Reflections on the First IOTA Meeting Iasi, Romania, 9–12 January 2019

INTRODUCTION

The inaugural meeting of the International Orthodox Theological Association (IOTA) occurred in Iasi, Romania from 9–12 January 2019. Opinion pieces authored in the weeks after the meeting described it as “the largest international gathering of Orthodox scholars in modern history”;² “a forum for worldwide, interdisciplinary scholarly interaction within the context of the Orthodox tradition”;³ and “an intellectual feast [with] a range of topics . . . [covering] ‘everything that you ever wanted to know about Orthodoxy but were afraid to ask.’”⁴ To be sure, the conference was unprecedented in terms of its size (nearly three hundred scholars), global diversity (forty nations), and breadth of disciplines (anthropology, art history, cultural studies, gender studies, history, literature, liturgics, missiology, musicology, philosophy, political science, religious studies, science and religion, and theology). But it was unprecedented in other ways that signal significant demographic shifts in the academic study of Orthodox theology and Orthodox Christian studies more broadly. For example, the broad participation of scholars from secular institutions and the significant number of women academics constitute a dramatic change from the Orthodox academic gatherings in Europe, the Middle East, or the United States fifty or even twenty years ago. The following essay serves as a “Field Report” in the conventional sense—a summary and evaluation of what occurred—but it will also provide a brief history of the origins, rationale, and expectations for future IOTA meetings.

BACKGROUND: SETTING THE STAGE

The initial inspiration for IOTA stemmed from the participation and observations of several (mostly) American-based scholars volunteering in the press room at the Great and Holy Council of Crete, which occurred in 2016. Imagined as the largest gathering of bishops in the modern world, and in the works for more than fifty years, the Crete council was supposed to produce a number of documents on various themes that would help guide the highly diverse Orthodox Christian community in the modern world. One of the ground rules of the Crete council was that the assembly of bishops would issue only documents that had a broad consensus. Some interpreted the condition of consensus to mean “unanimity.” In the opinion of several participating scholars, too many of the bishops approached the council and its documents through the lens of their local or national concerns, making unanimity or even consensus virtually impossible. At best, the final documents’ teaching on the ethical, social, and scientific questions of our age were bland and did little to engage and clarify the increasingly complex issues of our day. What is more, many of the more pressing questions regarding ecclesial governance, such as the conditions for autocephaly, or the difficult ethical questions surrounding the advance of modern science, were simply avoided.

Two of the founding members of IOTA, Pavel Gavrilyuk, and Gayle Woloschak, left Crete with a sense of dissatisfaction, not only for what had transpired, but also with respect to the Council’s mismatch between the localized interests of its participants and the assumption that pan-Orthodoxy required unanimity in all matters. Is the wide diversity of experience and ideas within Orthodoxy, the two asked, not something that is desirable and even necessary for the vitality and survival of the Church? Drawing upon their experience of intellectual exchange and the diversity of approaches that exist within every academic sphere, the founders believed that the academic community might have something to offer the institutional Church.

The idea for IOTA was to bring together a group of international scholars in a wide variety of disciplines that relate to the Orthodox Christianity from all countries where the Orthodox Church maintains a presence. One operating presumption was that assembling a broad collection of academics from different national, ethnic, and personal backgrounds would bring the rich diversity within Orthodoxy itself into the open. A second presumption was that the interaction of scholars from so many different perspectives, both in formal sessions and in informal conversations throughout the conference, would not only lead to an unprecedented exchange of ideas but also facilitate a greater understanding and mutual respect for various points of view on a...