CU Christian Orthodox Society

Talk by Klaus Kenneth

Time: Friday, 13 June, 7pm
Venue: Dining Hall, Wesley House, Jesus Lane, Cambridge, CB5 8BJ
Entrance: free for everyone

Klaus Kenneth is the authour of “Zwei Millionen Kilometer auf der Suche” (”Two Million Kilometers of Searching”) and “Lebensbuch des Nil von Sora” (”The Life of Nil Sorsky”), translator of Archimandrite Sophrony Sakharov’s books into German, musician and educator. For twelve years he travelled around the world in search of the truth. He went from India, Tibet, Thailand and the Arab countries to Mexico ; from Africa to Alaska and Brasil. He tried different religions - Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, … - before he found Christianity. Klaus will talk about his way to the Truth and his experiences of different religions.

When: Sunday, 18 May

PROGRAMME

1pm - Meeting in front of the electronic display at the Cambridge train
station. We will take the 1.09pm train to Ely. Please buy your own ticket.

2pm - Veneration of the relics of St Etheldreda of Ely in St Etheldreda’s
Church. Fr Raphael Armour will celebrate a Moleben.

3pm - Tea/coffee

4pm - Visit to the Ely Cathedral. Evensong.

5pm -6.30pm - Walk through Ely

6.30pm - Dinner in Italian restaurant ‘Prezzo’, 12-14 High Street, Ely

8/9pm - Return to Cambridge

Please let us know until Wednesday, 14 May, if you would like join us for dinner. We need to reserve a table. Please email cs300@cam.ac.uk or avs29@cam.ac.uk

Talk by Prof David Frost

When: Thursday, 29 May, 7pm
Where: Old Common Room, Wesley House, Jesus Lane, Cambridge, CB5 8BJ
Entrance: Free for everyone

We will also organise a screening of ‘King Lear’ in Wesley House prior to Prof Frost’s talk. Details to follow.

Professor David Frost will give an address entitled ‘King Lear: or the Chaplain’s Dilemma’ - a lecture evoked by an appeal from the then Chaplain of St John’s College that Dr Frost talk with one of his pupils, who had been concerned to understand Christianity but after a supervision on King Lear found it impossible to see how anyone who had responded to that play could be a Christian.

Professor Frost is currently Principal of the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, Cambridge, having been for ten years a Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge, Director of Studies in English, and a University Teaching Officer. Subsequently, he was for twenty-two years Professor of English Literature in the University of Newcastle, New South Wales. He is author of ‘The School of Shakespeare’, a study of Shakespeare’s relation to his contemporaries in the drama and has edited one of them, Thomas Middleton. However, he is better known for his work on Liturgical Commissions in England and Australia and was responsible with a team of Hebraists for The Liturgical Psalter, a translation of the Psalms that has been included in six national prayerbooks.

Talk by Prof Nicholas Loudovikos

When: Monday, 25 February, 7pm
Where: Old Common Room, Wesley House, Jesus Lane, Cambridge, CB5 8BJ
Entrance: free for everyone

Prof Nicholas Loudovikos is Professor of Systematic Theology at the Theological Department of the Superior Ecclesiastical Academy of Thessaloniki and Visiting Lecturer at the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies in Cambridge. He is the author of many books including Theopoiia: the postmodern theological aporia (2007); The Apophatic Ecclesiology of Consubstantiality. The Primitive Church Today (2002); Closed Spirituality and the Meaning of the Self. The Mysticism of Power and the Truth of Nature and Personhood (1999); Theological History of Ancient Greek Philosophy (2003); A Eucharistic Ontology. Maximus the Confessor’s eschatological ontology of being (1992, English translation forthcoming).

Tea/coffee and refreshments following the talk and discussion.

When: Friday, 22 February, 8pm
Where: Old Common Room, Wesley House, Jesus Lane, Cambridge, CB5 8BJ
Entrance: free for everyone

Talk by Dr Christine Mangala Frost

When: Wednesday, 13 February, 7pm
Where: Old Common Room, Wesley House, Jesus Lane, Cambridge, CB5 8BJ
Entrance: free for everyone

Tea/coffee and refreshments following the talk and discussion.

Dr Christine Mangala Frost was born into a Hindu Brahmin background and into the early practice of yoga. She became a Christian in her twenties in Cambridge and was chrismated Orthodox ten years ago in Sydney, Australia. She is a Director on the Board of the Institute of Orthodox Christian Studies, has lectured for its Summer School, and is a contributor to THE WAY, The Institute’s outreach programme on the basics of Orthodoxy. Her doctorate is from the University of Cambridge for a thesis on ‘The Problem of Evil in Jacobean Drama’, and she has taught comparative religion and literature and theology at universities in the United Kingdom, Australia and the People’s Republic of China (where she was Visiting Professor  at the School of Foreign Languages in the University of Zhengzou). As Christine Mangala, she has published two novels, The  Firewalkers and Transcendental Pastimes (the first shortlisted for  the Deo Gloria award and the Commonwealth Best First Book prize), she has  completed a third novel, A Kingdom in Oz, and is embarked on a fourth.

THE RETURN (Vozvrashcheniye)
(2003, directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev)
Golden Lion (Best Film), Venice Film Festival 2004
Russian with English subtitles

When: Thursday, 13 December, 7pm
Where: New Common Room, Wesley House, Jesus Lane, Cambridge, CB5 8BJ
Entrance: free for everyone

Sinopsis:
Vanya and Andrey, two young brothers, run home after a fight with neighborhood kids to discover their father has returned after a 12-year absence. With the half-hearted blessing of their mother, they set out with the taciturn father, who they’ve known only from a faded photo, on what they believe will be a fishing vacation. “The Return” is not only an esthetic marvel - it also marks a double “return”. A father literally returns to his sons. And the film harks back as well to a pre-Revolutionary religious and mystical strain in Russian thought, from Dostoyevsky to the philosopher Berdyaev.

Party before the beginning of the Nativity Fast: bring-and-share dinner, music and dancing lessons.

Time: Tuesday, 13 November, 7pm
Venue: Dinning Room, Wesley House, Jesus Lane, Cambridge, CB5 8BJ
Entrance: free for everyone

Abstract:
Phyletism is the concept of a national church, that is, a church limited to a certain nation or ethnic group. Condemned as a heresy at the Synod of Constantinople in 1872, in response to a parallel diocese for ethnic Bulgarians only in the city, it is widespread in the so-called Orthodox “diaspora”. In the US alone, there are approximately 20 major and perhaps 30 minor jurisdictions, formed along ethnic lines: “Greek”, “Russian”, “Ukrainian”, “Macedono-Bulgarian”, etc. Phyletism is not only completely incompatible with the canons but, by redefining the human identity in ethnic rather than doctrinal terms, undermines the Gospel itself.

Talk by Dr Christoph Schneider