Vigen Guroian
Vigen Guroian is a permanent Senior Fellow of the Russell Kirk Center and Professor of Religious Studies (Eastern Christianity) at the University of Virginia.
He was most recently Professor of Theology and Ethics at Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland. Since 1986 Dr. Guroian has been a member of the faculty of the Ecumenical Institute of Theology at St. Mary’s Seminary and University. For the academic year 1995-1996 he was named the Distinguished Lecturer in Moral and Religious Education at the Institute. For more than a dozen years he has taught courses and workshops on religion and morality in children’s literature both at the Ecumenical Institute of Theology and at Loyola College.
Dr. Guroian attended the University of Virginia and received his Ph.D. in Theology from Drew University in 1978. He was an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia from 1978-81 and held a post there as well in the Center for Russian and East European Studies. He has also been a visiting lecturer at St. Nersess Armenian Seminary in New Rochelle, New York, where he was the Seminary’s Director of Academic Affairs from 1990-92. He was appointed recently as a member of the Academic Council of Examiners of the Faculty of Theology at Yerevan State University in Armenia.
Dr. Guroian is the author of several books as well as an edition of Russell Kirk's ghost stories, Ancestral Shadows: An Anthology of Ghostly Tales (Eerdmans, 2005):
- The Fragrance of God (Eerdmans, 2006)
- Rallying The Really Human Things: Moral Imagination In Politics Literature & Everyday Life (ISI Books, 2005)
- Inheriting Paradise: Meditations on Gardening (Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1999);
- Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classic Stories Awaken a Child’s Moral Imagination (Oxford University Press, 1998);
- Life’s Living Toward Dying: A Theological and Medical Ethical Study (Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1996);
- Faith, Church, Mission: Essays for Renewal in the Armenian Church (Armenian Prelacy, 1995);
- Ethics After Christendom: Toward an Ecclesial Christian Ethic (Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1994); and
- Incarnate Love: Essays in Orthodox Ethics (University of Notre Dame Press, 1987).
He has also published over one hundred articles in books and journals on a range of subjects including liturgy and ethics, marriage and family, children’s literature, ecology, genocide, and medical ethics. Dr. Guroian’s two most recent books—Inheriting Paradise and Tending the Heart of Virtue—have received national press and media attention. Feature stories on his books have appeared in The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, The Richmond Times Dispatch, and more than a dozen other newspapers around the country. Dr. Guroian has been a guest on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, The Mark Steiner Show, and numerous other radio talk shows. BreakPoint with Chuck Colson devoted an entire radio commentary series to a discussion of Tending the Heart of Virtue. Dr. Guroian’s books have been featured in discussions on several Mars Hill Audio tapes, and Mars Hill Audio offers a tape wholly comprised of readings from Inheriting Paradise.
Dr. Guroian sits on numerous editorial boards including The Journal of Religious Ethics, Pro Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology, Regeneration Quarterly, and Christian Bio-Ethics. He is a Senior Fellow of The Trinity Forum and is on the Board of Directors of the Society of Christian Ethics and on the Executive Committee of Christians Associated for Relations with Eastern Europe. He has been active in both the National Council of Churches and in the World Council of Churches. He served in recent years as a member of the Ethics and Ecclesiology Consultation of the WCC and is currently a member of the Board of Trustees and Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Universal Literary Project at Columbia Teacher’s College, Columbia University.
He and his wife, June, live in Virginia. They have two children, a son, Rafi, and a daughter, Victoria.
- Transcript of Dr. Guroian’s 1999 Kirk Memorial Lecture at the Heritage Foundation: “Moral Imagination, Humane Letters, and the Renewal of Society” (PDF also available).
- You can listen to two lectures by Vigen Guroian (“Moral Imagination” and “G. K. Chesterton and Christian Humanism”) at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute site.