Orthodoxy on the Line

Offers a beautifully rendered account of an immigrant church too often left out of the stories told about religion in the United States. Transnational in scope and yet grounded in distinct working-class communities, Sarkisian’s history of Russian Orthodox Christianity in North America richly evokes the metropolitan streetscapes, mining towns, parish conflicts, and devotional rhythms that shaped immigrant experience. This is a superbly wrought study of lived religion—one that simultaneously captures the socioeconomic vulnerabilities of local enclaves and the global politics of industrial capitalism, war, and revolution. A striking achievement! -- Leigh Eric Schmidt, Edward C. Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor in the Humanities, Washington University in St. Louis Tells the largely unknown history of working-class immigrants who lived between two worlds: America and the empires they left behind. Capturing the smells and tastes of everyday life as well as fierce theological fights, Sarkisian shows how miners and factory workers and clerical families trying to live their faith experienced labor riots, the Great War, the Russian Revolutions, the Spanish flu, and the Red Scare. . . . Everyone interested in working-class American religion, trans-national Orthodox diaspora communities interacting with momentous changes in the old country, ethnicity, and immigration must read it. -- Nadieszda Kizenko, author of Good for the Souls: A History of Confession in the Russian Empire. Aram Sarkisian opens his marvelous new book with the story of a little boy slipping past the icon screen of his Russian Orthodox Church on a winter Sunday in 1917. In the pages that follow Sarkisian takes us past the screen too, where he reveals in vivid detail and elegant prose the forces that coursed through the most sacred spaces of the early twentieth century American ‘Rus, as the faithful tried to make a place for themselves in a world of shuddering change. -- Kevin Boyle, author of Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights and Murder in the Jazz Age