ISEC Leadership
Dr. Fischer is Professor of medicine, physiology and pharmacology at Touro College of medicine. He is the Residency Program Director and Vice-Chair of Internal Medicine at Brookdale Hospital Medical Center in Brooklyn with the largest internship in the United States. He is the author of ten textbooks of medicine. He is sub-specialist in infectious diseases and HIV medicine. He has recently been elected the president of the American Academy of Religion, Mid-Atlantic Region.
Rev. Dr. Conrad Fischer MD, MA
CHAIR
Judith Scott received the MDiv from Union Theological Seminary after a career as a teacher and principal in the NYC public schools. She joined St Gregory the Theologian Orthodox Church at Union and was chrismated by Fr John McGuckin and is now leader of the choir and an active member of the leadership team with Fr Sergey Trostyanskiy. Her participation with the Brotherhood of St Moses the Black enhances her interests in the history, spirituality and theology of African American Orthodox Christians nationwide.
judith scott, mdiv
Vice Chair
Dr. Eirini Artemi
Vice Chair
Dr. Eirini Artemi has bachelors in Theology and Classical Philology. She has master and doctorate on Theology, especially on History of Dogma, Patristic and dogmatic Theology. Her post-doctorate is on ancient Greek and Byzantine Philosophy. She is academic teacher in Israel Institute of Biblical languages and in the Orthodox Theological School of the University of Kinshasa- Congo. She is an adjunct professor in the postgraduate program of orthodox theology in Hellenic Open University. She has published a great deal of theological articles in many international journals and has participated in many international conferences as a speaker.
The Very Rev. DeForest L. Raphael
Attending to the spiritual, social needs of a vibrant faith community in the demographically diverse section of Washington Heights in the City of New York, the Reverend Deforest L Raphael raised and managed a budget more than $400,000. Inspiring a team, largely consisting of unpaid volunteers, to provide residents with much needed services. Our largest outreach program has been feeding nutritious meals, at a substantially rate, to seniors for more than 35 years. Over the last thirteen (13) years our Center has served well over 750,000 meals and have been asked to take charge of four (4) additional centers.
The Very Rev. Dr. Eutichius Felix Dovgan is a hegumen, and he had served as father-confessor in Saint Nicholas Synodal Skete of the ROCOR's, Saint Mark mission in NYC, and Saint Gregory of the Theologian Church (Union Theological Seminary, New York). Signor Fellow Reserchear for Old Slavonic in Board of Directors ISEC and President ISSML, NYSCTF Chaplain. He is the author and editor of numerous books and articles in Ruskline.Ru, Bogoslov.Ru, Orthodox Life, and Pravoslavnaya Rus in Ukraine, Russia, Romania, Moldova, Bulgaria, and the USA.
The Very Rev. Dr Eutichius Dovgan
The Very Rev. Dr. Lev Smith is an Orthodox priest in Des Moines, Iowa. He has taught in numerous colleges and universities, and is currently Visiting Scholar in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Iowa. He is the author of Philokalia: The Eastern Christian Spiritual Texts, and contributing editor of Healing, Reconciliation, and Reconciliation in Eastern Orthodox Perspectives, as well as numerous articles and reviews.
the very rev. dr. lev smith
Dr. Theodore Dedon
Theodore Dedon is a Resident Assistant Professor at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska and a recent graduate of Georgetown University’s Ph.D. program in Theological and Religious Studies. He specializes in religious pluralism with an interest in religion and international affairs, the relationship between Muslims, Catholics, and Orthodox Christians, and also political theology. His dissertation, under the supervision of Fr. Drew Christiansen, S.J., is called “Conciliarity, Nationalism, and the Roman Social Imaginary: A History of Political and Ecclesiastical Ideas on the Separation and Integration of Powers.” In 2020, he received Georgetown University’s most prestigious award given to graduate students, naming him Teacher of the Year in the Humanities for his well-received course called “Religion and International Affairs: Nationalism, Globalism, and Thinking in World Orders.” He has written many articles ranging from the subjects of synodality to nuclear disarmament. When not discussing theology and its impact on the world, he loves to spend time with his wife, Lauren, and their daughters Anastasia Sophia and Hildegard.
The Rev. Dr. Sergey Trostyanskiy is an Eastern Orthrodox priest and rector of St. Gregory the Theologian Church located on the campus of Union Seminary. He is author St. Cyril of Alexandria’s Metaphysics of the Incarnation (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2016) and Editor of Seven Icons of Christ: An Introduction to the Oikoumenical Councils. ed. Sergey Trostyanskiy (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2016) and Love, Marriage and Family in Eastern Orthodox Perspective. eds. Theodore Dedon and Trostyanskiy Sergey (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2016).
Dr. Sergey trostyanskiy
Nicholas Sooy is a PhD candidate at Fordham University, researching social action with a special attention to the ethics of conflict and the philosophy of economics.He is the director of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship & In Communion, and the Editor in Chief of In Communion.
Dr. Nick Sooy
David Pratt is the director of the Orthodox Christian Chaplaincy at Georgetown University and adjunct professor of philosophy there. Previously he was associate professor of philosophy at St. Martin’s University, Olympia, Washington. A retired Navy and Marine Corps chaplain, he served 24 years in training, combat, and humanitarian operations at sea and ashore. He holds a doctorate in comparative ethics from the University of Louvain, Belgium, where he studied under the philosopher William Desmond and Levinas scholar Roger Burggraeve, and degrees from St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, New York, and the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California.
the very rev. Dr. David Pratt
Brandon Paradise is an Associate Professor, Rutgers Law School and a McDonald Distinguished Fellow, Emory Center for the Study of Law and Religion. He holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, a master’s degree in church history from Union Theological Seminary, and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and economics from the University of Southern California. His scholarship focuses on the intersection of race, law and religion and law and theology.
Brandon Paradise, JD
John Anthony McGuckin held the Nielsen Chair in Late Antique Christian History at Union Theological Seminary and was professor of Byzantine Christian Studies at Columbia University in New York City. He is an archpriest of the Romanian Orthodox Church, and rector of the Orthodox Church in Lytham St. Annes, England. He serves on the faculty of church history at Oxford University, and is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society of the United Kingdom.
The Very Rev. Dr. McGuckin has been awarded several honorary doctorates, and has written twenty-five works of historical theology, including St. Cyril of Alexandria: The Christological Controversy, St. Gregory of Nazianzus: An Intellectual Biography, The Westminster Handbook to Patristic Theology, and The Ascent of Law.
the very rev. dr. john anthony mcguckin,
chair emeritus
the very rev. dr. Daniel Buda
Emeritus
Father Daniel Buda is the dean of the faculty of theology / Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu. He is the author of “The Antiochian Christology from Eustathios of Antioch until Nestorius.” Formerly a research fellow of the Department for Church History and Polity (2014), and a visiting professor of the Institute for Old-Catholic Theology at the Faculty of Theology, University of Bern, Switzerland, 2018-9.