CLE Webinar

Friday, December 5, 2025 -- 12:00pm ET

The Orthodox Church has had a significant role in the nation's jurisprudence on church governance and property disputes. Three U.S. Supreme Court cases involved Orthodox churches: Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, 344 U.S. 94 (1952), Kreshik v. Saint Nicholas Cathedral of Russian Orthodox Church in America (1960), and Serbian Eastern Orthodox Diocese v. Milivojevich (1976). Since then, disputes arising from discord within hierarchically affiliated churches have filled the courts.

Resolving these unfortunate disagreements, which divide jurisdictions and local church communities, involve considerations of the First Amendment's Religion Clauses, nonprofit corporate governance law, trust law, and the common law governing secular voluntary associations.

This program will discuss the manner in which the law has developed to its current state and the ways in which courts have addressed intra-church disputes. It also invites a discussion of whether the U.S. Supreme Court will bring more certainty to this area of the law.

(Clergy may register without charge. Contact us at: info@orthodoxattorneys.org)

Speaker

Peter Talevich is a litigation partner in the K&L Gates' Seattle office whose practice focuses on complex commercial disputes, constitutional law, and trust and estates disputes. Peter has represented Orthodox and Presbyterian jurisdictions in church governance disputes. He solely represents higher authorities within a religious jurisdiction in these disputes. Peter has also advised several other religiously affiliated organizations on transactional matters such as gifts and corporate governance. Peter is a graduate of University of Notre Dame and Seattle University Law School and attends a Roman Catholic church in Seattle. He also serves on the Board of Regents of Seattle University, a Catholic university.

CLE Credit

CLE credit is anticipated in the following states:

AK AL AR AZ CA CT GA IL KS NC NJ NV NY OH PA TN TX VA WA WV

OCAN 2026 Retreat

"Law, Calling, & Renewal of the Soul"

Rescheduled to April 24 - 26, 2026

St. Iakavos Retreat Center, Kansasville, WI

Due to scheduling conflicts in November, we are rescheduling the OCAN Retreat at St. Iakovos Retreat Center. More details to come!

CLE Webinar

Friday, August 1, 2025

Webinar Recording

Presented by Dn. Kenneth Liu

Executive Director, Orthodox Christian Attorney Network

Whether you serve on a parish or diocesan/metropolis council, provide informal guidance to a parish, or simply want to be aware of issues that a church should know about, we welcome you to join OCAN for this free webinar on top legal issues faced by churches. CLE credit was provided for the livestream only, but the recording is available.

This introductory webinar provided an overview of top legal issues all Orthodox parishes should be familiar with, including:

• Church Governance
• Parish Leader Fiduciary Obligations
• Youth Protection 
• Clergy-Penitent Privilege
• Insurance
• Copyright
• Property
• Liability protection

Thoughts on Humility

for Orthodox Christian Attorneys

Speaker: Lory Barsdate Easton

Thursday, April 10, 2025

In the Lenten prayer of St. Ephrem the Syrian, we ask the Lord to give us the spirit of humility. What is humility, and what does it mean to be humble as a lawyer? This webinar will discuss the virtue of humility, touching on Orthodox teachings and recent psychological research, and will explore challenges for lawyers seeking to grow closer to Christ through humility.

We will discuss some of the specific pitfalls for lawyers, including:

• the competitive and adversarial aspects of the profession,
• the encouragement to be self-promoting as "marketing,"
• the temptations of specialized knowledge, prestige, and power, and
• the dangers of stress and burnout

We also will consider some examples of humility in action in legal practice. Entering Holy Week, Orthodox Christians are brought face-to-face with the icon depicting the Extreme Humility of Christ. Join us before Lent ends to consider how our Lord Himself tolerated shame and injustice – to the grave – and what that means for us as lawyers.

Orthodox Christians and

the Rights Revolution in America

with Rev. Dr. Anthony Roeber

Thursday, February 27, 2025

Webinar Recording

So much of American law and policy is predicated on the concept of “rights,” derived primarily from western thought. Does our Orthodox tradition have anything to contribute to the American conversation on this topic?  

Fr. Anthony’s presentation will provide an overview of the objective and content of his book, Orthodox Christians and the Rights Revolution in America. His book engages the difficult question of how Eastern Orthodox people have selectively used some modern notions of rights but rejected other aspects of modern secular liberal thought. At the same time, it alerts the Orthodox to their inherited notions of “rights,” sometimes referred to as “prerogatives,” “honors,” “privileges,” and so on that remain contested both among hierarchs and in controversies between clergy and laity that have at times resulted in lawsuits in secular courts. Fr. Anthony attempts to provide a way to distinguish various kinds of rights claims before engaging the Orthodox chronological engagement with internal and external rights claims in North America. He then grounds these issues in the global context of Orthodox debates over rights and compares Orthodox North American assessments with Catholic and Protestant approaches.

Speaker: The Rev. Dr. A. G. Roeber, Emeritus Professor of Early Modern History and Religious Studies, Penn State University, is currently Professor of Church History, St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary. Born in Paonia, Colorado, he began his graduate work at the University of Denver and completed his Ph.D. at Brown University. He has taught at various universities in North America and in Germany. His  Palatines, Liberty, and Property was the 1993 co-winner of the American Historical Association’s John H. Dunning Prize for the best book on any aspect of American history in a two-year period. He is a past president of the Orthodox Theological Society in America and most recently Co-author of  Changing Churches (2012); co-editor, Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Theology (2016) author, Mixed Marriages: An Orthodox History (2018); editor, Human v. Religious Rights? (2020), and author, Orthodox Christians and the Rights Revolution (2024).