ABSTRACT
While employing the aid of the state in setding interna! polilics is extraor-dinary, that the schismatic model of church formation has become the norm among the Orthodox Indian Christian immigrants in the U.S. is even more phenomenal. In India, it is usually the diocesan bishop who arranges for the establishment of a new parish by calling together the petitioning parishioners and assigning a priest tO be viear at the new loeation. In the U.S., it appears that most new congregations are formed as the result of political splits within existing congregations, and mosdy initiated by the laity and dergy. The tendency for oongregations to split over non·doctrinal
issues is a growing concern that many church leaders raise. While I do not have the exact numbers of congregations that have formed as a result of splits, informed church leaders at national meetings indicate that it is a common pattern in most metropolitan areas where there is more than one congregation. Even though the diocesan center in New York State does not have an official count of the number of American immigrant congregations out of the fifty-six that were formed as the result of schisms, it would be unusual to find any second or third congregation in a given area to have a nonschismatic origin. In this paper, I will examine the gendered and racialized conditions of immigration and settlement that, coupled with organizational changes in the American setting, produce the phenomenon of schisms in the immigrant Indian Orthodox congregations in the V.S., which is exceptional relative to the church in India.
