Archimandrite Theoclitos Triantafilides, the saintly priest of Galveston, TX

In an article about Fr. Stephen Andreades, the first resident priest in New Orleans, I quoted from Understanding the Greek Orthodox Church, by Demetrios J. Constantelos (published 1982). At the time, I had only a Google Books “snippet view” of the book, but I’ve since acquired a copy through interlibrary loan, and I thought I’d publish the section dealing with the early Orthodox communities in Galveston and New Orleans. From pages 129-30:

The earliest Greek Orthodox church in the United States was established in 1862 in the seaport city of Galveston, Texas, and it was named after Saints Constantine and Helen. Even though the church was founded by Greeks, it served the spiritual needs of other Orthodox Christians, such as Russians, Serbians, and Syrians. It passed into the hands of the Serbians, who split with the Greeks. The Greeks then established their own church several decades later; but knowledge of the early years of the Galveston Greek Orthodox community is very limited. Neither the number of Greek Orthodox parishioners there nor the name of the first priest is known. The first known Greek Orthodox priest of this community was an Athenian named Theokletos Triantafylides, who had received his theological training in the Moscow Ecclesiastical Academy and had taught in Russia before joining the North American Russian Orthodox Mission. Versed in both Greek and Slavonic, he was able to minister successfully to all Orthodox Christians.

Knowledge of the second Greek community in the United States is more extensive. It was organized in 1864 in the port city of New Orleans. Like the Galveston community, the second one was also founded by merchants. For three years (1864-1867) services were held irregularly and in different buildings. Then in 1867 the congregation moved to its own church structure, named after the Holy Trinity. It was erected through the generosity of the philanthropist Marinos [sic -- Nicolas] Benakis, who donated the lot and $500, and of Demetrios N. and John S. Botasis, cotton merchants who together contributed $1,000.

The church was located at 1222 Dorgenois Street and for several years it became the object of generosity not only of Greeks but of Syrians, Russians, and other Slavs. In addition to Greeks, the board of trustees included one Syrian and one Slav. Notwithstanding the predominance of Greeks on the board, the minutes were written in English and for a while it served as a pan-Orthodox Church.

The early Holy Trinity Church was a simple wooden rectangular edifice 60 feet long and 35 feet wide. The major icons of the iconostasis were painted by Constantine Lesbios, who completed his work in February of 1872. The name of the first parish priest is unknown, but it is believed that a certain uncanonical clergyman named Agapios Honcharenko, of the Russian Orthodox mission in America, served the community for three years (1864-1867). In 1867 the congregation moved to its permanent church and appointed its first regular priest, Stephen Andreades, who had been invited from Greece. He had a successful ministry from 1867 to 1875, when Archimandrite Gregory Yiayias arrived to replace him.

The New Orleans congregation also acquired its own parish house; a small library, which included books in Greek, Latin, and Slavonic; and a cemetery.

There’s some good information here, although Constantelos cites no sources, and he gets some important facts wrong. Most crucially, Agapius Honcharenko was in no way connected to the Russian Mission in America, which at the time was limited to Alaska and would later regard Honcharenko as an obnoxious heretic. And Honcharenko did not serve the New Orleans parish from 1864-67 — in fact, he was never the parish priest at all. He visited the community in the spring of 1865, remaining for perhaps two weeks. He did celebrate the first Divine Liturgy in New Orleans, but he was not the first parish priest.

That distinction properly belongs to Fr. Stephen Andreades, but Constantelos gets Andreades’ dates wrong. While he did come to New Orleans in 1867, Andreades was gone by 1872 at the latest; we know this because Fr. Gregory Yayas was the priest by that point.

And before I close, a word about Galveston. First of all, I wouldn’t regard the 1860s Galveston community as a full-fledged “parish.” They had no priest, no known permanent building, and no known affiliation with a bishop. I do believe that a group of Orthodox in Galveston met for prayers under the name “Saints Constantine and Helen.” They may even have been visited by an Orthodox priest traveling aboard a Russian steamer, or something like that. But I regard the pre-Triantafilides Galveston community as a “proto-parish.” In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if New Orleans wasn’t also a “proto-parish” all the way up to 1867. As Constantelos correctly notes, it wasn’t until that year that the community got a priest and a building. Perhaps we should push their founding date up a couple of years, from 1864/5 to 1867?

Anyway, the thing I want to emphasize, because I’ll be coming back to it in other posts in the near future, is that Fr. Theoclitos Triantafilides of Galveston may be The Most Interesting Man in American Orthodox History. Before he came to America, he had lived a full life — as a monk on Mount Athos, as a tutor in the employ of the King of Greece, and later as a tutor to the future Tsar Nicholas II. When he came to the United States, Triantafilides was already in his sixties. When you take into account the changes in life expectancy, that’s equivalent to being in your eighties today. And he lived another two decades, tirelessly serving the Galveston community and beyond, traveling throughout the South in service to the scattered Orthodox people, regardless of nationality. He also appears to be one of the earliest American Orthodox priests to evangelize Protestant Americans (i.e. not only Native Alaskans and Carpatho-Rusyn Uniates).

That’s enough for today, but I assure you that we’ll have more on Triantafilides in the future. In the meantime, be sure to check out Mimo Milosevich’s highly informative website and lecture on the great priest of Galveston.

Tags: Agapius Honcharenko, Galveston, Greek, Gregory Yayas, New Orleans, Stephen Andreades, Theoclitos Triantafilides

John Quincy Adams, 1818

On January 20, 1811, an Orthodox baptismal service took place at the home of the future President of the United States John Quincy Adams and his wife Louisa. At that time they were living in St. Petersburg, Russia. Louisa Adams took an active part as one of the Godparents of the little girl being baptized, along with her fellow sponsors Martha Godfrey (the Adams American chambermaid) and Mr. Francis Gray, one of the secretaries to the American legation in Russia.

John Quincy Adams later became the sixth President of the United States, serving his one term of office between 1825 and 1829. He was the eldest son of the second U.S. President, John Adams. From a young age John Quincy lived in Europe with his father, as the latter served as American representative in France and the Netherlands. At the relatively tender age of 14, in 1781, John Quincy travelled for the first time to Russia as secretary to Francis Dana whose mission was to obtain recognition by Russia of the nascent American republic. This initial visit was to last almost 3 years.

John Quincy returned there for a further 5 years in 1809 when President James Madison appointed him as the first fully credentialed US ambassador to Russia. In this role his wife, Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams, who holds the distinction of being the only foreign born First Lady of the United States, ably supported him. (She was born in London to an English mother and American father.)

So how did Louisa Adams and the other Americans become co sponsors of an Orthodox baptism? As John Quincy recounts, on Russian New Year’s Day, 1811, his footman Paul, a Finnish man of Lutheran faith and his wife, “a Russian of the Greek church,” had a baby daughter. Because of the mother’s faith it was agreed that the child “was to be christened according to the fashion of the Greek Church.” At the request of the Lutheran footman Paul, Mrs Adams and Martha were asked to stand as Godmother and Mr. Gray as Godfather. The baptism took place at 8 o’clock in the evening in the parlor of the Adams home. The service was conducted by a priest “and an inferior attendant not in clerical habits, who chanted the Slavonian service, the priest from a mass book.”

Given the unusual time and location of the baptism and the use of non-Orthodox sponsors, (assuming none of the Americans had converted), one has to wonder if the child’s life was in danger and hence the unusual circumstances. Because at that time the calendar difference was 12 days, the evening of January 20, would have been the eve of the child’s eighth day, the traditional time for its naming. But whether this was deliberate or co-incidental cannot be said. It may also be that John Quincy Adams, as the head of the extended household, influenced the timing. In September of the same year the resident English chaplain of the Russia Company also baptized in his home, but according to the rite of the Church of England, his daughter Louisa Catherine. In connection with this baptism John Quincy wrote: “ (T)he rite itself, the solemn dedication of the child to God, I prize so highly, that I think it ought never to be deferred beyond a time of urgent necessity.”

In any event, John Quincy describes the service in meticulous detail. He writes:

A plated vessel of the size of a small bathing tub contained the water, which the priest consecrated at the commencement of the ceremony. Three tapers were at first fixed at the end most distant from the priest and at the two sides of the baptismal vase. The child was brought in and held by the nurse, until the priest took it naked and plunged it three times into the water. With a pencil-brush before and after plunging, he marked a cross on its forehead and breast, and finally on its forehead, shoulders and feet – repeating the same thing afterwards with a wet sponge. A shirt and cap, provided by the godmother, were then put upon the child, and a gold baptismal cross, furnished by the godfather. Tapers lighted were put into their hands, two of them from the sides of the vase, round which they marched three times, preceded by the priest. He then with a pair of scissors cut off three locks of the child’s hair, which, with wax, he rolled up into a little ball, and threw into the water in which the child was baptized; and finally, after a little more chanting from the book, the ceremony was concluded. During the first part of the ceremony the priest turned his back to the vessel of water, and the sponsors, with the nurse and child, to the priest. Another singularity was that at one part of the ceremony they were all required to spit on the floor.

John Quincy’s diaries report numerous other experiences of Orthodox worship during this second period in Russia, including attending the Paschal night service and a liturgy followed by veneration of the relics of St. Alexander Nevsky that took place at the monastery in St. Petersburg which bears the name of the saint. From a brief review of his diaries covering his five years in Russia as Ambassador it seems that Adams attended at least 50 Orthodox services, most commonly Te Deums, the short Orthodox service of thanksgiving and intercession. His writings also evince an interest in questions such as the dating of Easter and the moment of the descent of the Holy Spirit in the eucharistic liturgy.

His experience of Orthodox services was far from being uniformly positive: In describing a baptism at St. Isaac’s Cathedral he recalls that, “The choir of singers at the left hand of the chancel was small, the singing, as usual, excellent.” But he moves on to say

The mothers appeared delighted to have obtained the blessings. The multitude of self crossings, the profound and constantly repeated bows, the prostrations upon the earth and kissing of the floor, witnessed the depth of superstition in which this people is plunged perhaps more forcibly then I had seen before.

Perhaps surprisingly his attitude to the Orthodox practice of fasting and abstinence was more positive. He recounts a conversation with his Russian landlord during the second week of Lent that is worth quoting in full:

He spoke of their Lent, of which this is the second week. They keep their first and last week with great rigor, and in them they are not allowed to eat fish, no animal food of any kind – scarcely anything but bread, oil and mushrooms. The common people he says, consider a violation of the Lent as the most heinous of crimes. Murder, they suppose, may be pardoned, but to break the fast is a sin utterly irremissible. He himself kept the fast last week, not from a religious scruple, but because he thought it a salubrious practice, and a useful one to form a habits of self-denial. I am of that opinion myself, and I have often wished that the reformers who settled New England had not abolished the practice of fasting in Lent. I am convinced that occasional fasting, and particularly abstinence from animal food several weeks at a time, and every year, is wholesome, both to body and mind. It is true that fasting is not expressly enjoined in the Scriptures, and therefore cannot be required as a religious observance; but, unless prescribed by a principle of religion, there is no motive sufficiently powerful to control the appetites of men.

John Quincy Adams’ engagement with Orthodoxy in the context of his ambassadorial duties was clearly substantial. In recent years it has become popular to refer to Orthodoxy as “the best kept secret in America.” The more I read from early sources the more it seems that Orthodoxy was in fact much better known two hundred years ago then now, at least amongst the educated and ruling classes of the nascent Republic. This is a theme to which I shall perhaps return in subsequent articles.

Nicholas Chapman, Herkimer, New York, January 20, 2012

Tags: 1811, America, civil authorities, John Quincy Adams, Russian

January 23, 1921: Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine died of heart disease in New York, at the age of 71. Irvine has been a frequent topic on this website. Born in Ireland, Irvine came to the US as a teenager and served as an Episcopal priest for a quarter century before being defrocked by his bishop for “conduct unbecoming a clergyman.” In 1905, he converted to Orthodoxy and was ordained a priest by St. Tikhon, the Russian archbishop. Irvine was put in charge of “English work” in the Russian Church. He continued to attract controversy as an Orthodox priest, alienating most everyone he encountered, although St. Raphael found him useful in promoting the use of English. Needless to say, we’ll continue to examine Irvine’s career in future articles.

Fr. Michael Husson, circa 1900

January 27, 1939: Fr. Michael Husson died at the age of 79. He was one of the first Syrian/Antiochian clergymen in America, and spent many years as the rector of St. George Church in Worcester, MA. Here is one account of Fr. Michael, quoted in Arab American Faces and Voices by my grandmother’s cousin Elizabeth Boosahda (page 92):

It was Rev. Michael who told my family about their relatives living in Cedar Rapids, Iowa… Father Husson came from Worcester and he would travel all over the West because there was no Syrian Orthodox priest. He went from one town to another to do the duties of a priest. There were very, very few Orthodox priests in this country. Besides, Father Husson once a year would travel — he would wire ahead — and he would go to these different towns. Father Husson baptized my sister Mabel, and she was born in Cedar Rapids. He would go out to these places by train. People would give him a few dollars for all he did and then he would be on his way more informed as to the eligibility of those for marriage.

January 27, 1980: Fr. Basil Essey was ordained to the priesthood. Later, he was consecrated a bishop, and of course today he is the Antiochian Bishop of Wichita and the Secretary of the Assembly of Bishops.

January 29, 1983: Bishop Job Osacky was consecrated as the OCA Bishop of Hartford, CT. He eventually took over the OCA’s Midwest Diocese and became an archbishop, and in his later years, he became famous (and, in some circles, infamous) for his call for openness and transparency in the OCA. He died unexpectedly in December 2009.

If you know of any other important American Orthodox events that took place between January 23 and January 29, please let us know in the comments!

Tags: 1921, 1939, 1980, 1983, Antiochian, Basil Essey, Job Osacky, Michael Husson, Nathaniel Irvine, OCA

Bishop Sophronios/Sophronius (Beshara) was a bishop for the Holy Eastern Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church of North America (HEOCACNA), an enterprise started by Bishop Aftimios.  For all intents and purposes, the jurisdictional unity attempt died in 1933.  Bishop Sophronius, however, was the last bishop.  The date of his death has been given as 1934 by Archimandrite Seraphim (Surrency) in his book The Quest for Orthodox Unity in America.  Others have often followed that.  Yet, his grave marker states 1940, a date noted here as well:

http://meta.orthodoxwiki.org/Sophronios_%28Beshara%29_of_Los_Angeles

This begs the question of which is correct and if 1940 is correct, what was he doing during those intervening years?

Well, 1940 is correct and what he was doing was ordaining people to his American Orthodox Catholic Church (an alternative name for HEOCACNA).

Here are two examples of newspaper articles referring to him ordaining men to the priesthood:

1939 Sophronios Ordains a Priest

Sophronios Visits Binghampton 1939

For those interested in the beginning of his episcopal career, these might be of interest:

Sophronios to be Elevated

Sophronios Ordained 1928

Purpose of HEOCACNA and Sophronios

Tags: American Orthodox Catholic Church, newspapers, primary sources, Sophronios Beshara

January 16, 1924: Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow — former Archbishop of North America, and future canonized saint — issued an ukaz removing Metropolitan Platon Rozhdestvensky from his post as primate in America for “public acts of counter-revolution.” Of course, Tikhon was under pressure from the Soviet government. Really, “pressure” is an understatement; I have no doubt that he was compelled to issue that ukaz. Because this ukaz and stuff like it, later in the same year, the Russian Archdiocese declared itself independent from the Moscow Patriarchate.

January 17, 1869: Former Episcopal priest James Chrystal was ordained to the Orthodox priesthood in Syra (Greece). This would have been the eve of Theophany on the Old Calendar. Chrystal had only recently been baptized into the Orthodox Church, and very soon after returning to America, he left Orthodoxy, saying that he couldn’t tolerate the veneration of icons.

January 21, 1957: Greek Archbishop Michael Konstantinides delivered the invocation at President Dwight Eisenhower’s inauguration. This was the first time that an Orthodox bishop was invited to participate in a presidential inauguration. In the years surrounding this event, Orthodoxy came to be recognized by dozens of states as the “fourth major faith,” along with Roman Catholicism, Protestantism (treated as a generic whole, in spite of its myriad divisions), and Judaism.

If you know of another major American Orthodox historical event that occurred between the 16th and 22nd of January, let us know in the comments!

Tags: 1869, 1924, 1957, America, Communism, converts, Greek, James Chrystal, Michael Konstantinides, Platon Rozhdestvensky, Russian, Russian Metropolia, Tikhon Belavin

Editor’s note: The following article was provided by Magdalene Spirros Maag of Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Cathedral in New Orleans. As most of our readers know, Holy Trinity, which was founded in the 1860s, was probably the first Orthodox parish in the contiguous United States. In its early years, the community was multiethnic, and it was loosely affiliated with the Church of Greece. The archival work being done at the Cathedral today is incredibly exciting, and I thought that our readers would appreciate an update. We’ll continue to follow this project in future articles.

Hurricane Katrina severely flooded the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Cathedral in New Orleans with waters entering the Cathedral and the Hellenic Center Fellowship Hall leaving behind devastation that is all too familiar to Gulf residents.  Of particular concern was the collection of religious artifacts the Greek Orthodox community had safeguarded since 1865 when the church was first established on N. Dorgenois St.  Many items were lost and other relics were damaged in the flood waters.  The collection includes icons, Bibles, priests’ vestments, liturgical objects, photos and church documents.  In the fall of 2010 a major effort was launched to retrieve, assess and identify priority items for restoration and conservation.

Holy Trinity congregants have always safeguarded this collection throughout the century and a half since its beginning.  Because of the foresight of Karen Clark, cathedral member and textile conservator, and the combined efforts of Cathedral members, most of the collection had been archived and stored on the second-floor of the Fellowship Hall the year before Katrina struck.  But the dispersal of members and the rebuilding of the Cathedral and Hellenic Center structures, located in severely-hit Lakeview, took precedence for several years.

The reunification of the historic collection with its worshipping community was launched with a small display of key items during the 2010 Greek festival.  The campaign to restore the collection began.  Funds were raised to pay for the restoration of key items.  Some of these items are:

• The Holy Kouvouklion cited in a New Orleans guide in 1885 with 12 priceless painted icons that depict our Lord’s Paschal death and resurrection
• Blessed Mother of God Icon, gifted to Holy Trinity by the Russian imperial family in 1872, was exposed to excessive moisture from flood waters for several weeks.
• The flooded Sacramental Journals had mold threatening the Greek handwritten data inscribed by priests beginning in 1880.
• Holy Trinity’s first Greek Orthodox Bible crafted in Agia Lavra Monastery where the Greek war for independence from the Ottoman Empire launched was falling apart.

On March 10, 2012, the Archives Committee of Holy Trinity will hold its first public exhibition of key artifacts.  This event is a fundraising effort to pay for the continued restoration of priority items.  A joint effort of the Cathedral’s Archives Committee and their charitable arm, Ladies Philoptochos Society, fifty percent of the ticket sales will support several regional nonprofit organizations that serve our fellow residents who are in need of social services and basic needs.  Members of the Archives Committee accept memorial donations.  See contact information below.

Please see the attached flyer for information on date, cost, location and highlights of the Keepers of the Faith: The Beginning 1865 – 1915 Exhibition.  Please call Magdalene Spirros Maag @ 504-780-9165 and Connie Tiliakos @ 504-885-0206 for more information.  The information is also posted on the Holy Trinity website, www.holytrinitycathedral.org.

To download the flyer, CLICK HERE.

Tags: Greek, New Orleans, primary sources

Mimo Milosevich has written on Archimandrite Theoklitos Triantafilides (who served in America from 1896 to 1916).  Some of his reflections may be read here:

http://sites.google.com/site/theoclitostriantafilides/

Indeed, I consulted Mimo when writing my paper on Greeks serving in the Russian Mission, which I presented at this past year’s SOCHA Symposium.  He was very helpful in pointing me to sources and information.

Mimo has dedicated himself to sharing the story of Archimandrite Theoklitos and it’s easy to see why.  In an age when missionaries for the Russian Mission were brought over for short stints and when missionaries of any Orthodox background typically moved about from parish to parish, Theoklitos is a sturdy rock.  He still went to the “hinterlands,” mostly in Texas, but also in Colorado and spent time in San Francisco reaching out to the Greek community there.  He (and others) were ultimately largely unsuccessful in that venture in San Fran, in that the Greeks formed their own parish eventually, but not entirely and his dedication was clear.  He served God and God’s people through the Russian Mission.  He was able to see his way through the difficult hectic life of a missionary priest at a time when not all could.  Indeed, at a time when many laity could not.  He accepted canonical order and he loved the people under his care.  Barring some unbeknownst event in the Galveston Daily News, he should be included amongst those mentioned as possible Greek saints in America.
All that said, here is a recent talk given by Mimo:

http://www.saintjonah.org/podcasts/stherman2011/galveston_talk.mp3

Please be aware that during the introductory part, before Mimo himself begins speaking, there is a lot of background noise.  If you can forebear, you’ll be glad because that quickly goes away and the talk is very nice.  We at SOCHA are very glad that Mimo and Fr. John Whiteford (the talk was at his parish) were willing to allow us to share this with our readers.

Tags: America, Galveston, Greek, Missions, Russian, Serbian, Theoclitos Triantafilides

Fr. Christopher Jabara, 1894

In the life of St. Raphael Hawaweeny published by Antakya Press (page 24, to be precise), there’s a reference to an early Syrian/Antiochian chapel in New York, dating to 1893. The story goes that a visiting Antiochian priest, Archimandrite Christopher Jabara, established the chapel at Cedar and Washington Streets in New York City. Unbeknownst to the local Syrians, however, Jabara espoused a radical, heretical theology, rejecting the Holy Trinity and calling for the unification of all religions — and especially a merger of Orthodoxy with Islam. Jabara was a speaker at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago, and his talks were reported in the New York newspapers.  Jabara was “compelled to leave the country” and eventually died in Egypt. To read more about Jabara, check out this article I wrote two years ago.

I haven’t been able to find much of anything about that original Syrian chapel, but I did recently stumble upon the following note in the June 12, 1893 issue of the New York Sun:

The members of the Syrian Orthodox Greek Church who have been worshipping in the Greek chapel in Fifty-third street have now a chapel of their own on the top floor of the building at the northeast corner of Cedar and West streets. The chapel was dedicated yesterday morning at 10 o’clock. The service, which was in Greek, Arabic, and Russian, was conducted by Archimandrite Christophoros Jebarah, assisted by two priests from the Russian war ships now in the harbor. The Russian Vice-Admiral and a party of Russian sailors attended the service.

Jabara’s own weirdness aside, this is a really fine example of early inter-Orthodox cooperation. At the time, the only Orthodox church in New York was Greek, so that’s where all the Orthodox went — regardless of ethnicity. (Other sources tell us that the local Russians also attended the Greek church.) And when the Syrians opened their own chapel, the visiting Russian clergy and sailors came out for the dedication. Orthodoxy was small and new in early 1890s America, and the Orthodox, of necessity, had to work together. Of course, once the necessity passed, the Orthodox were content to break up into their respective ethnic groups.

Anyway, the Syrian chapel failed pretty quickly. It’s clear that Jabara wasn’t the right man to lead the church, but two years later, the right man, Archimandrite Raphael Hawaweeny, arrived on the scene, leading the Syrians until his death two decades later.

This article was written by Matthew Namee.

Tags: 1893, Antiochian, Christopher Jabara, early unity, New York, parishes, Raphael Hawaweeny

On December 30, we published an article by Daniel Silliman on the search for a narrative for Orthodoxy in America. As Daniel observed, mainstream religious scholars have paid precious little attention to Orthodoxy, and even we Orthodox haven’t done much to flesh out the narratives that shape our history.

I’ve done a fair bit of thinking over the years about overarching historical narratives. While I tend to prefer individual stories, I realize that those stories acquire much of their meaning as part of a broader narrative. And, as I believe I’ve said elsewhere, if American Orthodoxy could be summed up in one word, that word is encounter. Encounter between Orthodoxy and the West; encounter between long-isolated Orthodox ethnic groups; and encounter between the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox.

At the top, there have always been encounters. What makes American Orthodoxy unique is that, for the first time, regular laypeople from all the different Orthodox countries were thrown together in the same place. And what they discovered, back at the turn of the last century, was that they were not so very different from one another. That sentence may seem a bit odd in light of what happened afterwards — the ethnic fragmentation of American Orthodoxy. But in the beginning, there weren’t enough of any one ethnic group to justify forming a separate ethnic church. The Orthodox in America had to work together, to band together to preserve their faith in a foreign land. The seeds of fragmentation were present from the beginning, but so too were the seeds of unity. Ultimately, all of American Orthodox history seems, in my interpretation, to be converging on a point — a point which probably will never be fully realized. And that point is our unity as neither Russian nor Greek, Serb nor Arab, but one Church of Jesus Christ. In America, more than any other place or time in history, we are in a position to live out that unity. We’re all under the same roof, here. And resist it though we may, in the end, we will either come together in diverse unity, or we will marginalize ourselves and become a mere cultural museum piece.

So that’s one narrative. And as I said, “encounter” includes other factors. That obnoxious buzzword — “ecumenism” — has been a part of American Orthodoxy from Day 1. From the founding of Nicholas Bjerring’s New York chapel in 1870, to St. Tikhon’s friendship with the Episcopalian Bishop Grafton at the turn of the 20th century, to the Episcopal Church financing the Russian Metropolia during its time of troubles, to the World Council of Churches and the “Sorrowful Epistles” of ROCOR Metropolitan Philaret, to the present dialogues between the OCA and conservative Anglicans, American Orthodoxy has always engaged the non-Orthodox. Some of this engagement has led to conversions, from Bjerring and Irvine to the Evangelical Orthodox to the people who are about to be baptized this coming Theophany.

Those conversions are yet another piece of the narrative. My recent research on Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine has led me to revisit the problem — and it is a problem — of converts in American Orthodoxy. Don’t misunderstand me; I don’t mean that converts are a problem. But there is most definitely a convert problem, and particularly (but definitely not only) a convert clergy problem. Beginning with Bjerring and James Chrystal in 1869-70, converts have been received by the Orthodox with great enthusiasm. They’ve received minimal catechesis; they’ve been ordained almost immediately; and in far too many cases, they’ve caused major problems and/or left the Church entirely. This isn’t really the fault of the converts themselves. Bjerring, Chrystal, Irvine, Morgan, Mythen and his circle, Fr. Boris Burden… the list goes on and on. Even the “good” early converts were, almost to a man, deeply flawed in their personal lives. And if you’ve been Orthodox for very long at all, you’ve no doubt known one (and probably many) convert clergymen who came in with a burst of energy and productivity, only to reveal themselves to be erratic (or even corrupt) men who eventually left the priesthood and/or the Church itself.

It is the oldest problem in American Orthodoxy, and I hope that we can eventually develop standards at the national level to combat it. But really, it’s tied for the oldest problem: the other big issue is the problem of the youth.

There’s nothing terribly exciting about this one. From the beginning, American Orthodoxy has struggled to retain its young people. It didn’t help that, for decades (and in some churches, up to the present) Orthodoxy was treated as more of a cultural artifact than a living faith. Old languages were preserved, and English was resisted, and most young people didn’t care about the misguided justifications for using only Greek or Slavonic or Arabic or what have you. Who wants to worship in a language they can’t understand? And no matter how beautiful a language is, if the people can’t understand it, it has failed in its fundamental purpose: to communicate meaning. We’ve been losing our youth for more than a century. Irvine railed against the resistance to English and against the indifference of nominal parents. But equally problematic is the fact that we, as a Church, have failed to communicate the essence of Orthodoxy to our children. Too often, Sunday Schools teach Orthodoxy like you’d teach Episcopalianism or Roman Catholicism — systematically, like a subject in school. Which has its place, but — as a dear friend recently put it — they teach the “what,” but they fail to teach the “why.” And this is not a new problem.

But all of this, I think, is encapsulated in the concept of “encounter.” We encountered the West, and we didn’t know what in the heck to do with it. We weren’t prepared. We flailed about, dancing with the Anglicans, wallowing in our nominalism, ordaining every male American convert who expressed the faintest interest in the priesthood. All too often, we have lacked a vision for our mission in America, and even our identity as the Apostolic Church — the Church. Sentimentalism, ethnic pride, a desire for acceptance, a pleasant feeling of surprise when we are accepted — these things all can be good, and they can have their place. But they can also be our downfall. My mentor, Bill James, has said, “Nostalgia is the greatest enemy of the truth.” And speaking as a historian of the historical Church, I share that opinion. We must always be on our guard against that passion.

But I don’t mean to be negative; I’m actually one of the most optimistic people you’ll meet regarding the prospects of American Orthodoxy. All historical narratives are ultimately incomplete and uncompleteable, but ours is particularly so. In twenty years, we will have a much clearer understanding of that narrative. If our Assembly of Bishops succeeds in creating a unified American Orthodox Church, then the circle of encounter, from the early multiethnic parishes to a single pan-Orthodox Local Church, will be, in one sense, complete. And we will look back and see that all of our history led us to this point, where we as a Church were ready to unite and, together, to engage our fellow Americans. But if the Assembly fails, we will interpret it as the greatest of many failures, and perhaps the last in any of our lifetimes, to come together as one American Church. In this way, the past depends upon the future for its ultimate meaning.

That’s not to say that the past is relative; it’s not. Past events are not relative. But our interpretation of those events is entirely dependent upon what follows them. We in the 21st century are, in a sense, still making — to say nothing of writing — the history of Orthodoxy at the turn of the 20th century. We will determine how that past is viewed by future generations.

I’m not an academic, so I’ve probably failed to address any number of issues a good academic historian would cover. But as one who spends an inordinate amount of time wandering around in the American Orthodox past, these are some of the things I’ve noticed. I would love to hear what others think.

This article was written by Matthew Namee.

Tags: Historiography

Last Friday, the excellent Eastern Christian Books blog posted an interview with Fr. Oliver Herbel, Executive Director of SOCHA. While Fr. Oliver touches on his work in American Orthodox history, the focus of the interview is on his recent book on St. Sarapion of Thmuis. Here’s a snippet:

I first learned of St. Sarapion in a liturgical theology class at St. Vladimir’s Seminary.  His euchologion, or collection of prayers, has been studied and I was intrigued by them.  For example, in the Eucharist and at Baptism, rather than praying for the Holy Spirit’s descent, the Word of God was asked to descend.  I looked into him a little more and learned that St. Antony the Great willed one of his two cloaks to Sarapion.  The other he had willed to St. Athanasios the Great.  St. Athanasios’ letters to a “Sarapion” were, in fact, written to this same Sarapion and this led me to research whether any of Sarapion’s own writings were still extant.  Some are: two complete letters, a treatise against Manichaeans, and a letter partially preserved, written to Antony’s disciples.

The whole interview is really well done, and anyone interested in early Christianity and the Church Fathers should take a few minutes to check it out. CLICK HERE to read it.

Tags: SOCHA

Editor’s note: The following article was written by Daniel Silliman, who teaches American Religion and Culture at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. The article originally appeared on Mr. Silliman’s blog, and I thought our readers here at OrthodoxHistory.org would find it interesting. – Matthew

Watch American Religious Studies and American Religious History for even a little while, and you’ll see a developing, evolving way of talking about different groups. Go back — not too far, even — and one finds almost all the attention given to denominational organizations, and everything framed in terms of continuity or discontinuity with Boston Puritanism.

It’s not like that anymore.

Just in recent years, the account of Islam in America is growing and changing. It’s now de riguer to note that the first Muslims came to America with the importation of slaves from Africa. Added to that is a new emphasis on the various ways Islam has come to the US: with the slaves, emerging out of the 20th century African American community, with immigrants from South East Asia, with immigrants from the Middle East, etc.

A similar turn has happened in accounts of immigrants in general. Talk about Judaism, talk about Catholicism, and you have to talk about immigrant communities. One of the results of this has been to break up the homogenity of these religious identities. One looks today, for example, at Catholics, plural, focusing on the practices and behaviours of lay Catholics, the way religion functioned in their lives and in their sense of themselves, rather than focusing on Catholicism as an abstraction.

One blank spot, right now, however, is the Eastern Orthodox in America.

This blank spot kind of gets poked at, but there doesn’t seem to be a standard way to talk about this religion and this religious experience yet.

Part of this may be the numbers. Pew puts all the Orthodox Christians in America today at about .6%. Muslims also come in at about .6%, though, Orthodox Jews are half that, and Buddhists and Jehovah’s Witnesses are only slightly larger, with .7%. All those groups have more established narratives, it seems to me.

When the Eastern Orthodox are talked about, it’s often with this very general rubric of “immigrant,” without any specifics as to how their experiences and histories were different, if at all, from other immigrant groups.

Charles Lippy, in his brief Introducing American Religions gives two paragraphs to the “wave” of Eastern Orthodox Christians who came in the years between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of World War I, “Adding to diversity.” “Adding to diversity” is Lippy’s thing, so by the time one is 100, 150 pages into his book, saying that this is what the Orthodox did is only slightly more enlightening than “they existed.”

Most of his two paragraphs are dedicated to noting the countries the different groups came from, as well as the economic draws that brought them to where they ended up.

This is symptematic, more than a problem specific to Lippy. It seems like there’s not really a story about the Orthodox that anyone knows. Where, with Jews in America, one talks about the Hassids, or Reform Judaism and Isaac Mayer Wise, with the Orthodox Christians, there’s no standard story, no genrally know starting points, public moments or figures.

The second volume of Edwin Gaustad and Mark Noll’s anthology, A Documentary History of Religion in America since 1877 has the start of a story, and focuses on one very public moment in the Orthodox’s American history. They give 6 1/2 pages to Russian Orthodoxy in Alaska. This is a major improvement, though obviously still really limited. They include two documents, one Father John Veniaminov’s “The Condition of the Orthodox Church in Russian America,” the other a report on religion in the Russian American colonies and the Russian American Company, which was published in Overland Monthly in 1895. Both documents are really interesting — Veniaminov, for example, writes that at first the Aleuts only believed in and prayed to “an unknown God” about whom they knew little — but still only offer the tiniest sketch.

One would even be forgiven for thinking the Orthodox churches in America died out with “Russian America,” or, that if it do still exist, it’s in the form of left overs. In one editorial notes, Gaustad and Noll write “Russian Orthodoxy continued to be a major religious force in Alaska through the nineteenth century,” and “Russian Orthodoxy was planted with sufficient nurture to endure to the present day.”

Oddly, these are both statements sort of directed towards establishing the importance of the Orthodox in America. But kind of do the opposite.

I’m not knocking Gaustad and Noll. It’s actually a really excellent anthology. The point is not that they somehow failed, but that, really, there’s at best only a really limited and sketchy narrative of Eastern Orthdox Christians in America.

There’s basically nothing, it seems, when it comes to contemporary times.

There’s just sort of not a narrative here, and certainly not one that fits into any larger, broader narrative about religion in America. There’s precious little actually on this subject (exceptions: John H. Erickson’s Orthodox Christians in America; Alexei D. Krindatch’s work, including “Orthodox (Eastern Christian) Churches in the United States at the Beginning of a New Millennium: Questions of Nature, Identity, and Mission“).

There should be, though. The more recent history of Eastern Orthodoxy in America is particularly interesting, I think (and not just because a number of good friends of mine are a part of it) and yet it seems basically absent from scholarly work on religious culture and recent history. The evangelical press, by contrast, has paid attention to and noted the movement of evangelicals converting to Eastern Orthodoxy since at least the ’80s. Yet there’s no standing, standard account of these conversions, and why (in aggregate) they happened, and what that says about American religion at the turn of the 21st century, and what that says about American culture in general.

Instead of a good account that takes this movement seriously (while not, as is sometimes the wont of the converts themselves, over-estimating it as seismic and history-altering), what one gets is along these lines:

“Some years ago a sizable number of American Evangelicals, perhaps in search of a more colorful version of Christianity, became Eastern Orthodox as a group. For some reason they chose to join the American branch of the Patriarchate of Antioch, one of the most ancient Christian bodies in the world. (Its liturgical language is traditionally Arabic. You can’t get much more colorful than that.) Apparently these refugees from Billy Graham embraced their new faith with a fervor that alarmed some who were born Orthodox.”

That is Peter Berger — the great Peter Berger, I would even say — speaking out of the abundance of ignorance.

Even if it were the case these converts were merely seeking colorfulness, that’s a remarkably unsympathetic, un-empathetic way to describe the longings of other people’s souls. He could have easily just said the were “perhaps in search of more depth, history and tradition.”

But, the point is, there’s really no standard narrative of this event in recent religious history that could have been plugged in here by Berger. He’s essentially summarizing word-of-mouth and arguments that have been made in Christianity Today and other such publications. He still could have given a better account — this isn’t an excuse — but at least part of the problem is that the Orthodox story just isn’t told.

Father Michael Oleska, a priest of the Orthodox Church in America, recently issued a call to the Orthodox in America to start telling their stories. To themselves. To each other. He’s urging the religious telling of stories, arguing for the importance of such stories to a community and a culture. He says, in the video-message, that the Orthodox should start telling their stories because “culture is the enactment of a story.”

My hope is that as those stories are told, scholars of American religion pay attention.

This article was written by Daniel Silliman and originally appeared on his blog.

Tags: America, Historiography

After reading Matthew Namee’s recent post on the celebration of Christmas according to the New Calendar in Orthodox parishes and jurisdictions in America during the first half of the 20th century, I thought it appropriate to post an article that appeared in the pages of the New York Times  on December 25th, 1923.

I think it’s a rather unique picture of what Orthodox life was like in this era, especially given the political overtones of the repression of the Church of Russia, which we see in the first half of the article.  With their brothers and sisters in Russia experiencing the initial stages of a rather aggressive anti-religious campaign from the fledgling Bolshevik government, the North American Archdiocese were experiencing crises of their own in the wake of the Russian Revolutions of 1917.

In Russia, the Bolshevik government had instituted the national move to the Gregorian (New) Calendar on February 1/14, 1918 (February 1st became February 14th).  The Church of Russia resisted this change, and in discussions of the All-Russian Sobor of 1917-8 (in session as the calendar switch went into effect), determined to retain the Old Calendar.

By 1923, however, this would be tested by the rise to power of the Living Church, a reformist movement that had coalesced out of several radical factions within the Russian Church over the previous two decades.  Backed by the Bolshevik government, the Renovationists attempted to force the implementation of the New Calendar, and over time, the calendar issue became a distinct point of differentiation between the so-called “Renovationist” and “Tikhonite” factions within the Church of Russia.

In America, this differentiation, apparently, also resulted in a distinct rejection of the New Calendar within the North American Archdiocese.  In December of 1923, the Archdiocese was in the throes of its legal battles with the Living Church-backed John Kedrovsky, who had returned to America in October claiming to be the Archbishop of North America and the Aleutian Islands.  With confusing accounts coming out of Russia regarding the status of Patriarch Tikhon, reports of bizarre and troubling attacks against the Church and religious life by the Soviet government, and very real threats of the loss of St. Nicholas Cathedral and other church properties in American courts, the Archdiocese chose to reject the recent decision of the Pan-Orthodox Congress to institute the use of the Revised Julian (or New) Calendar.

Plainly, for many Orthodox Christians in America of Russian descent in this era, the New Calendar was not primarily associated with a Pan-Orthodox Congress, but with Bolshevism  and the repression of the beloved Patriarch Tikhon, who was obviously revered in all corners of Orthodox America.

The allowance for the use of the New Calendar within what would become known as the Metropolia would not come until the 13th All-American Sobor in 1967.  While some corners of the OCA have almost universally moved to the Revised Julian Calendar, there are yet still many parishes throughout the United States and Canada that will be celebrating the Nativity of Christ two weeks from now.  As Matthew outlined the other day, there is similar plurality across the other jurisdictions in America.  Yet regardless of when we observe this important day, it is with the same spirit of joy in the birth of Christ.

Tags: America, newspapers, OCA, Russian, Russian Metropolia, Tikhon Belavin

The following remarkable story appeared in the New York Times on May 1, 1908. If anyone can provide more information, please email me at mfnamee [at] gmail [dot] com.

BABY LEFT IN CHURCH; SOCIETY TO ADOPT IT

Advent of the Little Stranger Caused Flurry Among Women of the Ladies’ Aid

LEFT IN JANITOR’S BED

The Infant Is Sent Temporarily to Bellevue, but the Women Say They Want to Bring It Up.

The day before yesterday, and theretofore, the basement door of the Greek Orthodox Church, Holy Trinity, at Seventy-second Street and Lexington Avenue, could be opened without the slightest sound. It always stood unlocked.

But yesterday there was a shrill bell attached to the door, which rang sharply whenever the door was opened. Moreover, whenever the door did open or the bell rang there was a quick movement on the part of the janitor and of those members of the Ladies’ Aid Society who happened to be present to see who entered.

For on the previous day some one, taking advantage of the fact that the door latch was always out, had slipped into the janitor’s room in the basement and left in his bed a two weeks’ old boy baby. The janitor and l adies are glad that the baby came to the church, but do not wish, nevertheless, to establish such a precedent. Hence the new bell.

It was quite dark and the Ladies’ Aid Society had finished its meeting in the rear room of the basement when there came a squeak from the janitor’s room. The members of the society acted variously. The unmarried members got on chairs.

“It’s a mouse,” they said.

The married members listened attentively.

“It’s a baby,” they asserted.

Leaving the unmarried members still on their chairs, the married members hurried to the janitor’s room. On the bed was a little white bundle. As they drew near the little squeak was repeated.

One of the women more bold than her sisters went to the bed and threw back a blanket. A baby blinked up at her.

The question arose what was to be done with the infant.

“Notify the police,” said the janitor.

But word went about the room:

“It’s a Greek Church baby, and the Greek Church should take care of its own.”

So the police were not notified. Instead, one of the members of the society took the baby home. Yesterday the society was about to meet to discuss what was to be the ultimate disposition of the baby when a policeman arrived. The janitor, possibly not relishing the idea of a church baby, had telephoned to the East Sixty-seventh Street Station.

The baby was taken to Bellevue.

“But we want it here,” said the members of the Ladies’ Aid Society.

“You can claim it at Bellevue,” the policeman told them.

So the members of the society haven’t given up the idea of adopting the church baby. To-day there will be a special meeting of the society, when steps looking to its adoption will be taken.

If you’re anything like me, you want to know the rest of this story — what happened to the baby? Did one of the Greek women adopt him? How did his life turn out? I haven’t yet found any other articles on this story, but beyond the newspapers, an obvious place to look is in the baptismal records of Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church (now Cathedral). Presumably, if the baby was adopted by one of the parishioners, he would have been baptized sometime between this May 1, 1908 newspaper article and the end of 1908. As I said earlier, if any of our readers can help solve this mystery, email me at mfnamee [at] gmail [dot] com.

Tags: 1908, Greek, newspapers, parishes, primary sources

To our SOCHA readers: We’re looking for a professional archaeological metal restorer. Do you do this for a living? Do you know someone who does? If so, please email me at mfnamee [at] gmail [dot] com. Thank you!

- Matthew Namee

It’s almost Christmas for those of us on the New Calendar, but of course, our Old Calendar brethren will have to wait an additional 13 days. Originally, of course, all Orthodox Christians celebrated Christmas on the same day, because we all followed the same calendar. In 1923, an Inter-Orthodox Congress met at Constantinople under the presidency of the infamous Ecumenical Patriarch Meletios Metaxakis and voted to adopt the New Calendar. Over time, a lot of the world’s Orthodox Churches went along with the switch, but many refused and continue to use the Old Calendar. Hence the current discrepancy.

The thing many people don’t realize is that not every Orthodox Church that uses the New Calendar adopted it in 1923. According to Dr. Lewis Patsavos of Holy Cross, the latest Church to make the switch was Bulgaria, which did so in 1968.

Another thing people don’t realize is that some Orthodox in America were already following the New Calendar prior to its official 1923 endorsement. A couple of years ago, I wrote about how a Greek community in Columbia, SC arbitrarily adopted the New Calendar in 1914. That group didn’t have a priest or a formal church, but even earlier, in 1900, a Syrian colony in Fort Wayne, IN celebrated Christmas on the New Calendar’s December 25, and they were joined by a visiting priest from New York. (Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, 12/25/1900.) I’m not sure, but it’s possible that the priest was St. Raphael Hawaweeny. If it wasn’t him, it must have been one of his subordinates.

On the flip side, the Antiochian Archdiocese didn’t celebrate a New Calendar Christmas until 1940. The New York Times (1/6/1941) reported, “Departing from an ancient custom, the Syrian Orthodox Antiochian Church, which formerly followed the Julian calendar, celebrated Christmas on Dec. 25 this year…” That’s a full 17 years after the 1923 Inter-Orthodox Congress. And — someone correct me if I’m wrong here — the OCA waited until 1982 to switch calendars.

Anyway, to all of our New Calendar readers, we wish you a joyous Christmas. To our Old Calendar readers, happy St. Herman’s day!

This article was written by Matthew Namee.

UPDATE: In the comments below, William Kosar has pinned down when the Metropolia/OCA began making the switch from the Old to the New Calendar. William writes, “After a little research, it was at the Thirteenth Sobor of November 14-16, 1967 that the decision was made permitting parishes, upon approval of their diocesan bishop, to use the new calendar.” The 1982 date that I cited seems to refer to when then-Bishop Herman Swaiko of Eastern PA forced all the parishes in his diocese to adopt the New Calendar. Up to that point, it appears that parishes could choose. See the comments for more on how the process of choosing worked.

Tags: Antiochian, calendar

One of the minor characteristics of Orthodox Christianity in America has been the regular appearance of imposters.  Already on our blog, we have discussed the Bulgarian monk in Idaho and his ghost story.  We have also discussed Agapios Honcherenko.  Perhaps the Bulgarian monk really was a monk (though obviously in disobedience) and I still find it difficult to know exactly what to believe concerning Honcherenko.  One person that can definitely be labeled an imposter is Stephen Ustvolsky when he served as a bishop (“Metropolitan Serphim”).  We mentioned him in passing here:

http://orthodoxhistory.org/2009/11/12/1905-the-busiest-year-in-american-orthodox-history/

I thought I would take the time today to provide us with a slightly fuller account of what it is he was doing.  This article includes the text for a denunciation that was to be read publicly:

Ustvolsky

Tags: Stephen Ustvolsky

Today, December 13, is the New Calendar feast day of St. Herman of Alaska. A year ago on this feast, we reprinted a life of St. Herman written by Vera Johnston and published in 1919. To read (or re-read) that biography, click here.

Today is also the 28th anniversary of the death of Fr. Alexander Schmemann, the longtime dean of St. Vladimir’s Seminary and arguably the most important writer in American Orthodox history. If you haven’t seen it yet, take a few minutes and check out the Fr. Alexander Schmemann website, www.schmemann.org. There, you’ll find photos of Schmemann, a collection of his writings, and articles written about him by others. Perhaps the best memorial for Schmemann is the sermon given by his son-in-law, Fr. Thomas Hopko, at the memorial Divine Liturgy three days after Schmemann’s death. More recently, in 2008, Bishop Basil Essey gave a wonderful lecture in Schmemann’s honor at St. Vladimir’s Seminary. To listen to it on Ancient Faith Radio, click here.

Tags: Alaska, Alexander Schmemann, Herman of Alaska, Links, St. Vladimir's Seminary

Photo from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle obituary for Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine, January 24, 1921

I’ve written more words about Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine than about any other historical figure. Irvine was an Episcopal priest who converted to Orthodoxy in 1905, was ordained by St. Tikhon, and played a major role in American Orthodoxy until his death in January 1921. He was a trusted assistant to St. Raphael Hawaweeny, and he was the chief advocate of the use of English in Orthodox worship. Irvine’s significance to American Orthodox history is difficult to overstate.

I’m now working on a book about Irvine. No specifics yet, but I plan to finish it by the time I graduate from law school in a year. I’ve slowly begun to review my sources on Irvine, and I stumbled onto a really, really strange bit of information.

Irvine died in Brooklyn on January 23, 1921. The first obituary was published the next day, in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. This obituary seems to have been the main source for the obituaries that appeared in numerous other papers in the following days. Here’s the weird part:

The Rev. Dr. Ingram N.W. Irvine, 71 years old, in charge of the English division of the Eastern Holy Orthodox Catholic Church of America, died on Sunday, of heart trouble, at his residence, 677 Sterling pl. The funeral services will be held tomorrow morning at 11 o’clock, at Dr. Irvine’s late home, the Rev. A.L. Charles, rector of St. Mark’s P.E. Church, officiating, and the internment will follow in Greenwood Cemetery. Dr. Irvine is survived by his wife, Mrs. Emmalena Wilson Irvine, and a daughter, Mrs. Annie Chapin.

There’s not really any question that Irvine remained Orthodox to the end of his life. Even this obituary speaks of him as being the head of the “English division” up to his death. And if you know anything about Irvine, you know that he was a stubborn mule who wouldn’t just cut and run from a church at the first hint of discomfort. I’m 99.9% certain that Irvine did not revert to Episcopalianism in the month before he died.

So why was Irvine’s funeral in his home and not in a church — and why did an Episcopal priest officiate? Apart from the almost impossible prospect of a deathbed apostasy, here are the most likely scenarios I can come up with (with help from Aram Sarkisian and Fr. Oliver Herbel):

1. Irvine’s widow and/or daughter arranged for an Episcopalian funeral. This, in my view, is the most likely scenario. We don’t know much of anything about Emmalena, Irvine’s wife. Yes, she helped Irvine with his teaching ministry, but we don’t even know if she formally converted to Orthodoxy. For all we know, she remained Episcopalian even after her husband’s conversion. As for daughter Annie, she was a very dysfunctional person. It’s a story for another day, but suffice it to say that Annie stole from a lot of people, probably was a con artist, and left her children to be primarily raised by their grandparents (the Irvines). I doubt she’d demand an Episcopalian funeral, but her motives are difficult to follow. In any case, Emmalena and/or Annie may have asked Rev. A.L. Charles of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church to officiate.

2. Irvine himself asked for an Episcopalian funeral, but remained Orthodox. This is less crazy than it sounds. According to Aram Sarkisian’s research, Irvine’s bishop, Abp Alexander Nemolovsky, was in Canada when Irvine died. And Irvine had just been through a bad experience with a failed convert parish led by the erratic Archimandrite Patrick Mythen (who, incidentally, was probably in Canada with Abp Alexander when Irvine died). The nearest Orthodox bishop was the Syrian Bishop Aftimios Ofiesh of Brooklyn — a man Irvine hated. Irvine may have been so upset with the nearby Orthodox authorities that he preferred to be buried in a quiet ceremony officiated (perhaps) by an Episcopal priest that Irvine respected.

3. Irvine had an Orthodox funeral and an Episcopalian memorial service. This theory, suggested by Fr. Oliver, assumes that the newspapers just didn’t know about the Orthodox service. Along similar lines, Fr. Oliver points out that the Orthodox and Episcopalians may have officiated at the same funeral service. After all, in that era, it wasn’t unheard of for Orthodox and Episcopalian priests to officiate at the same marriage ceremony. I find this suggestion somewhat less likely than the possibility of dual funerals, simply because the Episcopalian funeral reported in the Eagle took place at Irvine’s home, rather than a church. Which suggests that it was something less than an “official” event. If Orthodox clergy were involved, why not do it at a church?

Anyway, at this point, we don’t know what was going on with Irvine’s funeral. But the three of us — Fr. Oliver, Aram, and I — are trying to track down what happened.

This article was written by Matthew Namee.

Tags: 1921, Aftimios Ofiesh, Alexander Nemolovsky, Episcopalians, Nathaniel Irvine, New York, newspapers, Patrick Mythen, primary sources

Fr. Pythagoras Caravellas

Editor’s note: The following article was written by relatives of Fr. Pythagoras Caravellas, and originally appeared in the 60th anniversary commemorative album for Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral in San Francisco, published in 1996. The article has been reprinted at Annunciation Cathedral’s website, and we present it here courtesy of the San Francisco Bay Area Greek Historical Society. The Society has done outstanding work on the history of Greek Orthodoxy in the region, and its chairman, Jim Lucas, is building a virtual photo album which may be found at this link. The website includes special pages for Fr. Pythagoras Caravellas and St. Sophia/Annunciation Cathedral, where he served as a priest.

We originally ran this article here at OrthodoxHistory.org on August 9, 2010. However, today is the 77th anniversary of Fr. Pythagoras’ repose, and I thought it appropriate to reprint his biography.

Pythagoras Caravellas was born in 1890, in Greece, on the small island of Samos, off the coast of Asia Minor. He was the son of a tobacco and cotton merchant and the youngest of four children.

At the age of 16, he completed his pre-university education at the gymnasium in Karlovassi. His schoolmasters, impressed with the young man’s curiousity and studious inclinations, recommended him for further study at one of the Greek teaching monasteries.

The year that young Pythagoras was cloistered in the mountain monastery, he applied himself diligently to the assigned subjects, religion, science, and the humanities. Perhaps it was the humility with which the monks imparted their wisdom to the young scholars that influenced young Pythagoras to cherish learning. This inspiration was to follow him always.

While under the tutelage of the monks, the Metropolitan of Corfu, Alexander, paid a visit to the monastery. The hierarchy of the Greek Orthodox faith had always taken a personal interest in the education and development of their youth. Alexander was not an exception. A man of deep perception, he was to become the first Archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Church. If his visits to the monasteries were anticipated by the students, a few requested were granted private audiences. The topics that generated the most interest were students’ personal aspirations.

During one of his private conversations with the Metropolitan whom he had known since childhood, Pythagoras confessed his secret hope to continue his education in the United States and perhaps establish a permanent home there. Expecting a small admonishment or to be dissuaded from his ambition, Pythagoras was pleased with the unexpected approval his received. The full impact of this meeting was not to emerge for twelve years, but its immediate result was that Pythagoras entered the Seminary in Athens to study for the priesthood. After a year, he was uncertain as to the wisdom of his action and decided to enroll in the University of Athens.

During the next four years he earned his degree and received his teaching credentials. While attending the university, he made occasional visits to his family in Samos. He also found time to tutor students, work for a tobacconist and take additional courses in English.

In 1911, he made his big decision to go to the United States. He went to Middleboro, Massachusetts, where a small colony of Greeks had settled, to live with his two brothers, Nicholas and Theodore, who had immigrated there two years before. Convinced that their brother was not interested in their restaurant business, they encouraged him to enter Harvard University with an offer to help him financially.

Before leaving Greece, Pythagoras had already decided to become a physician. Realizing how many long years of study lay ahead, he preferred not to accept his brothers’ generous offer. He considered ways in which he would attend school, allow time for studies, and still be able to earn an adequate income necessary for his tuition and living expenses. He would rely on his knowledge of small business accounting to earn his living and soon had a number of shopkeepers and restaurants as clients.

After graduation from Harvard with a degree in medicine in June, 1917, he became engaged to Evangeline Constantine. They were married in November, 1917. His work as a hospital intern offered some degree of fulfillment, but he was restless.

Recalling his year at the monastery and his communications with Archbishop Alexander, Pythagoras sent a letter to the Metropolitan asking for his guidance. The sincere simplicity of the Archbishop’s reply and his words of encouragement to enter the church convinced Pythagoras to give up medicine and to complete his studies in the priesthood.

Through further correspondence with the Metropolitan, Pythagoras learned of the need for Greek priests in the western part of the United States. As waves of Greek immigrants moved westward across the United States, they were dependent upon a small group of itinerant Greek priests for infrequent church services and the administration of religious rites. More Greeks lived and worked in the western states than the number of churches would suggest.

In 1921, Father Pythagoras arrived in San Francisco. At this time, his wife and daughter Theofani (Faye) were living in Chicago and it would be months later before he had the money to bring them to San Francisco. Once more the question of earning a livlihood and attending school was of immediate concern. Through letters of introduction and recommendation, Pythagoras became an assistant professor of Greek at the University of California, and attended the Pacific School of Religion. He supplemented his income writing for the Greek newspaper and the Christian Science Monitor. Soon, Pythagoras and Evangeline became an integral part of the young Greek community. Their resourcefulness and command of English, attracted the older families. They were often called upon to act as witnesses or interpreters in matters concerning immigration or in matters of law affecting members of the community. The more affluent Greeks were enthusiastic with the qualifications of the young couple and gave their wholehearted support for the erection of a church which would have Pythagoras as its priest.

After his graduation from the Pacific School of Religion in 1927, Pythagoras was ordained into the priesthood of the Greek Orthodox religion by the Patriarch of Constantinople, Metaxakis, and Archbishop Alexander, both of who were visiting in San Francisco at the time. The colorful ceremony was held in the new, small white church of St. Sophia. The presence of these eminent prelates in San Francisco created much interest and served to establish the young church of St. Sophia as a unified and integrated religious community.

With the advent of the Russian revolution, the organizational work of the Russian Orthodox Church in America came to an abrupt halt. In the meantime, the royalist-liberal controversy in Greece had divided event the Greek immigrants in America. The church could nor or would not steer a neutral course in the civil war raging between the forces of King Constantine and Premier Venizelos. This partnership, which had its beginnings in 1916, was to shake the church communities of Greece and United States to their foundation. The reaction in the United States was violent.

Reorganization required a degree of cooperation difficult to obtain. Nevertheless, Father Pythagoras managed to steer his congregation away from the repercussions of the political battles in Greece and toward the establishment of a Greek-American community whose growth would be a blending of the cultural heritage of Greece and the democratic principles of their adopted country, America.

Since coming to San Francisco, Father Pythagoras’ family increased by two daughters, Helen and Joan. After his ordination, Father Pythagoras budgeted his family severely. Occasionally, his small salary was supplemented by farmers; gifts of produce, fruit, and fowl. His parish was a poor one, and living became more difficult during the depression when members of his congregation dwelt on the edge of poverty. He administered to their needs, with words of encouragement and guidance. He would officiate at services during his frequent visits to farming communities. He taught the children of the community Greek after their regular school hours. He found time to program social activities for the community in observation of national and religious holidays. He made his rounds at the hospitals giving communion to the sick, the injured, and the dying. He conducted services every Sunday, every Holy Day and in the Greek church this alone is a rigorous and demanding schedule.

In 1931, the physical strain had taken its toll. Father Pythagoras was will with tuberculosis. He was a patient for three years at the California Sanitorium in Belmont. During his confinement, he continued to read avidly and began work for his degree as a Doctor of Divinity. He looked forward to returning to his church and his congregation. In late 1934, the doctors told him that he was cured and that he would soon be going home. On December 6, 1934, he suffered a heart attack and died. He was mourned by Greeks throughout the nation and his body lay in state in the church of St. Sophia for 7 days to afford his many friends the sad privilege of a final farewell.

Tags: Greek, parishes, Pythagoras Caravellas, San Francisco