Orthodox Christian Material Culture: Of People and Things in the Making of Heaven [Hardcover]

Prologue; Introduction; Part I  People and place; Chapter 1: British Orthodoxy; Chapter 2: Coming to the Orthodox temple; Chapter 3: Here and There; Part II  Materials; Chapter 4: Making sacred space; Chapter 5: Materials of transformation; Chapter 6: Materials of ikonicity; Part III  Making heaven; Chapter 7: Becoming an ikon; Chapter 8: Ikonicity; Chapter 9: Becoming Orthodox, making heaven; Epilogue: All Saints Barking of the Spice Rack; Diagram of St ?thelwalds Parish Church; Bibliography; Glossary; Index

Although much has been written on the making of art objects as a means of engaging in creative productions of the self (most famously Alfred Gells work), there has been very little written on Orthodox Christianity and its use of material within religious self-formation. Eastern Orthodox Christianity is renowned for its artistry and the aesthetics of its worship being an integral part of devout practice. Yet this is an area with little ethnographic exploration available and even scarcer ethnographic attention given to the material culture of Eastern Christianity outside the traditional homelands of the greater Levant and Eastern Europe.

Drawing from and building upon Gells work, Carroll explores the uses and purposes of material culture in Eastern Orthodox Christian worship. Drawing on three years of ethnographic fieldwork in a small Antiochian Orthodox parish in London, Carroll focusses on a study of ecclesiastical fabric but places this within the wider context of Orthodox material ecology in Britain. This ethnographic exploration leads to discussion of the role of materials in the construction of religious identity, material understandings of religion, and pathways of pilgrimatic engagement and religious movement across Europe.

In a religious tradition characterised by repetition and continuity, but also as sensuously tactile, this book argues that material objects are nlcâ