Clergy
Fr. Isaac Crow
The V. Rev. Fr. Isaac Crow was born Bruce Crow in 1953 in Beirut, Lebanon, the youngest child of an American father and a Lebanese mother. His undergraduate and graduate studies were undertaken at the American University of Beirut in the fields of anthropology, Middle East history, and religious studies.
During his student years he traveled extensively in the Middle East visiting Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Egypt, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, and Iran. From 1976–1978 he taught at the University of Isfahan in Iran. In Beirut he worked as a translator and documentationalist for the Middle East Council of Churches. Following an encounter with Metropolitan GEORGES (Khodr), the Orthodox Bishop of Mt. Lebanon, he began to study Eastern Orthodox theology and became involved in the Antiochian Orthodox Youth Movement.
In 1982 he entered the Balamand Patriarchal Seminary (the St. John of Damascus Orthodox Institute of Theology) as a student of the Diocese of Mt. Lebanon. In 1987 he graduated, presenting a thesis titled Divine Call and Human Response: The Teaching of St. Isaac the Syrian on the Nature of Man. Following the completion of his theological studies he remained at the Balamand, serving for three years as the librarian of the Institute.
In 1989, at the height of the Lebanese Civil War, Fr. Isaac was received by H.E. Metropolitan PHILIP (Saliba) into the Antiochian Archdiocese of North America and was ordained to the Holy Priesthood on September 10, 1989. He was given the ordained name Isaac after the great 7th century Syriac Saint Isaac of Nineveh. Fr. Isaac has served parishes in Montreal, Canada; Yonkers, New York; and Lowell, MA. In 2001 he was assigned to the pastorate of St. Mary Church in Pawtucket, RI.
Fr. Isaac has pursued post-graduate work in the field of early Christian studies at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. Alongside his pastoral ministry, his interests include: the writings of the Church Fathers, liturgical art, the study of theological anthropology and contemporary culture, christian ecology, interfaith dialogue (particularly Christian-Muslim relations), and traditional Byzantine modal music. Since 2003 he has been involved in campus ministry and serves as the Eastern Orthodox Chaplain at Brown University in Providence, RI. Fr. Isaac is married to Dolly Choueiry, a native of North Lebanon, and they are the parents of Basil B Crow.