Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Alexander Kitroeff
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Greek Language ◽  
Greek Orthodox ◽  
Eastern Orthodoxy ◽  
Greek Orthodox Church ◽  
Language Schools ◽  
Greek Americans

This chapter provides an account of the Greek Orthodox Church's interrelationship with the Greek Americans throughout the twentieth century. It analyzes the Orthodox Church in the United States that plays a determining role in community affairs not seen anywhere else, such as its control of Greek-language schools. It also establishes the hegemony of the Greek Orthodox Church over the Greek American community. This chapter argues that the Greek Orthodox Church helped shape Greek American identity throughout the twentieth century and did so by adapting to the steady Americanization of the Greek Americans. It also reaches beyond the domain of Eastern Orthodoxy in America as it illustrates the way a relatively small, ethnically rooted religion can survive in the wider religious marketplace of America.

The Greek Orthodox Church in America

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Kitroeff
Keyword(s):  
Focal Point ◽  
The United States ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Greek Language ◽  
Greek Orthodox ◽  
American Institution ◽  
Greek Orthodox Church ◽  
Language Schools ◽  
Greek Immigrants ◽  
The Church

This sweeping history 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. The book 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.

Greek Orthodoxy and the Ethnic Revival

2020 ◽  
pp. 140-160
Author(s):  
Alexander Kitroeff
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Exponential Growth ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Immigration Reform ◽  
Greek Language ◽  
Greek Orthodox ◽  
Greek Orthodox Church ◽  
White Ethnic ◽  
Greek Americans ◽  
Parish Priests

This chapter discusses how the Greek Orthodox Church dealt with the era of ethnic revival that legitimized European white ethnic identities, including that of Greek Americans. It highlights the controversy Archbishop Iakovo generated when he decreed that parish priests could perform parts of the Sunday liturgy in Greek. It talks about Archbishop Iakovos message to Greek Americans of how most of them were now more comfortable with the English rather than the Greek language and how that development should be reflected in practice. The chapter mentions how Greek Americans experienced the most sustained revival of their identity of all the European “ethnics” due to a big influx of immigrants from Greece in the wake of the immigration reform of 1965. It discusses the exponential growth of Greek presence in the New York borough of Queens, especially in the Astoria section that became a “Greektown,”

Assimilation and Respectability in the 1950s

2020 ◽  
pp. 95-114
Author(s):  
Alexander Kitroeff
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Eastern Orthodox ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Greek Orthodox ◽  
Postwar America ◽  
Religious Identification ◽  
Greek Orthodox Church ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter examines the Greek Orthodox Church against the background of the 1950s. It highlights the rise in religiosity and the upward social mobility of the Greek American second generation. It also explains how the Greek Orthodox church, which was on the margins of conversations about religion in America, found ways to become more relevant and somewhat mainstream. The chapter analyzes the unexpected development and importance of the Eastern Orthodox Churches to the Cold War policies of the United States. It also looks into the combination of powerful causes, such as the Cold War, social dislocation in suburbia, anxieties of the atomic age, and deliberate religious marketing that led to a remarkable spread of religious identification in postwar America.

Church and Patriarchate and the Limits of Americanization

2020 ◽  
pp. 228-246
Author(s):  
Alexander Kitroeff
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Eastern Orthodox ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Greek Orthodox ◽  
New Era ◽  
Greek Orthodox Church ◽  
The Church

This chapter focuses on the state of Greek Orthodoxy in America at the end of the twentieth century. It assesses whether the Church under Archbishop Iakovos overreached in its efforts to Americanize, which alienated the Ecumenical Patriarchate. It analyzes the patriarchate's intervention, which illustrated the administrative limits the Greek Orthodox Church in America faces in its efforts to assimilate. The chapter describes the patriarchate's ability to invoke the transnational character of Orthodoxy in the new era of globalization. It explores the end of the evolution of Greek Orthodoxy into some form of American Orthodoxy through its fusion with the other Eastern Orthodox Churches.

The Greek Orthodox Church in between Greece and America

2020 ◽  
pp. 78-94
Author(s):  
Alexander Kitroeff
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Greek Orthodox ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
Greek Orthodox Church ◽  
Secular Politics

This chapter records how the hegemony of the Greek Orthodox Church was extended during the 1940s. It reflects back on the church's close entanglement with the world of secular politics. It also assesses the astute ways that Archbishop Athenagoras courted both the Greek and the US governments in order to strengthen the status and the influence of Orthodoxy in America in the 1940s. The chapter describes the wartime conditions in the United States during the 1940s that have eroded religiosity throughout the country. It looks into Greece's entry into the war on the side of the Allies, which meant that the Greek Orthodox Church identified with the Greek nation and could openly support the homeland.

Church and Homeland

2020 ◽  
pp. 161-181
Author(s):  
Alexander Kitroeff
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Greek Orthodox ◽  
Greek Orthodox Church ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Church

This chapter looks at how the Greek Orthodox Church played a central role in Greek American efforts to shape US foreign policy toward Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus between the 1960s and 1980s. It talks about the Amercanization process of Greek Orthodox Church that not only advocated for Greek interests but for American and Christian values as well. The chapter explains “Ethnarchy,” which when the highest ecclesiastical leader of the church in a given area assumes political leadership. It mentions Stanley Harakas who provided two examples of ethnarchs in the twentieth century: Archbishops Damaskinos and Makarios. Archbishop Damaskinos served as regent from the time Greece was liberated from Axis occupation in 1944, while Archbishop Makarios served as the first president of the Cyprus Republic between 1960 and 1977.

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