The Zohrab Information Center is proud to be a cosponsor of the upcoming event organized by the Graymoor Ecumenical & Interreligious Institute. Ecology And Ecumenicity: Facing Division And Imagining Reconciliation In The Care Of Our Common Home will take place online via Zoom on September 18, 2020 at 1-3 PM EDT. The event is an online colloquium with ecologically-attentive theologians, ethicists, and community leaders from an array of Christian traditions. Originally planned in conjunction with the Zohrab Information Center’s Spring 2020 Series on the Environment, this event promises to be an important conversation about Christian environmental theology in the current moment. Dr. Christopher Sheklian, Director of the Zohrab Information Center, will be one of the panelists, putting the Armenian Christian perspective on the environment developed during in part during the Spring 2020 ZIC Enrichment Evening Series into conversation with other Christian eco-theological perspectives.
The event is free and open to the public. Register now.
The ecological crisis is, no less, an ecumenical crisis and an ecumenical opportunity. There can be no degradation nor restoration of the environment, on any scale from local to global, that does not also present a challenge of communication with and commitment to one another. The “home” (oikos) we share—however divided and acrimonious it may be—is and must be a home to all. Yet our ecological vision and efforts are often themselves divisive or inattentive to divisions that shape our capacities for response.
This roundtable will take up the urgent contemporary questions rising from the entanglement between social division (religious, political, ethnic, economic, and so forth) and ecological degradation. For instance:
- How are we best to understand the causes and ethical entailments of our present ecological challenges through the resources offered by our (different and often disagreeing) traditions?
- What roles are played by ecological precarity in the divisions (cultural, ethical, political, theological) between and within Christian communities?
- How should religious communities (and conversations between communities) contribute to society’s responses to these challenges—whether at the level of a public vision of ecological integrity, or at the level of concrete challenges like food security, environmental justice, and the plight of climate refugees?
- What ecumenical resources exist for engagement between religious communities with apparently incompatible assessments of the present ecological situation?
This special program has been generously cosponsored and co-organized by the Center for Earth Ethics at Union Theological Seminary; the Church World Service; the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University; and the Zohrab Information Center.
Panelists Include:
• John Chryssavgis (Archdeacon of the Ecumenical Patriarchate)
• Kelly Brown Douglas (Dean, Episcopal Divinity School at Union Theological Seminary)
• Dawn Nothwehr, OSF (Professor, Catholic Theological Union)
• Chris Sheklian (Director, Zohrab Information Center, Diocese of the Armenian Church of America (Eastern))
• David Vásquez-Levy (President, Pacific School of Religion)
For more information and for biographies of the panelists, please visit the event page on the website of the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement
You can also contact Dr. Christopher Sheklian at zohrabcenter@armeniandiocese.org with any questions about the program or how to register.
We look forward to seeing you for this important event!