Image: Adapted (trimmed) from "Kubinka, Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces" by Sergey Sebelev on Wikimedia. The file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

UCLA Center for European and Russian Studies hosted an online round-table discussion about "Religion and Russia's Invasion of Ukraine". The event took place via a Zoom webinar on Tuesday, April 12, 2022. Speakers of the roundtable included scholars from Georgetown University, University of Helsinki, University College Stockholm, and University of Alberta. The discussion was moderated by Roman Koropeckyj of UCLA.

If you missed the webinar, you can watch it here on our website or on our YouTube channel. If you prefer to read a summary of the discussion, you are welcome to read Is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a ‘holy war?’ It’s complicated - an article by Madeline Adamo published by UCLA Newsroom.

SPEAKERS

José Casanova is a Senior Fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, and Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Theology and Religious Studies at Georgetown University. From 1987 to 2007 he served as Professor of Sociology at the New School for Social Research, NY. His book, Public Religions in the Modern World, (Chicago, 1994) has become a modern classic and has been translated into many European and non-European languages. Among his recent publications are Global Religious and Secular Dynamics (Brill, 2019) and two collections of essays in Ukrainian, Po toy bik sekuliaryzatziyi (Dukh I Litera, 2017) and Relihiya v suchasnomu sviti (UCU Press, 2019). He is also co-editor of The Jesuits and Globalization (Georgetown UP, 2016) and of Islam, Gender and Democracy in Comparative Perspective (Oxford, 2017). Casanova holds a B.A. in philosophy from the Seminario Metropolitano in Zaragoza, Spain, an M.A. in theology from Universität Innsbruck, Austria, and M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from the New School for Social Research. He is the recipient of the 2012 Theologischer Preis der Salzburger Hochschulwochen in recognition of his life-long achievement in the field of theology. In 2021, Casanova delivered the CIUS Bohdan Bociurkiw Memorial Lecture on “The Three Kyivan Churches of Ukraine and the Three Romes.”

Sean Griffin is a research fellow in the Collegium for Advanced Studies at the University of Helsinki. His research focuses on the history of the Orthodox Church and its role in the making of cultural memory. His newest book, The Sacred Reign of Vladimir Putin, will be published by Cornell University Press.

Archimandrite Cyril Hovorun is a Professor in Ecclesiology, International Relations and Ecumenism at the University College Stockholm (Enskilda Högskolan Stockholm). A graduate of the Theological Academy in Kyiv and National University in Athens, he accomplished his doctoral studies at Durham University under the supervision of Fr Andrew Louth. He was a chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, first deputy chairman of the Educational Committee of the Russian Orthodox Church, and later research fellow at Yale and Columbia Universities, visiting professor at the University of Münster in Germany, international fellow at Chester Ronning Centre for the Study of Religion and Public Life at the University of Alberta in Canada, director of the Huffington Ecumenical Institute at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and Assistant Professor at the same university. He has published several books in different languages, including La riconciliazione delle memorie: Ricordare le separazioni tra le Chiese e la ricerca dell’unità (Roma: San Paolo, 2021, in co-authorship with Lothar Vogel and Stefano Cavallotto); Sacred Architecture in East and West (edited, Los Angeles: Tsehai, 2019), Political Orthodoxies: The Unorthodoxies of the Church Coerced (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2018; Ukrainian translation published in 2018); Ukrainian Public Theology (Kyiv: Dukh і Litera, 2017, in Ukrainian), Scaffolds of the Church: Towards Poststructural Ecclesiology (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2017; Ukrainian translation published in 2018); Wonders of the Panorthodox Council, (Moscow: Christian Book Club, 2016, in Russian); Meta-Ecclesiology, Chronicles on Church Awareness, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015; Ukrainian translation published in 2017); From Antioch to Xi’an: an Evolution of ‘Nestorianism’ (Hong Kong: Chinese Orthodox Press, 2014, in Chinese); Will, Action and Freedom. Christological Controversies in the Seventh Century (Leiden - Boston: Brill, 2008).

Frank E. Sysyn is director of the Peter Jacyk Centre for Ukrainian Historical Research at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS), professor in the Department of History, Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Alberta, and editor in chief of the Hrushevsky Translation Project, the English translation of the multi-volume History of Ukraine-Rus’ (12 volumes). He is head of the executive committee of the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium (HREC) at CIUS, a member of the editorial board of Harvard Ukrainian Studies and East-West: A Journal of Ukrainian Studies, and head of the advisory board of the Ukrainian Program at the Harriman Institute. He has taught at the University of Alberta, Harvard University, Columbia University, Stanford University, and other institutions. A specialist in East Central European history, he is the author of Between Poland and the Ukraine: The Dilemma of Adam Kysil, 1600-1653 (1985), Mykhailo Hrushevsky: Historian and National Awakener (2001), and studies on the Khmelnytsky Uprising, Ukrainian historiography, early modern Ukrainian political culture, modern Ukrainian religious history, and the Holodomor. He is also coauthor with Serhii Plokhy of Religion and Nation in Modern Ukraine (2003) and co-editor with Martin Schulze Wessel of Religion, Nation, and Secularization in Ukraine (2015). He is co-editor with Andrea Graziosi of Communism and Hunger: The Ukrainian, Chinese, Kazakh, and Soviet Famines (2016) and the recently published Genocide: The Power and Problems of a Concept (2022). He is editor in chief of three-volume collected work of Father Mykhailo Zubryts’kyi : Vol. 1 Scholarly Works (2013) and Vol. 2 Materials toward a Biography (2016) Vol.3 Newspaper Articles, Ethnographic Works, and Archival Materials (2019).

MODERATOR

Roman Koropeckyj is a professor of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Languages & Cultures at UCLA. He is the author of numerous articles on Ukrainian, Little Russian, and Polish literature, two award-winning books on the Poland’s national poet Adam Mickiewicz, and co-author with Robert DeLossa and Robert Romanchuk of Rozmovliaimo! [Let’s Talk!], a basic grammar of Ukrainian.

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Duration: 01:27:50