Biographical Note: John Anthony McGuckin
The Very Revd. Professor John Anthony McGuckin, of Irish extraction, is an Archpriest of the Orthodox Church in the Patriarchate of Romania’s Archdiocese in Western Europe, and currently Rector of St Gregory’s chapel in St. Anne’s on Sea, in North West England.
He was born in Wallsend on Tyneside in the North of England. Both his grandfathers (William McMahon, and Patrick McGuckin) as well as his father., Francis McGuckin, worked in the supply of ropes to the shipping trade extensively conducted on the Tyne at Willington Quay. At 11 he was sent to study at St. Cuthbert’s Grammar school in Newcastle on Tyne, and having matriculated there in 1969 he entered the novitiate of the catholic Passionist Order at Minsteracres Monastery, Co. Durham, and was afterwards sent by the Order to study philosophy and theology at the Jesuit Heythrop College between 1970 and 1975, where his philosophy teacher was Frederick Copleston, his scriptural professor was Robert Murray, and his patristic professors were doctors Robert Butterworth, Joseph Laishley and Maurice Bevenot. He gained the London University BD degree with first class honours in 1975, and moved to Durham to pursue doctoral studies in patristics with Protopresbyter George Dion Dragas. In 1979 he gained the Durham Doctorate in Philosophy for his dissertation on the theology of the Christian advisor to Emperor Constantine, Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius, and in 1980 moved to LSU College in Southampton for his first professional teaching post as Lecturer in New Testament Studies. In 1988 he became Head of the Department of Theology there, and a Principal Lecturer, before moving the following year to become Lecturer in New Testament and Patristics at the University of Leeds in Yorkshire. There he introduced courses in Byzantine Church History, as well as teaching biblical exegesis of the Gospels. He supervised the master’s theology programme, and supervised several early Christian doctoral students, becoming a University Reader in Patristic and Byzantine Theology in 1995.
In 1997 he came to the United States to serve as Professor of Church History at Union Theological Seminary in New York. For over two decades he was the Nielsen Professor of Early and Byzantine Church History at Union; and also Professor of Byzantine Christianity at Columbia University, and is now Emeritus. He is currently Professor in the Theological Faculty of Oxford University where he assists with examining and mentoring duties for higher degrees in the domain of early Christianity. He was also Senior Professorial Research Fellow in Emory University's School of Law, in the course of which project he issued his study of Byzantine Law published by SVS Press, New York. He is also Professorial Fellow in the St. Irenaeus Orthodox Institute of Radboud University, Nijmegen. In 2008, he founded and directed the New York Sophia Institute, as an advanced research forum for Eastern Orthodox thought and culture; one that was intended to bring together some of the brightest intellectual lights in contemporary English-speaking Orthodoxy for collaborative studies on Church and Society. It has issued eight volumes of critical studies on the Orthodox tradition under its own imprint of Theotokos Press, by young and established orthodox scholars, both male and female: including important studies of the role of women in contemporary Orthodoxy, and the Eastern Christian world’s attitudes to significant concerns such as theology of liberation, biblical interpretation, art and music, and monastic experience.
While he was a student at Durham he composed his first book, an English edition of the Theological Chapters of St. Symeon the New Theologian, the medieval Byzantine poet and mystic. He became an Orthodox Christian in 1989 and was ordained to the Diaconate in Baia Mare (Romania) in 1996, by Archbishop Justinian Chira (of blessed memory) and to the priesthood with a pastoral care for Romanians in England, in 1997, by Metropolitan Serafim Joanta. moving to the Omoforion of Metropolitan Nicolae Condrea when in the USA and subsequently Metropolitan Iosif when returning to England in the Romanian Archdiocese of Western Europe. Since his first book on St. Symeon he has published thirty four books on religious and historical themes, and two volumes of poetry, becoming internationally recognised as a leading interpreter of the Early Christian and Eastern Orthodox traditions. His works have been translated into many languages: Romanian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Korean and Chinese among them. He has taught in numerous Universities both in America and in Europe, as Visiting Distinguished Professor or as Visiting Scholar; including Kiev, Sibiu, Bucharest, Rome, Oslo, Iasi, Cambridge, Belfast, Oxford, Yale, Nijmegen, Sydney and Moscow. He was elected a Fellow of the British Royal Society of Arts in 1986, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1996. He was selected as the prestigious Luce Fellow in Early Christianity in 2006.
For his contributions to academic theology he was awarded the Order of St. Stephen the Great, the jewelled Cross of Moldavia and Bukovina, by the Romanian Patriarch Daniil in 2008. In 2013 He was awarded the second jewelled cross at St. Vladimir’s by Metropolitan Tikhon of the Orthodox Church in America, the highest honour bestowed on married clergy by the Orthodox churches, on the occasion of his award of the Honorary Doctorate in Divinity from St. Vladimir's seminary. In Nov. 2014 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Letters by the Andrei Saguna Theological Faculty of Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu.
Among his publications are: The Transfiguration of Christ in Scripture and Tradition (1986); St. Cyril of Alexandria: The Christological Controversy (1994); At the Lighting of the Lamps: Hymns from the Ancient Church (1995, and repr. 1997); St. Gregory of Nazianzus: An Intellectual Biography (2000) (Nominated for the 2002 Pollock Biography Prize); Standing in God’s Holy Fire: The Spiritual Tradition of Byzantium (Orbis, 2001); The Book of Mystical Chapters (Shambhala, 2002), The Westminster Handbook to Origen of Alexandria (WJK, 2004) and The Westminster Handbook To Patristic Theology (2004). His large-scale study of Eastern Christianity, The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to its History, Theology, and Spiritual Culture appeared from Blackwell-Wiley in the summer of 2007. A subsequent project was the making of the largest-ever English-Language Encyclopedia of Eastern Orthodoxy which he edited, and which appeared from Blackwell-Wiley in Winter 2010. His most recent books are Prayer Book of the Early Church (Paraclete Press. 2012); The Ascent of Law: Patristic and Byzantine Reformulations of Antique Civilization (SVS Press. 2012); The Path of Christianity: The First Thousand Years (IVP Academic, 2016); Eastern Orthodoxy: A New History, (Yale University Press, 2019); Origen: Master Theologian of the Early Church (Lexington/Fortress, 2022); and St. Symeon the New Theologian: Hymns of Divine Eros (SVS Press, New York, 2026). In addition to his scholarly books he has published more than 170 research articles, in scholarly journals, ranging in subject matter from New Testament Exegesis to Art History; and Russian mysticism to Human rights theory. Many of these appeared as an edition of his collected works, brought out in 2019, in three volumes by SVS Press, New York. The central focus of his research has revolved around the thought of the fourth to fifth century Christian Fathers and the Byzantine mystical writers.
Professor McGuckin has appeared many times on American, British, and Italian Television programmes, as well as on Radio in Europe, America, and Canada; commenting on religious issues. In 2011 his film, co-authored with Emmy-award-winning Director Norris Chumley was released in cinemas, on cable TV and DVD entitled: Mysteries of the Jesus Prayer. It can be seen in large part on YouTube under that title. In 1994, his first collection of poetry, Byzantium and Other Poems, was published; and a second retrospective collection appeared in 2010 (Selected Poems). While teaching higher graduate courses in New York, Fr. John also formerly served as the Rector of the Eastern Orthodox Chaplaincy of St. Gregory the Theologian, looking after English-speaking Orthodox students in Upper Manhattan. In retirement he is now the serving priest for the small Orthodox community in St. Anne’s, U.K.
He is married to Eileen McGuckin, a professional Master-Iconographer in the Byzantine and Slavic styles, with a very pronounced clarity of line and colour in her work. She maintains a busy studio fulfilling commissions for individuals as well as churches. Their family consists of three married children, and seven grand-children; the makings of a small Irish clan.