12/07/2025 08:30
- 10:45
HALL: Erika Weinzierl Hall
Proponent:
Kolosova A.
Chair:
Gavrilyuk P.
Speaker:
Beliakova N.,
Biriukov D.,
Kolosova A.,
Oeldemann J.
Expressions of communal life and worship, including decision-making at councils and synods, have been integral to Orthodox Christian and broader Christian identity since earliest times. However, from the 19th to 21st centuries, notions and practices of conciliarity have taken on a more dynamic role in the Orthodox churches, bringing about a shift described by Paul Valliere (2012) as a 'conciliar renaissance'. The term conciliarity, together with the overlapping notions and practices of communion, catholicity, synodality, ecumenicity, koinonia and sobornost continue to generate intense debate and profound theological vision concerning the nature, governance and fellowship of the Church, as well as contributing to profounder understandings of the unity in diversity of human community and the relationality of human personhood.
This panel aims to foster discussion of the rich diversity of theories, practical expressions, and theologies of conciliarity that have emerged in diverse contexts in the modern Orthodox oikoumene. It will foster discussion of questions such as: How has the renewed focus on conciliarity affected the question of women's ministry and representation in Orthodox church governance? To what extent has there been mutual interaction between Orthodox theology and traditions of conciliarity outside the Eastern Churches, including in the context of Roman-Catholic/Orthodox dialogue and the current discourse on synodality in the Roman Catholic Church? How has the notion of sobornost been used and/or abused in political theology and secular political theory? What new forms of Orthodox conciliarity have emerged as local identities and aspirations to ecclesial autonomy have been aroused by mission, migration, the break-up of empires and socio-cultural change?