Looking East

A Window on the Eastern Christian Traditions of Epiphany

November 10- 11 2011

ISM Great Hall

CONFERENCE OVERVIEW

11th century Orthodox Church. Photo: Vasileios Marinis.

Handouts and other downloadables

Other Events

The greatest divide that separates modern Christians from their forebears in Christ is the rise of modernity: modern culture, modern ways of thinking. The advent of the modern worldview has posed fundamental challenges to Christian worship and its music. No segment of the Christian Church has remained entirely untouched by modern ideas, but those furthest removed from centers of modern culture have arguably been least of all affected by them: the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, the Coptic Church in Egypt, the Armenian Orthodox Church, the Jacobite (Syrian Orthodox) Church, the Church of Malabar in India -- and others might be named, as well. A living experience and an investigation of those churches' liturgies and music might provide a window revealing the seamless unity of premodern worldview, culture, liturgy (acts, arts, words) and liturgical music, a window that may shed light on ideas and practices now atrophied in western Christianity, and offer a fresh perspective for the Church as it encounters and strives to find its place and role in the modern world.