"Religion in Present-Day Greece: Facts and Challenges"

Dr. Groen, chair of liturgical studies and sacramental theology and the director of the Institute of Liturgy, Christian Art, and Hymnology at the University of Graz, is a scholar of liturgical and ritual studies, who focuses on the role of language (both verbal and nonverbal) in the various Eastern and Western liturgical traditions, past and present. he studied philosophy, theology and Modern Greek in Nijmegen, and practical theology, hospital chaplaincy and liturgical history in Amsterdam (M.Th. 1980). He became the founding director of the new Institute of Eastern Christian Studies, Nijmegen, where he was editor-in-chief of the prominent academic review “The Journal of Eastern Christian Studies” (2001-2002). In 2007 Graz University and UNESCO appointed him UNESCO Chair-holder for Intercultural and Inter-Religious Dialogue in Southeastern Europe (the Balkans). In his lectures and many scholarly writings he deals with, i.a., several aspects of Balkan studies – for instance, inter-ecclesiastical and inter-religious relations, nationalism, multiculturalism, church-state relations – Byzantine-rite worship, and current practical-liturgical issues, such as the rites of the sick and dying. He is a member and governor of many international ecumenical and scholarly associations. His research project on Adequate Liturgical Language and Vernacular Tongues will examine the tension between the language used in worship and the actual vernacular tongue, an issue having to do with cultural and religious identity, questions of unity and uniformity of ecclesiastical worship, and with the intelligibility of liturgical rites.

Speaker: Bert Groen, Fellow at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music