Introduction

The integrative role of religion has been a recurrent theme of sociological and anthropological theory. This role is apparent in the Greek-American community; religion functions as a cement of the social fabric. Indeed, it would be hard to overestimate the role of Greek Orthodoxy in joining people of Greek ancestry into a community and reinforcing their sense of ethnic identity. The nature of ethnic identity and the church’s role in fostering and sustaining it are subjects of this study, first published in 1990. In ultimately focusing on the interplay between church, community and individual, the book suggests that understanding the relation of these people to their church is to understand them as a people.