Religious Pluralism in

Twenty-First-Century America:
Problematizing the Implications
for Orthodoxy Christianity
Elizabeth H. Prodromou

This article aims to situate Orthodox Christianity within the context of

American religious pluralism in the twenty-first century. It explores the
role of Orthodox Christianity, as both subject and object, in the evolution
of American religious identity, with particular focus on the domestic,
international, and transnational factors that account for the locus of
Orthodox Christianity in debates about the religious dimensions of col-
lective identity in America. The article concludes that internal pluraliza-
tion is redefining the identity and mission of Orthodox Christianity in

Elizabeth H. Prodromou is an assistant professor of international relations and the associate director
of the Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs at Boston University, Brookline, MA 02446.

Versions of this article were presented at the 14th Annual Meeting of the Orthodox Christian Laity
in October 2001 and the Meet the Authors Seminar of the Foundation for Modern Greek Studies of
the University of Michigan in May 2002. The article develops ideas that are part of a project
(“Orthodox Christianity in American Public Life: Challenges and Opportunities of Religious
Pluralism in the Twenty-first Century”) directed by me at Boston University’s Institute on Religion
and World Affairs. I would like to thank Peter Berger, Charles Moskos, Peter Marudas, Alexandros
K. Kyrou, and Vassilis Lambropoulos for their close readings of this text, including their insights on
the intellectual and operational questions at the core of the article; these individuals helped to enrich
my arguments, but I am responsible for any shortcomings that remain.
An especially useful example of the recognition of the need for a strategic approach to considering
Orthodoxy’s engagement with American religious pluralism is the report of the Commission for an
Archdiocesan Theological Agenda, a task force organized by Archbishop Iakovos, the former
archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America. See the report, “The
Future of Orthodoxy in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America,” as well as
commentary and analysis at www.voithia.com/content/qmpArThAg90.htm.
Journal of the American Academy of Religion September 2004, Vol. 72, No. 3, pp. 733–757
doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfh065
© 2004 The American Academy of Religion
734 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

America, such that the consolidation of a distinct type of American

Orthodoxy may allow for a renegotiation of the place of Orthodox
Christianity in the American public sphere in the twenty-first century.

O NE OF THE MOST INTRIGUING PARADOXES of democracy in

twenty-first-century America lies in the overwhelming societal consensus
in favor of the U.S. Constitution’s foundational commitment to religious
freedom, based on creating a wall of separation between church and
state, on the one hand, and the scope and intensity of religious activity in
the public sphere, on the other. The highly particularistic secularity of
late-modern America contradicts the claims of classical sociologists
regarding the structural-functional parameters and empirical features of
modernity with regard to the public role of religion (Berger 1999; Martin),
and suggests that the procedural and qualitative dimensions of American
democracy have been enhanced by the dynamism of public religion over
the course of the country’s history. Indeed, the new millennium suggests
that the public sphere continues to allow for religious actors to contribute to
the discourse and processes of democracy in America, both at home and
abroad, as evidenced by the Bush administration’s efforts to involve
faith-based organizations in social service activities, as well as the Clinton
administration’s establishment of the Office of International Religious
Freedom in the U.S. Department of State.1
Insofar as religious participation in the public sphere has been a hall-
mark of America’s historical trajectory, it is possible to trace the evolution
of the religious content and associated power implications of American
civic culture. The current historical conjuncture presents an especially
remarkable moment in the evolution of American religious identity, as
the interactions of domestic, international, and transnational factors have
combined to produce an unprecedented degree of religious pluralism in
America. Consequently, the American public sphere has become a space
of intense contestation among religious actors who are competing over the
renegotiation of American religious identity, based on the recognition that
the conversation about religious pluralism has implications for the civic
quality of American democracy and for the associated benefits of inclusion.
This article aims to situate Orthodox Christianity within the context
of American religious pluralism in the twenty-first century. More specific-
ally, it explores the role of Orthodox Christianity, as both subject and
object, in the evolution of American religious identity, in order to suggest

1
For a very readable treatment of the role of religion in the American public sphere, with
particular emphasis on the problematic of the impacts on liberal democracy in America, see
Thiemann.
 Prodromou: Religious Pluralism in America 735

the possibilities for Orthodoxy represented by the current historical

moment of unprecedented religious pluralism in America. By concen-
trating on the impact of changing domestic, international, and transna-
tional factors to analyze the role of Orthodox Christianity in American
public life, the article is rooted in the discipline of political science. How-
ever, my analytical approach reflects a firm commitment to the engage-
ment between comparative politics and international relations, as well as
respect for the strengths derived from trespassing into the disciplinary
domains of history, sociology, and religion.2
The article is organized into four parts. The first part offers a sum-
mary of the conceptual approaches for analyzing the role of religion in
American public life, with an introduction to the First Amendment as
it has defined the public sphere as an arena for pluralism and competi-
tion in terms of religion. The second part summarizes the emergence of
religious paradigms that have defined the possibilities for religion to
operate in American public life from the country’s inception to the
present. Especially important are the ways in which these religious para-
digms tell a story about the meaning of American civic culture. The third
part explores Orthodox Christianity as both subject and object in the
changing religious paradigms that emerged over the course of America’s
historical trajectory. The analysis seeks to explore the causes for Orthodoxy
Christianity’s marginal contribution to and recognition within these
paradigms. The fourth part of the article concludes with some evidence
suggesting that, while the current historical conjuncture creates new pos-
sibilities for Orthodox Christianity to renegotiate its place in the public
sphere in America, the greatest challenges to such a shift may lie in the
struggles over the identity and mission of an indigenous “American
Orthodox” church (Krindatch).

PLURALISM, THE MARKET METAPHOR, AND RELIGION IN

THE PUBLIC SPHERE
In order to situate Orthodoxy Christianity within the theoretical
and practical context of American religious pluralism in the twenty-first
century, the necessary point of departure is the First Amendment of the
U.S. Constitution. Setting the legal parameters for the appropriate and
permissible role of religion in American public life, the First Amendment
is equally dedicated to preventing the establishment of religion and to

2
For a rich comment on the importance of interdisciplinarity to theoretical rigor and analytical
richness, see Foxley, McPherson, and O’Donnell; King, Keohane, and Verba; and Hirschman.
736 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

protecting the rights of freedom of religious conscience and practice

for all citizens.3 The First Amendment is at the center of what has come
to be viewed as a particularly American type of secularity; it is the legal
embodiment of the Jeffersonian notion that a wall of separation between
church and state is essential to safeguard religious freedom and, conse-
quently, to maintain the health of American democracy (Hunter; Monsma
and Soper 1977).
Scholars have identified American secularity as defined by the legal
separation of church and state, on the one hand, and a public sphere
marked by impressive religious vitality, on the other. More specifically,
there is a significant literature that argues that the particularity of American
secularity has been the determinant factor in facilitating the incomparable
religious pluralism that has made the United States what Diana Eck (1997,
2001) argues is the world’s most religiously diverse nation at the start of
this third millennium. Accordingly, American secularity is best under-
stood in terms of the market metaphor, where the dynamics of religious
activity in the public sphere are those of a highly competitive market-
place. Diverse faiths and denominations compete for consumer-members
through ever more sophisticated marketing strategies designed to con-
vince the consumer-member of the superiority and advantages of specific
religious products, whether these be tangible or intangible in nature. Fur-
ther, the state functions as an impartial arbiter of religious competition
in the public sphere, and the state’s principle regulatory responsibility is
the protection of a level playing field that will prevent the emergence of
religious monopolies and oligopolies (Chaves and Cann).
The First Amendment reflects a theoretical commitment to what can
aptly be called a free religious market, understood less in strict economic
terms than in general terms as the kind of engaged pluralism and choice
associated with the marketplace.4 However, the realities of the religious

3
The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is dedicated to protecting the right of every
American citizen to freedom of religion and freedom of expression from government interference.
Two clauses that guarantee religious freedom are found in the First Amendment, and both clearly
reflect the concept of a wall of separation between church and state or, more broadly, between
religion and state. The establishment clause enforces the separation of church and state by prohibiting
the government from passing legislation to establish an official religion or to give preference to one
religion over another. The free exercise clause prohibits government interference in individuals’
belief and practice of their religion. For very useful reviews of the intellectual origins and legal
evolution of the First Amendment, see the Web sites of the Institute for First Amendment Studies
(www.ifas.org) and the Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School (www.law.cornell.edu).
4
I do not subscribe to the rational choice approach for understanding religion in the public sphere in
America. However, I do see utility in concepts such as choice, pluralism, competition, demand, and
supply, which are rooted in the market metaphor, and therefore, I draw on these to help understand
the dynamics of engagement by religious actors in the public sphere in America. An excellent summary
of rational choice theory applied to the study of religion is available in the essays in Young.
 Prodromou: Religious Pluralism in America 737

market in American history have been profoundly shaped by the interactive

effects of key domestic, international, and transnational variables. In par-
ticular, political and socioeconomic trends within the United States
(domestic), the impact of international crises on U.S. foreign policy (inter-
national), and changing patterns of immigration (transnational) to the
United States have defined the competitive realities of the public sphere
with regard to religion and, in the process, have shaped identifiable reli-
gious paradigms over the course of America’s history.5 Significantly, the
interaction of the domestic, international, and transnational factors has
produced multiple iterations in the religious paradigms that came to be
understood as the basis of America’s shared civic oneness. By the same
token, those interactive effects have driven continuing debates about the
reinterpretation of the First Amendment as the legal framework for reli-
gious pluralism in America, with the legal parameters currently in flux
at the start of the twenty-first century (Monsma and Soper 1998).6

RELIGIOUS PARADIGMS AND AMERICAN CIVIC CULTURE

From the formation of the American nation-state to the present, it is
possible to identify the emergence and consolidation of discrete religious
paradigms that reflect dominant interpretations and associated structural
representations of the common covenants of American citizenship. As
Diana Eck (2001: 31) has observed, a periodization of U.S. history according
to these religious paradigms tells a story about the myriad religious
ways and worlds that constitute American collective identity. A stylized
review of these religious paradigms provides the intellectual and opera-
tional context in which to analyze the place of Orthodoxy Christianity in
American public life.
The first religious paradigm, and by far the most continually domin-
ant in its impact in American public life, can best be characterized as the
Protestant Christian paradigm. This model emerged within the political,
socioeconomic, and international conditions that were the chrysalis of

5
Insofar as I am making a claim that the most fruitful approach for understanding changing
religious terrain in America is through analysis of the interaction among domestic, international,
and transnational factors, I endorse the relatively recent turn in political science toward the
theoretical and methodological reengagement of the subdisciplines of comparative politics and
international relations. Interesting synopses of this disciplinary turn are provided in Crotty, Koehane
and Milner, Milner, and Zahariadis.
6
Current debates on the interpretation of the First Amendment in the face of America’s
expanding religious pluralism center on the relationship between the free establishment and the free
exercise clauses and have begun to focus on the concept of legal treatment that is at the heart of
several Western European approaches to regulating the relationship between state and religion.
738 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

U.S. state formation and nation-building and extended from the late
eighteenth century to the late nineteenth. Indeed, the first disestablishment
of religion in America emerged as the legal response to cleavages within
Protestantism that were played out in terms of competing theological
tendencies, political coalitions, economic programs, and the independ-
ence struggle of the American colonies.7 The practical consequences of
the specifically Protestant Christian paradigm were expressed in intra-
Protestant political debates about the appropriate degree of federal or
state support for religious activities—for example, support for Sunday
holiday and days of national prayer, as well as government funding for
public schools and missionary activities.
Given the overwhelmingly Protestant affiliation of the first waves
of colonial and post-independence immigrants to America, Protestant
Christianity emerged as the hegemonic, if unofficial, religious paradigm
in the crucial century of nation-state construction in the United States.
Moreover, just as the Protestant exclusivist dimensions of this first
religious paradigm coalesced in terms of domestic political and socio-
economic institutions and programs, the effort to reinforce Protestant domi-
nation in terms of American civic culture was buttressed by popular
reaction against the surging immigration of Catholics to the United
States, as well as the impacts of World War I (Bellah and Greenspahn;
Casanova; Higham).
Indeed, the shift in the religious paradigm that marked the second
period in American secularity began in the early twentieth century and
was intensified in the interwar period. Competition between old and new
immigrant groups over political rights and socioeconomic opportunities
in America was played out against the U.S. move toward engagement
in World War II. Therefore, by the start of World War II, the interaction
of domestic policies and international considerations had produced the
kind of revolutionary shift in worldviews described by Thomas Kuhn.
In short, the Judeo-Christian paradigm crystallized as the new religious
paradigm of American civic unity.
The origins of the term “Judeo-Christian tradition” remain a matter of
scholarly debate, historical review, and even historiographical contestation,

7
The normative power of the Protestant Christian religious paradigm was captured in the
observation of a respected English commentator on American politics and society who wrote in the
late nineteenth century that “the National Government and the State governments do give to
Christianity a species of recognition inconsistent with the view that civil government should be
absolutely neutral in religious matters. . . . The matter may be summed up by saying that Christianity
is in fact understood to be, though not the legally established religion, yet the national religion”
(Bryce, quoted in Monsma and Soper 1977: 20).
 Prodromou: Religious Pluralism in America 739

but there is a general consensus on the theological and intellectual under-

pinnings of the term, as well as on the political implications and religious
content of the model.8 According to Mark Silk, the Judeo-Christian
tradition had emerged by World War II as an “antifascist affirmation of a
shared religious basis for western values” (67). As such, the term marked
the effort of American intellectuals, nonreligious (“secular”) and religious
alike, to remove Christianity as an identifying marker for anti-Semitic
fascism.
This initial political-intellectual project was reinforced by theological
interpretations like those of America’s leading Protestant theologian,
Reinhold Niebuhr, whose work emphasized the “Hebraic–prophetic con-
tent of the Christian tradition” (quoted in Silk: 71). The sociological inter-
pretation of the new religious paradigm was rendered explicit in Will
Herberg’s (1983) landmark work on patterns of assimilation among
American immigrants, in which he argued that Protestant, Catholic, and
Jewish immigrants effectively “became American” by maintaining their
religions while giving up their homeland languages and cultures. With
the election of the country’s first Catholic president in 1960 as affirmation
of the end of the social and political marginalization of Catholics in
America, as well as the repeated formulation of the Cold War as a battle
of Western civilization against godless communism, the Judeo-Christian
paradigm codified the formal and informal religious template of America’s
civic identity from the first to the last quarter of the twentieth century.
Since the early 1970s a new paradigm shift has been under way, with
the specificities of this third religious paradigm being sharply contested
on the basis of domestic, international, and, increasingly, transnational
tendencies. In particular, dramatic shifts in immigration patterns, the
product of both U.S. immigration law and the geographic distribution of
ethno-religious violence in the postbipolar era, help to account for a
sharp rise in the number of Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists in America,
as do demographic tendencies within these three religious communities.9
Consequently, the evidence suggests that twenty-first-century America
will be reflected in a religious paradigm informed by an unprecedented

8
Perhaps the most cogent synthesis of the discussions about the origins of the term Judeo-
Christian tradition is found in Silk.
9
The roots of new immigration patterns that have brought unprecedented numbers of Muslims,
Hindus, and Buddhists to America lie in the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act and its links
to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Adjustments in U.S. immigration policy were intended to extend the
elimination of race discrimination from the domestic to the international features of U.S. policy.
Indeed, presaging the current paradigm shift, Supreme Court Justice William Douglas observed in
1965 “that the United States was no longer merely a Judeo-Christian country, but . . . a nation of
Buddhists, Confucianists, and Taoists, as well as Christians” (quoted in Prothero).
740 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

degree of pluralism; in fact, scholars speak of the clarification of this third

religious paradigm in terms of two pluralist options, either an Abrahamic
model that includes Judaism-Christianity-Islam or a multicultural model
built on the five world religions of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism,
and Buddhism (Ebaugh and Chafetz; Eck 2001; Warner and Wittner).
On the other hand, it may well be that the new religious paradigm
may reconsolidate along Judeo-Christian lines. The process of consolida-
tion of the third religious paradigm in twenty-first-century America is
embedded in the interstices of domestic, international, and transnational
factors that, though under way since the latter part of the previous century,
have been clarified since the end of the Cold War.
At the international level, the vision of a clash of civilizations
(Huntington) confronting U.S. foreign policy makers after the Cold War
has meant the articulation of friend versus foe categories in religious
terms in the international arena, with implications for members of those
categories within the immigrant populations in America. Indeed, at
the domestic level, changing immigration patterns, coupled with fiscal
crises in education, health care, and worker retraining, have sharpened
the linkages between a civilizationally based foreign policy, on the one
hand, and religious criteria for deciding the formal and informal criteria
of citizenship in America, on the other. Similarly, the Bush administra-
tion’s proposals for faith-based policy initiatives have sharpened the fault
lines of religious cleavage at the domestic level by attaching potential
concrete costs and benefits to religious affiliation in twenty-first-century
America.10
Finally, the post–Cold War era has also been marked by the mobilization
of religious groups in America as transnational actors. Religious groups
in America were the motive force behind the International Religious
Freedom Act (IRFA) passed in 1998.11 The IRFA legislation aims to promote
the protection of religious human rights on a global scale, establishing
standards of religious freedom that would affect U.S. foreign assistance.12
In practical terms the IRFA has come under severe criticism because of
the State Department’s failure to utilize the compliance mechanisms
available under IRFA, and overall, IRFA has intensified the competition,

10
The establishment of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives
formalized the Bush administration’s commitment to developing legislative proposals for the
participation of faith-based organizations in the delivery of federally funded social services.
11
For a useful summary of the legislation, see http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/inforusa/laws/majorlaw/
intlrel.htm.
12
The possibility for consensus on the meaning and application of religious human rights is
a matter of controversy in both scholarly and policy debates dealing with religious freedom.
An excellent overview of the matter is found in van der Vyver and Witte.
 Prodromou: Religious Pluralism in America 741

and, in some cases, antagonism, among religious actors in the United

States with regard to the material benefits of U.S. foreign policy (Hackett,
Silk, and Hoover). Consequently, domestic religious actors have begun
to mobilize more regularly in terms of transnational issues and within
transnational networks oftentimes connected to country of origin.
The terrorist attacks against the United States on 11 September 2001
have heightened popular awareness of and interest in the religious dimen-
sions of American civic identity. The events of 9/11 have transformed
what some might interpret as an arcane theoretical discussion into a matter
of daily discourse in the mass media and public policy venues; the reli-
gious content of American civic culture is now being explicitly discussed
in terms of the connection between homeland security and national
security strategy. In this respect 9/11 may be a transnational event—that
is, one whose effects operate in the liminal, interstitial spaces below,
between, and above state boundaries—that determines the reconfigur-
ation of the new religious paradigm in twenty-first-century America,
with crucial implications for the religious boundaries of inclusion/exclu-
sion that define what it means to be American.13 In short, 9/11 has cast
into sharp relief the domestic, international, and transnational factors
that must be considered in analyzing the current religious paradigm shift,
with interesting implications for Orthodox Christianity in this context.

ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY AS SUBJECT AND OBJECT IN

AMERICA’S RELIGIOUS PARADIGMS
Any consideration of the position of Orthodox Christianity in the
current historical moment of transition in America’s religious paradigm
requires an analysis of Orthodoxy’s role, as both subject and object, in
earlier iterations of the religious paradigms. A useful backdrop for this
analytical exercise can be provided with a basic profile of the Orthodox
Christian community in America at the start of the third millennium.

13
It bears note that the faith-based approach to public policy, as well as the linkages between U.S.
foreign assistance and performance measures of freedom of religion and conscience, is rooted
squarely in a conception of the public sphere as a marketplace for religious competition. The
globalization of this marketplace has meant the transnationalization of American religious
competition in a manner that has forced the U.S. government to consider the state’s role as a
putatively impartial arbiter of market conditions. The Bush administration has addressed this issue
directly in terms of the domestic context, as evidenced in the publication of Unlevel Playing Field:
Barriers to Participation by Faith-Based and Community Organizations in Federal Social Service
Programs (www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/08/20010816-3-report.pdf).
742 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

The Orthodox churches in America are made up of a constellation of

multiple jurisdictions, with varying degrees of cooperation and coordination,
which are largely identified with their respective ethnic constituencies. In
numerical terms Orthodox Christians in America are not insignificant,
although wide variations in statistical data cite as few as one million and
as many as five million Orthodox Christians in the United States at the
start of the twenty-first century.14 Within this numerical range is a striking
degree of ethnic heterogeneity, including Greeks, Russians, Ukrainians,
Armenians, Albanians, Romanians, Serbs, Bulgarians, and Arabs, among
others.
Measures of educational achievement and wealth for Orthodox Chris-
tians are comparatively high on a per capita basis vis-à-vis other religious
groups in America. Additionally, American Orthodoxy is embedded in a
global Orthodox community with formal and informal networks of com-
munication and cooperation. With an estimated 350 million adherents,
Orthodox churches constitute the third largest Christian communion in
the world.
In short, one might expect that Orthodoxy, when considered in terms
of its per capita levels of wealth, educational achievement, and profes-
sional accomplishment, as well as in terms of transnational scope, has
actively and, perhaps, notably engaged in the pluralist conversation that
has defined the religious dimensions of American civic culture. Yet a
review of the relevant social science and humanities literatures on pub-
lic religion in America reveals little systematic research on Orthodox
Christianity in the U.S. context; likewise, the spate of academic and public
policy literatures on the policy implications of religious diasporas in
America also reveals very limited attention to Orthodox Christianity.
The above synopsis elucidates a conundrum inherent in the effort to
situate Orthodox Christianity within the historical and contemporary
evolution of American public religion. Specifically, what accounts for the
difference between Orthodoxy’s potential versus its performance in
engaging in the theoretical and practical enterprise of paradigm building
with regard to defining the limits for religion in the American public
sphere? Answers to this question necessitate a return to the origins of the
Protestant Christian and Judeo-Christian paradigms.

14
The data (and their diversity) can be located in representative sources such as the project
“Research on Orthodox Religious Groups in the United States,” located on the Web site of the Hartford
Institute for Religion Research (http://hirr.hartsem.edu/research/research_orthodoxindex.html); the
U.S. government census, located on-line at www.census.gov; and in Nikolas K. Gvosdev’s Orthodoxy
in America: Crisis of Demography, a special report of the Justinian Centre of Baylor University
(www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/5357/orthodem.html).
 Prodromou: Religious Pluralism in America 743

With regard to the Protestant Christian model, Orthodox Christianity

was marginal, if not outright irrelevant, as both subject and object in the
elaboration of this religious paradigm. The lack of contribution by and
interest in Orthodox Christianity is not surprising. Although Russian
Orthodox Christians had arrived as missionaries in Alaska and a short-lived
Greek Orthodox settlement existed in Florida in the late eighteenth cen-
tury (Erickson: 31–52), the immigration of Orthodox Christians to
America came well after the revolutionary period that exercised a formative
impact on the Protestant Christian paradigm. Furthermore, although “a
growing tide of immigration from Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and the
Middle East made Orthodoxy one of the fastest-growing faiths in America”
(Erickson: 53) by the mid–nineteenth century, this wave of immigration
came well after the various Protestant denominations had mobilized
within the political and socioeconomic structures that were essential to
consolidating the Protestant Christian dimensions of American collective
identity.
In short, immigration patterns meant that Orthodox Christians began
to arrive in significant numbers after the establishment of a Protestant
cultural hegemony that lasted well into the twentieth century and which
affected the contours of the subsequent Judeo-Christian model. In this
sense, the particular evolution (and relative marginality) of Orthodoxy in
American public life must be understood in terms of American Ortho-
doxy’s engagement with two religious paradigms that were integrally
defined by Protestantism.
If the patterns and timing of immigration provide a logical explana-
tion for Orthodox Christianity’s marginality in the articulation of the
Protestant Christian paradigm, the engagement of Orthodox Christianity
in the paradigm shift to the Judeo-Christian model presents a more puz-
zling picture. The first great waves of Orthodox immigration—primarily
in terms of Greek and Slavic immigrants from southeastern Europe, as
well as Asia Minor—had already occurred by the time of the political and
intellectual motivations associated with the formulation of the Judeo-
Christian construct, and the countries of origin for these immigrants
were directly preoccupied with the antifascist struggle that served as the
catalyst for the shift to the Judeo-Christian paradigm.15 Furthermore,

15
For excellent sources on immigration patterns from Greece, see Moskos 1989 and Saloutos
1964, 1973. There is a rich literature on immigration and settlement patterns of Slav Orthodox
populations from southeastern Europe, with representative works including those by Altankov,
Bodnar, and Prpic. An excellent source guide for publications with immigration data on Orthodox
immigrants to America in terms of their ethnic identification is Thernstrom.
744 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

by the time that the Judeo-Christian concept had been consolidated

around the World War II period, Orthodox Christians had reached more
than negligible numbers in America, and they had begun to demonstrate
impressive levels of economic performance and educational achieve-
ment.16 Equally important, Orthodox Christians continued to emigrate
during World War II and after—even in the face of immigration quotas
that reduced their overall numbers—from East European countries whose
regimes Washington was committed to vanquish in the name of the
godliness of the American way of life.
Nonetheless, the above domestic and foreign policy conditions did
not produce a meaningful engagement by Orthodox Christianity with
the theoretical and practical formulation of the Judeo-Christian con-
struct that, as Mark Silk points out, was meant to serve the purpose of
defining American identity as inclusive of “Americans of all faiths” (70).
Two important factors, one intellectual and the other political, help to
explain the relative marginality of Orthodoxy in the construction of and
inclusion in the Christian portion of the new paradigm’s hyphenate.
In intellectual terms it is impossible to underestimate the broader
impacts of seemingly arcane theoretical debates over religious history and
theological interpretation. The decisive imprint of Reinhold Niebuhr in ful-
filling what he viewed as his responsibility “as a Christian theologian . . . to
strengthen the Hebraic content of the Christian tradition” (quoted in Silk:
71) depended on downgrading the centrality of Hellenistic thought in
Christian theology. Niebuhr identified Hellenism as the source for “all
our most serious misunderstandings about man and his work” (quoted
in Silk: 72).
The political implications of this residue of Protestant cultural hege-
mony in American religious life were appreciated by American Jewish
intellectuals, who responded positively to Niebuhr’s reinterpretation
of the Hebraic versus Hellenic character of Christianity. The intellectual
boundaries of inclusion in the new religious paradigm were further
cemented by Will Herberg’s seminal work on the shared assimilation
patterns of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews in America, which is directly
informed by Niebuhr’s Protestant formation of the Judeo-Christian
tradition.17

16
For data on wealth and education, as well as professional distribution, of one ethnic community
among the overall Orthodox population in the United States, see Moskos 1989. For similar data on
other Orthodox groups organized according to ethnicity, see Thernstrom.
17
For an affirmation of the impact on Herberg of Niebuhr’s arguments on the Judeo-Christian
tradition, see Herberg 1956.
 Prodromou: Religious Pluralism in America 745

In short, the intellectual reconfiguration of the dominant religious

paradigm from Protestant to Judeo-Christian required input from
Orthodox thinkers. Yet this input was absent, notwithstanding the col-
lective oeuvre produced by Orthodox thinkers such as Georges Florovsky,
John Myendorff, and Alexander Schmemman, the first of whom spent a
good part of his academic career teaching at Princeton University.18 Not
incidentally, these three Russian émigrés developed their writings based
on their shared convictions about the normative requirements and
intrinsic capacity of Orthodoxy Christianity in the face of threats to lib-
erty and democracy by communism. Exposure to the English-language
work of such scholars (whether written in English or available in transla-
tion) is considered by scholars of Orthodox history as instrumental in
the theological and overall religious revival in American Orthodoxy dur-
ing the early mid–twentieth century, when the network of local Ortho-
dox churches in America expanded significantly to the southeastern and
western parts of the United States. However, for the most part, the work
of Orthodox scholars did not penetrate the broader academic and policy
discourse of the United States for most of the twentieth century, which
helps to account for the failure of Orthodox churches’ “persistent efforts
to be recognized as the ‘fourth faith’ of the United States, side by side
with Catholics, Protestants, and Jews” (Moskos 2002: 93).
Changing immigration laws that restricted the inflow of Orthodox
Christians from traditional countries of origin, along with pressures of
assimilation that were especially acute until the 1960s civil rights move-
ment, defined Orthodox Christians in America along ethnic lines. The
effects of legal-structural definitions of American Orthodox in ethnic
terms, along with internal community fears about the survival of
ethnic identity in the New World, produced an ethnicization of Ortho-
dox churches in America. The consolidation of Orthodoxy’s institu-
tional structures along ethnic jurisdictional lines amounted to the
creation of tighter institutional relationships between Orthodox
churches in America and respective “mother churches” in countries of
origin in the Old World. Consequently, the solidification of this trans-
national organizational structure allowed for vitality and growth
within the Orthodox communities in America, at the cost of a limited
engagement by American Orthodox in the intellectual and socioeco-
nomic processes that were redefining American identity in terms
of Protestant-Catholic-Jew. As John Erickson explains, although “the

18
Representative works in the prolific body of work produced by these scholars include Florovsky,
Myendorff, and Schmemman 1960, 1979.
746 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

system of ethnic jurisdictions helped many Orthodox Christians in

America to preserve their [religious] . . . identity, . . . [t]he ethnic juris-
dictions often formed closed groups, cut off from the wider American
context” that was reshaping views about the religious bases of American
civic culture (98).19
In political terms the Cold War was instrumental in contributing to
the exclusion of Orthodoxy from the Christian hyphenate in the Judeo-
Christian tradition. In particular, the geographical division of Europe
and the ideological division of the world into East and West meant a
continuing decline in the curve of Orthodox immigrants to the United
States at precisely the time when changes in civil rights legislation offered
a broadening of the structural context for Orthodoxy’s contribution.20
Furthermore, the Cold War meant the effective disappearance of any
interest in Eastern Christianity from the intellectual and political
consciousness of the Euro-American social sciences—this also explains,
again, the lack of attention to the body of work produced by the great
Russian émigré thinkers noted earlier.21 Washington’s ideological and
geostrategic map of Cold War Europe meant, at the very least, the
implicit political and cultural identification of Orthodoxy with an east-
ern, communist-totalitarian Other that was the military nemesis of a
West now redefined in the American context as Protestant-Catholic-
Jewish.
In short, the historical record reveals a cluster of domestic, interna-
tional, and transnational factors that help to account for the compar-
atively circumscribed engagement by and recognition of Orthodox
Christianity in the Protestant Christian and Judeo-Christian paradigms
that shaped American civic identity during the first two centuries of the
country’s existence. In this sense, it is plausible to characterize the oppor-
tunity structure—possibilities and challenges—for Orthodoxy’s role in
the American religious marketplace in terms of significant competitive
constraints rooted in objective and subjective factors. If the hegemony
of Protestantism, reinforced by the specificities of the Judeo-Christian

19
Erickson (37–102) also provides an excellent treatment of how the formalization of a well-
functioning institutional structure, with transnational linkages, in the Orthodox churches in
America in the first half of the twentieth century contributed, paradoxically, to Orthodoxy’s
separation as an organized religious force from broader American social, political, and cultural
currents. A useful summary of the creation of the organization of the Orthodox churches in America
along ethnic jurisdictional lines is available in Bogolepov: 51–57.
20
See notes 15–16 for the links between immigration law and civil rights legislation.
21
For an elaboration on the related issue of the interaction between ideological and geostrategic
considerations, on the one hand, and religious conceptions of identity, on the other, see Prodromou:
126.
 Prodromou: Religious Pluralism in America 747

conception, made up the operational parameters for competition among

religious actors, Orthodox Christianity proved historically weak in bring-
ing its internal resources (intellectual, political, and economic) to the
competitive game. Against this backdrop, the current historical moment
of remarkable pluralization in the religious marketplace in America sug-
gests a further intensification of the competitive dynamics of religious
interaction in the public sphere, raising questions about the capacity of
Orthodoxy to compete.

PLURALISM, COMPETITION, AND THE FUTURE OF

ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE
The specificity of the current historical moment in the evolution of
the American nation-state creates new possibilities for Orthodox Chris-
tianity in twenty-first-century public life. As noted earlier, the most
recent reconfiguration in the religious template for American civic iden-
tity had begun by the latter part of the twentieth century and has been
intensified with the end of the Cold War. There is ample evidence that
political leaders, civic activists, and intellectuals alike acknowledge the
specificities of the current transformation in America’s religious para-
digm. Indicative is President Clinton’s signing of the Religious Freedom
Restoration Act in 1993, which was cited as an effort to reinforce the full
scope for exercise of religious freedom in a context of religious heteroge-
neity far more complex than that envisioned by the Framers of the First
Amendment.22 The legislation was presented as an effort to preserve civic
oneness while safeguarding the principles of religious freedom, equality,
and tolerance that have been the hallmarks of American democracy.
However, it is the post-9/11 climate in America that will most likely
determine the consolidation of a new religious model conceptualized
in Abrahamic, multicultural, or neo-Judeo-Christian terms. The explicit
linkage of homeland security and national security by U.S. policy makers,
concomitant with the state’s efforts to reinforce this worldview in the
popular discourse and mind-set, has meant that the consolidation of
America’s new religious paradigm will be played out in terms of domes-
tic, international, and transnational contexts.23

22
A discussion by then-President Clinton about his commitment to the need for the Religious
Freedom Restoration Act is found at http://clinton1.nara.gov/White_House/EOP/OP/html/book3-
plain.html.
23
As an illustration of the efforts by the current U.S. administration to engage makers of popular
culture (e.g., the advertising industry and the film industry) in the task of linking homeland security
and national security in the mind of the American populace, see www.cnn.com/2001/US/11/08/
rec.bush.hollywood.
748 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

How do the particularities of this historical conjuncture alter the

possibilities for Orthodoxy’s place as subject and object in the reconfigu-
ration of the religious dimensions of American civic identity? Simply
put, Orthodox Christianity in America possesses identifiable ideational,
institutional, and capital (human and financial) resources that create
unprecedented opportunities for the religion to engage as subject—
rather than to respond passively as object—in the discourse and activi-
ties that will determine America’s latest religious paradigm. However,
Orthodoxy faces several challenges to its ability to move away from
a relatively marginal, passive place in the U.S. public sphere toward
a place built on active choice and voice in self-definition and contribu-
tion to current debates on the religious dimensions of American civic
identity.
A detailed analysis of the opportunities and challenges that will deter-
mine Orthodoxy’s position in the public sphere in twenty-first-century
America is well beyond the scope of this article. In fact, in the effort to
problematize the implications of American religious pluralism for
Orthodox Christianity in the twenty-first century, the article has clarified
the parameters for a research agenda analyzing those factors that will
shape the nature and consequences of Orthodoxy’s engagement in the
current debate over the religious dimensions of American civic identity.
By way of conclusion and as introduction to a future research agenda, it
is worth summarizing the principal opportunities for and challenges to
Orthodoxy in a constructive engagement in the American public sphere
in the new millennium.
First, as noted earlier, Orthodox Christians in America demonstrate
high per capita measures of wealth, education, and professional achieve-
ment in comparative religious terms. These measures have enabled Ortho-
dox Christians in America to build a strong profile in the academy, the
mass media, and the public policy world—namely, in three key institu-
tional arenas that exert an extraordinary influence on the construction
of the discourse, images, and, ultimately, agenda for action that define
what it means to be American with regard to religion (Moskos 1989:
172). Orthodox Christians, then, possess impressive human capital assets
and associated financial resources to contribute to the reconfiguration
of the operative religious paradigm for twenty-first-century America.
Recognition of the real power that accompanies the production of ideas,
knowledge, and cultural views related to the religious dimensions of civic
identity is demonstrated in recent efforts by American Orthodox to sup-
port academic programs and policy research that will improve Ortho-
doxy’s active contribution to the discourses and practices that affect
religious diversity and pluralism in America.
 Prodromou: Religious Pluralism in America 749

Second, Orthodox Christianity possesses a set of ideational, or theo-

logical, resources that may be especially relevant to current intellectual
debates and legal-political choices about the nature and extent of religious
freedom, as well as the core question of the (lack of) porousness of the
wall of separation between religion and state, important to the quality of
American democracy in this millennium. Orthodoxy’s Trinitarian theol-
ogy and an associated anthropology of personhood offer rich ideational
assets that can be brought to bear on political theorizing and policy for-
mulation on questions about the trade-offs of wealth versus equity and
debates about the environment and education as public goods, to name
but a few.24
Finally, Orthodox Christians in America are a component segment in
a global, transnational faith community that is located in geographic
regions of crucial importance to U.S. foreign policy. Specifically, the esti-
mated 350 million Orthodox Christians around the world are geographi-
cally concentrated in Russia, Ukraine, southeastern Europe, and the Middle
East, regions whose geostrategic value to the United States has increased
after the Cold War and, particularly, since the events of 11 September
2001. Orthodox immigrants to America remain aware of, and in many
cases involved with, contemporary socioeconomic, political, and reli-
gious developments in their countries of origin, based on networks of
communication and interaction that are rooted in national and local
churches. In this respect, Orthodoxy’s global organizational structure is
positioning American Orthodox as effective interlocutors with a broader
U.S. foreign policy apparatus committed to the twin goals of protecting
the homeland and building peace abroad.25
Measured against the above stock of assets that marks Orthodox
Christianity’s capacity to remap its place in the American public sphere,
there are identifiable challenges that will affect the quality and extent
of Orthodoxy’s engagement with a religiously plural public sphere. In
particular, the Orthodox community, or the Orthodox churches, in

24
Efforts to apply Orthodox theology to questions of contemporary political theory and public
policy as they affect the conceptualization and practice of democracy have expanded significantly
since the end of the Cold War. These works are diverse in their focal questions and geographic
emphasis, but the literature demonstrates a growing body of work by scholars of Orthodoxy working
in American academic contexts. Representative publications include Clapsis, Harakas, and Marsh
and Gvosdev.
25
In May 2000 the Office of External Affairs of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the USA and
Canada was established in Washington, D.C. The office reflects the growing interest on the part of
Orthodox actors in the United States (and, more broadly, North America) to establish “a consistent
and proactive voice” in interactions with governmental, nongovernmental, and other religious
bodies in the American public sphere. See its “Vision Statement” at www.oea.serbian-church.net/
vision.html.
750 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

twenty-first-century America is defined by a remarkable process of inter-

nal pluralization; this phenomenon within Orthodoxy in America is con-
sistent with the notable increase in the socioeconomic and religious
heterogeneity of the United States in the last quarter of the twentieth cen-
tury and has been reinforced since the events of 11 September 2001,
with growing public debate over the religious markers of authentic
American identity.
The processes associated with the internal pluralization of Orthodoxy
are being driven by the impacts of globalization and democracy on the
membership, discourse, and behaviors of Orthodox churches in America.
The main issue driving the patterns and evolving consequences of the
pluralization of Orthodoxy in America is the question of whether it is
plausible and meaningful to speak about the consolidation of a specifi-
cally “American” Orthodoxy whose content, expression, and concerns
are shaped and informed by the particularities of U.S. identity. The
answer to this question about Orthodoxy’s self-conception in America, in
turn, has obvious implications for the nature of Orthodoxy’s mission in the
public space in America. In this sense, identity and mission are intrinsically
related to Orthodoxy’s possible shift as subject and object in the current
redefinition of the religious dimensions of American collective identity.
The outlines and patterns of the debate over the identity and mission
of American Orthodoxy clarify the challenges associated with Ortho-
doxy’s position in a religiously plural, public sphere. As noted above, the
pluralization of the Orthodox presence in America has proceeded in
tandem with the differentiation and diversification of America’s overall
religious profile and the associated competitiveness of the public sphere.
Within this context the debate over Orthodox identity in America has
tended to be polarized along two competing perspectives. On the one
hand, there are those who maintain that the weakening of ethnic, spiri-
tual, and ecclesial structures in U.S. society as a whole has insinuated
itself into the Orthodox ecclesiastical jurisdictions in America. According
to this logic, the challenges to Orthodoxy lie in the defense against American
pluralism and a reinforcement of long-standing ties with the mother
churches. In contrast, there are those who argue that the challenge to
Orthodoxy lies in recognizing the need to adapt to the specificities of
America, with an implicit preference toward assimilation according to
the logic of the conventional melting pot conception of American reli-
gious identity.26 It is significant that there has yet to emerge a coherent

26
For a representative yet comprehensive sampling of the two poles of discussion regarding
Orthodox identity in America, see the academic, media, ecclesiastical, and popular contributions at
www.voithia.com.
 Prodromou: Religious Pluralism in America 751

alternative to the two poles of the debate regarding Orthodox identity in

America. The notion of adaptation or incorporation, as opposed to
wholesale assimilation or outright rejection, much less the consideration
of Orthodoxy within larger debates about multiple modernities, has not
yet emerged as a clearly articulated approach for reconceptualizing an
American Orthodoxy.27
The relative underdevelopment of the conceptual parameters for
rearticulating Orthodox identity in America has been aggravated by the
fact that the institutional culture of Orthodox churches in America has
been skeptical about the market metaphor and, consequently, has been
slow to develop the kinds of strategic vision and operational mechanisms
required for religious competition in the public sphere. Orthodox actors
at the three levels of the ecclesiastical, institutional structure—hierarchy,
clergy, and laity—have begun relatively recently to dialogue on ques-
tions related to the practical requirements and spiritual implications
of Orthodox churches’ competitive participation in a public sphere
informed by market values, structures, and mechanisms. This dialogue
has involved a diverse set of participants, including ecclesiastically sanc-
tioned groups such as the Standing Conference of Canonical Orthodox
Bishops in America (SCOBA) as well as independent lay organizations
such as the Orthodox Christian Laity and the short-lived Greek Orthodox
Leaders of America.
Though working from different analytical and organizational points
of departure, these various groups acknowledge the competitive public
sphere inhabited by Orthodox Christianity. Furthermore, they have been
bound by a shared view that Orthodoxy is responsible for and capable of
contributing to American public life, in view of the inordinate influence
of U.S. foreign policy in the international system.28 However, it is only
within the latter part of the twentieth century and especially since the end
of the Cold War that the Orthodox churches have begun to conceptualize

27
Efforts to reconceptualize the options for immigrant responses to collective identity formation
in America have produced an innovative engagement between scholarship on immigration, on the
one hand, and religion as a determinant of collective identity, on the other. For a representative
treatment of this scholarly dialogue, see Casanova and Zolberg. The concept of multiple modernities
also creates space for reconceptualizing an American Orthodox identity outside of the dichotomous
boundaries of either assimilation or rejection; an introduction to the debate on multiple identities is
available in the special issue “Multiple Modernities” in Daedalus (Graubard 2000).
28
In an especially prescient observation, the Russian Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemman
identified the importance of the establishment of SCOBA in 1960 with America’s impact as a global
power. Schmemman noted that “at the moment when the United States assumes an always greater
responsibility in the world community, the presence of Orthodoxy in America acquires a new
significance and calls for better forms to express her common testimony” (www.schmemann.org/
byhim/episcopatus.html).
752 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

the “key issues facing Orthodox Christians in America” in terms of a

coherent vision for Orthodoxy’s engagement in the conversation and
activities of the American public sphere. 29
With the growing recognition of the links between Orthodoxy’s inter-
nal pluralization, on the one hand, and the expanding religious heteroge-
neity of America as a whole, on the other, cleavages and contests over
power relations and accountability within the institutional structures have
become a commonplace in the Orthodox churches of the United States.
Vertical and horizontal cleavages have emerged along lay-clergy-hierar-
chy lines as disputes over financial management and organizational pro-
grams have coalesced around the issue of ecclesiastical governance in
relation to the American organizational context and to relations between
churches in America and mother churches abroad. The debates over
ecclesiastical relations between American and mother churches have
been reinforced and provoked by the notable transformation in the
demographic profile of Orthodoxy in America. Over the course of two
centuries in America, Orthodox churches had largely defined themselves
as immigrant churches organized along ethnic lines whose ecclesiastical
structures were tied to and directed by mother churches in the countries
of origin. However, the diversification of Orthodoxy’s demographic
profile has come with the expansion beyond the reproduction of first-
generation immigrants (or “cradle Orthodox”) to include new waves of
Orthodox immigrants as well as converts and interfaith and interdenom-
inational (“mixed”) marriages.
Taken as a whole, the changing profile and needs of Orthodox com-
municants in America has produced sharp dissension over how to bal-
ance organizational efficiency and transparency with theologically valid
institutional design that incorporates domestic, international, and tran-
snational factors of change. The impact of religious pluralism on Ortho-
dox Christianity in America will be played out by Orthodox churches’
capacity to resolve fundamental questions of identity and mission in an
American context shaped by the twin forces of democracy and globaliza-
tion. Analysis of the response to these questions is the material for a rich
research agenda that is ready for implementation.

29
“Key issues facing Orthodox Christians in America” is a paraphrase from the title of an inquiry
undertaken by the Orthodox Christian Laity, an interjurisdictional, nonprofit, lay organization
whose mission is the education of the laity for participation in all aspects of the ecclesiastical life. See
Sfekas and Matsoukas.
 Prodromou: Religious Pluralism in America 753

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