When Orthodox scholars get together, we rarely talk directly about the future. But occasionally the pressing needs of our time demand such a conversation. The near future is an exciting time for Orthodoxy: His All-Holiness the Ecumenical Patriarch has called a representative council of bishops to convene in Istanbul next spring, and many hope that this meeting will mark the beginning of a unified effort to address the manifold issues facing the Church in (post-)modernity. But the deliberations of a recent gathering of Orthodox scholars in New York, which discussed the Council’s agenda, suggest that this hope might remain unfulfilled.