An Overview
Worship - Fellowship - Picnic - Music - Dancing - Children's Acitivities - Workshops - Bookstores
This year our Diocese will hold its 14th Annual Diocesan Days on Labor Day weekend, Friday, September 3rd through Sunday, September 5th, in Jackson, California. We take this opportunity to invite you to support this very important and uplifting event by coming and participating in all the Church Services, workshops and other planned activites. We encourage you to come and spend time with family and friends and enjoy a weekend of delicous food and entertainment. Information regarding the schedule of events will be available soon!
Special Guest Speaker, Keynote Address: His Eminence, Metropolitan Nikitas
His Eminence Metropolitan Nikitas of Dardanellia, son of Constantine and Kalliope Lulias, was born on June 22, 1955 in Tampa, Florida where he was raised with his brother John. A member of Savant, the University of Florida Honor Society, he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Honors) degree from the University in 1976. He was listed in the Who’s Who of American Colleges and Universities in 1975 and 1979. His Eminence attended the Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology and received his Master of Divinity, with Honors, in 1980. He was a Rotary International Graduate Scholar from 1980-1981 and A Graduate Scholar, Ministry of the Exterior, Greece, from 1981-1982. He pursued his graduate studies at the University of Thessaloniki, Greece until November 1982. He further studied the Russian language at the St. Petersburg Theological Seminary, St. Petersburg, Russia from late 1992 to mid 1993. His Eminence Nikitas’ first assignment upon ordination was Associate Pastor at Ss Constantine and Helen Cathedral in Merriville, Indiana. He remained at the cathedral until 1987 at which time he became the chancellor of the Greek Orthodox Diocese of Chicago, Illinois. During his tenure as Chancellor from 1987 to 1995, he was involved in numerous educational, community service, and interfaith activities. He lectured a course in Orthodox Christian Theology at Loyola University, Chicago, Illinois (1988 to 1991). In 1994 he was appointed Director of Development for the International Orthodox Christian Charities and on July 1, 1995 he became Pastor of the St. Demetrios Orthodox Church of Chicago. He was consecrated a Hierarch and named Metropolitan of Hong Kong and South East Asia on Saturday, 14 December 1996. This historic event took place in the Patriarchal Cathedral of St. George the Great Martyr, Phanar, Istanbul. He was enthroned as the first Metropolitan of Hong Kong and South East Asia (the Exarchates of China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore) on Sunday, 12 January1997 at the Cathedral of Saint Luke the Evangelist in Hong Kong. In March of 2007, His Eminence Metropolitan Nikitas was appointed Director of the Patriarch Athenagoras Orthodox Insitute in Berkeley, California. His Eminence Metropolitan Nikitas is fluent in English, Greek and Russian and has a working knowledge of Latin, Church Slavonic and Spanish.
Guest Speaker: Rev. Dr. Andrew Cuneo
Topic "God and Modern Culture"
Dr. Andrew Cuneo was born in the “green and pleasant” land of Wilton, Connecticut, where he lived until attending Stanford University 3000 miles away. It was there that he met his future wife, Erika. He graduated from Stanford with a B.A. in English and then traveled to England to complete an M.Phil. in English Renaissance Literature at the University of Oxford. Before completing graduate studies, he assisted Walter Hooper with research on the unpublished letters of C. S. Lewis, a subject which then became the focus of his doctorate at Oxford. The University awarded him his D.Phil. in English in 2001, making him the first Oxford scholar ever to receive a doctoral degree on C. S. Lewis. He was the Oxford University C. S. Lewis Society President from 1995-1999 and arranged the CSL Commemorative Lecture Series in 1998 at Regent’s Park College, Oxford. Dr. Cuneo lives in Hillsdale, Michigan, where he teaches English Literature at Hillsdale College. Dr. Cuneo is a generalist in British literature, a gardener in his free time, and an admirer of the Inklings.
