Working-class immigration, religion, and labor history in the United States At the turn of the twentieth century, thousands of immigrants from the borderlands of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires built a transnational church in North America. The community that church leaders called American Orthodox Rus' was created by and for working people, and transformed believers' identities as Eastern European migrants, as Orthodox Christians, and as American workers. Given how strongly the Russian Orthodox Christian community was tied to working class industrial life, this book makes the case that we cannot understand the scope of working class and immigrant religion in the United States without understanding American Orthodox Rus'. The work Russian Orthodox immigrants did in the Progressive Era United States occurred in factories, foundries, and mines; they lived mainly in industrial cities and mining towns; and they almost immediately got caught up in the most pivotal-and sometimes violent-political and social crises of their times, both nationally and internationally. To address their needs in these contexts, the Russian Orthodox Church expanded its missionary efforts in North America, forming a network of social and material aid for working-class believers. This book traces the rapid growth of this transnational religious world, then explores its unexpected collapse under the weight of the First World War, a global pandemic, and the transnational reach of revolutionary political change in Russia. A story of challenge and resilience, Orthodoxy on the Line complicates dominant paradigms in the study of labor and North American Religions.
Aram G. Sarkisian is a historian of religion, immigration, and labor in the United States.
"Offers a beautifully rendered account of an immigrant church too often left out of the stories told about religion in the United States. Transnational in scope and yet grounded in distinct working-class communities, Sarkisian's history of Russian Orthodox Christianity in North America richly evokes the metropolitan streetscapes, mining towns, parish conflicts, and devotional rhythms that shaped immigrant experience. This is a superbly wrought study of lived religion--one that simultaneously captures the socioeconomic vulnerabilities of local enclaves and the global politics of industrial capitalism, war, and revolution. A striking achievement!"--Leigh Eric Schmidt, Edward C. Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor in the Humanities, Washington University in St. Louis
