Judith Scott received the MDiv from Union Theological Seminary after a career as a teacher and principal in the NYC public schools.  She joined St Gregory the Theologian Orthodox Church at Union and was chrismated by Fr John McGuckin and is now leader of the choir and an active member of the leadership team with Fr Sergey Trostyanskiy.  Her participation with the Brotherhood of St Moses the Black enhances her interests in the history, spirituality and theology of African American Orthodox Christians nationwide.

Dr. Eirini Artemi has bachelors in Theology and Classical Philology. She has master and doctorate on Theology, especially on History of Dogma, Patristic and dogmatic Theology. Her post-doctorate is on ancient Greek and Byzantine Philosophy. She is academic teacher in Israel Institute of Biblical languages and in the Orthodox Theological School of the University of Kinshasa- Congo. She is an adjunct professor in the postgraduate program of orthodox theology in Hellenic Open University. She has published a great deal of theological articles in many international journals and has participated in many international conferences as a speaker.

Attending to the spiritual, social needs of a vibrant faith community in the demographically diverse section of Washington Heights in the City of New York, the Reverend Deforest L Raphael raised and managed a budget more than $400,000. Inspiring a team, largely consisting of unpaid volunteers, to provide residents with much needed services. Our largest outreach program has been feeding nutritious meals, at a substantially rate, to seniors for more than 35 years. Over the last thirteen (13) years our Center has served well over 750,000 meals and have been asked to take charge of four (4) additional centers. 

The Very Rev. Dr. Eutichius Felix Dovgan is a hegumen, priest emeritus, and scholar of Old Slavonic and Slavic studies. He has served as a father-confessor at Saint Nicholas Synodal Skete of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR), Saint Mark Mission in New York City, and Saint Gregory the Theologian Church at Union Theological Seminary in New York.

Dr. Dovgan serves as Senior Fellow Researcher for the Old Slavonic and Slavic Section on the Board of Directors of the Institute for the Study of Eastern Christianity (ISEC). He is also President of the International Society for Slavic and Medieval Literature (ISSML) and Chaplain of the New York State Council of Orthodox Theological Foundations (NYSCTF).

He is the author and editor of numerous books and scholarly articles on Slavic and Orthodox Christian subjects. His work has appeared in publications and scholarly venues in Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Moldova, Bulgaria, Italy, and the United States, including Ruskline.ru, Bogoslov.ru, Orthodox Life, and Pravoslavnaya Rus.

The Very Rev. Dr. Lev Smith is an Orthodox priest in Des Moines, Iowa. He has taught in numerous colleges and universities, and is currently Visiting Scholar in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Iowa. He is the author of Philokalia: The Eastern Christian Spiritual Texts, and contributing editor of Healing, Reconciliation, and Reconciliation in Eastern Orthodox Perspectives, as well as numerous articles and reviews. 

Dr. Theodore Dedon

Theodore Dedon is a Resident Assistant Professor at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska and a recent graduate of Georgetown University’s Ph.D. program in Theological and Religious Studies. He specializes in religious pluralism with an interest in religion and international affairs, the relationship between Muslims, Catholics, and Orthodox Christians, and also political theology. His dissertation, under the supervision of Fr. Drew Christiansen, S.J., is called “Conciliarity, Nationalism, and the Roman Social Imaginary: A History of Political and Ecclesiastical Ideas on the Separation and Integration of Powers.” In 2020, he received Georgetown University’s most prestigious award given to graduate students, naming him Teacher of the Year in the Humanities for his well-received course called “Religion and International Affairs: Nationalism, Globalism, and Thinking in World Orders.” He has written many articles ranging from the subjects of synodality to nuclear disarmament. When not discussing theology and its impact on the world, he loves to spend time with his wife, Lauren, and their daughters Anastasia Sophia and Hildegard.

The Rev. Dr. Sergey Trostyanskiy is an Eastern Orthrodox priest and rector of St. Gregory the Theologian Church located on the campus of Union Seminary. He is author St. Cyril of Alexandria’s Metaphysics of the Incarnation (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2016) and Editor of Seven Icons of Christ: An Introduction to the Oikoumenical Councils. ed. Sergey Trostyanskiy (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2016) and Love, Marriage and Family in Eastern Orthodox Perspective. eds. Theodore Dedon and Trostyanskiy Sergey (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2016).

VK MCarty is the author of From Their Lips: Voices of Early Christian Women (Gorgias, 2011) and forthcoming The Radiant Word: Reflections in the Orthodox Tradition (Gorgias, 2026); she writes and lectures on Ascetical Theology and Early Christianity, and leads retreats for Holy Cross Monastery, Grace Church Broadway and St. Paul's Carroll Street. She served as Acquisitions Librarian for General Theological Seminary 2000-2015, from which she graduated cum laude, and is a licensed worship leader in the Diocese of New York. She leads weekly services for St Ignatius of Antioch and preaches regularly for St Gregory the Theologian Orthodox Church; her sermons are collected at Public Orthodoxy.

David Pratt is the director of the Orthodox Christian Chaplaincy at Georgetown University and adjunct professor of philosophy there.  Previously he was associate professor of philosophy at St. Martin’s University, Olympia, Washington. A retired Navy and Marine Corps chaplain, he served 24 years in training, combat, and humanitarian operations at sea and ashore. He holds a doctorate in comparative ethics from the University of Louvain, Belgium, where he studied under the philosopher William Desmond and Levinas scholar Roger Burggraeve, and degrees from St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, New York, and the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California. 

Brandon Paradise is an Associate Professor, Rutgers Law School and a McDonald Distinguished Fellow, Emory Center for the Study of Law and Religion. He holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, a master’s degree in church history from Union Theological Seminary, and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and economics from the University of Southern California. His scholarship focuses on the intersection of race, law and religion and law and theology.

John Anthony McGuckin held the Nielsen Chair in Late Antique Christian History at Union Theological Seminary and was professor of Byzantine Christian Studies at Columbia University in New York City. He is an archpriest of the Romanian Orthodox Church, and rector of the Orthodox Church in Lytham St. Annes, England. He serves on the faculty of church history at Oxford University, and is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society of the United Kingdom.

The Very Rev. Dr. McGuckin has been awarded several honorary doctorates, and has written twenty-five works of historical theology, including St. Cyril of Alexandria: The Christological Controversy, St. Gregory of Nazianzus: An Intellectual Biography, The Westminster Handbook to Patristic Theology, and The Ascent of Law.

Father Daniel Buda is the dean of the faculty of theology / Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu. He is the author of “The Antiochian Christology from Eustathios of Antioch until Nestorius.” Formerly a research fellow of the Department for Church History and Polity (2014), and a visiting professor of the Institute for Old-Catholic Theology at the Faculty of Theology, University of Bern, Switzerland, 2018-9.

William Bellamy is an editor, researcher, and program coordinator at ISEC. 

Will specializes in religious history, with a focus on the causes and implications of iconoclastic theology throughout Christian history. His thesis, The Politics and Christology of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, was supervised by Fr. John McGuckin. He is the author of The Council of Nicaea II: 787 The Power and Sacramentality of Christ's Icon. He has delivered presentations and moderated panels at the AARC, ISEC, the National Gallery of Art, and the National Portrait Gallery. In addition to Byzantine theology, he has written historiography of iconoclasm scholarship, iconoclasm in secular contexts, and theological and political aesthetics.  He is currently studying Library and Information Sciences at Queens College, CUNY, pursuing a career in saving rare books from AI and teaching religious information literacy to seminarians and historians.