LEWISTON — Members of the community are invited to a potluck luncheon and conversation with Archbishop Lazar Puhalo of the Orthodox Church in America. The event will be held at USM’s Lewiston-Auburn campus in the upstairs lounge from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 8.

Puhalo has been called one of the world’s foremost social philosophers and “one of the last true Renaissance thinkers.” He is a hierarch of the North American Orthodox Church. Besides being a notable church leader, Puhalo is also a world leader in ecological, indigenous and human rights. He has studied physics and particle physics at University of British Columbia, as well as neurobiology, Byzantine history and patristics at the Warburg Institute, University of London, United Kingdom, and theology at Holy Trinity Seminary, Jordanville, N.Y.

He has lectured widely in North America and Europe on human rights, the world ecological crisis, and religion and science. Puhalo has been an activist for women’s rights and has written 48 books.

The event is free and open to the public and is being sponsored by USM LAC’s International Students Organization of Lewiston-Auburn, the Arts and Humanities program, and students of LCC 350 Global Past, Global Present. For more information, visit usm.maine.edu/lac or call 753-6574.