Eastern Orthodox Christianity And American Higher Education

Over the last two decades, the American academy has engaged in a wide-ranging discourse on faith and learning, religion and higher education, and Christianity and the academy. Eastern Orthodox Christians, however, have rarely participated in these conversations. The contributors to this volume aim to reverse this trend by offering original insights from Orthodox Christian perspectives that contribute to the ongoing discussion about religion, higher education, and faith and learning in the United States. The book is divided into two parts. Essays in the first part explore the historical experiences and theological traditions that inform (and sometimes explain) Orthodox approaches to the topic of religion and higher education—in ways that often set them apart from their Protestant and Roman Catholic counterparts. Those in the second part problematize and reflect on Orthodox thought and practice from diverse disciplinary contexts in contemporary higher education. The contributors to this volume offer provocative insights into philosophical questions about the relevance and application of Orthodox ideas in the religious and secular academy, as well as cross-disciplinary treatments of Orthodoxy as an identity marker, pedagogical framework, and teaching and research subject.

A collection of essays that examines the institutions, curricula, and personnel of American higher education from the perspective of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. The first set of essays focuses upon the institutional framework of higher learning; the curriculum is the central theme of the second; the last set is concerned with the educated person's role in and out of the academy.

In 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.

Like many Americans, the Eastern Orthodox converts in this study are participants in what scholars today refer to as the "spiritual marketplace" or quest culture of expanding religious diversity and individual choice- making that marks the post-World War II American religious landscape. In this highly readable ethnographic study, Slagle explores the ways in which converts, clerics, and lifelong church members use marketplace metaphors in describing and enacting their religious lives. Slagle conducted participant observation and formal semi-structured interviews in Orthodox churches in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Jackson, Mississippi. Known among Orthodox Christians as the "Holy Land" of North American Orthodoxy, Pittsburgh offers an important context for exploring the interplay of Orthodox Christianity with the mainstreams of American religious life. Slagle's second round of research in Jackson sheds light on the American Bible Belt where over the past thirty years the Orthodox Church in America has marshaled significant resources to build mission parishes. Relatively few ethnographic studies have examined Eastern Orthodox Christianity in the United States, and Slagle's book fills a significant gap. This lucidly written book is an ideal selection for courses in the sociology and anthropology of religion, contemporary Christianity, and religious change. Scholars of Orthodox Christianity, as well as clerical and lay people interested in Eastern Orthodoxy, will find this book to be of great appeal.

This book offers a fresh report and interpretation of what is happening at the intersection of two great contemporary movements: the rapid growth of higher education worldwide and the rise of world Christianity. It features on-site, evaluative studies by scholars from Africa, Asia, North America, and South America. Christian Higher Education: A Global Reconnaissance visits some of the hotspots of Christian university development, such as South Korea, Kenya, and Nigeria, and compares what is happening there to places in Canada, the United States, and Europe, where Christian higher education has a longer history. Very little research until now has examined the scope and direction of Christian higher education throughout the world, so this volume fills a real gap.

Our world is growing increasingly complex and confused—a unique and urgent context that calls for a grounded and fresh approach to Christian higher education. Christian higher education involves a distinctive way of thinking about teaching, learning, scholarship, curriculum, student life, administration, and governance that is rooted in the historic Christian faith. In this volume, twenty-nine experts from a variety of fields, including theology, the humanities, science, mathematics, social science, philosophy, the arts, and professional programs, explore how the foundational beliefs of Christianity influence higher education and its disciplines. Aimed at equipping the next generation to better engage the shifting cultural context, this book calls students, professors, trustees, administrators, and church leaders to a renewed commitment to the distinctive work of Christian higher education—for the good of the society, the good of the church, and the glory of God.

Utilizing a common set of objective institutional markers as a compass, this book guides readers through the terrain of various Christian institutions. The Christian higher education landscape confuses many people. Future students, parents, staff, and even faculty often do not understand the important subtleties and nuances. They need a guide that empirically explores the ways Christian universities operationalize their Christian identity. This book will guide them through the field of Christian higher education and introduce our Operationalizing Christian Identity Guide (OCIG), which identifies the major ways Christian colleges and universities use their Christian identity to make mission, marketing, membership, curriculum, cocurricular, and other decisions (an online spreadsheet of OCIG scores for all the Christian colleges and universities in North America updated in real-time will be available to readers). These markers are identifiable by anyone, no matter their religious or nonreligious background. The OCIG is then employed to provide readers a tour of Protestant, historically Black, Catholic, evangelical/multidenominational, and Eastern Orthodox institutions in the United States and Canada. Parents, students, staff, and faculty will be equipped to engage Christian higher education with a clearer understanding of these key elements and their importance to the mission and purposes of individual institutions and Christian higher education at large.

This book examines Christian converts to Orthodoxy who served as exemplars and leaders for convert movements in America during the twentieth century.