CAS Workshop. From Schism to Union and Back: Eastern Christians and Catholic Expansion in the Age of Confessionalism

In recent decades, there has been a resurgence of scholarship on intensifying contacts between the Catholic Church and Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches in the early modern period. Stretching from Eastern Europe through the Middle East all the way to sub-Saharan Africa and South India, these interconfessional encounters were marked by fierce theological debates, cultural misunderstandings, political intrigues, and complex negotiations of religious practices and beliefs. They produced greater familiarity and understanding of each other’s traditions in anticipation of the coveted Christian unity while also resulting in new schisms between and within the Churches. Since studies of these developments are often nested inside their geographically defined fields, this workshop aims to put them in dialogue with each other, exploring differences, connections, and wider patterns of these interconfessional contacts across the vast geography of pre-modern Eastern Christianity. The workshop can be divided into several themes which broadly define the state of the field, namely the issues of church unity and confessionalization, religious conversion and syncretism in an interconfessional context, knowledge production and exchange.

Register at https://umich.zoom.us/j/95935123558