A few months back, I happened to hear one of my favorite Orthodox pieces of music, the Paschal Troparion, put to the tune of an Appalachian folk melody. As it happens, I adore folk music: I spend time actively memorizing English, Scottish, Irish, and American folk melodies and their varied lyrics. I was instantly smitten, and wondered what such cultural adaptation said about the future of Eastern Orthodoxy in the United States. To date, from what I’ve read, Orthodoxy has been hindered by the fact that its patriarchates tend to be ethnically oriented, so that a visitor to a Greek or Russian Orthodox church may feel like a tourist in a foreign culture. The Orthodox Church in America is trying to overcome that by offering a “native” Orthodoxy, but despite the number of young men who are attracted to it, it hasn’t gone quite mainstream yet. While searching for something on this subject, I encountered American Orthodox — which has a promising title, but struggles to find a cohesive message.

American Orthodox is a curious little book,  more of a collection of pieces than a focused monograph. It opens with the stories of several people who had encounters with St. Peter the Aleut in Alaska and California,, including a woman who discovered an icon of Peter which had washed up on the beach.  St. Peter was an early Aleut convert to Russian Orthodoxy who the Spanish made a martyr of in San Francisco from a mix of ethnic and religious acrimony.  The number of people who have felt a connection to St Peter include the author, who threw an icon into the ocean in some attempt at finding closure in his life.   The book then shifts into reflections on Orthodoxy in general, including the role of beauty and particularly icons in guiding people to God.  This includes a physical description of how the interior of a purpose-built Orthodox church is structured, with emphasis on the iconostasis. As someone who has visited an Orthodox church   but didn’t know names of these particular elements, I found this helpful – despite having read other books on Orthodoxy by Ware and Mathews-Green!  This reflection on beauty is immediately followed by an epilogue, and a timeline of Orthodoxy in America.  As someone who finds Orthodoxy fascinating  – especially its music and the homilies I’ve found on youtube, which are more biting and insightful than most – I enjoyed it, but I imagine many readers who might pick it up would wonder what its mission was meant to be.