A clear introduction to Eastern Orthodoxy and key aspects of the tradition. Now contains new articles and additional readings on Orthodoxy and evangelicalism.

Eve Tibbs offers a comprehensive yet accessible introduction to the beliefs and practices of the Eastern Orthodox Church for Western readers. Tibbs has devoted her career to translating the Orthodox faith to an evangelical audience and has over twenty years of experience teaching this material to students. Assuming no prior knowledge of Orthodox theology, this survey covers the basic ideas of Eastern Orthodox Christianity from its origins at Pentecost to the present day.

Although much has been written on the making of art objects as a means of engaging in creative productions of the self (most famously Alfred Gell’s work), there has been very little written on Orthodox Christianity and its use of material within religious self-formation. Eastern Orthodox Christianity is renowned for its artistry and the aesthetics of its worship being an integral part of devout practice. Yet this is an area with little ethnographic exploration available and even scarcer ethnographic attention given to the material culture of Eastern Christianity outside the traditional ‘homelands’ of the greater Levant and Eastern Europe. Drawing from and building upon Gell’s work, Carroll explores the uses and purposes of material culture in Eastern Orthodox Christian worship. Drawing on three years of ethnographic fieldwork in a small Antiochian Orthodox parish in London, Carroll focusses on a study of ecclesiastical fabric but places this within the wider context of Orthodox material ecology in Britain. This ethnographic exploration leads to discussion of the role of materials in the construction of religious identity, material understandings of religion, and pathways of pilgrimatic engagement and religious movement across Europe. In a religious tradition characterised by repetition and continuity, but also as sensuously tactile, this book argues that material objects are necessary for the continual production of Orthodox Christians as art-like subjects. It is an important contribution to the corpus of literature on the anthropology of material culture and art and the anthropology of religion.

With an estimated 250 million adherents, the Orthodox Church is the second largest Christian body in the world. This absorbing account of the essential elements of Eastern Orthodox thought deals with the Trinity, Christ, sin, humanity, and creation as well as praying, icons, the sacraments and liturgy.

Despite over 200 million adherents, Eastern Orthodox Christianity attracts little scholarly attention. While more-covered religions emerge as powerful transnational forces, Eastern Orthodoxy appears doggedly local, linked to the ethnicity and land of the now marginalized Eastern Europe. But Eastern Orthodoxy in a Global Age brings together new and nuanced understandings of the Orthodox churches—inside and outside of Eastern Europe—as they negotiate an increasingly networked world. The picture that emerges is less of a people stubbornly refusing modernization, more of a people seeking to maintain a stable Orthodox identity in an unstable world. For anyone interested in the role of Eastern Orthodoxy in the 21st century, this volume provides the place to begin.