The Quarterly Journal of St. Philaret’s Institute

This series of interviews published in the SFI Journal is a foretaste of what will be heard at SFI’s annual conference focusing on issues of contemporary Orthodox ecclesiology. The conference “Church Unity and Divisions in the Church” will be the most recent in a series: “Between Eucharistic Ecclesiology and the Reality of Parish Life” (2017), “The Nature of the Church and Its Boundaries” (2018), “Ministry and Structure of the Church” (2019). On the one hand, the Eastern and Western churches continue to take steps, if not towards reunion, at least towards increased dialogue and the elimination of historically accrued stereotypes. On the other hand, a number of new challenges to church unity have appeared. In particular, there have been a number of recent events in the Orthodox world, such as the non-participation of several local churches in the Pan-Orthodox Council, the establishment of a new metropolis under the jurisdiction of Constantinople in Ukraine, and the debates around the status of the Archdiocese of Orthodox Parishes of Russian Tradition in Western Europe. In light of these tendencies, we ask Orthodox and Roman Catholic theologians to answer a number of questions about the nature of church unity and the prospectives for preserving visible unity between Christian churches in the contemporary world.