Sacred Space Essay Contest & Lectures

The Center for Christianity, Culture and the Arts invites all interested Biola undergraduate students, graduate students, and alumni to submit an essay addressing ways in which Evangelical Christians should consider sacred space within their particular church communities.  This paper is in response to the ideas, theories and writings of Russian art historian Dr. Alexei Lidov.  Please familiarize yourself with Dr. Lidov’s papers by downloading them using the links provided below:

HIEROTOPY: THE CREATION OF SACRED SPACES AS A FORM OF CREATIVITY
AND SUBJECT OF CULTURAL HISTORY
http://hierotopy.ru/contents/CreationOfSacralSpaces_01_Lidov_Hierotopy_2006_Eng.pdf

ICONS AND ICONICITY IN SACRED SPACE
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8lj23kgsrrhisuh/icon%20and%20iconicity%20-lidov-sr-final.doc?dl=0

CONTEST SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

1. Writers must register and attend ONE of two sessions given by Dr. Alexei Lidov. Event dates are: Going Deep With Icons--Thursday, December 3, 2015, from 10:30AM to 1:00PM OR Sacred Space as Spatial Icon--Saturday, December 5, 2015, at 5:00PM. Both events will be held at Fieldstead & Company in Irvine. Father Patrick Doolan from St. Gregory of Sinai Monastery will respond to Dr. Lidov’s paper on December 3rd and Fr. Hugh Barbour from St. Michael’s Abbey will respond on Dec 5th.  You MUST REGISTER to attend these lectures via email at ccca@biola.edu. The deadline for event registration is November 20, 2015. Transportation or gas reimbursement will be available.
2. Deadline for essay submissions is Monday, April 4, 2016. No late entries will be accepted.
3. Email papers to Nila.Osline@biola.edu.
4. Essays should be no shorter than 8 pages and no longer than 12 pages in length, PDF formatted, double-spaced and paginated.
5. Submitted essays should not have been previously published in any form.
6. All entries must include: writer’s name, mailing address, telephone number and e-mail address.
7. Prize Money Awarded: First Place: $1000.00, Second Place: $750.00, Third Place: $500.00.
8. For answers to any questions regarding this contest, please email: ccca@biola.edu or nila.osline@biola.edu.
9. The winning entries will be announced on Monday, May 16, 2016.
10.  A publication of the winning essays may result from this contest.

Alexei Lidov is a Russian art historian and Byzantine scholar. He was born in Moscow where he studied and earned his PhD in art history from Moscow State University. Lidov founded and directs the Research Center for Eastern Christian Culture, an independent non-governmental organization. He has lectured widely on Orthodox iconography, most notably at Princeton, Harvard, Columbia, Oxford and Cambridge. While studying the role of miraculous icons and relics in the formation of sacred spaces in the Eastern Christian tradition, Lidov formulated the concept of “hierotopy” which refers to the creation of sacred spaces as a special form of human creativity and field of study that combines art, history, archeology, anthropology and religion.  Hierotopy represents not only the artistic image and symbolic world they form, but the entire collection of media that serves to organize a sacred space into a “spatial icon.”

Father Patrick Doolan is a noted iconographer at St. Gregory’s of Sinai Monastery in Northern California. Trained by the Russian iconographer and iconologist Leonid Ouspensky, and considered by many to be “the master of true fresco”, Father Doolan carries on the traditions of religious iconography that capture the essence of the Orthodox faith. Currently Father Doolan is painting fresco cycles in three Orthodox Churches, one in Northern California and two in France.

Fr. Hugh Barbour, O. Praem, is the Prior of St. Michael’s Abbey of the Norbertine Fathers in Trabuco Canyon, Orange County, California. Fr. Barbour holds a B.A. in Classics from UNC-Chapel Hill, a license in Patristics from the Pontifical Institute of Augustinianism in Rome, and a Ph.D. in Thomistic Philosophy from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome. He teaches both Augustinian studies and philosophy at the Abbey, and he is a member of the Ecumenical Commission of the Diocese of Orange.