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A Carpatho-Rusyn Village’s American Conversion to Orthodoxy: Statistical Analysis Reveals Life Narratives

Sat, November 23, 2:00 to 3:45pm, San Francisco Marriott Marquis, Floor: LB2, Nob Hill D

Abstract

The presence of immigrant Carpatho-Rusyn natives of Becherov (present-day northeastern Slovakia) fueled the late-19th/early-20th-century conversion and development of Carpatho-Rusyn immigrant Orthodox church communities in Minnesota and Pennsylvania. The role -- visible and invisible -- of those natives, both the clergy and the secular leaders, spurred conversion movements in their homeland, the Banat of present-day Romania, and Argentina. A project to document these migrants' religious affiliation and places of residence by means of historical and statistical analysis revealed a high degree of and persistent affiliation with the (Russian) Orthodox Church throughout Becherov diaspora "colonies." The project was primarily a historical survey rather than a compilation of collected stories, but the end result brought forth a number of stories worthy of further exploration. Many of these stories were cobbled together primarily from church and civil documents without recourse to oral history or memoirs. But after an intervention in the primary community of their descendants, new life narratives and deeply-rooted social networks among the immigrants were revealed that serve to reinforce the integral place of Becherov in this conversion phenomenon.

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