Green Orthodoxy: Ecological Conversion of Eastern Orthodox Churches

We are inviting you to the upcoming online seminar 

Green Orthodoxy: Ecological Conversion of Eastern Orthodox Churches

Ksenia Medvedeva, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences
Commentary by Marco Castagnetto, University of Turin

May 23, 2024, 12:00 pm (CEST), ONLINE event
Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/95323384178?pwd=WDEvUDgvYVYraldGQkVkV2ZhQzcrdz09

In this talk, I will present my study of environmental engagement of Eastern Orthodox churches in the United States and Greece and discuss how religious and environmental discourses are shaped by each other. To do this, I will analyze Orthodox contribution to the environmental topic and examine how certain religious practices (e.g., fasting) are changed by environmental thinking. I will map some existing environmental initiatives in Orthodox churches, including both top-down projects initiated by the church, as well as grassroots initiatives run by Orthodox individuals which often stay out of the view of church officials. Finally, I will point at several challenges for understanding environmental activities of Orthodox actors.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 847639 and from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education.

Ksenia Medvedeva is a sociologist of religion who focuses her research on various aspects of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Currently, she is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie PASIFIC Cofund Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences where she conducts her research on the environmental engagement of Eastern Orthodox churches in the United States and Greece. Her doctoral dissertation at Freie Universitaet Berlin (Germany) was dedicated to the study of Eastern Orthodox monasteries in the United States.

Marco Castagnetto, Ph.D. (discussant) is adjunct lecturer in the Master’s program for Religious Studies and Intercultural Mediation at the University of Turin. The focus of his research is on New Religious Movements from a sociological standpoint. He also explores issues related to religion and ecology, European traditionalist phenomena and their connection to religion and politics, as well as soteriological philosophies of India in relation to Western esotericism studies. In 2020, he published “The Lotus and the Sword. Aurobindo Ghose’s Thought and Its Reception in the West” (Milan: Franco Angeli).