Dr. Elizabeth H. Prodromou is one of the rare Orthodox scholars who is a conversational partner with both foreign policymakers and the Ecumenical Patriarchate. (You see her here at the Great and Holy Council in Crete in 2016 with Patriarch Bartholomew and Archbishop Anastasios of Albania.) As an MIT-trained political scientist whose life’s work has focused on situating Orthodoxy within her academic research and her diplomatic and policy experiences, she calls herself a “hybrid,” someone who crosses the boundaries of scholarship and practice and who aims to understand how ideas influence and inspire the actions that affect people’s daily lives. She has described her work in the academic and policy arenas, whether in the Church, the university, or the foreign policy world, as centered on service and peacebuilding. Elizabeth is a Professor in Boston College’s Program in International Studies, as well as a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Eurasia Center of the Atlantic Council. She was a member of the delegation of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to the Holy and Great Council at Crete in 2016, one of only four women at the event.
She credits her upbringing and her doctoral research as the keys to her professional pathway. Elizabeth told Axia that “When I was growing up in South Portland, Maine, my parents taught me that Orthodoxy and service were one and the same, that education was about becoming a fuller person through knowledge. Fortunately, we had remarkable priests in our parish of Holy Trinity in Portland and they opened up Orthodoxy in ways that made me think seriously about what it means to be Church, and to be a Church that protects human dignity, helps those in need, and speaks with a confident voice in the public sphere. Those formative experiences shaped my academic and practitioner choices and commitments.”
Elizabeth completed her Ph.D. in Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a dissertation on church-state relations in 1980s Greece, a period that saw intense debates, among theologians and between theologians and policymakers, on Orthodoxy’s influences in public life around questions of democracy and nationalism. A year at Princeton on a post-doctoral fellowship coincided with the start of the post-Cold War Yugoslav Wars, and her expertise on religion and politics, especially on Orthodoxy, led to her engagement with policymakers in Washington and Europe. She says, “I realized that foreign policy knowledge about Orthodoxy was a tabula rasa, and, likewise, that Orthodox Churches were only beginning to come to terms with their relevance in contemporary international relations.” Her scholarship on Orthodoxy, democracy, and human rights, and especially, her teaching on religion and politics in Greece and Turkey, led to what has become her work with the Ecumenical Patriarchate, which has stretched to almost three decades. This same trajectory led to her appointment as a diplomat on the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (2004-2012), and, then, to work as a member of the U.S. Secretary of State’s Religion & Foreign Policy Working Group (2011-2015).
She incorporates her diplomatic experience and ongoing policy work into her teaching and scholarship on religion and human rights. She told Axia, “The existential threats faced by the Ecumenical Patriarchate shine a light on how failures to protect the rights of all faith communities make for so much of the human suffering, violence, and non-democratic forms of politics that deprive human beings of their dignity and security. Diplomatic and field research travels around the world have made it clear that Orthodoxy faces enormous challenges, but, likewise, I believe that the global Orthodox Church has both a responsibility and the capacity to help solve the existential issues of our time”
She spent a decade teaching leaders in international relations about the importance of religious literacy and faith-based engagement for peacebuilding, with a decade as a Professor of Conflict Resolution at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University; she continues to work with policymakers on similar issues, especially as they relate to Orthodoxy and security, in organizations such as the European External Action Service, the International Negotiators Working Group, and in think tanks like the Atlantic Council, the Center for American Progress, and the Hudson Institute.
Elizabeth was appointed to the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s Task Force on Modern Slavery, she is an Advisory Board member of the St. Phoebe Center for the Deaconess, and she conducts leadership training for Orthodox churches worldwide. She is an active mentor to Orthodox young adults, in programs such as CrossRoad, Orthodox Volunteer Corps, and the Archons’ Pilgrimage of Discovery. She is a member of the University of Notre Dame Law School’s Religious Liberty Initiative (Advisory Board), the Freedom of Religion or Belief Women’s Alliance (Alliance Advisor), the Global Academic Council of the International Religious Freedom Secretariat.
“Hybridity has been a way for me to thrive as a scholar, a teacher and mentor, and in policymaking. And, as an Orthodox woman, wife, and mother, I’m always mindful of how ideas and actions are inextricably related, and how service is a way of life, how mentorship is leadership by example. It’s incumbent upon the global Orthodox Church to live up to the model of unity in diversity, at a time when faith communities worldwide are called to be positive agents in ensuring peace and human flourishing.”
She is co-editor of two volumes on Eastern Orthodox Christianity and numerous articles on religion and international relations, including recent work on Orthodoxy and geopolitics. She sits on the editorial board of The Review of Faith & International Affairs and, more recently, of The Journal of World Christianity. :
