A great man is one who collects knowledge the way a bee collects honey and uses it to help people overcome the difficulties they endure - hunger, ignorance and disease!
- Nikola Tesla

Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.
- Franklin Roosevelt

While their territory has been devastated and their homes despoiled, the spirit of the Serbian people has not been broken.
- Woodrow Wilson

Bishop Maxim (Vasiljević)

(2006–)

For the last eleven years the ruling bishop of the Western American Diocese is Maxim (Vasiljević,) well known in academic circles since he holds several academic titles and is professor of the Faculty of Orthodox Theology at the University of Belgrade. Maxim (secular name Milan Vasilje¬vić) was born on June 27, 1968 in Foča, Yugoslavia, into a family of a priest. His father Lazar is a priest and mother Radmila, nee Todorović.

After finishing elementary school in Sarajevo (1983), he studied Seminary school in Belgrade (finished in 1988), served the army, and enrolled into the Faculty of Orthodox Theology in the same city.

He was tonsured a monk in Tvrdos Monastery, Bosnia and Herzegovina, on August 18, 1996, by Bishop Atanasije of Herzegovia, who also ordained him a deacon (1996) and priest in 2001.

Bishop Maxim graduated from the Faculty of Orthodox Theology at the University of Belgrade in 1993. He completed his Masters of Theology at the University of Athens in 1996, and then three years later, in 1999, at the same University, he defended his doctorate in the field of Dogmatics and Patristics with the title, “Participation in God” in the Theological Anthropology of St. Gregory Nazianzen and St. Maximus the Confessor.

He worked for one year on his post-doctorate in Paris and the Sorbonne in 2003–2004, in the field of Byzantine History and Hagiography. During this time, he also delved in the theory and practical application of painting at the French Academy of Fine Arts in Paris. Bishop Maxim speaks Greek, French, Russian, and English. He was the editor of “Theology”—Journal of the Faculty of Orthodox Theology, University of Belgrade.

On July 30, 2006 Bishop Maxim was instated on the throne of bishops of the Western America Diocese by Bishop Longin of New Gračanica Metropolitanate. Previously, he was Bishop of Hum and Vicar in the Metropolitanate of Dabro-Bosna, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. As vicar-bishop of Hum he was elected Bishop of the Western American Diocese at the regular Assembly of the Hierarchs of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Belgrade, Serbia in 2006.

Bishop Maxim is professor of the Divinity School at the Theological Faculty of the University of Belgrade, and was teaching Christian Anthropology and Sociology at the University of East Sarajevo. He also taught at St. Sava School of Theology in Libertyville, Illinois.

Bishop Maxim also leads the Diocesan iconographical school inspired by Byzantine and Serbian medieval fresco painting and by Fr. Stamatis, a famous Iconographer from Greece.

Bishop Maxim’s scholarly studies and articles include books and essays on Holy Fathers and Saints; he has also written on the hagiographical and iconographical themes. His books include, among other, History, Truth, Holiness Studies in Theological Ontology and Epistemology (2011); Diary of the Council Reflections from the Holy and Great Council at the Orthodox Academy in Crete (2016), Theology as a surprise: Patristic and pastoral insights (SVSP 2018).

Among his many appointments, Bishop Maxim represents the Serbian Orthodox Church to the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches (WCC).

In 2006 he established St. Sebastian Orthodox Press and named in honor of a first American born Orthodox priest, Fr. Sebastian Dabovich. Sebastian Press is one of the prevalent and most dynamic publishers of Christian Orthodox publications on the West Coast and in the USA. It has enriched Christian literature in the English language during the last few years with almost 100 titles in print from many of the best living Orthodox writers, with its valuable translations of the interesting and resourceful works of Serbian, Greek, and other theologians to English.

He has participated in many theological forums and symposia in the USA, Europe, Asia, and Australia. He was a member of St. Vladimir’s Seminary Board of Trustees in New York.


SA

 

People Directory

Bishop Irinej (Dobrijević)

(2016–)

On 25 May 2016 the Holy Assembly of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church elected by acclamation Bishop Irinej of Australia and New Zealand to the Throne of Bishops of Eastern America following the election of Bishop Mitrophan of Eastern America to the Throne of Bishops of Canada.

He was born in 1955 in Cleveland, Ohio, USA, to his father Djuro and mother Milica (nee Svilar). His elementary and secondary education was completed in Cleveland, Ohio. After attending the Cleveland Institute of Art from 1973–1975, he attended St. Tikhon’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in South Canaan, Pennsylvania from 1975–1979, where he graduated with a Licentiate in Theology with the academic distinction maxima cum laude. In 1980 he enrolled in St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in Crestwood, New York and graduated in 1982 with a Master of Divinity degree with Honorable Mention for his master’s thesis Bishop Nicholai Velimirovich: A 1921 Mission to America. Following which, he entertained studies at the Athens Centre in 2000 and 2003 receiving levels I and II certificates in contemporary Greek language.

He spent most of his career in the field of education. He lectured as visiting fellow at Loyola University in Chicago and visiting fellow at the Faculty of Orthodox Theology in Belgrade. For many years he was the co-editor of The Path of Orthodoxy, the official publication of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the USA and Canada.

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Publishing

My Brother's Keeper

by Fr. Radovan Bigovic

Rare are the books of Orthodox Christian authors that deal with the subject of politics in a comprehensive way. It is taken for granted that politics has to do with the secularized (legal) protection of human rights (a reproduction of the philosophy of the Enlightenment), within the political system of so-called "representative democracy", which is limited mostly to social utility or to the conventional rules of human relations. Most Christians look at politics and democracy as unrelated with their experience of the Church herself, which abides both in history and in the Kingdom, the eschaton. Today, the commercialization of politics—its submission to the laws of publicity and the brainwashing of the masses—has literally abolished the "representative" parliamentary system. So, why bother with politics when every citizen of so-called developed societies has a direct everyday experience of the rapid decline and alienation of the fundamental aspects of modernity?

In the Orthodox milieu, Christos Yannaras has highlighted the conception of the social and political event that is borne by the Orthodox ecclesiastical tradition, which entails a personalistic (assumes an infinite value of the human person as opposed to Western utilitarian individualism) and relational approach. Fr Radovan Bigovic follows this approach. In this book, the reader will find a faithful engagement with the liturgical and patristic traditions, with contemporary thinkers, Orthodox and non-Orthodox, all in conversation with political science and philosophy. As an excellent Orthodox theologian and a proponent of dialogue, rooted in the catholic (holistic) being of the Orthodox Church and of his Serbian people, Fr Radovan offers a methodology that encompasses the above-mentioned concerns and quests.