Subdeacon Dr. Brian A. Butcher

BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Butcher is currently a sessional lecturer in the Toronto School of Theology and a Fellow of the Metropolitan Andrey Sheptysky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies, relocated in 2017 to the University of St. Michael’s College from Saint Paul University in Ottawa. He also has sessional appointments at Agora University (on-line) and Augustine College (Ottawa). From 2011-2017, he taught courses at the latter in both Eastern and Western Christian traditions, after stints at Simon Fraser University, Catholic Pacific College/Trinity Western University and Corpus Christi College—all in Greater Vancouver.

Brian’s professional associations include membership in the American Academy of Religion—where he is a member of the steering committee for the Eastern Orthodox Studies Unit—as well as the Society of Oriental Liturgy, the International Society for Orthodox Church Music, and the North American Academy of Liturgy. A subdeacon in the Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church, he also conducts the Sheptytsky Institute Choir (based at St. John the Baptist Shrine, Ottawa); in addition, he plays the organ and cantors at St. George’s Roman Catholic Church (Ottawa). He enjoys taekwondo, training for triathlons, performing Celtic and other folk music, and cooking.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS / SELECTED AREAS OF SERVICE / PASTORAL WORK

Books

• Liturgical Theology “After Schmemann”: An Orthodox Reading of Paul Ricoeur (New York: Fordham University Press, 2018)

•  Married Saints in the Orthodox Tradition: The Representation of Conjugality in the Sanctoral Hymnography of the Byzantine Rite (Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag, 2009)

 Articles

• “The Martial as the Mystical: Taekwondo as Orthodox Christian Contemplative Practice” in Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality 17:2 (Fall 2017), 197-211.

•  “Naming the Unnameable(?) Liturgical (Un)Translatability and the Challenge of Interreligious Dialogue” in Proceedings of the North American Academy of Liturgy: Annual Meeting, Houston, Texas, 7-9 January, 2016 (July 2017), 67-76.

•  “Opening Their Treasure Chests, They Offered Him Gifts’: The Liturgical Legacy of John Paul II to the Eastern Churches” in Asian Horizons: Dharmaram Journal of Theology 8:1 (March 2014), 48-62.

•  “Symbols and Symbolism in the Liturgy’ Revisited: A Ricoeurian Critique of Schmemann’s Symbology” in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 52:3-4 (2011), 293-312.

 Chapters in Edited Volumes

• “You Have Given Us the Grace to Pray Together in Harmony”: Orthodox Liturgical Singing as a Criterion for (Philosophical? Theological?) Aesthetics” in J. Bruce Ellis Benson, Neal DeRoo and Aaron Simmons, eds. Liturgies: Philosophical Explorations of Embodied Religious Practice (Oxford University Press, forthcoming in 2021)

• Contributor to F. L. Cross, E. A. Livingstone, Andrew Louth, eds. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church 4th ed. (Oxford University Press, forthcoming in 2021)

• “Gender in/and Orthodox Theology: Vistas and Vantage Points” in Helena Kupari and Elina Vuola, eds. Gender in Orthodox Christianity: Dynamics of Tradition, Culture and Lived Practice (London: Routledge, 2019), 25-46.

• “Women Deacons in the Christian East” and “The Diaconate in the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches” in D. Michael Jackson, ed. The Diaconate in Ecumenical Perspective (Durham, UK: Sacristy Press, 2019), 79-87; 91-103.

• Member of Editorial Advisory Board and Contributor, The Encyclopedia of Christianity in the United States, eds. George Thomas Kurian and Mark A. Lamport (Lanham, MD: Rowen & Littlefield Publishers, 2016).

•  “Orthodox Sacramental Theology: Sixteenth to Nineteenth Centuries” in Hans Boersma and Matthew Levering, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Sacramental Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 329-47.

Books Co-Edited

• Martin Lüstraeten, Brian Butcher, Steven Hawkes-Teeples, eds. Let Us Be Attentive: Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of the Society of Oriental Liturgy (Münster: Aschendorff Verlag [Studies in Eastern Christian Liturgies 1], 2020).

 Book Reviews

• “John Behr and Interpretations of the Fourth Gospel Ancient and Modern: A Review Essay” in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 60:1-4 (2019), 233-240.

• Bissera V. Pentcheva, Hagia Sophia: Sound, Space, and Spirit in Byzantium (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2017) in Reading Religion: A Publication of the American Academy of Religion (On-line: December 2019).

 Liturgical Texts

• “Akathist for the Synaxis of the Holy Healers”; published in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 61:1-4 (2020), 219-40. Commissioned by the Toronto Guild of the Canadian Federation of Catholic Physicians & Societies, in honour of their new patronal icon.

 Presentations

• “Liturgical Singing as a Criterion for Aesthetics”
  Invited keynote for the 21st Annual Dominican University College Student Conference (Ottawa, Mar. 26-27, 2021)

• “What Is Eastern Catholic Theology?”
  Paper for the Liturgy and Comparative Theology Seminar at the North American Academy of Liturgy (Atlanta, Jan. 2-4, 2020)

• “Orthodox Contemplation, Spirituality, and Encounters”
  Respondent for co-sponsored session of the Contemplative Studies Unit and the Eastern Orthodox Studies Unit at the American Academy of Religion (San Diego, Nov. 23-26, 2019)

• Panelist for launch of John Behr, John the Theologian and His Paschal Gospel (OUP, 2019)
  Wycliffe College (Toronto, May 22, 2020)      watch video

• “How Do You as a Scholar Understand the Place and Role of Theology in Your Engagement, Personal or Professional, with the Bible? Has Your Understanding Changed Over Time?”
  Panelist for conference of the Toronto School of Theology Graduate Students’ Association (Toronto, Mar. 21, 2019)

• “From the Mary of History to the Theotokos of Faith: Sketching the Development of Marian Dogma and Devotion in the Orthodox Tradition(s)”
  Paper for co-sponsored session of the Comparative Theology Unit and the Eastern Orthodox Studies Unit (“Making Meaning of Mary: Christian and Muslim Perspectives on Images [Actual and Virtual] of the Mother of Jesus”) at the American Academy of Religion (Denver, Nov. 17-20, 2018)

• “Freedom within Limits (?): ‘Uniate’ Theology between Catholic West and Orthodox East”
  Paper for the Ricoeur Unit at the American Academy of Religion (Denver, Nov. 17-20, 2018)

• “Precious in the Sight of the Lord Is the Death of His Venerable Ones" (Ps 115:6 [LXX]): Martyrdom in the Byzantine Christian Tradition”
  Paper for the “Scripture and Theology Colloquium: Martyrdom and its Scriptural Shape” at Wycliffe College (Toronto, Oct. 19, 2018)      watch video