Dr. Aaron T. Hollander is Associate Director of Graymoor Ecumenical & Interreligious Institute, Editor of Ecumenical Trends, and Adjunct Faculty in Theology at Fordham University. In 2022, he was elected President of the North American Academy of Ecumenists; he also serves on the steering committee of the Ecclesiological Investigations International Research Network and on the faculty of the Summer Course in Ecumenism at the Centro Pro Unione in Rome. He is a scholar of ecumenical theology and lived religion, with his PhD from the University of Chicago (2018). His research foci include the lived dynamics of ecumenical/interreligious conflict and coexistence, the aesthetic texture and political power of holiness (particularly in Orthodox Christianity), and the circulation of theological understanding beyond explicitly religious settings. His first book, forthcoming from Fordham University Press (2025), is entitled Saint George Liberator: Hagiography and Resistance on the Island of Saints.

Seminar: Interreligious Relations, Mission, & World Christianity

January 28-29 (Tuesday-Wednesday)

In popular consciousness both within and beyond the churches, Christian mission is regularly framed in opposition or at least in divergence from “interreligious dialogue” – the one purportedly aimed at converting the other and the latter at engaging or deepening mutual understanding with the other. A closer look, however, reveals that mission fields and perspectives have been preeminent sites of interreligious engagement at a level of sophistication that is easily overlooked. We will consider the evolving role of interreligious encounter, learning, and reconceptualization in the history of modern Christian mission, especially once global mission becomes a driving force in 20th-century ecumenical agendas and disciplines.