South Canaan, PA, June 25, 2026
Photo: medieval.nd.edu St. Tikhon’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in South Canaan, PA (Orthodox Church in America) has appointed Justin Smith as its new Assistant Professor of Church History / Historical Theology, effective July 1, 2026.
The appointment follows the retirement 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 service, the seminary reports.
The Seminary’s Academic Dean, Fr. Paul Witek, PhD, said the seminary was blessed to add Smith as a budding teacher and scholar, and expressed hope that he would share with students the understandings he has gleaned from such figures as Fr. Alexis Torrance and Fr. Maximos Constas and impact future generations of clergy.
An Orthodox scholar, husband, and father of six from middle Tennessee, Smith specializes in Church History and East-West Christian relations. He graduated with honors from Wheaton College, majoring in Bible, theology, and early Christian studies. He later attended a Protestant seminary in the Reformed tradition, where studies in the Biblical languages brought him to Greece and to an awareness of the Orthodox Church, an engagement that culminated in his family’s conversion to Holy Orthodoxy.
Smith completed a ThM 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 pursued doctoral studies at the Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame, specializing in Late-Byzantine Church History. His thesis on St. Mark of Ephesus (1394–1445), advised by Protopresbyter Alexis Torrance, is in its final stages of completion.
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