Book Review: Turning to Tradition: Converts and the Making of an American Orthodox Church

Abstract

A mere footnote in many historical and sociological analyses of American religions, Eastern Orthodoxy has finally begun to receive the sustained attention of scholars interested in exploring its interplay with the American cultural context. In this vein, historian D. Oliver Herbel’s monograph, Turning to Tradition: Converts and the Making of an American Orthodox Church, contributes significantly to our understanding of at least one vital strand of this interplay: the extent to which twentieth-century American conversions to the Orthodox Church represent a subset of American ecclesial restorationism. Certainly, at an initial glance, Eastern Orthodoxy’s exotic ‘‘otherness’’ and entrenched doctrinal conservatism make it appear, in Herbel’s assessment, ‘‘a very un-American choice’’ (3) amidst the religious plurality, innovation, and individualism marking the contemporary American landscape. Yet, over the course of the twentieth century, the Orthodox Church has consistently attracted self-propelled, theologically-informed American converts to its doors. Herbel examines how these conversions reflect aspects of the American religious scene in featuring the case studies of four intra-Christian converts who have become ‘‘iconic and theologically normative’’ (2) within American Orthodoxy: Fr. Alexis Toth (1853–1909), Fr. Raphael Morgan (ca. 1869–1916), Fr. Moses Berry (1951-present), and Fr. Peter Gillquist (1938–2012). In addition to their clerical prominence, these figures are significant in inspiring entire movements of fellow seekers to embrace the Orthodox faith and for reflecting, at least to some extent, the ethnic and racial diversity within American Orthodoxy. While motivations for conversion can be quite idiosyncratic in their biographical specificity, these men cite Orthodoxy’s claim to embody, in its doctrine and