Description
Book SynopsisIn this sweeping history, Alexander Kitroeff shows how the Greek Orthodox Church in America has functioned as much more than a religious institution, becoming the focal point in the lives of the country''s million-plus Greek immigrants and their descendants.
Assuming the responsibility of running Greek-language schools and encouraging local parishes to engage in cultural and social activities, the church became the most important Greek American institution and shaped the identity of Greeks in the United States. Kitroeff digs into these traditional activities, highlighting the American church''s dependency on the mother church, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople, and the use of Greek language in the Sunday liturgy. Today, as this rich biography of the church shows us, Greek Orthodoxy remains in between the Old World and the New, both Greek and American.
Table of ContentsIntroduction
1. Greek Orthodoxy Arrives in America
2. Americanization and the Immigrant Church in the 1920s
3. Greek Orthodoxy versus Protestant Congregationalism
4. The Greek Orthodox Church in between Greece and America
5. Assimilation and Respectability in the 1950s
6. The Challenges of the 1960s
7. Greek Orthodoxy and the Ethnic Revival
8. Church and Homeland
9. Toward an American Greek Orthodoxy
10. The Challenges for an American Greek Orthodoxy
11. Church and Patriarchate and the Limits of Americanization
12. Greek Orthodoxy in America Enters the Twenty-First Century
