This panel examines how mobility—whether through exile, scholarly travel, or diaspora life—shapes the production and contestation of ecclesial authority in Middle Eastern Christian traditions. Spanning late antique, medieval, and contemporary contexts, the papers argue that displacement is not merely a backdrop to religious life but a generative force that reconfigures theological imagination, institutional legitimacy, and communal belonging. The first paper shows how exiled clerics in Egyptian non-Chalcedonian Christianity transformed displacement into a credential of authenticity, enabling the expansion of orthodoxy through hagiography and epistolary networks. The second analyzes the mobility of the Armenian theologian Mkhitar Gosh, demonstrating how movement between Gandzak and Cilicia fostered theological synthesis while sustaining tensions between homeland and diaspora. The final paper examines the Coptic Synaxarium in the United States, where youth reinterpret hagiography in digital and pedagogical settings. Together, the panel highlights authority as continually reconstituted through movement and reinterpretation.
The leitmotif of the exiled legitimate cleric was more than rhetoric in the Egyptian non-Chalcedonian polemics of the fifth-through-eighth centuries. This paper analyzes exile and expulsion of non-Chalcedonian leaders as a trope in hagiographies, as well as a galvanizing factor in connecting various Egyptian localities through epistolary correspondence with non-Chalcedonian leaders in exile. The analysis accounts for expulsions appearing in Christian non-Chalcedonian hagiographical texts (such as Makarius of Tkow, Daniel of Scetis, and Samuel of Kalamoun); and in the letters of Pope Timothy II Aelurus (d.477), written in exile to the faithful in Egypt. The paper discusses the ironies of exilic displacement, showing how: 1) it was subverted, transformed into a credential of authentic authority, and 2) it served to make non-Chalcedonian orthodoxy unexpectedly mobile. This paper draws significantly on the unpublished files of David W. Johnson, S.J. (†2011), who serves posthumously as a co-author.
In American Coptic Orthodox parishes, the Synaxarium is often treated as inherited devotional reading, yet it is increasingly becoming a frontline site where the church’s future is negotiated with younger generations. This paper argues that the Synaxarium functions as a technology of ecclesial formation: it scripts models of holiness, suffering, gender, vocation, and communal belonging, and thereby shapes how youth imagine what “Coptic” Christianity can be in the United States. I examine how second- and third-generation Copts receive, contest, or re-narrate Synaxarium figures amid American moral sensibilities, digital media habits, and inter-Christian proximity. Particular attention is given to pedagogical settings (Sunday school, youth meetings, retreats, and online clips) where hagiography is condensed, moralized, or contextualized. I show how these interpretive moves implicitly revise ecclesiology—redefining authority, identity, and continuity—by determining which saints remain credible, and why.
Mkhitar Gosh, one of the most influential figures in the history of the Armenian Church, was born around 1140 in the city of Gandzak (present-day Ganja in Azerbaijan) and was educated at some of the most prominent monasteries in the northern region, eventually attaining the rank of vardapet (given to scholar monks, roughly equivalent to an archimandrite). After receiving this rank, which designated him as scholar and gave him the right to teach, he traveled to the Cilicia region. At the time, the two regions were starkly divided intellectually, theologically, and culturally. This paper argues that this very literal mobility and Gosh’s monastic trajectory influences the characteristics of Gosh’s intellectual and theological approach. It suggests that Gosh’s mobile trajectory between these two regions can serve as an example for a recurring theme and problem in the Armenian experience: the disjoint between Armenian life in the traditional homeland and in diaspora.