On March 7, 2023, the Church of Ingria held a conference on the biblical Book of Ruth. The conference, which took place at St. Mary’s Lutheran Cathedral in St. Petersburg and was live-streamed via Zoom, gathered 36 people. It opened with greetings from ELCIR Bishop Ivan Laptev. Many thanks to Aleksandr Sokolov and Aleksandr Statinov for arranging the webcast!The ELCIR plans to publish the presentations in print by July 2023.
Presentations:
Rev. Mikhail Ivanov, MTh, ELCIR chief secretary, senior pastor of St. Mary’s Cathedral: “The Book of Ruth: A Story about the Hidden God.”
Rev. Andrei Lipnitski, pastor of St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church of the SELC in Novosibirsk, faculty member at the SELC Theological Seminary: “The Book of Ruth and the Reign of the Judges.”
Olga Rudaya, master’s degree student at the ELCIR Theological Institute, ELCIR Information Department secretary: “The Situation of Widows in the Book of Ruth, in the Old Babylonian and Middle Assyrian Laws.”
Rev. Alexander von Schmidt, pastor of Zion Lutheran Church (San Luis Obispo, CA), DPTh student at Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, IN: “The Boundaries of a Typological Interpretation of the Book of Ruth.”
Liliann Keskinen, MPhil, coworker of the Institute for Bible Translation, Finland; editor of Inkerin Kirkko magazine: “On the Translation of the Book of Ruth into Finno-Ugric Languages.”
Darya Shkurlyatyeva, Master of Philology, ELCIR Liturgical Commission secretary, responsible editor in the churchwide media, musicologist: “The Image of Ruth in Musical Compositions: Theology and Musical Semiotics.”
Soli Deo Gloria!
