Vigen Guroian
Vigen Guroian resides with his wife June Vranian in Culpeper, Virginia, where he mostly tends to his large perennial and vegetable gardens. June is an Interior Designer. Vigen and June have two children. Their son Rafi is 28 years of age, a graduate of Hampden-Sydney College, and employed at Cox Newspapers in Washington D.C. Their daughter Victoria is 24 years old, a graduate of Washington and Lee University, and employed at the NRA.
Dr. Guroian received his B.A. from the University of Virginia (1970) and his Ph. D. in Theology from Drew University (1978). He is presently Professor of Theology and Ethics at Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland. Dr. Guroian 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 been a visiting lecturer at St. Nersess Armenian Seminary in New Rochelle, New York, and was the Seminary's Director of Academic Affairs from 1990-92. Dr. Guroian has served for many years as a member of and consultant to the Armenian Religious Education Council of the Prelacy of the Armenian Church of North America.
Since 1986 Dr. Guroian has been a member of the faculty of the Ecumenical Institute of Theology at St. Mary's Seminary and University teaching courses there regularly. For the academic year 1995-1996 he was named the Distinguished Lecturer in Moral and Religious Education at the Institute.
Dr. Guroian has been on numerous editorial boards including The Journal of Religious Ethics, Pro Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology, and Christian Bio-Ethics. He has served terms on the Board of Directors of the Society of Christian Ethics and the executive committees of the American Theological Society and 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 is Senior Fellow of the Center on Law and Religion of Emory University; Permanent Senior Fellow of the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in Mecosta, Michigan; Senior Fellow of the Trinity Forum; and an ongoing Fellow of the Wilberforce Forum under the Prison Fellowship Ministries founded by the honorable Chuck Colson.
Recent significant consultations and projects on which Dr. Guroian has served include: "The Alonzo L. McDonald Family Project on Christian Jurisprudence," Emory University (2004-2009); "The Vocation of the Child," commissioned by the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Religion at Emory University (2005-2006); A Consultation: "American Orthodoxy or Orthodoxy in America," sponsored by the Institute on Religion and World Affairs, Boston University and Pew Charitable Trusts (2003-2004); Christian Jurisprudence Project on "Law and Human Nature: The Teaching of Modern Christianity," sponsored by Pew Charitable Trusts (2001-2004); and "Consultation on Ecclesiology and Ecumenism," sponsored by the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology (2000-2003).
Dr. Guroian has published more than 150 articles in books, journals, and encyclopedias on a range of subjects including Orthodox theology, liturgy and ethics, marriage and family, children's literature, ecology, genocide, and medical ethics. He has authored a monthly column entitled "Really Human Things" on the Prison Fellowship Ministries' BreakPoint site. Dr. Guroian's books, Inheriting Paradise: Meditations on Gardening (Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1999) and Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classic Stories Awaken a Child's Moral Imagination (Oxford University Press, 1998), 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," "T
“Henry Mitchell, in his book One Man's Garden, observes that "it is not important for a garden to be beautiful" in everyone's eyes. But "it is extremely important for the gardener to think it is a fair substitute for Eden." Perhaps this is an overstatement, or perhaps it is a theological truth.”
“The fruit of the garden is not restricted to what we eat. Every garden lends something more to the imagination - beauty.”
“Gardening symbolizes our race's primordial acceptance of a responsibility and role in rectifying the harm done to the creation through sin.”
“My son Rafi is enchanted with cyberspace. But we are not disembodied mind or spirit, we are our bodies - cruising the Internet won't teach us that. It may even trick us into thinking that having a body and a place is not important. Gardening teaches us differently. I do not mean industrial mechanized farming, I mean the kind of gardening that any one of us can do with his hands and feet and the simplest tools.”
“I think if we all gardened more, they and all of the other birds that fly in the air above and light in my garden below would be better off. I know that God values them no less than I do. So when I plant in spring I also hope to taste of God in fruit of summer sun and sight of feathered friends.”
“Mere instruction in morality is not sufficient to nurture the virtues. It might even backfire, especially when the presentation is heavily exhortative and the pupil's will is coerced. Instead a compelling vision of the goodness of goodness itself needs to be presented in a way that is attractive and stirs the imagination.”