Angie Heo

Anthropologically explores the entanglement of theology and politics among contemporary Orthodox Christians. Much of the anthropological literature on Christianity tends to concentrate on Protestants and Catholics in the Global South. The contemporary scholarly interest in such communities descends from histories of missionization and colonization of these regions, as well as a sense of their theological kinship with the secularized visions of Western political and social life. Orthodox Christianity, however, has largely been rendered marginal in mainstream anthropological engagement because of its theological and social alterity from such Western anthropological traditions of knowledge production. Because of this, Orthodox Christian lifeworlds in and beyond the academy are created, contested, and transformed in relation to various "others," whether they be religious, political, secular, or historical, with an eye toward a discursive opposition between modernity and Orthodoxy. Each of the essays in Anthropologies of Orthodox Christianity texture a new trajectory in the study of this religious tradition that take seriously the theopolitical aspects of Orthodox life through anthropological inquiry. The volume engages and moves beyond the tension between populist and institutional framings of religion, and critically addresses the ontological gap in both anthropology and theology as social, cultural, and geopolitical interest in Orthodox Christianity continues to expand and grow.

Anthropologically explores the entanglement of theology and politics among contemporary Orthodox Christians. Much of the anthropological literature on Christianity tends to concentrate on Protestants and Catholics in the Global South. The contemporary scholarly interest in such communities descends from histories of missionization and colonization of these regions, as well as a sense of their theological kinship with the secularized visions of Western political and social life. Orthodox Christianity, however, has largely been rendered marginal in mainstream anthropological engagement because of its theological and social alterity from such Western anthropological traditions of knowledge production. Because of this, Orthodox Christian lifeworlds in and beyond the academy are created, contested, and transformed in relation to various “others,” whether they be religious, political, secular, or historical, with an eye toward a discursive opposition between modernity and Orthodoxy. Each of the essays in Anthropologies of Orthodox Christianity texture a new trajectory in the study of this religious tradition that take seriously the theopolitical aspects of Orthodox life through anthropological inquiry. The volume engages and moves beyond the tension between populist and institutional framings of religion, and critically addresses the ontological gap in both anthropology and theology as social, cultural, and geopolitical interest in Orthodox Christianity continues to expand and grow.

Since the Arab Spring in 2011 and ISIS’s rise in 2014, Egypt’s Copts have attracted attention worldwide as the collateral damage of revolution and as victims of sectarian strife. Countering the din of persecution rhetoric and Islamophobia, The Political Lives of Saints journeys into the quieter corners of divine intercession to consider what martyrs, miracles, and mysteries have to do with the routine challenges faced by Christians and Muslims living together under the modern nation-state. Drawing on years of extensive fieldwork, Angie Heo argues for understanding popular saints as material media that organize social relations between Christians and Muslims in Egypt toward varying political ends. With an ethnographer’s eye for traces of antiquity, she deciphers how long-cherished imaginaries of holiness broker bonds of revolutionary sacrifice, reconfigure national sites of sacred territory, and pose sectarian threats to security and order. A study of tradition and nationhood at their limits, The Political Lives of Saints shows that Coptic Orthodoxy is a core domain of minoritarian regulation and authoritarian rule, powerfully reversing the recurrent thesis of its impending extinction in the Arab Muslim world.

Since the Arab Spring in 2011 and ISIS’s rise in 2014, Egypt’s Copts have attracted attention worldwide as the collateral damage of revolution and as victims of sectarian strife. Countering the din of persecution rhetoric and Islamophobia, The Political Lives of Saints journeys into the quieter corners of divine intercession to consider what martyrs, miracles, and mysteries have to do with the routine challenges faced by Christians and Muslims living together under the modern nation-state. Drawing on years of extensive fieldwork, Angie Heo argues for understanding popular saints as material media that organize social relations between Christians and Muslims in Egypt toward varying political ends. With an ethnographer’s eye for traces of antiquity, she deciphers how long-cherished imaginaries of holiness broker bonds of revolutionary sacrifice, reconfigure national sites of sacred territory, and pose sectarian threats to security and order. A study of tradition and nationhood at their limits, The Political Lives of Saints shows that Coptic Orthodoxy is a core domain of minoritarian regulation and authoritarian rule, powerfully reversing the recurrent thesis of its impending extinction in the Arab Muslim world.