Pluralism as a second language: Construction and accommodation of difference by Eastern Orthodox immigrants in Chicago

The present dissertation research focuses on the role of Eastern Orthodox churches in their immigrant constituencies' construction, accommodation, and reconstruction of meanings, symbols, and ideas pertaining to, and deriving from, their host society. Premised on a central thesis of the sociological theory of civil society, that successful functioning of civil society depends on effective accommodation of difference among its constituent groups, my comparative research seeks to understand processes and factors involved in construction and accommodation of difference by the members of four meso-level Eastern Orthodox immigrant institutions. In the course of my fieldwork in the Chicago metropolitan area, I have constructed a maximum-variation-type theoretical sample of institutions varying on the scales of ideological-religious pluralism and cultural-ethnic diversity. My data were consistent with the initial hypothesis that accommodation of difference---understood as willingness and ability to comprehend meanings and actions of divergent social groups in order to harmonize one's own ways with those of others---would be facilitated most within institutions that combine pluralistic pro-ecumenical ideology with cultural diversity.;My hypothesis is embedded in a novel question in research on immigration, "How is civic participation facilitated by immigrants using congregational resources to reconstruct and accommodate different social, cultural and ideological meanings they face in America?" I address this question by combining the "new paradigm's" focus on micro-level construction of meanings with New Institutionalist elaboration of contextual cultural and ideological resources involved in this process. I amend and contribute to recent conceptual schemes pertaining to religious cultural construction by emphasizing the importance of intermediate level of analysis of the contexts and the continuous function of agency in identity-change. My research corrects the previous one-sided conceptualization of immigrant experiences as modular dichotomized conditions. It highlights the role of individual actors and symbolic contexts of meso-level institutions in translating extraneous (i.e. not transplanted from the sending country) social norms into plausible guidelines for civic engagement, and provides empirical data about substantive features of this process in the communities of Eastern Orthodox immigrants.