Aaron T. Hollander
Dr. Aaron T. Hollander is the Executive Director of Graymoor Ecumenical & Interreligious Institute (GEII). He is responsible for developing and sustaining the programs, publications, and partnerships of the Institute, while serving as GEII’s public representative in interchurch/interreligious, academic, and civic dialogue settings. He is the Editor of GEII’s award-winning journal of accessible public scholarship, Ecumenical Trends; he organizes dialogues, workshops, retreats, and other educational programming to equip participants with resources for humane dialogue and collaborative action; he carries out research into the histories of conflict and the dynamics of peacebuilding within and between religious communities, strengthening the Institute’s involvement with the academy of religion; and he serves on The Interchurch Center’s Committee for Ecumenical, Interreligious, and Community Concerns, maintaining the legacy of the building as a home for meaningful collaboration between organizations dedicated to the common good.
Dr. Hollander earned his PhD in Theology from the University of Chicago Divinity School (2018), his MPhil with Distinction in Ecumenical Studies from Trinity College Dublin (2009), and his BA with Highest Honors from Swarthmore College (2007). He is a scholar of contextual theology and lived religion, whose ongoing research foci include the dynamics of ecumenical/interreligious conflict and coexistence, the aesthetic texture and political power of holiness (particularly in Orthodox Christianity), and the circulation of theological understanding beyond explicitly religious settings. Dr. Hollander co-teaches the Centro Pro Unione Summer Course in Ecumenism and serves as adjunct faculty in Theology at Fordham University. He is the author of Saint George Liberator: Hagiography as Resistance in the Modern Mediterranean (Fordham University Press, 2026), a historical-ethnographic study that illuminates how representations of Orthodox Christian saints serve as means of resistance in the midst of cultural and political domination. He has also published numerous scholarly articles, chapters, and reviews in the fields of ecumenical theology, political theology, theology and popular culture, ecclesiology, world Christianity, interreligious studies, material religion, and comparative hagiology.
Dr. Hollander was President of the North American Academy of Ecumenists from 2022-2024, and he serves on the steering committee of the Ecclesiological Investigations International Research Network. His research has been awarded grants by the Fulbright US Student Program, the American Academy of Religion, the Council of American Overseas Research Centers, and the University of Chicago, and he has been an invited speaker at Villanova University, the University of San Francisco, the Oslo Coalition on Freedom of Religion and Belief, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, and Princeton Theological Seminary. He is available to lead workshops, seminars, or other educational programming pertaining to ecumenical/interreligious history, methods, and peace processes.
Publications
2026
Saint George Liberator: Hagiography as Resistance in the Modern Mediterranean. Fordham University Press.
2027
Saints in Divided Societies: The Political Aesthetics of Holiness. Forthcoming from Fordham University Press.
2026
“‘Even They Love Him’: Muslim Devotion to Saint George in Orthodox Christian Imagination.” Forthcoming in the Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures.
2026
“Ambiguous Liberation and the Aesthetics of Hope: A Response to the Roundtable on Saint George Liberator.” Forthcoming in Religious Studies Review.
2026
“Raimundo Barreto’s Base Ecumenism and the Legacy of Princeton Ecumenics.” Forthcoming in Religious Studies Review.
2026
“The Gallows Stairs to Freedom: Liberating Warfare and Sanctifying Memory in Cyprus.” Forthcoming in the Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies.
2025
“Memory, Truth, and Reconciliation in the Wake of Human Brutality.” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 60, no. 3: 347-358.
2024
“The Song of Saint George: Performing Liberation in Colonized Cyprus.” Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies 7, no. 1-2: 61-83.
2024
“Ecumenism and Translation? Ecumenism as Translation? Ecumenism in Translation?” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 59, no. 3: 295-305.
2023
“Decolonizing Churches as Emancipation and Exorcism.” Journal of World Christianity 13, no. 1: 58-65.
2021
“Fundamental Ecumenics Revisited: A Near-Forgotten Intellectual Framework as a Toolkit for the Mid-Twenty-First Century.” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 56, no. 2: 161-199.
2021
“Hagiography Unbound: A Theory of Making and Using Holy Media.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 89, no. 1: 72-102.
2021
“Blessed Are the Legend-Makers: Experimentation as Edification in Dungeons & Dragons.” Political Theology 22, no. 4: 316-331.
2020
“The Heromartyrs of Cyprus: National Museums as Greek Orthodox Hagiographical Media.” Material Religion 16, no. 2: 131-161.
2020
“Comparison as Collaboration: Notes on the Contemporary Craft of Hagiology.” Religions 11, no. 1.31: 1-9.
2016
“Forum: Crafting the Introductory Course in Religious Studies.” With Russell McCutcheon, Andrew Durdin, Kelli Gardner, Adam Miller, and Emily Crews. Teaching Theology and Religion 19, no. 1: 78-98.
2027
“Saints in Divided Societies: Agency, Mediation, Alterity.” In Saints in Divided Societies: The Political Aesthetics of Holiness, edited by Aaron T. Hollander. Forthcoming from Fordham University Press.
2027
“Martyrdom and Monumentality Among the Confederate Dead: The Case of Stonewall Jackson.” With Jalane D. Schmidt. In Saints in Divided Societies: The Political Aesthetics of Holiness, edited by Aaron T. Hollander. Forthcoming from Fordham University Press.
2021
“Holy Persons in the Global Middle Ages.” With Massimo Rondolino. In the Encyclopedia of the Global Middle Ages. Bloomsbury.
2020
“Ecumenical and Interreligious.” In Interreligious Studies: Dispatches from an Emerging Field, edited by Hans Gustafson, 107-118. Baylor University Press.
2017
“Blazing Light and Perfect Death: The Martyrs of Córdoba and the Growth of Polemical Holiness.” In Contested Spaces, Common Ground: Space and Power Structures in Contemporary Multireligious Societies, edited by Ulrich Winkler, Oddbjørn Leirvik, and Lidia Rodriguez, 203-224. Brill/Rodopi.
2011
“@Edinburgh2010: Online Ecumenism in an Age of Participation.” In Edinburgh 2010: Mission Today & Tomorrow, edited by Kirsteen Kim and Andrew Anderson, 321-329. Regnum Books International.
2026
“What Has Cambridge to Do with Jerusalem? Part I: Sightings of a Secular Ecumenism.” With John Sexton. Ecumenical Trends 55, no. 4: 1-10.
2026
“The Ancient Future of Ecumenical Spirituality.” Ecumenical Trends 55, no. 1: 1-6.
2025
“Is There an Orthodox Liberation Theology? A Fresh Look at a Fraught Category.” Public Orthodoxy, December 12, 2025: https://publicorthodoxy.org/good-reads/is-there-an-orthodox-liberation-theology/
2025
“Plurality, Entanglement, and the Wisdom of Interreligious Hospitality.” With Simran Jeet Singh. Ecumenical Trends 54, no. 6: 12-21.
2024
“Conflict, Peace, and Political Imagination in Contemporary Orthodox Christianity.” With Elizabeth H. Prodromou and Nikolaos F. Dimitriadis. Ecumenical Trends 53, no. 4: 3-14.
2024
“The Way is Open: Synodality, Ecumenism, and the Future of a Church in Process.” With Nathalie Becquart, XMCJ. Ecumenical Trends 53, no. 2: 1-9.
2023
“Translation and Transformation in Pentecostals’ Recovery of the ‘Great Tradition.’” With Emilio Alvarez. Ecumenical Trends 52, no. 4: 10-20.
2023
“Habits of the Heart: Ecumenical Formation and the Way of Reconciliation.” With Justin Welby. Ecumenical Trends 52, no. 1: 29-31.
2022
“Peace in Our Time? Suffering, Solidarity, and the Promise of Interreligious Engagement.” With Azza Karam. Ecumenical Trends 51, no. 4: 9-18.
2022
“Idolatry, Polarization, and the Politics of Faith.” With Serene Jones. Ecumenical Trends 51, no. 2: 10-18, 31.
2021
“On Us the Blood? Interreligious Reckoning with the Legacies of Christian Anti-Judaism.” With Amy-Jill Levine. Ecumenical Trends 50, no. 4: 1-9, 25.
2021
“Homeward Bound: Ecology and Ecumenicity between Laudato Si’ and Fratelli Tutti.” Ecumenical Trends 50, no. 2: 1-4, 31.
2020
“Asceticism, Ethics, and the Renewal of the Earth: Orthodox Christian Contributions to an Ecumenical Ecology.” With John Chryssavgis. Ecumenical Trends 49, no. 6: 6-13.
2020
“Collusions of Identity and the ‘Grace of Otherness.’” Berkley Forum, September 23, 2020: https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/responses/collusions-of-identity-and-the-grace-of-otherness.
2020
“On the Far Side of Revenge: Social Division and the Hope of Ecumenics in Northern Ireland and the United States.” With Geraldine Smyth. Ecumenical Trends 49, no. 4: 1-11, 20.
2020
“Exile and Hospitality: The Armenian Apostolic Church and the Wisdom of Marginality.” With Daniel Findikyan. Ecumenical Trends 49, no. 2: 9-16.
2019
“The Courage to Hearken: Ecumenism and the Underside of Modernity.” Ecumenical Trends 48, no. 2: 1-13.
2025
Review of Virginia Burrus, Earthquakes and Gardens: Saint Hilarion’s Cyprus. The Journal of Religion 105, no. 2: 237-239.
2015
Review of Augustine Casiday, Beyond Heresy: Reconstructing the Theology of Evagrius Ponticus. The Journal of Religion 95, no. 1: 136-138.
2009
Review of Brian Stanley, The World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh 1910; and of David Kerr and Kenneth Ross (eds), Edinburgh 2010: Mission Then and Now. One in Christ 43, no. 2: 201-206.