Authentic Arabs, authentic Christians: Antiochian Orthodox and the mobilization of cultural identity

Author: Matthew W. Stiffler

Publisher/Publication: University of Michigan

Volume/Issue: PhD Thesis

DOI/ISBN: https://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/77904

Abstract

This dissertation shows how the cultural identity is produced within the intersecting social locations of religion, culture, and politicized action. The writer focuses on the Antiochian Orthodox Church to show how transnational religious communities in the U.S. can create complex identities that both celebrate a U.S.-based religious and cultural identity and engage in transnational politicized action that, in the case of Antiochian Orthodox, can run against the grain of popular U.S. political discourses about Arabs and the Middle East. The writer situates constructions of cultural identity within the space of the church in relation to events in the homeland, mostly war and humanitarian crisis, and U.S. political and popular culture discourses of Arabs. He shows how Antiochian Orthodox strategically separate their "importation" from their "immigration" to navigate the "contradictions" of liberal multiculturalism.

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