And God has provided. With the stability of a loving home, our adopted children went through a transformation, almost overnight. The girl who would turn on the hot water for her sister is now a compassionate and trusted caretaker of her younger siblings. And, of course, the rest of the family has changed as well. We are learning to trust in God’s providence and to put less stock in “reasonable” calculations. Our adoption has even been transformative for our parish on a number of levels. We have one family that became foster parents after we arrived and two other families are in the process of becoming licensed. People see it up close and it inspires them to take the same step, thank God.
Our big clergy family also changes people’s expectations. Parishioners recognize that I’m not as available as an empty nester priest would be. That changes how parishioners view themselves, their relationship with the priest, and with the rest of the church. In some ways—when it works well—people are more self-sufficient and interdependent on one another rather than dependent on the priest.
Challenges of many new inquirers and catechumens
We’ve always had catechumens, but it used to average between 6 –10 or so. Now we have 25 catechumens and I know of brother priests who are seeing 70, 100, and more! Our catechumenate is a formal program with classes, and it lasts a year. I describe it to them as like getting engaged.
There is another group of people though. We have a lot of inquirers who are just staying inquirers, who have been attending and learning for a while. So, altogether, almost 50 people are either catechumens or inquirers! In addition, almost every week we have visitors. Some of our visitors probably are seeing how crowded our parish is and so they go looking for something less crowded (laughter). As long as they end up in another Orthodox parish—thank God, I’m happy with that.
So yes, it is a challenge. Our parish identity is being challenged by how many new people there are here. Oftentimes I think that the old timers have felt like the outsiders and have felt displaced. I’m working on some things to help them with that.
Also, our parish tends to be on the conservative end of the political spectrum. That comes with some plusses and minuses. It would be great if people didn’t talk politics at all, but they do! And newcomers hear conversations during coffee hour and they think, “Oh—is that the kind of people who are here?” and they get worried. But usually, for most of the parishioners, regardless of their politics, their faith really is first. Yes, they care about politics and they are talking to others who have the same leanings during coffee hour, BUT when it comes down to it, are they going to avoid a fellow parishioner of a different persuasion politically? No.
Even if these differences between our parishioners have at times become really fractious on social media, at the end of the day the people involved have said, “Look—we need to come together here and put this aside and recognize that, first and foremost, we are brothers and sisters in Christ.” The few times there have been social media “fights,” in the end it has ended peaceably.
Dealing with social media
It’s usually on the topics on the fringe where people butt heads. One of these is how men understand women. We have a lot of young men coming into the Church and many of them are disenfranchised and/or feel disenfranchised, and they feel like they can’t make it in life. “I have a job but I can’t buy a house, can’t seem to find a girlfriend”; there’s a lot of discrepancy between the expectations they had growing up as opposed to the reality of their adult lives.
Then the reaction is, “Feminism has been ascendant for a while and now men are second-class citizens and I am angry about the place women occupy in the world.” But also, “I am going to learn how to be a player and date women serially.”
Often this is being brought into the Church and is something I’ve had to address very directly, in our catechism classes and general parish classes, like a class I did on marriage. I am talking about the dynamic between men and women, and making sure our parishioners are not OK with unhealthy attitudes. We try to understand where these attitudes are coming from, and we aren’t going to denigrate people. We will be compassionate but also express the Orthodox understanding of the relationship between men and women.
How do we rehabilitate these young men? In my parish what is working well is to get them involved in service. I have actively said, “We need the dishes washed, or, someone’s donating a couch, can you help move it? Our playground is a mud pit, let’s have a workday to dig everything out and put in mulch, can you help?” And the young men have stepped up in ways that have really touched my heart. They are serious about this and are asking, “What else can I do?” They’re going above and beyond, counting Sunday collections, visiting people who are homebound…it’s beautiful to see the ways they have found their place. Belonging through service has been transformational. By God’s grace, some of these young men who are learning and growing in the Faith will even eventually become priests. We sent one family to seminary last year and will do so again this year.
YONKERS, NY, Tuesday, August 20, 2024—At its meeting on August 9, 2024, the Board of Trustees at St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary (SVOTS) announced its decision to indefinitely pause the relocation of St Vladimir's Seminary, and pursue the needs of the Seminary for recruiting a new president, strengthening the Seminary’s finances, and creating a strategic vision and direction in fulfillment of its core mission.
The Seminary’s core mission remains to “train priests, lay leaders, and scholars to be active apologists of the Orthodox Christian Faith—focusing on academic rigor and spiritual formation within a residential Orthodox community.”
Over the course of the summer, SVOTS began proceedings for a comprehensive search for the next Seminary President, while also conducting an in-depth analysis of the Seminary’s organizational structure, budgetary gaps, and future growth needs.
The Board of Trustees commends Dr Ionuţ-Alexandru Tudorie, Interim President and CEO for his diligent work in leading St Vladimir’s Seminary during this time of transition, and assisting in the maintenance and development of the internal structure of the Seminary in order to prepare for the incoming class of students this fall. The Board of Trustees and Dr Tudorie, together, acknowledge that the near-term focus on the Seminary’s mission especially includes looking inward and refocusing the institution as Christ-centered, student-focused, and education-driven. Dr Tudorie remarks: “As we renew our focus on what St Vladimir’s Seminary needs most at this moment, we tune into the needs of our students here and now, beginning foremost with spiritual formation and academic excellence.”
ABOUT ST VLADIMIR’S ORTHODOX THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
Saint Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary (SVOTS) is a higher education institution that embraces the challenge of serving the Church and the needs of Orthodox Christians in the twenty-first century. SVOTS trains priests, lay leaders, and scholars to be active apologists of the Orthodox Christian Faith, focusing on academic rigor and spiritual formation within a residential Orthodox community. The Seminary is chartered by the University of the State of New York and accredited by the Commission on Accrediting of the Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada (ATS) to offer the following program degrees: Master of Divinity, Master of Arts, Master of Theology, and Doctor of Ministry. www.svots.edu
Over the summer alumni from St Vladimir’s Seminary (SVOTS) joined students and clergy from around the globe for Suprasl’s annual World Gathering of Orthodox Youth. The event was held June 30–July 8, 2024, at the Monastery of the Annunciation and the Suprasl Academy in northeastern Poland.
SVOTS graduates served as speakers and workshop leaders for the gathering’s ninety youth participants hailing from twenty-five countries. Alumni at the event included Archpriest Vladimir Misijuk ('91) from Poland; Archpriest Theodore Svane ('15) from Norway; and Archdeacon Joseph Matusiak ('06), former director of alumni and recruitment at SVOTS and who now serves in Poland. St Vladimir’s Seminary (SVS) Press author Dr Elizabeth Theokritoff, who penned Living in God’s Creation: Orthodox Perspectives on Ecology (2009), was also among the speakers.
Suprasl 2024 was organized with the blessing and support of His Beatitude Metropolitan Sawa of Warsaw and All Poland, in conjunction with OrthNet and the Fellowship of Orthodox Youth in Poland. Participants represented ten of the world’s autocephalous Orthodox Churches.
Read a full recap of the 2024 World Gathering of Orthodox Youth at OCA.org.
Suprasl’s forthcoming events include a student trip to Cappadocia in January, led by former SVOTS dean and professor Archpriest John Behr. Learn about more future Suprasl events on the organization’s website, suprasl.org.
Fr Vladimir Misijuk (right) and Archdeacon Joseph Matusiak (middle) serve the Proskomedia.
Fr Theodore Svane and Simon from Norway singing during the cultural evening.
Photos and information for this article were adapted from Suprasl.org and OCA.org.
On May 18, 2024, The Rev. Dr Renish Geevarghese Abraham did something remarkable: he graduated from St Vladimir’s Seminary (SVOTS) after three years of study with both a Master of Divinity (M.Div.) and a Master of Theology (Th.M.) degree. Typically, obtaining both degrees would take a seminarian a minimum of four years—three for the M.Div. and one for the Th.M.
As if that feat weren’t impressive enough by itself, Fr Geevarghese graduated with the class of 2024 with a number of honors, as class valedictorian with the designation summa cum laude, a commendation for thesis, and a commendation for service to the community. And during his three years of study he completed an optional thesis for his M.Div. degree on top of the required thesis for the Th.M.: Christ and Kenosis in Select Novels of Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Holy Land as Inner Spiritual Landscape: The Journey of St Gregorios of Parumala to Jerusalem, respectively. Any SVOTS graduate could tell you that completing two theses over that span of time, in addition to the other degree requirements and chapel life, would be a monumental task.
Fr Geevarghese, a priest of the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church (MOSC), has since returned to his native country of India to serve in the MOSC’s Diocese of Delhi and to resume his post as professor of English at St Stephen's College in Delhi. But before departing, he was gracious in sharing a bit about his life and experience at St Vladimir’s Seminary.
Tell us about yourself, Father, and what you were up to before enrolling at SVOTS.
I am from Kerala, the southernmost state of India. I belong to the Diocese of Delhi of the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church. My secular education includes an M.A. in English (University of Delhi) and Ph.D. in English (University of Delhi). I have been teaching at the Department of English, St Stephen's College, Delhi, India, since 2012. I was the bursar of the college and a member of the Governing Body from 2016 to 2021. I then went on sabbatical to pursue theological studies at SVOTS.
From my youth, I was inclined towards monasticism. I realized my vocation to monasticism and priesthood in 2020. I was ordained a reader in 2021, deacon in 2022, and priest in 2023. I have been appointed the vicar of St George Orthodox Church, Jalandhar, Punjab, and St Mary's Orthodox Church, Bikaner, Rajasthan (effective from Aug 11, 2024).
How did you decide to come to St Vladimir's Seminary?
It was my decision to pursue theological studies from an Orthodox seminary abroad. I could not think of any institution other than St Vladimir’s, as it is the most premier Orthodox seminary, committed to academic excellence and spiritual formation. My metropolitan, His Grace Dr Youhanon Mar Demetrios, was also instrumental in this decision.
Fr Geevarghese’s bishop, His Grace Dr Youhanon Mar Demetrios (center), at the Malankara chapel on campus with Fr Chad and other Malankara seminarians.
What made you want to complete both M.Div. and Th.M. programs?
Initially, my plan was to complete the M.Div. and return to India. However, by the end of my second year I had approximately sixty-three [of the seventy-two required] credits and was done with my M.Div. thesis. On the advice of [faculty member] Rev. Dr Varghese Daniel, and with the support of Dr Tudorie and the Faculty Council, I was allowed to simultaneously pursue the Th.M. and complete the M.Div.
Describe your experience in the M.Div. program. How has the program here augmented your already extensive education?
The M.Div. is the foundational degree in theology for those who are in the ordination track. The courses at SVOTS are carefully chosen to give a foundation in biblical languages, Scripture, church history, and pastoral theology. Through my secular education especially in English literature, I had a good understanding of the history and theology of the Western Church. My training at SVOTS helped me understand the relationship between Eastern and Oriental Orthodoxy.
How did the M.Div. program help prepare you for your ordination to the priesthood?
The program helped me grow up both academically and spiritually. St Vladimir's provided all necessary support and encouragement in this regard.
What has your role been here in the Malankara student community?
For the Malankara students, I feel that I have been a friend, mentor, and constant companion. In the final year especially, my role as the Malankara sacristan helped the community come together academically and spiritually. We found time to engage in theological debates, and understand our ecumenical relations with other churches in a better light. By the grace of God, I could find time for everyone whenever they had something to share with me. Moreover, I have wonderful memories to carry back. I appreciate the support and guidance St Vladimir’s Seminary extends to the Malankara seminarians.
May God grant Priest Geevarghese many years of fruitful ministry!
The Institute of Sacred Arts (ISA) at St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary (SVOTS) explores the intersection of human creativity and holiness. Here, Institute Director Dr Peter C. Bouteneff reflects on the activities of the ISA over the past year and his own fruitful sabbatical.
Please join me in reflecting on a beautiful year of cultivation and germination for our Institute, and in looking ahead to some exciting events.
In June of 2023 we held our annualSummer Music Institute that brought several noted contemporary composers of Orthodox choral music to our campus: Mother Katherine Weston, Benedict Sheehan, Dawn Helene, and others. Under the leadership of Dn Harrison Russin and Talia Sheehan, the Summer Institute was a place where we could sing their music, engage them in deep conversation, and participate in workshops for conductors, composers, and singers.
Participants at the 2023 Summer Music Institute
I was on sabbatical for both semesters of this past academic year and spent several months out of the country—first in Cambridge, UK on a sabbatical fellowship, and later in the Estonian forest, next to the Arvo Pärt Centre where I was scholar in residence.
While working and writing overseas on a theological book project, I recorded several episodes of our podcastLuminous: Conversations on Sacred Arts. I spoke with poets (a number of them!), artists, composers, scholars—look for our forthcoming episode with Kim Haines-Eitzen, who makes recordings of the desert and reflects on the impact of sound on monasticism.
Dr Peter Bouteneff gives a lecture at the Arvo Pärt Center in Laulasmaa, Estonia, on the topic "The Brink of Despair and the Cup of Tea: St Sophrony and the Polarities of the Spiritual Life," on April 13, 2024.
The Institute took a great step forward in bringing Alexander Lingas on as its associate director. Apart from being a leading scholar of Byzantine music and musicology, Dr Lingas is founding artistic director of the world-renowned choral ensembleCappella Romana, who are moving from strength to strength with their performances, recordings, and publications. Cappella Romana has just received an NEH grant related to their work in presenting the Canon of Racial Reconciliation and other projects bringing together Orthodox and Black Gospel musical worlds.
This past year Dr Lingas helped our Institute to securea grant from the Calvin Institute that funded a colloquium in March. Music directors of Orthodox seminaries from around the world gathered on the SVOTS campus to share their experience, wisdom, and resources, to “undertake an inventory of existing chapel musical repertories.” There is more to come on this project!
Dr Alexander Lingas delivers a presentation at St Vladimir’s Seminary during his tenure as the ISA’s Artist in Residence.
Last February the Institute was involved in producing a concert at the massive Church of St Ignatius Loyola on Park Ave in New York: the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir performed a stirring program called Pärt / Palestrina, that brought together these two composers separated by five hundred years.
Later that month we hosted an exclusive tour of theAfrica and Byzantium exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. On a day that the museum was closed to the public, we brought twenty friends of the Institute to that once-in-a-lifetime exhibit. Our own student Jaime Rall—who had interned at the Met Museum all year and was involved in the work behind the scenes—led the tour.
Seminarian Jaime Rall (M.A. ‘25, concentration in Sacred Arts) guides the tour group at the Africa & Byzantium exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art February 28, 2024.
In sadder news, on January 18 we lost a very dear friend and colleague, Fr Ivan Moody. A world-renowned composer, conductor, and musicologist, Fr Ivan brought his musical sense, scholarly acumen, and infectious enthusiasm to everything he did. He accompanied the work of our institute from its inaugural conference in 2016. I have recorded conversations with him onvideo and on ourLuminous podcast, which also produced aspecial commemorative episode featuring guests Dr Alexander Lingas, Tallis Scholars director Peter Phillips, Ivana Medic, and other scholars who worked closely with Fr Ivan. Dr Lingas also directed the seminary’s chorale in a special concert, in February, of Fr Ivan’s music at Saint Anthony Orthodox Church in Bergenfield, NJ. Memory Eternal!
This June I gave a lecture in Fribourg, Switzerland on “The Empathic Power of the Arts in Society,” where I talked about how the arts don’t just speak to us: at their best, they listen and reflect our lives back to us, and that’s often when people speak of them as “spiritual.” That talk built upon my paper at last year’s conference on Music and Spiritual Realities, at the University of St Andrew, now published as part of a fascinating book.
This coming academic year our invaluable colleague Dr. Rossitza Schroeder will be offering her Introduction to the Sacred Arts course in the autumn, and in the spring semester she will lead a course (co-taught by me and Dr Lingas) on Creation in the Arts of the Orthodox Church. Dr Schroeder has a number of essays in the pipeline for publication, including one entitled “Looking with the Eyes of Faith in the Byzantine Church,” which will appear in the Cambridge Companion to the Byzantine Church.
Iconographer George Kordis assists a student at his icon painting workshop on campus.
Speaking of publications:Byzantine Materiality, an exciting and ground-breaking new volume produced by our Institute and published by DeGruyter, has just appeared, edited by Evan Freeman and Roland Bettancourt. Additionally, soon to appear with St Vladimir’s Seminary (SVS) Press is a volume entitled Rethinking Sacred Arts, edited by myself and the Harvard University Armenian specialist Christina Maranci. There are other exciting book publications from our Institute in the pipeline this coming year.
In closing, you may have heard that Fr Chad Hatfield has retired as president of St Vladimir’s Seminary. Fr Chad has been a consistent and unstinting supporter of the Institute of Sacred Arts. There was no suggested project, no matter how far-fetched it may have sounded, that he didn’t support. I recall how, when former SVOTS faculty member Nicholas Reeves and I approached him with the idea of bringing Arvo Pärt and the Estonian orchestra and choir to Carnegie Hall, he said “Absolutely!” Not only that, but within a matter of weeks, he got on a plane with us to Estonia to meet with the composer and begin laying plans. We’re grateful for your support, Fr Chad—you’ve helped us to do many beautiful things.
Through the educational programs, publications, and events we sponsor, through the conversations that we foster, the Institute of Sacred Arts plays a significant role in the Church and society. On behalf of my colleagues, I thank you for your prayers and support!
Please be in touch if you have questions, encouragement, and ideas. You may email us any time atsacredarts@svots.edu.
His icon-painting school, Writing the Light, offered several days of workshops on campus, from June 16–20. Twenty-eight students participated in the workshops. Kordis’ stay at the seminary culminated in a public conversation with ISA Director Dr Peter Bouteneff on the role of the sacred arts in church and society. (Hear that discussion in its entirety through ISA’s Luminous Podcast.)
“Tradition is creativity. In tradition you receive something, you enrich it with yourself, and you give it to another person. So it’s a dynamic process,” Kordis explained during the conversation. “In the meantime, it is you who enriches what you receive. If you don’t do that, then you don’t continue tradition: you interrupt it.”
Kordis also described the proper mindset of the sacred artist in this dynamic process.
“In Greek, the artist/creator is demiourgos. And this word means someone who is serving community. So, when we say ‘creativity’ we should think of the ability of someone to serve community better and better. To be more ecclesial. That’s real creativity! Not the invention of new individual things.”
“Our association with George Kordis adds immeasurably to the life of our Institute,” said Bouteneff. “His mastery of painting and his artistic sensibilities are matched by his uncanny ability to speak theologically about the arts.”
Eminent iconographer George Kordis has the rare distinction for a practicing artist of a complete academic training in theology, with advanced theological degrees from Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Boston and the University of Athens, where he was assistant professor in iconography (theory and practice). His training as a painter preceded and motivated his move into theology: During the 1980s he worked with the Cypriot master iconographer, Fr. Symeon Symeou, and also studied painting at The School of Fine Arts at The Museum of Boston from 1987–89; and even while obtaining his doctorate (Athens) in 1991 he continued his studies in painting and engraving under Fotis Mastichiadis. Dr. Kordis has been a visiting professor teaching icon painting courses at Yale University, the University of South Carolina, the University of Bucharest/Department of Orthodox Theology, and Ukraine Pedagogical University, Odessa, while continuing to create major church programs of iconography—including several in the US (see Holy Trinity in Columbia, SC and, recently, Holy Trinity in Pittsburgh and panel icons, which have been seen in numerous prominent exhibitions at Yale University and elsewhere). Kordis is also a prolific author with wide-ranging interests: theory and practice of Orthodox iconography, Fayum mummy portraits, Theophan the Cretan, Andrei Rublev, Fotis Kontoglou, Greek folk art, and many other topics.
