News

On June 2nd, 2014, Religious Studies hosted a reception to celebrate the publication of Dr. Alexander Treiger’s book (co-edited with Samuel Noble), The Orthodox Church in the Arab World, 700-1700: An Anthology of Sources (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2014).  The book offers a representative selection of major Arab Christian works written between the 8th and 17th centuries, most of which are translated into English for the first time.

The reception was a special welcome to members of the local Eastern Christian communities and an introduction to the uniquely strong grouping of classes on Eastern Christianity offered by the department. Beyond the introductory classes on the “Abrahamic religions” and the “Cultural Introduction to the Arab World,” the department offers seminars on the Orthodox and Oriental Churches, Catholicism, Christianity in the Lands of Islam, Meetings between Hellenism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Mystics of the Middle East, Philosophy of the Church Fathers, John of Damascus, as well as instruction in Classical and Patristic Greek, Latin, and Arabic. The department is also considering renewing instruction of Coptic and Syriac.

The Dean of FASS, Dr. Robert Summerby-Murray, the clergy and community members from four local Orthodox parishes—St. Antonios (Antiochian Orthodox), St. George (Greek Orthodox), St. Mena (Coptic Orthodox), and St. Vladimir (Orthodox Church in America)—the monks of the Hermitage of the Annunciation (Orthodox Church in America) in New Germany, NS, and many colleagues and friends of the department attended the reception. Dr. Wayne Hankey stressed the importance of forging close ties with Eastern Christian communities, so prominent in Atlantic Canada, and emphasized the central role our department has played in teaching languages, cultures, and the religious heritage of Eastern Christianity and thus providing an academic point of reference to Eastern Christians in Nova Scotia.