The E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation has awarded Aristotle Papanikolaou, Ph.D., associate professor of theology at Fordham University, a $38,000 grant to complete a book that explores the relationship between confession and desire.
Papanikolaou, whose research focuses on contemporary Eastern Orthodox theology and the relationship between Orthodoxy and culture, serves as co-director of the Orthodox Studies Program at Fordham and is author of Being With God: Trinity, Apophaticism, and Divine-Human Communion (University of Notre Dame Press, 2006).
His book, which he intends to publish in 2009, will examine, among other things, what a more iconic, rather than juridical, understanding of confession may mean for Orthodoxy in the democratic and religiously plural societies of the 21st century.
The Philadelphia-based Carpenter Foundation was established in 1975 by E. Rhodes Carpenter, founder of the Carpenter Co., which manufactures and distributes polyurethane products, and his wife, Leona B. Carpenter. The foundation supports museums, healthcare organizations and graduate theological education.
