St. Tikhon's Seminary Appoints New Assistant Professor of Church History / Historical Theology

South Canaan, PA — It is with great pleasure that St. Tikhon's Seminary announces the appointment of Justin Smith as the Seminary's new Assistant Professor of Church History / Historical Theology. Professor Smith will take up his position at the Seminary on 1 July 2026. Professor Smith's appointment comes at the conclusion of the long-standing tenure of Professor Emeritus, Dr. David Ford, who stepped down from the full-time faculty at the end of the 2025-2026 academic year after 37 years of faithful service to the Seminary community. In announcing the appointment of Professor Smith, the Seminary's Academic Dean, Priest Paul Witek, Ph.D., noted that: “The Seminary is blessed to be adding Professor Justin to its faculty as a budding teacher and scholar and anticipates that he will partner well with a new generation of prominent specialists and practitioners that we have brought together over the past several years. We look forward to Justin sharing with our students the understandings that he has gleaned from such prominent figures as Fr. Alexis Torrance and Fr. Maximos Constas, and sincerely hope that he will significantly impact future generations of servants to minister with the utmost excellence in the Lord's Vineyard.”

Justin Michael Smith is an Orthodox scholar, husband, and father of six, who hails from middle Tennessee and specializes in Church History and East-West Christian relations. He graduated with honors from Wheaton College, where he majored in Bible, theology, and early Christian studies. After Wheaton, Justin attended a small Protestant seminary in the Reformed tradition where his studies in the biblical languages brought him to Greece—and to an awareness of the Orthodox Church. This trip precipitated an intense and thorough engagement with the history of the Church and relations between Western and Eastern Christians, an engagement which culminated in his departure from the seminary and his family’s conversion to Holy Orthodoxy. Shortly thereafter, Justin completed a Th.M. with highest honors at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology under Archimandrite Maximos Constas with a thesis on the theology of St. Basil the Great. He then continued his studies at the doctoral level in the Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame, where he studied theology, classics, and history, specializing in Late-Byzantine Church History. His doctoral thesis on the life and work of St. Mark of Ephesus (1394–1445) is being advised by Protopresbyter Alexis Torrance and is in its final stages of completion. Justin is deeply humbled, honored, and eager to join the faculty at St Tikhon’s in the fall, where he will strive to place his talents and training in the service of one of the Church’s high callings, namely the intellectual formation of future clergy.

Our Seminary warmly welcomes Professor Smith to the St. Tikhon's community, and wishes him the very best in his appointment to our faculty.