Orthodox Christians and the Rights Revolution in America

. . .Orthodox Christians and the Rights Revolution in America synthesizes the history of Orthodox Christians in North America and their engagement with religious liberty, property rights, and freedom of expression in a succinct and detailed way.-- ""Reading Religion"" A.G. Roeber's Orthodox Christians and the Rights Revolution in America is an indispensable study of the engagement with and contributions of Orthodox Christianity to the complex, contested evolution in rights regimes in the United States. He offers an erudite narration of the history of Orthodox Christians as a faith community in America whose navigation of the country's rights regimes has been shaped by two main factors--first, Orthodox Christians' connectedness to their transnational, macro-historical experiences and, second, American rights debates that continue to be marked by competing claims about the origins, scope, and arbiters of rights in an ever more religiously plural United States. This case study of Orthodox Christianity in America's rights revolution is essential reading for broader understandings of how religious communities assess involvement in questions about social and political rights in terms of the possible transformative consequences both inside and outside faith communities.---Elizabeth H. Prodromou, Visiting Professor in International Studies at Boston College Orthodoxy did not bring with it to America a doctrine of human rights. With impressive erudition Roeber shows why it is incumbent upon Orthodoxy to come to terms with human rights speech, whether yea or nay. This is because many of the most significant religious and moral issues of the day entail human rights language and reasoning; whether marriage, sexuality and gender, free speech and religious liberty, or nationalism and the sovereignty of the nation state. There is no other book like this in the corpus of Orthodox reflection on the station of the Church in America.---Vigen Guroian, author of The Orthodox Reality, and The Melody of Faith: Theology in an Orthodox Key Finally, the English-speaking world has an erudite and engaging treatment of the oft vexed interactions of Orthodox Christianity and human rights, particularly in the United States. A.G. Roeber combines insider theological lore with refined legal and historical knowledge to show how the Orthodox faithful have gradually come to see the utility if not value of some modern human rights norms of human dignity, moral agency, social order, and religious freedom. But he also shows how and why the Orthodox faithful remain deeply suspicious of modern liberalism and its founding secular premises. This is now the standard text on Orthodoxy and human rights for insiders and outsiders alike.---John Witte, Jr., Center for the Study of Law and Religion, Emory University What happens when convictions about ""rights"" developed from within the traditions of Orthodox Christianity confront the modern ""rights revolution"" that is dominated by secular reasoning? A.G. Roeber's deeply researched and carefully argued book provides answers that focus on the growing participation of the Orthodox in American social and political debates. One of the book's many contributions, however, is to extend its discussion to consider the clash of Orthodox opinions (Russian versus Ukrainian and the Orthodox Church of the USA) on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. For anyone interested in connections between religious thought and contemporary debates over ""rights,"" this book is a treasure.---Mark A. Noll, McAnaney Professor of History Emeritus, University of Notre Dame