Vigen Guroian - The Orthodox Reality: Culture, Theology, and Ethics in the Modern World

This book is dedicated to the late Will Herberg, Jewish philosopher and theologian, who was my teacher and mentor during my doctoral study at Drew University from 1972 to 1977. In the fall of 1971, I visited Drew having spent a disappointing semester in a PhD program at the University of Pennsylvania. I walked from the parking lot to nearby Bowne Hall where the Caspersen School of Graduate Studies was housed. I climbed the narrow flight of back stairs to Wills office in a dormer room and was met by a squat, broad-waisted, partially balding, gray-bearded man who instantly reminded me of Socrates.

Will immediately stood up from behind his desk, greeted me, and then just as swiftly seated himself. I grabbed a wooden chair and pulled it up nearer to Wills desk. Brusquely, as was his manner, Will asked, or more rightly stated, You have an Armenian name. Parev , inchpes yes? (This is the Armenian greeting: Welcome. How are you? ) I answered, Lav yem (I am well.) Did your grandparents emigrate from Armenia about the time of the First World War? I answered, Yes, they did. Will then inquired, What did your grandfathers do for a living? I responded that my paternal grandfather worked in a shoe factory. Then he must have lived near Brocton, Massachusetts. I answered that my father grew up in Bridgewater where my grandfather worked. (Bridgewater is fewer than ten miles from Brocton.) Later I surmised that during the research for his classic sociological study of religion in America, Protestant, Catholic, Jew , Will must have come across this detail in American ethnography and remembered it!

You want to study at Drew? I answered that I did, but that more especially I wished to study under him. Will smiled. It was a bright smile in an otherwise dim room. He then looked directly into my eyes and stated, You may study under me with one condition. I expect that you will attend the Armenian Church regularly. I know that there are several parishes in this area.

And that is how it began. Some might think this a most unorthodox beginning. Who today would ask such a thing of a prospective graduate student? But I understood what Will was telling me. Theology must begin with prayer and in ones own tradition.

At this time in my life, a list of persons to whom I owe thanks and special mention would be far too long. I do want to remember, however, Thomas C. Oden, who was also at Drew in the formative years of my graduate study and who passed on in December 2016. I took just one course with Tom, his seminar on Reinhold Niebuhr. It, however, launched me into the study that would be the backbone of my dissertation on the politics of Reinhold Niebuhr and Edmund Burke. Will became incapacitated with a cancerous brain tumor that finally took his life in 1977, and Tom participated in my doctoral defense in Wills stead. But my relationship with Tom Oden continued until his death. As he began to look to the writings of the great patristic authors and then launched the monumental series Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, for which he served as the general editor, our ongoing conversation turned to my work in Orthodox theology and ethics. For years Tom was a source of wise counsel and comfort to me as I struggled to carve a niche in the religious academy. We even shared together, as members of a religious delegation, an extraordinary adventure to Russia in September 1991, just a month after the failed coup that brought about the end of the Soviet Union.

Last, Tom Oden introduced me to Howard and Roberta Ahmanson. Eventually, through their foundation, Fieldstead and Company, they supported a leave from teaching at Loyola College and seven years presence at the University of Virginia from 2008 to 2015. During those years, I composed important articles that have become chapters in this book. I will be forever grateful for the Ahmansons faith in my efforts to integrate Orthodox Christianity into the study of religion in the academy.