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In the Hands of Women: Home Alter Tradition in Utah's Greek Orthodox Homes
Icons are often arranged on walls and tables in Utah homes. This photograph was taken in the home of Aphrodite Marcooles, Salt Lake City. All photographs are courtesy of the author.
In the Hands of Women: Home Altar Tradition in Utah's Greek Orthodox Homes
BY ELAINE M. BAPIS
WHEN MY GRANDMOTHER ARRIVED in the United States in 1916, she brought a long-standing tradition from Greece that her daughters remember as one of the vibrant features of their household. 1 She arranged eikones (icons), kandilia (votive candles), and a themiato (censer) in her bedroom to continue religious worship in the manner of her heritage. Creating a center of holiness and spirituality in the home was part and parcel of her life. Like other Greek immigrant women, she felt it was integral to religious faith itself
Studies of Greek American communities treat women's traditions such as this one in an anecdotal manner. Typically, Greek American history is about public institutions and the struggle to develop cohesive organizations. 2 Most inquiry explores the central role of the church—its national and regional history or the nature of ceremonies and rituals conducted within. "It is no exaggeration," observes one historian, "to say that without the Greek Orthodox church there would be no Greek-American community."3 Church history is therefore central to Greek American studies However, the exclusive focus on the public institution in relation to community cohesion has subsumed the importance of long-standing domestic religious customs and their parallel function in cultural transmission. Adopting a new country while successfully transporting a heritage to the West depended upon creating an efficient relationship between home and church in a manner consistent with Greek Orthodox tradition, yet suitable to American settings where immigrants found themselves widely scattered In creating and maintaining the home/church dynamic, immigrant women's home altar tradition was critical.
When Greek immigrant women set up private religious sites in their Utah homes in the early nineteen hundreds, they engaged in age-old rituals that provided them with a resource of strength and action At the same time that their faith in home rituals facilitated them personally, it indelibly marked the religio-cultural identity of their families, connecting the individual and the family to a larger Greek community. Women's religious culture in the form of home altars created and sustained a vital relationship between church and home. This home-church connection suggests that Greek communities in Utah not only developed by creating congregations of "the faithful" in church but also by means of private devotion, especially one that could endure relocation. However, even though the home altar tradition is widespread in Greek Orthodox homes, it is not without a history of modification in practice and in meaning of women's religious authority. Based on the experiences of twenty women from three Greek Orthodox communities of Utah, this study examines the nature of Greek women's home altar tradition, its sustaining power, and its changes over three generations.4
Despite its widespread presence in Greek American homes, the home altar tradition has been the exclusive subject of only one study Robert Teske, in his 1973 analysis of Greek Orthodox custom in Philadelphia, describes religious devotion in the home as one of the most widespread and persistent of the immigrant religious customs.5 He finds little modification in domestic religious tradition and recognizes it as a central feature in Greek American homes Other writers such as Kay Turner and Cynthia Viduarri have studied the tradition of home altars in Tejano Catholic culture,6 and Yvonne Milspaw examines women's religious heritage from a Protestant angle, identifying a similar home-altar practice as standard among German-Anabaptist culture.7 These studies recognize the cross-cultural links between their respective community's religious tradition and Christian practice in general.8 In all three cases, the home altar tradition is an expression of the close ties between ethnic and religious identity. Greek tradition in Utah has similar ties.9
Greek immigration to America had reached about 10,000 by the late 1890s, with the largest concentrations of population in Chicago and NewYork.10 These early groups spurred a wave of large-scale immigration toward the turn of the century with over 100,000 Greeks arriving by 1910." Greek settlement in Utah was part of this twentieth century phenomenon Lured to America by labor agents and vibrant success stories (under a disguised system of forced servitude), large numbers of Greek men were transported west to work on the railroad and in newly opened coal mines.12 Planning to stay only until their servitude expired, these men instead became founders of Utah's Greek American communities. Like the earlier, eastern immigrants, they converted their work enclaves into sites of settlement, and by 1912 many men had sent for families or arranged with relatives to send for brides.
Greeks settled in four Utah areas, Salt Lake City, Bingham, Ogden, and Carbon County with a total population at about 4,039 by 1910. Almost all were men. 13 Before women arrived in large numbers (1912), men had already pioneered mutual aid societies, Greek-language newspapers, and political organizations.14 In Salt Lake City by 1905 they had constructed and dedicated the original Greek Orthodox church, Holy Trinity. Serving the Intermountain West, the church became the primary symbol and evidence of Greek identity in the New World. By 1916 Greeks in Price had dedicated their church, and the Ogden community followed at a later date. It was not by chance that the church was the primary means of social, cultural, and religious identity To early generations in Utah the word "Greek" defined both nationality and religion, and maintaining this closeness meant having a central place of fellowship The church with its social hall housed mutual aid society meetings and baptism and wedding parties and essentially became a place where Greek language, food, song, and dance were relished. But the public fashioning of religiocultural identity also depended upon a fluid exchange with the home. A center of cultural security, the home was also a place where women's custom of private worship promoted a "Greek" form of religious piety and kept ties between religion and culture strong. Especially in view of the immigrants' relative isolation from Eastern Christian tradition and their permanent separation from homeland and family, the fact that private worship has survived as a tradition suggests that it served both a private and public need.15 The dialectic between home and church that Greek immigrant women created in Utah recalls early Christian tradition when the home was the original "church" where people gathered (most likely in the loft or some place out of public view) to preach, teach, and partake of sacraments. 16
Devotional expression in the home bolstered institutionalization of religion by providing for a non-compartmentalized practice of piety.17
A general description of culturally prescribed home altar arrangements begins with the ways that church and home replicate each other materially and ritually. One literally takes the church into the home by placing the most significant visual, Byzantine icons, in private locations, thus marking a sacred space similar to the church's venerated center, the altar.18 As in the church, icons in the home are forms of visual instruction, providing "concise memorials" of significant written scripture.19 Two primary eikones in Orthodox iconography, Xristos (Christ) and Theotokos (Holy Mother), glorify Christianity's central event—the divine Mysterion, more commonly known as the incarnation.20 In home altars as in Orthodox church interiors, these two core icons constitute the primary visual language of worship A third-generation woman who grew up in Salt Lake City describes what she remembers in her home: "We had a little corner of. . . holiness in the bedrooms for the icon and religious effects. We always had the Icon of Christ and the Icon of the Virgin Mary hanging on the wall."21 As in the church, several different icons may be placed around the central ones in home arrangements.22 Among them may be a family member's patron saint or commemorations of miraculous events in early church history.
Veneration of Byzantine icons in the home and church marks one's source of spiritual connection to Christianity and signifies religious and cultural identity. Not only does the art, dating to pre-schism time, inscribe one's religious history but the Greek letters overlaying the icon's visuals identify culture. Between Byzantine art and Greek letters, these icons distinguish Eastern Christianity from Western and designate Greek culture in relation to the broader Eastern Orthodox heritage. Hence, the visuals and the letters help create a sense of religious and cultural "ecology" for Greeks in their American homes. Traditional religious practice in the home replicates church ritual in three main ways: keeping a vigil light called a kandili, using a censer known as a themiato for blessings, and praying.23 The kandili (votive candle), continually lighted in church, is a symbolic reminder of the eternal light of the Gospel. The kandili either hangs from the ceiling next to the eikona or sits on a shelf in a corner of the bedroom or over a doorway or on a table with the themiato nearby Both second- and third-generation women had vivid memories of mothers' or grandmothers' custom of lighting the votive candle A third-generation woman characterizes her grandmother's kandili ritual: "She would light it at fast days and name days; it was a big part of her life."24 A Salt Lake City woman recalls her grandmother's tradition: "We had the kandili, thick glass with wide rim filled with oil and a little water to hold the wick. The kandili was lit each night before the prayer before we went to bed. It also served as a night light but that was not the main purpose."25 Another woman explains the dynamic relationship between church and home symbolized by the kandili: "The first thing that comes to mind is the relationship with the spiritual. . . and that light, seeing that light is the same thing as lighting a candle every Sunday [at church]."26
During church services the priest blesses the faithful with the themiato. Women have traditionally done the same at home for their families in particular and as acts of kindness in general. A third-generation woman describes her mother's practice: "We had the themiato for the incense and the charcoal We burned the incense and charcoal on Sundays and holidays We always did our cross and said a prayer of thanks."27 One woman explains the ritual: "When we themiazi [use the censer, i.e., incense burner] we believejust because the smell and the smoke goes [sic] up, that's [sic] our prayers go up. We themiazi the night before [a] holiday like Saint George, SaintJames, Saint Stellianos, every name day and in the morning too before we go to church; I go first to my icons and then to all the rooms and then to my car because I have icons there and then I stay in the front door and themiazi outside and I pray for everybody in the world and for my dead people. I don't ever change anything for me."28
Finally, home and church imitate each other through the goal of prayer, a means of communion (communication) with the divine. A recent immigrant explains how the church and home integrate religious practice: "We like to continue the prayers from the church to the house ... its some kind of connection."29 Gratitude, seeking forgiveness, and asking for help are the primary motivations for prayer. How often is entirely up to the individual; for some it is daily and for others occasionally. A 1950s immigrant remembers her mother's ritual in Greece: "If [she] has problem she went [sic] any time of day but in the evening yes."30 Another woman explains the role of home prayer: "We'd worship just like we would if we were in church, so we would all line up at night . . .when we went to bed we'd stand in front of the eikones and pray."31
Prayer (in front of the eikones) for a 1930s immigrant functions as a source of strength and a place of veneration: "Anytime I go in that room and I see the icons I have to make my stavro [sign of the cross]
kai tha kano kai oti mou erthiesto mialow mou kai tha zitiso hari [and then I ask whatever comes into my mind and any favors from God]. If I am very sorry, very sad about something, I have to go there. I do it anytime I want, anytime."32 Belief in the power of prayer for one immigrant woman, whose livelihood came from raising goats and selling cheese and milk, was undeniable. Her daughter describes this close relationship in the story about their goats being poisoned: "I think I was only four or five years old then . . . Mom was very unhappy and she kept . . . cursing them [the neighbors] and praying and . . . one night Panageia [Virgin Mary] came to her and told her don't get too distressed and don't hate 'em and don't curse 'em; I'll take care of them and then spring come [sic] along right after and we had some nasty weather and their animals were lambing . . . and they lost almost all of their animals and . . . our few goats ... a good many of them had twins so that made mora feel like God answered." 33 One second-generation woman who grew up near Price remembers the central role of the home in their religious life. "We couldn't go to church to worship so we worshipped at home and everyday [mother] used her censer and censed the house and lit her vigil light every night."34
The tradition of home altars represents the dynamics between church and home in another way For married women, a fourth traditional object, the Stephana (marriage crown) appears in a glass case near the eikones. As one woman remembers, "[the] Stephana... were in my parents bedroom next to their icon."35 When women place the Stephana from the church marriage ceremony next to the eikones, they carry the event of marriage into the home and give it a venerable station. According to Cretan tradition, the Stephana isburied with the first deceased spouse. 36
If the early immigrants had no access to the products they found ways to make them: "In those days we did not have wicks because it was hard to get 'em ... so [mother] just spun a piece of cotton and she had a little metal like across the glass with water on the bottom and then put the oil and the oil comes up on top naturally . . . and then she'd put that little wick through a little hole in her metal holder then it just lit all night." Another item that was frequently constructed was the traditional shelf many women left behind in Greece: "Dad built mother a little . . . box-like shelf more or less and it was with a cross on top; it was like an altar and she had all her icons in that and her vigil light and the vigil light was lit every night; we woke up at night we had a little light ... it was sacred to her."37 This sacrality is not interrupted by political or secular images such as pictures of family members, political leaders, or national flags.38
While most respondents described eikones, kandilia, themiato, and sounds of prayer as typical of immigrant women's daily religious practice, few mentioned reading and studying Bibles. The Bible and prayer books have always been central to Orthodox religious dogma, but the eikones, kandili, and themiato have played a significant role in helping women to create an intimate relationship with the sacred world while transmitting religious culture to their families. Since Greek Orthodox women's access to hierarchical management of the church (where dogma is decided and debated and clergy are educated) met an early death, and since liturgical administration is the exclusive right of men, generations of women have found ways of engaging actively in religion through domestic ritual The emphasis on the visual in Greek Orthodox tradition (compared to the written word for Protestants) has a particular significance for immigrant women. The sensory tradition provided them with a means of "unmediated" worship in the home. Praying, censing the house and family, and keeping an eternal flame endowed women with the ability to activate religious worship and sustain Orthodoxy in Utah's largely Protestant region. Isolated from their homeland and estranged from their religious environment, Greek immigrant women were not disconnected. Relocating their religious practice was as simple as packing an icon in a bag.
In transporting traditional practices from Greece to America, early immigrants provided their communities with a direct link to Greek Orthodox religious history and culture, allowing uninterrupted religious worship where getting to church may have been occasional at best. Through the kandili, themiato, prayer, eikones, and Stephana, immigrant women found ways to continue the familiar, complementary relationship between church and home, while passing on cultural and religious identity to their families. Subsequent generations—at the very least—procured a sense of "Greekness" through identification with the religious items and their function in the church-home dynamics
Subtle but significant modifications in the home altar tradition appeared with second generation women. The first item to disappear, generally speaking, was the shelf. Since the traditional shelf was an item unavailable in Utah, women arranged their eikones on walls or tables (some keeping the east-facing tradition and others not) with a kandili nearby Some continued rituals such as blessing the family As one third-generation daughter explains: "[I] definitely [remember my mother] blessing the house with the . . . how would she call it, themiazi; T would themiazi the house' . . . one day specifically that she cense[d] was the first day of the year . . . she [would] light the incense in the kitchen and then she went directly to the icons to [sic] the bedroom . . . and then she would go to each room in the house; we each took the palm of our hand in a vertical position and we go over the smoke with the sign of the cross and she would have each one of us specifically [do that] I remember it being a real special time."39 If the rituals of blessing occurred only occasionally for some, second-generation women retained prayer as the primary function of their religious center. Another time-honored component has been the continued separation between the sacred and the secular.40
Two important changes, however, suggest American influence. Religious statues have been discouraged as a general rule in Greek Orthodox tradition since the "too-real" nature, as opposed to the preferred abstractness of flat Byzantine icons, suggests idolatry No religious statues appear in Greek Orthodox churches today. Their inclusion would indicate Roman Catholic tradition. Many second-generation women, though, have found a way to accommodate religious statues without spiritual conflict. One second-generation woman in Salt Lake has a collection of three statues of the Virgin Mary that a Catholic friend had given her as a gift.41 Another has included two angels that she acquired at an interfaith conference. Blending them with traditional items suggests an open attitude toward Christian faiths on a broad spiritual level and a gift-giving dialectic apparent in America because of proximity with other religions. Women identify these items as appropriate religious expressions with no threat to their distinct Greek Orthodox practice Similarly, the appearance of westernized icons or unusual representations ofJesus in some Greek Orthodox home altars suggest Catholic and Protestant influence and a way of appropriating religious identity in a broader sense. A parish priest explained what he found at an elderly lady's home: "She has her little icon and I give her communion [regularly] and she's got these real unusual pictures of Jesus there; but out of her own personal reverence she said, Tjust can't throw those things away' and she puts them there; they wouldn't typically go there but it'sjust an expression of her own piety."42
In the case of an interfaith marriage, combining statues and icons was a way of blending cultures. A third-generation daughter explains: "My grandmother was a very devout Catholic and . . .when my mother married my father . . . she told my mother that her children, my brother and I, should be Greek Orthodox. My mother kept her little icons and she also had statues . . . the Catholic statues of the Virgin Mary mostly and they were intertwined We always had the kandili because the Catholics always had them."43 Another change was the addition of a low voltage electric kandili that allowed the eternal glow without the hazard of a lighted candle or the oil and water combination: "About 1945 my mother purchased an electric kandili which was a beautiful deep red glass surrounded in a gold container."44 This sometimes replaced the votive candle and in other instances complemented it, with the candle being lit only on special occasions.
A major change for second-generation women has been more frequent readings of the Bible and prayer books. This shift from a more oral cultural tradition to a literary one can be marked in the second generation's recent participation in Bible classes and a more active church system of distribution of religious texts. Early immigrant women's dependence on home altar traditions issued largely from their mothers and grandmothers Contemporary reliance on written authority has changed the traditional relationship with written texts for Greek women in Utah. The Bible, for instance, represents a useful resource from which to read independently rather than just a sacred text lying next to sacred icons. Many second-generation women have found a new balance in their domestic religious practice between active ritual and the more isolated act of reading.
While active engagement in blessings with the themiato and lighting the kandili functioned as a central part of domestic religious devotion for immigrant women and as a complimentary component for the second generation, the eventual disappearance of active ritual from third-generation homes not only began a change in practice but also a significant shift in the role of women's religious authority. Thirdgeneration response to home altar traditions ranges from complete abandonment to modified devotional expression. Generally, third-generation practice is marked by a less elaborate collection of eikones and a more simple arrangement, with many married women having one or two icons next to the Stephana. While the second generation had either an electric light for a kandili or the votive candle (or both), the third generation tended not to have either. Several of them mentioned that they had the kandili but it sat in a drawer or was used only sporadically at a few specific moments during the year. Modification generally meant less ritualized practice such as blessings with the themiato. One woman laments the loss of the themiato, "I've never done that; I remember my mom so specifically; I bought all the stuff and I've got it but I've never done it." Her devotional expression, like that of other third-generation women, consists of prayer and the immigrant tradition of placing the eikoneson the east wall, as she demonstrates: "They [people] had to . . . face the sun's rising so they [icons] always had to be on the east wall and I remember in every apartment or in every house I would say now are the icons going to be on the east wall; so to this day they are on the east wall in my house; so we've always passed that on."45
Although third-generation women were less inclined to activate family rituals such as blessing the family with the themiato, they have continued to draw on prayer in front of their eikones as a resource for spiritual strength: "I think that's my way of saying this is my [spiritual] link; definitely a feeling of security . . . definitely."46 It is a place and a moment of privacy for women, respected and understood by family members: "I remember my mother," comments one woman, " and she went to . . . her bedroom and locked the door and she said I am going to pray, don't make too much noise."47 Not generally a place where the family comes together in prayer, the home altar site retains the aspect of a woman's space, as suggested by this comment: "We never prayed as a family in that area where the icons [were]. She [mother] would tell me specific times that she would pray to the icons; I never saw her; I don't think it was a daily thing; I remember her very specifically, maybe troubled times, when she would say that last night I knelt and prayed."48
In a significant way, domestic religious tradition generated piety, cultural identity, and a form of religious authority for women through modeling and a female "ownership" of custom. As one person observes, "Nobody ever said this is what you do; it was all just from what I saw my mother do."49 Another woman clearly understood the importance of modeling: "It's seen as an expression; if they see, if they light the candle .. . I think that means something to them . . . like my grandchildren. When they live [sic] here overnight I tell them let's go to [sic] pray . . . each one pray[s]." 5 0 While both male and female children most likely procured a sense of "Greekness" through identification with the material items, women assumed primary responsibility for creating and attending to religious centers in the home. Few respondents remembered their adult brothers, for example, acquiring the home altar tradition
Keeping a sacred center still functions as a means of sustaining a dynamic relationship between church and home. The potent nature of domestic religious tradition in maintaining a dialectic between community and home is especially exemplified in the way it conjoins the church and home through special occasions. At Easter, for example, parishioners may place objects from the church service in the home. These customs range from taking the lighted candle from Good Friday services all the way home and lighting a kandili to placing the palm from Palm Sunday or the carnation from Good Friday next to the eikones. A third-generation woman explains: "On [Good] Friday night I always put the flower always, we all do and we let them dry there sometimes I will even put them in [the] box that holds
From the Palm Sunday liturgy, strips of palm leaves shaped into crosses are taken home and placed on icons. Home of Bessie Markos. the crowns; I kept them in there for awhile and then my mom's always told me you have to burn them; you can't throw them in the garbage; we try to bring a light home from the service."51 Other occasions may include bringing ayiasmos (holy water) from the Epiphany church service into the house As one woman explains: "Ayiasmos was always available at home in case someone needed to take some due to illness."52 For another person: "[Mother] had the holy water that she'd get from the church and she'd sprinkle with that and if any of us were sick she would give us a teaspoon of it and hope that the Lord would reach us and help us heal and we still do it to this day."53 Holy water has also been used in blessing the house as one person explains: "The priest. did visit our home with basil and holy water and blessed each room by forming the cross with the basil and the holy water."54 One woman pointed to a basket next to her eikones which held a bottle of ayiasmos brought to her from the Holy Land. The home's place of prayer symbolizes a way of identifying oneself as Greek Orthodox, and in the simple act of placing a carnation in the frame of the eikona, or a palm from Palm Sunday, one engages in a dynamic relationship with the larger Greek Orthodox community. Yet, as the dialectic between church and home, evidenced by such time-honored rituals as placing religious objects from church services on the eikones, persists, women's role in that dialectic has lost its vitality
Finding themselves in a world vastly different from their grandmothers, third-generation Greek American women face a more efficient church system that has assumed an assertive role in educating members on religious issues to keep an extremely diverse community together. While addressing the needs of a changing community, influenced especially by interfaith marriages, the church has become an influential (if not primary) source of religio-cultural instruction. Through clergy-laity newsletters, a church-sponsored newspaper, Bible and prayer-book classes, and youth retreats, the church standardizes information about worship and religious culture and distributes it on a national basis. As more young people participate in retreats where they are taught traditions of domestic religious devotion through church direction, they engage in new systems of cultural transmission. This change has given young people, both men and women, wider access to religious culture, creating a renewed interest in the private sphere as a place for religious devotion. Fourth-generation descendants now have a chance to acquire the tradition of sacred centers in the home where their third-generation mothers may have abandoned it.
While some see this shift as a resurgence of religious practice in the home, it is important to recognize how a switch in the means of cultural transmission has occurred and what that suggests about Greek Orthodox women's heritage of religious authority. What has been accomplished in the institutional supervising of religious training is the maintenance of a fluid relationship between church and home. What has changed is the role of women as activators of religious ritual in the household Third-generation women's religious activity has retained its aspect of a personal means of religious devotion but has lost its prominence as a means of active engagement for women in the religious maintenance and education of family. Several third generation respondents mentioned that they were involved in more Bible classes and religious conferences than their mothers were The aspect of study, brought into the home by the second generation, has given women's domestic religious tradition an institutional character, dependent on written authority more than on modeling. It is not unreasonable to assume that as church members attend religious classes and conferences, they participate less in the kind of domestic religious culture characteristic of immigrant women's tradition and more in the prescribed style of church authority. While keeping a sacred center in the home has been traditionally encouraged by women, they are no longer the central vehicle through which its inheritance proceeds. Where third generation women acquired religious "training" from both memory of women's active engagement and written authority, their children are more likely to gain religious education through written and church-regulated sources than from home custom. Responsibility for religious training has shifted into the hands of the church.
The switch from modeling as a means of cultural transmission to institutionalized, formal religious training can be illustrated in another way. Inter-religio-cultural marriage has become a permanent feature in Greek Orthodox communities.55 As a result, formal instruc- tion, an effective way to educate converts, has naturally evolved. The recent publication of A Guide toGreek Traditions and Customsin America is an embodiment of the demand on the Greek Orthodox community to meet the needs of a varied and diverse audience.56 In the preface, author Marilyn Rouvelas (a non-Greek) explains that when she "met her Greek-American husband in 1965, everything from the food to the church services was literally foreign" to her. After her conversion to Greek Orthodoxy, she adopted the many customs which have "inalterably changed [her] life." Addressing the dual needs to explain to converts and also to "preserve" these customs, she compiled a kind of guide to Greek Orthodox culture. Among the traditions secured upon A Guide's pages is a section describing katekia ekklesia: "If possible, locate the ikonostasi [collection of icons] on an east wall of the house so that you face east while praying some people prefer an upstairs hallway; others select the parents' bedroom The choice is yours." The rest of the section defines the items and their "official" purpose. What is significant to this paper is that publishing what previously has been considered natural custom—just habits of the home confirms the changed audience claiming Greek Orthodox identity and culture as well as the changed nature of acquiring "custom." The book, written mostly in imperative voice, places custom in the context of a new authority—the written guide. The author generously hopes that her "book may spark new enthusiasm" among immigrants' descendants and aid a rising group of converted members to feel more included and able to "share the Orthodox faith and recognize it as a powerful bond that transcends geography and ancestry."57
The guidebook's ambition is both to revive and preserve Greek Orthodox culture. In the process it has become a new cultural product, that is, an example of how new infrastructures are being created through which Greek religio-cultural identity is issued. Guide books, similar to church Bible classes, are important strategies through which people meet the challenge of keeping diverse communities together. These new approaches indicate a dynamic, ever-changing process of culture. To be sure, preservation on paper ensures the life of one kind of authority, but it is unable to transmit another What seems to be left out is the potent nature—the emotions and substance—of our grandmothers' and mothers' practice, in motion. Blurred is the powerful realm of ministry for women that strengthened cultural and ethnic ties, nourished by the memory of the homeland. In some ways, the new emphasis on studying religion, preserving custom through the written word, and the present hope for Orthodoxy to transcend geography and ancestry have made our connection to women's traditional strategy of faith historical and nostalgic.
These changes suggest that an important shift in the function of the home altar tradition has occurred. It has retained its role as a resource of spiritual strength (where an individual may pray) and as a connection between home and church, but it has lost its vitality as a source of women's religious authority. Many third-generation women have become more dependent on the formal study of religion rather than a more active, visually ritualized expression learned through the custom of their ancestors. This shift in women's religious authority also indicates that a more formalized authority than modeling has become a primary means for religious training. While the themiato may be burning less in the homes of Utah's Greek Orthodox, the pages of Bibles and prayer books are turning more.
The variables determining how subsequent generations will engage in a tradition such as home altars are many and complex. Understanding the complete picture of how Greeks pioneered their cultural traditions in Utah means more than telling the story of building churches and setting down the rules of religious custom. It means remembering the hands making the sign of the cross, the lips moving for the repose of souls, the smell of incense, or the sight of the flickering flame infusing nights with a little bit of safety It means remembering how Greek immigrant women brought their community into the home and their history into a modern world. Their altars were not merely repositories or archives shelving old country relics, but a dynamic, vitalizing system symbolizing one's engagement in creating and maintaining a religious culture and identity.
Greek American poet, Eleni Fourtouni, confirms the vitality of her mother's religious life that gave the icons, kandilia, and prayers their potent nature. In "Death Watch," a poem memorializing her mother, she recreates her mother's image in relation to religious objects. The poem ends with the following words:
It is significant that she shapes her mother's image through the most personal religious objects, the kandili and the eikona. The ethereal reflection brings the nurturing of the lamp and the mother into a unified source of grace and comfort. One is remembered in dynamic relation to the other and like the pictures in our minds of the women who left a legacy of religious piety in Utah, the written poem is inseparable from the lived one It is shaped by the images reflected on an icon, a light, and a prayer.
NOTES
Ms. Bapis is a doctoral student in American history and film at the University of Utah. She acknowledges with thanks the critical comments and suggestions made by Margaret Brady, Robert Goldberg, Katherine Grier, and Dean May during all stages of this project.
1 The phrase "home altars" does not derive directiy from Greek religio-cultural practice It is not a phrase that Greek Orthodox people use to identify their tradition of private worship. The closest phrase would be katekia ekklesia (transliterated form) or "the church in the home," a phrase generally used by the church clergy When lay people refer to "home altars" they usually refer to a specific object, such as an icon of Christ or the Virgin Mary or a kandili. I am using the phrase as a generic label.
2 The most notable monograph is Theodore Saloutos, The Greeks in the United States (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964) which, in relation to church history, discusses the pressures on die Greek Orthodox Church to assimilate as it changed from a federation of churches in eastern Europe to a centralized system in America Equally important is the examination of resistance and accommodation of Greek Americans in responding to assimilation Thomas Burgess, Greeks in America (Boston, 1913) describes American reaction to Greeks; and Charles C Moskos,Jr., Greek Americans: Struggle and Success (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1980), combines social and cultural history with memoir and adds demographic information and personal experience to Saloutos's general narrative. Alice Scourby's The Greek Americans (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1984), follows along the same lines The exceptional focus on folk dynamics has been Helen Z Papanikolas's extensive study of Greek tradition in the Intermountain West Most helpful for a description of early immigrant custom, work life, and household are, "The Exiled Greeks" in The Peoples of Utah (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society, 1976), and her earlier monograph, "Toil and Rage in a New Land: The Greek Immigrants in Utah," Utah Historical Quarterly 38 (1970); also helpful is her "Greek Immigrant Women in the Intermountain West," Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora 16 (1989): 17-35.
3 Alice Scourby, "Ethnicity at the Crossroads: The Case of Greek America," Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora20 (1994): 128.
4 Twenty women from the three Greek Orthodox communities of Utah have contributed information for this project through in-depth interviews Ten second-generation women, speaking about their mothers, provide a general description of early tradition and their own inheritance or modification of it Eight third-generation women describe their response to this age-old tradition, ranging from modification to abandonment One woman who came to Salt Lake City in 1931 and another during the early 1950s represent more recent links to the practice in Greece and provide a comparison to Greek American custom All but two second-generation women are retired, their occupations having ranged from working in department stores and in school lunch programs to operating small businesses and writing professionally Their formal education extended from completion of eighth grade to college Most of the third-generation are college educated and working in their professions The recent immigrant women are both Greece-educated and have spent their years in Utah as Greek language teachers for church education programs Eleven are married, three are single, and four are widows All are officially listed as members of their respective churches While this study only spans three generations, two great-granddaughters (fourth generation) have added insight into contemporary practice Their information has been used to enhance the argument of changed sources of education rather than as evidence for inheritance or rejection They were both college students at the time of their interviews and residents of Salt Lake City.
5 Robert Thomas Teske, "The Eikonostasi among Greek-Philadelphians," Pennsylvania Folklife 23 (1973): 20-30.
6 Kay Turner, "Mexican American Home Altars: Towards Their Interpretation," Aztlan 13 (1982): 309-26 Cynthia Viduarri, "Tejano Religious Folk Art Forms in South and West Texas," Purview Southwest: Proceedingsfor the 1991 Annual Conference on the Southwest/Texas Popular Culture Association , March 27-30, 1991, San Antonio, pp 26-31.
7 Yvonne Millspaw, "Protestant Home Shrines: Icon and Image," New York Folklore 12 (1986): 119-36 She links Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox religious heritage but refers to no specific study that has described Eastern Orthodox practice (Russian, Romanian, etc.).
8 See especially Turner's "Mexican American Home Altars." Her discussion includes information dating home altar tradition to pre-Christian times.
9 In Turner's and Viduarri's studies the use of home altars (while linked to the early Christian church) was not analyzed in relation to modern non-ethnic Catholic communities Linking ethnic identity to home altars is not to suggest that setting up sacred centers cannot be found in all religious communities (nor is it to claim that women's private religious devotion is a primary insurance for the survival of churches), but it is to claim that the particular variety in the Greek Orthodox church—its survival and its long history of female maintenance (like that of Tejano Catholics) is deeply attached to ethnic culture, a powerful force in the development of the church in Utah.
10 Peter W Dickson, "The Greek Pilgrims: Tsakonas and Tsintzinians," New Directions in Greek American Studies (New York: Pella Publishing Company, 1991), ed Dan Georgakas and Charles C Moskos Dickson explains that only 15-25 Greeks arrived at the port of New York prior to 1882 By 1892 both New York and Chicago had communities with dedicated churches.
11 Papanikolas, "The Exiled Greeks," p. 410 (footnote on 1910 census).
12 Employment records and newspapers, according to Papanikolas in "The Exiled Greeks," indicate that Greeks were the "largest group of immigrants in [Utah] mining towns" (p 416) In many of her accounts, she tells the story of the leading padrone, Leonidis G Skliris, who exploited Greek immigrants as he negotiated their terms of employment.
13 According to the 1910 census, fewer than ten Greek women resided in Utah at this time Ibid., p 417.
14 The Fiftieth Anniversary Album for Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church of Salt Lake City reports that by 1908 several regional societies were consolidated into a national organization called "Pan Hellenic National Union" in which Utah Greeks participated with their local chapter, "O Kanaris" (p .45) By 1913 three Greek language newspapers provided forums for debate of issues ranging from work conditions in Utah to Greece's political affairs with Turkey (p 48).
15 Keeping the home a place of Greek Orthodox piety was a challenge for immigrant women in Utah Through word of mouth or possibly a few letters, they heard of Greece but did not expect to see their families again Mosdy teenagers or in their early twenties, these women pioneered Greek domestic culture in Utah, grafting their sense of "Greekness" onto unfamiliar food, homes, clothing, and social customs; but being isolated from family placed a new burden on them, since carrying on cultural tradition meant shouldering the responsibility alone Where women would have shared household tasks with neighbors and relatives for numerous religious celebrations in Greece, they found no such support in America It is no wonder that, in view of such demands, immigrant women found personal strength in reprieves such as private places of prayer.
16 While it is difficult to trace exacdy, the tradition most likely finds its roots in the Gospel's words as revealed by Paul According to William Barclay in The Letters to the Corinthians, 2d ed (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1956), "It is not until the third century that we hear about a church building at all" (p. 187). In Romans 16:3-5 Paul asks us to "greet the church" that is in the home of Priscilla and Aq'uil-a (Christian co-workers and leaders in Corinth and Ephesus) and again in 1 Corinthians 16:19 he refers to "the church that is in their [Priscilla and Aq'-uil-a's] house." Barclay explains that when Paul "writes from Ephesus he sends greetings from them, and from the Church that is in their house" (p 187).
The Greek phrase katekiaekklesia (the church in the home) is a common phrase used by church hierarchy to describe the creation of a Christian atmosphere in the home This tradition, as traced through Paul, is important for women's religious history because it connects women to their role as early deacons, teachers, preachers, prophets, and founders of churches, suggesting that they participated in an active discipleship, thus helping to ensure the church's life For information about women's active discipleship see Eva Catafygiotu Topping, Holy Mothers of Orthodoxy (Minneapolis: Light and Life Publishing Co., 1987).
As institutional development replicated the practice of prayer and partaking of sacraments, melding public and private traditions, it did not advance the role of preacher in the church for women Institutions therefore failed to create lasting public hierarchies inclusive of women, and while their notable leadership in Christian history should not be surprising, it is often neglected. Although it is difficult to say for sure, most likely, as the church became the realm of male authority, responsibility for the maintenance of the church in the home passed almost exclusively into the hands of women. This is not to say that men did not participate in religious ritual at home but that their practice does not have the collective identity women's has had.
17 Interview with Fr John Kaloudis, Prophet Elias Church, Salt Lake City, April 26, 1996 Speaking of a non-compartmentalized religious tradition, he explains: "If youjust come to church on Sunday and that's it, that's really not faith at all; Christianity is meant to embrace every aspect of our lifestyle and that [katekia ekklesia] is an expression of that lifestyle."
18 Byzantine icons were the first Christian art and are distinguished by the focus on abstraction, highlighting the rhythmical or spiritual rather than the real; the time period of most icons in Greek Orthodox tradition spans 550 and 1453 With the transference of the religious capital to Constantinople in 330, Byzantine art took on its eastern and Greek style David Talbot Rice's Art of the Byzantine Era (1963; 2d ed., London: Thames and Hudson, 1986), is very helpful in describing the history of Byzantine art Byzantine icons appear throughout the interiors of Greek Orthodox churches but are most centrally arranged along a screen, the eikonostasi, standing in front of the altar and facing the congregation.
19 Constantine Cavarnos, TheIcon (Haverhill, Mass, 1992).
20 The centrality of the incarnation is equally as representative in Tejano custom; see Kay Turner's "Mexican American Home Altars."
21 Telephone interview with Gregoria Korologos, February 3, 1996, third generation, Salt Lake City and Washington, D.C.
22 Byzantine art has a particular significance for women A controlling idea or expression in the eikona of Christ and the Holy Mother is nurturing—nurturing as elements of both mother and son, male and female. The relatively abstract nature of male and female shapes in Byzantine style, while not obliterating the reality of their humanness, compresses it and highlights and inscribes both the object (male and female) and the idea (nurturing) with an "honorable reverence." The honorable reverence is meant to venerate the idea and act of nurturing as the ideal relationship between human beings (as well as between the individual and the divine) Visuals (through icons) conjure the honorable reverence of nurturing so that women who saw themselves as primary nurturers also saw themselves as engaging in an ennobling commitment Creating spiritual nurturing for many Greek immigrant women was as important as physical nurturing.
23 The nature and value of the objects are directly related to the way they function in the actual church liturgy. The central action of the church is Divine Liturgy along with special ceremonies such as baptism through which the faithful participate in Theia Mysteria (Divine Mysteria or holy sacraments) Divine Mysterion in baptism, for example, occurs when we see a body bathed in the water and believe that the soul is simultaneously cleansed through the "Grace of the Holy Spirit." The objects themselves have a specific purpose in relation to the idea of mysteria. The Divine Mysteria, exclusively administered by clergy, through appropriate, visible symbols initiate one into things invisible. Sacraments and clergy constitute the central feature of church as institution Constantine Cavarnos, Orthodox Christian Terminology (Brookline, Mass.: E Marshall Publishing & Translation Services, 1994), p 53.
24 Interview with Myra Varanakis, Salt Lake City, March 30, 1996, third generation.
25 Korologos interview.
26 Varanakis interview.
27 Korologos interview.
28 Interview with Aphrodite Marcooles, Salt Lake City, April 26, 1996, first generation, 1950 29.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid.
31 Interview with Bessie K Markos, Plain City, February 9, 1996, Ogden community, second generation.
32 Interview with Eleni Bovos, Salt Lake City, April 26, 1996, first generation, 1931.
33 Markos interview.
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid.
36 Helen Z Papanikolas "Wrestling with Death: Greek Immigrant Funeral Customs in Utah," Utah Historical Quarterly 52 (1984): 36.
37 Markos interview.
38 In traditional Catholic home altars, for example, pictures of family members and especially pictures of John F Kennedy appear frequently See Turner, "Mexican American Home Altars."
39 Varanakis interview.
40 The exception was an icon that had been hand embroidered by a person who was in prison in Greece It was Byzantine in style, theme, and image but had two Greek flags on either side of the Theotokos; this was an unusual expression of religion's and culture's inseparability (icon appears in the collection of Aphrodite Marcooles shown on page 312, left hand side of icon arrangement) Still, no political figures such as presidents interrupted the sacred visuals of Christ, Mary, and saints in these women's home altars.
41 Interview with Maxine Bapis, Salt Lake City, February 29, 1996.
42 Kaloudis interview.
43 Interview with Sophie Wondolowski, Salt Lake City, February 9, 1996.
44 Korologos interview.
45 Varanakis interview.
46 Ibid.
47 Marcooles interview.
48 Varanakis interview.
49 Wondolowski interview.
50 Marcooles interview.
51 Varanakis interview.
52 Korologos interview.
53 Markos interview.
54 Korologos interview.
55 When our grandparents identified themselves as Greek, they signified their religion, culture, and geography through one word, Greek Ethnic and religious identity were inextricably tied to each other and to the land of Greece However, in an American setting dispersement and diversity have forced Greek communities to affiliate in new ways One example is the experimentation with labels such as Orthodox Christians or Eastern Orthodox that church communities have acquired (instead of Greek Orthodox).
56 Texts were distributed through a speaking tour by the author to various Greek Orthodox communities throughout the United States.
57 Marilyn Rouvelas, A Guide to Greek Traditions and Customs in America (Bethesda, Md.: Nea Attiki Press, 1993), p ix The hope of transcending geography and ancestry suggests that the Greek Orthodox communities in the United States are in a period of transition where the word Greek can no longer underpin their identity Unable to locate a word that comfortably identifies a common ancestry, contemporary communities continue to struggle for definition Where the word Orthodox ignores specific Greek history and culture, the word Greek ignores diverse ancestry common to interfaith marriage The early immigrants faced no such paradox.
58 Eleni Fourtouni, WatchtheFlame (New Haven: Thelphini Press, 1983).
