Colonizing Christianity

Colonizing Christianity employs postcolonial critique to analyze the transformations of Greek and Latin religious identity in the wake of the Fourth Crusade. It argues that the experience colonization splintered the Greek community, which could not agree how best to respond to the Latin other.

The first monograph to apply the lessons and methods of postcolonial thought to the Latin conquest of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade, a pivotal moment in the history of Byzantium and of the relations between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches.

Demacopoulos George E. :

George E. Demacopoulos is Fr. John Meyendorff & Patterson Family Chair of Orthodox Christian Studies and Professor of Theology at Fordham University.George E. Demacopoulos is Fr. John Meyendorff & Patterson Family Chair of Orthodox Christian Studies at Fordham University. He is the author of four monographs, most recently The Invention of Peter: Apostolic Discourse and Papal Authority in Late Antiquity and Gregory the Great: Ascetic Pastor and First-Man of Rome. With Aristotle Papanikolaou, he co-founded the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University. He presently serves as co-editor of the Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies.

George Demacopoulos’s Colonizing Christianity is a truly extraordinary reevaluation of historical events in light of new theoretical approaches. It is both ground-breaking and measured, revolutionary and rooted in historical specificity. Demacopoulos knows the sources he works with and presents them eloquently. These sources carry their own historiographical baggage—so much so that one might doubt the possibility of saying anything new about them. The author manages, however, to argue convincingly for a new framework in which to understand these sources, and in so doing brings them to life in fascinating ways.

David Perry:
Colonizing Christianity's analysis of a number of texts through the lens of colonial and postcolonial theory makes for useful, important, reading. There are significant stakes both for medieval historians and those committed to finding pathways of reconciliation among contemporary Christians.