Conference in Kostroma on “Communitarian and Sobornal Principles in Societal and Church Organizations in Russia”
At the Theological Seminary in Kostroma, on the 27–28 of May, 2024, an international conference on “Communitarian and Sobornal Principles in Societal and Church Organizations in Russia” took place, with the blessing of his Eminence Metropolitan Therapont of Kostroma and Nerekhta.
At the opening of the conference, the Kostroma Theological Seminary and St. Philaret’s Institute signed an agreement on cooperation between the two schools.
Fr. Georgij Andrianov, Rector of the Kostroma Seminary, greeted the conference guests saying: “I am glad that our seminary is taking part in such a high-quality scholarly forum. We have collaborated with St. Philaret’s Institute for some time now, and since 2017 we’ve been running roundtables and other small events together. Today, in recognition of our evolving relationship, we will sign a formal cooperation agreement as evidence that our two schools have become friends and desire to continue working together. I hope that this agreement will help our scholarly cooperation attain to a new and even stronger momentum.”
The Rector of St. Philaret’s Institute, Aleksandr Kopirovskij, also greeted conference guests, saying: “It is a joy to greet you all here on these lands of the Kostroma Diocese during this festive Paschal season, during which we will seriously confer at this forum with the intention of engendering conversation about the most important thing in the Church at this time, i.e. its internal unity and how all its members can be brothers and sisters in the full sense of those words. Worldly division and its intensification due to a non-brotherly, non-friendly principles must be overcome so that there is at least an example available, first and foremost, within the Church itself. I hope that this conference will be fruitful and that everyone will go away more spiritually rich, enhanced in faith, and more deeply connected to the Church, in brotherhood.”
The speakers at the first plenary session on “Ecclesial Aspects of Communitarianism” were: senior researcher and Historian Andrey Teslia, from Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, First Vice Rector of SFI, Dmitry Gasak, Founder and Spiritual Father of the Transfiguration Brotherhood, Fr. Georgy Kochetkov, Head of the Faculty of Social Work at St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University, Tatyana Zaltsman, and senior lecturer at Penza Theological Seminary, Kira Aristova.
After lunch, the conference continued its work in plenary and special sections, a portion of which occurred offsite in a session held in Archangelsk.
At the plenary session on “Social Aspects of Russian Communitarianism”, the following speakers made presentations: Prof. Anastasia Tumanova, of the National Research University Higher School of Economics, Margarita Shilkina, Dean of the Faculty of Religious Studies at SFI, Roman Linkin, Deputy Director of the European Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences, Anna Alieva, Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Religious Studies at SFI, and Fr. Dmitrij Sazonov, who is a senior lecturer at the Kostroma Seminary and Chairman of the Kostroma Society of Church History and the Regional Department of the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society.
The plenary session on the conference’s second day was devoted to types and principles of church brotherhoods. Participants included: Rector Fr Georgy Andrianov of the Kostroma Seminary, Elena Nepoklonova, a senior lecturer from the Faculty of Domestic Philology and Russian as a foreign language at the Russian State Hydro-Meteorological University, Marina Naumova, First Vice Rector for Development at SFI, Lora Gerd, Chief Researcher at the St. Petersburg Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Abbot Dmitrij (Netesin), who is the head priest at the Church of St. John the Theologian in Kostroma.
The conference was organised by the Kostroma Theological Seminary and St. Philaret’s Institute.