El Amparo contra leyes en el Perú: entre la incertidumbre y las inconvenientes restric-

of excellent scholarly works have explored this subject in depth, especially with regard to the relationship between specific nations and their churches (see, for example, Himka and

Zayarnyuk 2014; Kivelson and Greene 2003; Leustean 2009, 2010; Perica 2002; Ramet 1988; Roudometof and Makrides 2017). In order to talk about Orthodox Christianity in North America, as practiced by Orthodox-born immigrants, Orthodox-born Americans and Canadians, and the newly converted, it is necessary to be aware of the larger history of Orthodox Christianity in the world. For example, I have interviewed a number of converts who believe Orthodox Christianity to be the most authentic form of Christianity because of its age and apparent changelessness over time. For the Orthodox-born, especially in majority-Orthodox Christian countries, religious identity and national identity are often deeply related, and this, too, is a product of a long history.

Lived experiences are shaped by broader contexts, even when individuals are not

conscious of them. Folklorist Mary Hufford discusses historical discourse as encompassing more than the past. Discussions of people, land, and history may deeply concern the present (Hufford 1995, 546). Folklorist Diane Tye chose to analyze her mother’s life through her recipes because of what they revealed about her community and her place within it rather than because she enjoyed baking (Tye 2012, 5). Larger social forces shaped her experience. In the case of the Orthodox Church, it is crucial to understand the history and culture of the Byzantine Empire to understand the church’s aesthetic, its views on authority, its approach to gender roles, and even its liturgical rituals. Not all believers who participate in Orthodox Christian liturgies are aware of the church’s history permeating their lived experiences, but they are affected by it nonetheless.

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Theologian Aristotle Papanikolaou discusses how Orthodox Christianity shaped the culture and politics of the Byzantine Empire at the same time that its own thought and practice were shaped by the empire itself (Papanikolaou 2003, 77). The Orthodox Church’s contemporary attitudes toward democracy, nationalism, and individualism are all connected to its past.

Papanikolaou suggests that the relationships among the culture of Byzantium, its imperial government, and theology are especially at issue when addressing contemporary questions about Orthodox Christianity. It is beyond the scope of this work to provide a complete, detailed history of the Orthodox Church. Instead, I will focus on its pivotal development in the Byzantine

Empire, followed by a few themes that are pertinent to this specific study, including empire, nation, anti-Westernism, and Communism. I draw from the histories of Orthodox Christianity in Romania, Russia, Serbia, Ukraine, and its presence in North America.

Origins in the Roman Empire

Orthodox Christians trace the history of their faith back to the time of Jesus Christ (0-33 AD/CE), an itinerant Jewish healer living in Judea, in the Roman Empire. Claiming an unbroken lineage to the teachings of Christ is a major way in which the Orthodox Church appeals to authenticity. In describing his conversion to Orthodox Christianity, Father Peter Gillquist writes that he considered the Catholic Church to be less authentic because, in his view, they broke off toward a separate path of Christendom in 1054 AD (Gillquist 1992, 48-49, 66-7). When Orthodox Christians talk about their faith being ancient, as Gillquist does in his book, this is what they mean; they tie the founding of Orthodox Christianity to the founding of Christianity itself.

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After Christ’s crucifixion, his disciples spread his teachings throughout the Roman Empire and even beyond its borders. The scope of this missionary work is how the first

Christians, who were also Jews, gradually became the founders of a new religion, believing Jesus to be the Messiah of biblical prophecy (See Biblical scholar Bart D. Ehrman 2018 for a fuller discussion of how Christianity became a separate religion, rather than a sect of Judaism). The earliest Christian communities sprang up in Jerusalem, Rome, Athens, Ireland, Northern Africa (especially Egypt and Ethiopia), and the city of Antioch (today, the Turkish city of Antakya). According to the book of Acts (11:19-26), the word “Christian” to describe the followers of Jesus was coined in Antioch. As historian and Orthodox theologian Timothy Ware writes, the bureaucratic structure of the early Church was determined by the structure of the Roman Empire; there was a bishop to oversee the Christian community in each city, and he was assisted by priests, and below them, deacons (Ware 1997, 13).

Historian John Meyendorff describes that in its first three centuries, Christianity faced waves of imperial persecution, particularly under emperors Nero, Domitian, and Diocletian (Meyendorff 1981, 15). In part, this was because Christian theology bade followers to obey God first before any earthly authority, and this was politically threatening to the Romans, for whom their emperor was a god. Not unlike today, early Christians were not necessarily all of one accord in their beliefs. Ehrman discusses the diversity of beliefs in early Christian communities, including syncretism with pagan traditions (Ehrman 2018). “Pagan” here is defined in opposition to Christianity; Ehrman uses the term loosely to refer to many different traditions which were polytheistic and without formally written or unified doctrine (Ehrman 2018, 83). I use the term in Ehrman’s sense. Historian Lars Brownworth suggests that the appeal for converting to

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(Brownworth 2009, 7). The corruption of officials and impossibly high taxes made life difficult for average Roman citizens, particularly the lower classes. Seeking the message of hope and a glorious afterlife, many plebeians were drawn to mystery cults, of which Christianity was the most popular. Brownworth writes that the pagan ideas of the afterlife became less attractive because they did not promise happiness (Brownworth 2009, 7). Besides this, pagan gods were depicted as unpredictable, not unlike their human worshippers.

The emperor Diocletian (who ruled roughly from 285-305 CE) led an especially thorough persecution of Christians, destroying churches and Christian writings, and torturing or killing thousands. Pagans and Christians had coexisted as friends and neighbors for years, and there was public sympathy for those persecuted (Brownworth 2009, 8). Brownworth writes that “Most pagans refused to believe that a religion that encouraged payment of taxes, stable families, and honesty in trade could be full of dangerous dissidents, threatening the security of the state” (Brownworth 2009, 8). In less than one hundred years, the tide would turn the other way.

The Rise of the Byzantine Empire

Diocletian recognized that the Roman Empire was growing too large to be easily administered from a single city. In 285 CE, he split the empire in half, complete with two capitals and two emperors. Rome was the Western capital, and the Eastern capital was called Byzantium, from which later historians would draw the term “Byzantine” to describe the Eastern half of the empire. While inhabitants of the Byzantine Empire had Roman citizenship, their language was Greek. In this multiethnic empire, people referred to themselves as both “Roman” and “Greek.” Eventually the latter became a more common identification (particularly after the Schism with the West). Hundreds of years earlier, Alexander the Great conquered these lands

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and required all people to learn Greek, though their own vernacular languages coexisted. When the Romans took over, they spoke Latin, but it was expedient to learn and use Greek as a lingua franca as they expanded into Alexander’s former territories. Shared knowledge of Greek greatly aided the spread of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire. It is significant that when the first books of the Christian Testament, or New Testament, were written, it was not in Jesus’s own language, Aramaic, but in Greek, a political language of the conquerors of Judea.

Constantine I, later known as “the Great,” assumed power in 306 CE. It was Constantine who made Christianity legal in the Roman Empire. By this time, the faith had existed long enough to develop different schools of thought and interpretations, leading to civil unrest among some factions of Christians. In an attempt to make his citizens more unified, Constantine ordered a council of bishops to meet and resolve their differences. In fact, three hundred bishops came to the meeting, which would later be known as the First Ecumenical Council, held in the city of Nicea in 325 CE. A statement of faith, known as the Nicene Creed, was drafted at this council; it is still used in many Christian traditions today. In 330 CE, Byzantium was renamed

Constantinople after its leader, who converted to Christianity on his deathbed, seven years later.

The Church convened seven Ecumenical Councils over the course of the next five hundred years to solidify its theology. Some of the earlier schools of thought were labeled heresies, and others were incorporated into the official dogma of the Church. After Christianity became legal under Constantine, this paved the way for several Christian emperors. In fact, Theodosius I made Christianity the official religion of the Byzantine Empire, making other faiths illegal. Over the next two centuries, Christian emperors granted the Church a great deal of

power, including public welfare (Meyendorff 1981, 16-17). Meyendorff points out that the legalization of Christianity and, indeed, the merging of Church and State during this period

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shaped the legacy of Orthodox Christianity thereafter. Where Christianity was once the religion of a persecuted minority, it became a faith whose adherents held special privileges. Meyendorff argues that the history of persecution in the Church led to some defensive tendencies, in the hope of safeguarding the faith (Meyendorff 1981, 21). For example, liturgy became more formal, increasing the distance between priest and laity. It was also during this time that priests began to adopt imperial-looking garb rather than wearing simple, casual robes as the laity did.

It should be noted that the earliest Christian documents do not indicate consistent or specific attitudes toward Roman culture or politics. Papanikolaou writes that while the Bible itself offers contradictory assessments of worldly governments, its three major attitudes toward them include “necessity, divine sanction, and condemnation” (Papanikolaou 2003, 81). Two representative quotes include “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s” in Matthew 22:21 and “those authorities that exist have been instituted by God” in Romans 13:1. These attitudes changed in the fourth century after Christianity became legal and the official faith of the Byzantine Empire. Christian writers began describing the emperor’s position as ordained by God. Where there were ambiguous attitudes before, a

Christian emperor meant reimagining government structures as part of God’s divine plan to bring Christianity to all peoples (Papanikolaou 2003, 81-2). Meyendorff writes that in Byzantium, “the Church and the State…represent the internal cohesion of one single human society, for whose welfare on earth the emperor alone is responsible” (Meyendorff 1981, 49). In this model, imperial authority was an icon of God’s authority. Some Orthodox Christian theologians also extend this symbolism to domestic life, where the husband, as head of the house, is an icon for Christ as the head of creation (for example, Kalliakmanis 2016).

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When Theodosius I made Christianity the official religion of the Byzantine Empire, the shape of government changed as well. The bishop of this city became the clergyman closest to the throne in influence and proximity. The cooperation of the bishop and the emperor was seen as essential to harmony or symphonia (Papanikolaou 2003, 82). Interestingly, the relationship between the emperor and the bishop could affect theological interpretation. Meyendorff notes that if the emperor appointed certain people in ecclesiastical positions, he could influence the way doctrine was interpreted and applied (Meyendorff 1981, 51). This bishop would be the first to call himself the Ecumenical Patriarch, a position still occupied in the Church today. Historian Andrew Louth, writes that the mentality behind calling this bishop “Ecumenical Patriarch” stems from a very Roman mentality; the Greek word “oikoumene” means the “inhabited land,” which the government used to refer only to the territory of the empire (Louth 2013, xvi). This situates the position of the Ecumenical Patriarch in the context of an empire. Though he is a bishop like any other, his position in the center of the Byzantine Empire put him symbolically at the center of the Roman vision of the world. This is but one example of how contemporary hierarchy and governance in the Orthodox Church stems from an imperial past.

In the 5th century CE, the Western half of the Roman Empire began to collapse, following invasion by Germanic tribes. These included the Goths and Visigoths, who were defeated by the Frankish Merovingian dynasty. Some Merovingian rulers converted to Christianity, and by the turn of the 6th century, efforts were made to convert the rest of the Franks (the aristocracy, by and large, converted more willingly than the peasants, who were practicing a form of Germanic paganism). As a new Frankish dynasty, the Carolingians, succeeded the Merovingians, a Latin Christian Renaissance was underway in Western Europe. Charlemagne, the most famous

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to note that “pope” at this time simply meant the bishop of Rome, not the sole head of the Christian Church. As the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople was the “first among equals” with other bishops, the pope was simply the bishop of the largest Christian metropolis in the West. This Christianizing process in the West led to tensions with Constantinople, which was competing with them for the conversion of new peoples, especially the Slavs in South and Central Europe respectively.

This was nowhere more apparent than in the territory of Bulgaria, led by Tsar Boris I. Boris made a choice to adopt Christianity among his people (comprised of two ethnic groups, Slavs and Bulgurs) as a tactic to unify them with surrounding European countries, all of whom were Christian. Rome and Constantinople both wanted to influence Bulgaria, as it was a strategically advantageous territory between the two halves of Christendom. Byzantine missionaries Cyril and Methodius were working their way through Slavic territories, and they offered Boris the Cyrillic alphabet which they developed for the Slavonic language. Boris’s interest was piqued, and he sent an emissary to Constantinople, which was using a Greek liturgy, to ask if the Bulgarian Church could be independent and perform services in their own language. Constantinople refused, and Boris banished the Byzantine missionaries and turned to Rome. The Byzantine emperor Michael III was displeased by this action and wrote to Boris, criticizing the Roman Church. Boris requested that Rome ordain bishops in Bulgaria, but his candidates were denied, communication was slow, and the pope with whom he had been in correspondence died. Boris perceived the delays in proceeding as an insult, and he turned back to Constantinople. Boris I was baptized in 863 or 864 CE, and his people followed. When Boris was baptized, the Byzantine emperor Michael III became his godfather (Meyendorff 1982, 26). This suggests his conversion was part of Bulgaria’s political alliance with the Byzantine Empire. The result was

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that Constantinople granted Bulgaria an independent national church with a liturgy in the local Slavonic language, an unprecedented act in the East or the West.

A little after this time, the missionaries Cyril and Methodius converted another major Slavic group: the Kievan Rus’. In 944, a treaty between Byzantium and the Kievan Rus’ was forged, by which time a small Christian community already existed in Kiev. The conversion of Rus’ian Princess Olga popularized the faith among some aristocracy (Poppe 1992, 271).

Continuing tradition, Byzantine emperor Constantine VII became Olga’s godfather (Poppe 1992, 272-3). Her conversion laid the groundwork for a large-scale Rus’ian conversion decades later, as the result of a political agreement. Byzantine scholar Andrzej Poppe writes that in 987, the Byzantine emperor Basil II requested help from the Rus’ian Prince Vladimir to defend

Constantinople from an insurrection by a general named Bardas Phocas (Poppe 1976, 197). In return, Vladimir was given the emperor’s sister in marriage, providing that he and all the Rus’ convert to Christianity (Poppe 1976, 198). Sure enough, the Rus’ were baptized en masse in the Dnieper River, an event immortalized in legend.

The legend of the conversion of the Kievan Rus’ is still glorified in the Orthodox Church. The Russian Chronicle is a fundamental text which recounts the history of the early Slavs

between 850 and the early 1000s, when it was compiled. Historian of Russia, Thomas Riha, writes that the chronicle has a heavy religious bias in general and borrows from many Greek Byzantine written sources (Riha 1964, 1). According to the chronicle, Vladimir had some interest in Christianity even before his military assistance to Constantinople. In 987, wanting to unify his people, the prince sent emissaries to foreign lands to study Bulgar Islam, Khazar Judaism, and Byzantine Greek Christianity to choose which faith would best accomplish this task. Apparently, the Muslim aversion to alcohol was unacceptable to Vladimir, and he interpreted the loss of

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Jerusalem by the Jews as proof that their God had abandoned them. His emissaries who traveled to Constantinople witnessed a liturgy in the Hagia Sophia, and they described its beauty. Riha’s translation of this account in the Chronicle includes:

…the Greeks led us to the edifices where they worship their God, and we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it. We only know that God dwells there among men, and their service is fairer than the ceremonies of other nations. For we cannot forget that beauty. (Riha 1964, 9)

Anecdotally, I have heard this specific part of the account quoted or paraphrased by Orthodox Christian converts. With or without the fuller context of historical politics, the aesthetic impact of liturgy resonates with many of them, and a historical account of similar sentiments provides a sense of connection. Orthodox Christian convert and journalist Frederica Mathewes-Green wrote a blog post about aesthetics and Orthodox Christianity referencing the conversion of the Kievan Rus’, which circulated in my childhood community of converts (Mathewes-Green 2008). She used the story to make the argument that beauty convinced an otherwise thuggish warlord to be Christian and that it is a necessary part of Christian experience today. Drawing on history in this way to argue for both the authenticity of Orthodox Christianity and its contemporary relevance is a tactic I have found frequently in conversion narratives. Orthodox-born believers may not necessarily share this sense of awe, because the liturgy is not new for them; it is habitual.

The Split Between East & West

A key aspect of Orthodox Church history still cited in the present day by believers is the Great Schism of 1054. Deep divisions had percolated between the East and West for centuries. At the time, there were five main bishops, four of whom were in the East. The youngest of these bishops was the Patriarch of Constantinople. Brownworth writes that in the East, “the Greek love of disputation had kept the church somewhat decentralized,” and important decisions were made

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by a council of bishops, whereas in the West, the Patriarch of Rome had “grown weary of the