Ethno-Religiosity in Orthodox Christianity: A Source of Solidarity &amp; Multiculturalism in American Society

Chris Durante

doi:10.3390/rel6020328

Abstract

This study will analyze the processes of community organization implemented by Eastern Orthodox Christian ethno-religious groups, and Greek Orthodox Christian communities in particular, to establish themselves in American civil society. It will be argued that the symbiotic relationship formed between ethnicity and religion in this tradition, as well as the democratized grassroots mode of community organization that American civil society fosters, contributes to a strong sense of belonging amongst members of the ethno-religious Orthodox Christian congregations. In turn, this sense of belonging has produced a multi-layered mechanism for solidarity-building in these communities. It will then be suggested that in addition to contributing to America’s religious diversity, the preservation of ethno-linguistic heritage by the various Orthodox Christian churches simultaneously contributes to America’s poly-ethnicity and linguistic diversity as well. Last, it will be argued that the continued survival of ethno-religiosity in American Orthodoxy can either lead to further isolation amongst the separate ethnic congregations, or it can alternatively open avenues for the cultivation of a form of Orthodox Christian multiculturalism that supports neither homogeneity nor isolationism.

Highlights

With its longstanding history of immigration & religious denominationalism, American civil society has become an arena of unprecedented ethnic, religious and cultural diversity
Given the continued immigration of new religious and ethnic groups into American society, it is important to understand the ways in which religion and ethnicity have shaped American immigrant identities over the past century and the integration of immigrant groups into American civil society
The liberal pluralism of America has provided Orthodox Christianity with a socio-political situation in which, as a single tradition, it was able to manifest its multicultural tendencies in civil society

Summary

Introduction

With its longstanding history of immigration & religious denominationalism, American civil society has become an arena of unprecedented ethnic, religious and cultural diversity. American “civil society” is itself a public space, separate from the state, in which private citizens can engage in the mutual pursuit of common goals, collectively gather, and form private organizations in the public sphere The nature of this civil society lends itself to numerous possibilities for immigrant groups to create voluntary associations in which their ethno-religious identities have survived. With Eastern Orthodoxy, we are presented with a regionally based territorial mode of organization, and a federated form of association in which local clergy and congregants play an active role in determining their particular ecclesial leaders Commenting on this tradition of autocephaly, Philip Walters traces it to “the arrangements whereby local communities of believers in the early church came into association with one another” These historical arrangements embody the notion that any universalistic idea will always manifest itself through the particular, thereby enabling the emergence of a religio-cultural atmosphere in which ethno-linguistic diversity has historically been incorporated into the very fabric of the tradition itself

Growing Roots in America

Ethno-Religious Heritage as a Social Cause

Ethno-Religiosity as a Source of Solidarity

Findings

Conclusions