The retention of ethnic identity and cultural practices among stateless people, like the Assyrians, is certainly a lacuna in academia. Most research done on the Assyrians is more-or-less limited to the ancient world or the Christian period based o Syriac liturgical culture. The study of the material culture of the Assyrians of Harput, Turkey who settled in Massachusetts shows a distinct method(s) of identity preservation and transmission to subsequent generations of Assyrians and non-Assyrians as well as a plethora of intellectual and philosophical development, especially in regard to personal and group identity structures. It is this transplanted identity, both grassroots and elite, and its conflict with its own church, that leads to a further debate of the legitimacy of religious institutions which, in the case of the Syrian Orthodox Assyrians, played a pivotal role in cultural and identity retention. The early immigrants formed a number of organizations and institutions which bolstered social capital and facilitated communal networks and cultural development. This meant shifting from an exclusively Christian denominational affiliation to the more secular ‘nationalistic’ approach, which broke the bonds of ecclesiastical animosity, fostered in part by the millet system, where Christian and Jewish communities were governed through their religious institutions. Materials gathered in conversation with first and second generation Diaspora families, visits to cemeteries, and investigations of individual books and newspapers from the early period of Assyrian emigration to Massachusetts, will be utilized to show the growing divide between Assyrian religious and secular institutions in Massachusetts. The periodicals surveyed will include, Lichono d’Omtho (The Nation's Voice) recently microfilmed by Harvard University, the personal memoirs of Sennharib Balley of Diarbekir, and the archives of the United Assyrian Association of Massachusetts. These secular writings will be juxtaposed with the correspondence between the Syrian Orthodox archbishop in New Jersey, Mor Ignatius Yeshu Samuel, and that of the committee of St Mary’s Assyrian Apostolic Church of Worcester, Massachusetts. Through this research I hope to illustrate the pattern of secularization of Middle Eastern Christian minorities in United States in the early 20th century, and the Church’s response to a dwindling congregation.