(ARCHONS) - An anonymous United Methodist donor is offering $75,000 seed money toward the creation of an Orthodox Institute at Duke Divinity School. The offer comes in response to a proposal by the Duke Orthodox Christian Student Association (DOCSA) that a Duke-Halki institutional partnership may accelerate the reopening of the Halki School of Theology (see www.dukehalki.com).
The announcement was made at a recent Duke-UNC hosted Halki symposium that featured a screening of the Hellenic History Foundation’s “Silent School” documentary. Following the documentary screening, the symposium concluded with remarks by Duke Divinity Professor, J. Warren Smith, PhD, Duke University’s Turkish Muslim Chaplain, Abdullah Antepli, DMin, and Orthodox Christian Fellowship’s John Stonestreet, MDiv, PhD(c).
A video of the symposium and donation announcement will be available online for a limited time at http://video.dukehalki.com.
For additional information, please contact:
Duke Orthodox Christian Student Association
dukehalki@gmail.com
Nick Valilis 915.241.5099
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It is good news that Duke University is considering establishing a Duke-Halki institutional partnership that may accelerate the reopening of the Halki School of Theology.
ReplyDeleteTurkey closed down the Halki School over 40 years ago. It's about time Turkey reopened the Halki School of Theology, as it has promised to do several times during the past year.
Rather bleak story about this in The Times (of London). The link requires a subscription. Let me see if I can paste an excerpt:
ReplyDeleteA forced population exchange in 1923 devastated the Greek community. It was dealt further blows by riots in 1955 in which thousands of Greek businesses were destroyed. The population has dwindled to only 3,000 in a country that is 99 per cent Muslim.
Despite their small numbers, Greeks are still perceived in some quarters as a threat to Turkish nationhood and, even today, hostility is focused on the most visible target: the Orthodox Church and its top cleric. Turkey refuses to acknowledge Patriarch Bartholomew as leader of the worldwide Orthodox Church, and insists that his senior clergy come exclusively from the country’s tiny Greek community.
It is virtually impossible for the Church to train new priests after a 1971 law banned private religious education, forcing the closure of its main seminary on Halki.
“We are without oxygen. The patriarchate is dying,” Patriarch Bartholomew told the Turkish newspaper Milliyet.
In another interview, to CBS, the Patriarch sparked outrage by saying that his Church felt “crucified”.
His comment drew a rebuke from the Government and triggered a nationalist backlash, with one newspaper carrying a picture of Bartholomew nailed to a cross.