Father Dusan Bunjevic

by Dawnell Vuko Lewis

To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of his ordination into the priesthood, Father Dusan Bunjevic was honored at a luncheon on February 8, 2015, at St. Archangel Michael Serbian Orthodox Church in Saratoga, California.

Father Bunjevic served St. John the Baptist Cathedral in San Francisco from 1964 until his retirement in 1999, but to ensure ample space to the sold-out event, the luncheon was held at nearby St. Archangel Michael's.

The celebratory crowd included the Bunjevic family, many of father's parishioners, people from the several parishes of the San Francisco Bay Area, and especially a group from Indiana where Father Bunjevic had begun his long service to the church at Gary's St. Sava in 1960 and where he was ordained in 1964.

Sailors of the Sky

In these timely conversations led by Fr. Radovan Bigovic, many issues are introduced that enable the contemporary reader to deepen and expand his or her understanding of the role of art in the life of the Church. Here we find answers to questions on the crisis of contemporary ecclesiastical art in West and East; the impact of Impressionism, Expressionism, Cubism, Surrealism and Abstract painting on contemporary ecclesiastical painting; and a consideration of the main distrinction between iconography and secular painting. The dialogue, while resolving some doubts about the difference between iconography, religious painting, and painting in general, reconciles the requirement to obey inconographic canons with the freedom essential to artistic creativity, demonstrating that obedience to the canons is not a threat to the vitatlity of iconography. Both artists illumine the role of prayer and ascetisicm in the art of iconography. They also mention curcial differences between iconography in the Orthodox Church and in Roman Catholicism. How important thse distinctions are when exploring the relationship between contemporary theology and art! In a time when postmodern "metaphysics' revitalizes every concept, these masters still believe that, to some extent, Post-Modernism adds to the revitatiztion of Christian art, stimulating questions about "artistic inspiration" and the essential asethetic categories of Christian painting. Their exceptionally wide, yet nonetheless deep, expertise assists their not-so-everday connections between theology, ar, and modern issues concerning society: "society" taken in its broader meaning as "civilization." Finally, the entire artistic project of Stamatis and Rupnik has important ecumenical implications that aswer a genuine longing for unity in the Christian word.

The text of this 94-page soft-bound book has been translated from the Serbian by Ivana Jakovljevic, Fr. Gregory Edwards, and Andrijana Krstic. Published by Sebastian Press, Western American Diocese of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Contemporary Christian Thought Series, number 7, First Edition, ISBN: 978-0-9719505-8-0

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