The Eastern Church in the spiritual marketplace: American conversions to Orthodox Christianity

Abstract

Like many Americans, the Eastern Orthodox converts in this study areparticipants in what scholars today refer to as the spiritual marketplace or quest culture of expanding religious diversity and individual choice-making that marks the post-World War II American religious landscape.In this highly readable ethnographic study, Slagle explores the ways inwhich converts, clerics, and lifelong church members use marketplacemetaphors in describing and enacting their religious lives.Slagle conducted participant observation and formal semi-structuredinterviews in Orthodox churches in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, andJackson, Mississippi. Known among Orthodox Christians as the HolyLand of North American Orthodoxy, Pittsburgh offers an importantcontext for exploring the interplay of Orthodox Christianity with themainstreams of American religious life. Slagle s second round of researchin Jackson sheds light on the American Bible Belt where over the pastthirty years the Orthodox Church in America has marshaled significantresources to build mission parishes.Relatively few ethnographic studies have examined Eastern OrthodoxChristianity in the United States, and Slagle s book fills a significant gap.This lucidly written book is an ideal selection for courses in the sociologyand anthropology of religion, contemporary Christianity, and religiouschange. Scholars of Orthodox Christianity, as well as clerical and laypeople interested in Eastern Orthodoxy, will find this book to be ofgreat appeal.