Ukrainians In Pennsylvania

Ukrainians, originally known as Ruthenians, began arriving in the Philadelphia area at the end of the 1800s. Like all immigrants, they were not spared considerable hardships in their pursuit of the American dream. Finding stable employment was an ongoing endeavor. After work they gathered around their churches, indisputably the centerpiece of their immigrant communities. Here they procured much-needed support from their fellow countrymen. Theirs was a common purpose: to preserve in this new world their cherished customs and traditions. Thus their societies abounded with schools, choirs, bands, dance groups, reading rooms, and church and fraternal organizations. With time, more Ukrainians appeared, with the largest group arriving after World War II to escape the horrors of war-torn Europe and start anew. Ukrainians of Greater Philadelphia documents how each new generation of immigrants added to the kaleidoscope that became the Ukrainian community in and around the City of Brotherly Love.

At the dawn of the 20th century, the industrializing world provided Ukrainians an opportunity to immigrate to America to lead free and honorable lives. Ukrainians of the Delaware Valley illustrates the Ukrainians ongoing saga, commencing with the late 19th century when they disembarked in the Delaware Valley and continuing to the present, as they gradually integrated into their American communities. The Ukrainians common purpose was to preserve their unique eastern culture, cherished daily customs, and elaborate traditions embalmed in the mysteries of their eastern religion in new surroundings. Ukrainians of the Delaware Valley documents how each new generation of immigrants added to the kaleidoscope of Ukrainian communities in 17 of the boroughs of the Delaware Valley.

Originally known as Ruthenians, Ukrainians began to immigrate to western Pennsylvania in the late 1800s. Attracted by the region's growing importance as an industrial center, they settled in cities and towns close to their work. Like other immigrants, they faced many economic and social hardships, but they were proud to call themselves Americans as they firmly preserved and celebrated their ethnic heritage. Their dispersion among the hills and valleys of western Pennsylvania prevented the development of a highly centralized community, but it also preserved many of the unique aspects of a diverse people. Ukrainians of Western Pennsylvania chronicles where these hardworking people settled, the ways they organized community and personal life, the venues through which they presented their heritage, their contributions to the general community, and how their community has grown with the times.

Ukrainians, originally known as Ruthenians, began arriving in the Philadelphia area at the end of the 1800s. Like all immigrants, they were not spared considerable hardships in their pursuit of the American dream. Finding stable employment was an ongoing endeavor. After work they gathered around their churches, indisputably the centerpiece of their immigrant communities. Here they procured much-needed support from their fellow countrymen. Theirs was a common purpose: to preserve in this new world their cherished customs and traditions. Thus their societies abounded with schools, choirs, bands, dance groups, reading rooms, and church and fraternal organizations. With time, more Ukrainians appeared, with the largest group arriving after World War II to escape the horrors of war-torn Europe and start anew. Ukrainians of Greater Philadelphia documents how each new generation of immigrants added to the kaleidoscope that became the Ukrainian community in and around the City of Brotherly Love.

Despite centuries of foreign rule, the people of Ukraine preserved their rich Slavic heritage. Fleeing poverty and persecution, Ukrainians brought this heritage with them to build new communities in the United States. This book is a look into how, with each new generation, the Ukrainian Americans continue to add to American life through their traditions of faith, their arts and architecture, and many other contributions.

After decades of official atheism, a religious renaissance swept through much of the former Soviet Union beginning in the late 1980s. The Calvinist-like austerity and fundamentalist ethos that had evolved among sequestered and frequently persecuted Soviet evangelicals gave way to a charismatic embrace of ecstatic experience, replete with a belief in faith healing. Catherine Wanner's historically informed ethnography, the first book on evangelism in the former Soviet Union, shows how once-marginal Ukrainian evangelical communities are now thriving and growing in social and political prominence. Many Soviet evangelicals relocated to the United States after the fall of the Soviet Union, expanding the spectrum of evangelicalism in the United States and altering religious life in Ukraine. Migration has created new transnational evangelical communities that are now asserting a new public role for religion in the resolution of numerous social problems. Hundreds of American evangelical missionaries have engaged in "church planting" in Ukraine, which is today home to some of the most active and robust evangelical communities in all of Europe. Thanks to massive assistance from the West, Ukraine has become a hub for clerical and missionary training in Eurasia. Many Ukrainians travel as missionaries to Russia and throughout the former Soviet Union. In revealing the phenomenal transformation of religious life in a land once thought to be militantly godless, Wanner shows how formerly socialist countries experience evangelical revival. Communities of the Converted engages issues of migration, morality, secularization, and global evangelism, while highlighting how they have been shaped by socialism. This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)—a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries—and the generous support of the Pennsylvania State University. Learn more at the TOME website, available at: openmonographs.org. The open access edition is available at Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.