Friends, it is my pleasure to announce the Third Annual Florovsky-Newman Week. We are observing it on June 2-5 in Wichita, Kansas. This year’s theme is The Patristic View of Baptism: Public Proclamation or Salvific Sacrament? Perhaps you have some research that you would like to present on this subject. If so, please see the call for papers above. You can send a proposal to umbargerm@newmanu.edu. And put “Florovsky-Newman Proposal” in the subject line.
The theme for the Third Annual Florovsky-Newman Week delights me. Baptism is the one Sacrament that unites all Christians. And yet, it is also the source of so much division between the various Christian sects. At Florovsky-Newman Week, we invite Christians from all traditions for encounter in serious dialogue. We try not to smooth over or ignore disagreements between us. But our intent is to charitably understand the grounds for division. A discussion about Baptism provides a perfect opportunity to do this.
Florovsky-Newman Week: A Collaborative Effort
Florovsky-Newman Week is a collaborative effort between the Gerber Institute for Catholic Studies at Newman University and the Eighth Day Institute.
Both institutes are near and dear to my heart. I teach theology at Newman University. And one semester I had the privilege of being a Gerber fellow. The Eighth Day Institute has the mission to renew culture through faith and learning. It is striving to do this, in particular, by bringing Christians together in conversation around the first 1000 years of the Church. This is because during the first millennium of Christianity, the Church didn’t suffer any major schisms. So, the Eighth Day Institute works towards restoring the original unity of the Church by way of “neo-Patristic synthesis.” That’s a phrase that Fr. Georges Florovsky, the great Russian Orthodox theologian, used to describe his personal project. It is also a good description for St. John Henry Newman’s work. Hence, Florovsky-Newman Week!
