Greek Orthodox Archdiocese Blogs

February 19, 2008

Seminar on Addiction at St. Vladimir’s Seminary

Filed under: General, Technology & Religion, Mobile Pornography — Theo Nicolakis @ 8:54 pm

I had a wonderful visit at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary (www.svots.edu) this past Friday. The school was kind enough to invite me to speak on a day-long series on addictions.

During the morning session, some frightening statistics about clergy training and substance abuse were disseminated. The statistics showed that overall, only about 12.5 percent of clergy members completed any coursework while in seminary (or “studying to be a member of the clergy”). While Orthodox Christians ranked first among clergy likely to have completed substance-abuse-related coursework, that number was only 27.8 percent.

This is in stark contrast to the survey completed by CASA that showed that 73.9 percent of Catholic, 58.2 percent of Protestant, and 50 percent of Jewish presidents of Theological schools viewed the importance of substance abuse training as “very important”.

I was encouraged and inspired by St. Vladimir’s proactive program to tackle this serious topic head-on.

As I promised to the attendees, I’m attaching a copy of my presentation here to the blog.

I have multiple options:

  • I have the original Apple Keynote version that you can download here (note that this file is HUGE and over 750 megs and includes all the videos). You need Apple Keynote, which is included in iWorks 2008 to open this file.
  • I have a PDF version of the keynote presentation here in PDF format.:
  • I also have a self-running version (though it’s not the full presentation I did at St. Vladimir’s) here in MP4 format.

    • I want to extend my sincere thanks to Fr. Chat Hatfield and the entire St. Vladimir’s community for their kind invitation and hospitality. I had a wonderful time with you all and I look forward to seeing you all online and on FaceBook (that is once I get my account finally going ;-)

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