A Talk by Hilarion Alfeyev, Metropolitan of Volokolamsk, at the University of Winchester

On Thursday 5^th February Hilarion Alfeyev, Metropolitan of Volokolamsk (Russia) will give a talk at the University of Winchester (The Stripe, Sparkford Road, Winchester SO22 4NR). The topic of the talk will be Does Christian Ecumenism still have a future?

Hilarion Alfeyev is a bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church. At present he is the Metropolitan of Volokolamsk, the chairman of the Department of External Church Relations and a permanent member of the Holy Synod of the Patriarchate of Moscow. He is also a noted theologian, church historian and composer and has published books on dogmatic theology, patristics and church history as well as numerous compositions for choir and orchestra.

The voice of Christendom is nowadays deeply disunited. One wonders whether we can still speak at all of ‘Christianity’ or whether it would be more accurate to refer to ‘Christianities’, that is to say, markedly diverse versions of the Christian faith. Some of the moral, spiritual, pastoral and practical issues connected with this will be analysed from the point of view of a Russian Orthodox Metropolitan who for the last twenty years has been deeply involved in the ecumenical work and who follows with great anxiety the processes taking place in contemporary secular society. The Russian Orthodox Church, which in the twentieth century passed through seventy years of struggle for survival and which is still recovering from persecutions, has much to offer to its partners in the ecumenical dialogue in terms of theological reflection. At the same time, it has much to learn from them. We need a true dialogue, not just a monologue, and that we must be able not only to criticize the others, but also to be self-critical ourselves.