Recent years have seen increasing numbers of Protestant and Catholic Christians converting to Eastern Orthodox Christianity. This book examines Christian converts to Orthodoxy who served as exemplars and leaders for convert movements in America during the twentieth century. These converts turned to tradition for different reasons: for some it was a response to oppression and for others it was an expression of religious identity creation. The former characterizes Carpatho-Rusyn and African American conversions. The latter may be seen in recent African-American conversions and in a large group of Evangelicals who became Orthodox. For these groups, says D. Oliver Herbel, conversion is an ironic expression of the American tradition of being anti-tradition, by making a complete break from that very anti-tradition tradition. Herbel draws on archival resources including many unpublished Rusyn and Russian newspapers and personal archives, as well as personal interviews. Conversion to Orthodox Christianity remains a largely uninvestigated aspect of American religious history despite significant historical and contemporary numbers of such converts.
Herbel presents close examination of the theological reasons for the exemplary converts' own conversions as well as the reasons they offered to persuade those who followed them. He considers the conversions within both the context of the American anti-tradition, which drives religious mavericks to create a new religious experience, and that of racial and ethnic tensions in America. This book offers the first serious investigation of this important trend in American religion and the first in-depth investigation of any kind of African-American Orthodoxy.