Fr. Nicholas Bjerring in his New York chapel, November 1871. Grand Duke Alexis of Russia is standing behind the chair at the right.

On today’s American Orthodox History podcast, I discuss the first two convert American Orthodox priests, James Chrystal and Nicholas Bjerring. You can listen to the podcast for the whole story, but I thought I’d give a brief summary here.

Chrystal and Bjerring were exact contemporaries, both born in 1831. Chrystal lived in the New York area, and died in Jersey City. Bjerring was an immigrant from Denmark, but in 1870 he established the first Orthodox chapel in New York City, and he lived there the rest of his life.

Both Chrystal and Bjerring converted to Orthodoxy for ideological reasons. Chrystal was an Episcopalian intellectual, and he was obsessed with the history of baptism. He even wrote a book on the subject, and he came to the conclusion that the Orthodox Church alone had preserved the correct method of baptism (by triune immersion, in the name of the Trinity). Bjerring was a Roman Catholic intellectual, and he became scandalized by Rome’s declaration of papal infallibility at the First Vatican Council. He, too, came to believe that only the Orthodox Church had preserved the truth.

Both men wanted to be “correct,” and they both came to Orthodoxy without having actually attended an Orthodox church. There were, of course, very few Orthodox churches in America in that period — just two outside of Alaska, in San Francisco and New Orleans — and neither Chrystal nor Bjerring had any connection with those. Both men traveled to Orthodox countries to seek reception into the Church and ordination to the priesthood. Chrystal went to Greece, were he impressed church leaders with his vast theological knowledge. Bjerring went to Russia, where he impressed church leaders with his zeal. Both men were quickly received into the Church — Chrystal by baptism, of course, and Bjerring by chrismation. Both were quickly ordained priests, and both were quickly elevated (Chrystal to archimandrite; Bjerring, being married, to archpriest). Both were sent back to America — specifically, to New York City.

Chrystal was the first to leave. Almost immediately upon his return to the United States, he repudiated the Orthodox faith, declaring that he could not accept the Seventh Ecumenical Council and the veneration of icons. He started his own sect, and he spent the rest of his life — the next 35-plus years — railing against “creature worship” and trying to convince  the Orthodox to abandon icons.

Bjerring lasted a good bit longer. He was priest of the New York chapel for 13 years, and he was a visible figure in New York society. But he had a lot of problems. He didn’t have sufficient training for the priesthood, and he made what might be called “rookie mistakes” — errors that any seminary student learns to avoid. But what’s worse, he didn’t speak Russian or Greek (the languages of most of his small congregation), and, being a native of Denmark, he spoke English with a thick accent. He actively discouraged conversions, viewing himself not as a missionary but as a sort of religious ambassador to America, promoting goodwill between the Orthodox and the Protestants (especially the Episcopalians).

Bjerring’s parish never grew; in fact, it stagnated. Attendance was always low. By 1883, the Russian authorities had seen enough. They pulled the plug on the chapel, and they offered Bjerring a teaching position in St. Petersburg, where he wouldn’t have to deal with parishioners or church services. But Bjerring wasn’t interested; instead, disgruntled, he abandoned Orthodoxy and became a Presbyterian minister. By the end of his life, he became dissatisfied with Presbyterianism as well, and, coming full circle, returned to the Roman Catholic Church as a layman.

In the cases of both Chrystal and Bjerring, you had men who were obviously intelligent, well-read, and serious. But in both cases, those impressive characteristics blinded church authorities (Greek for Chrystal, Russian for Bjerring) to the obvious deficiencies of both men. One should never become Orthodox to be “right,” as did Chrystal. And one should never become Orthodox in a state of disillusionment, as did Bjerring. Both men joined the Orthodox Church principally because of their brains, but they lacked an experience of the life of the Church, which is necessary for a healthy conversion. The Greek and Russian Churches, in their excitement over these American converts, failed to realize that they were inexperienced and idealistic, and that their interest in Orthodoxy needed to be nurtured for at least a year or two before conversion.

And then there were the ordinations. It’s a frustrating thing, if you study American Orthodox history — time and again, converts are received and then immediately ordained to the priesthood. This became a big problem in the Russian Archdiocese in the late teens and early twenties, and it’s certainly still a problem today. And if you read St. Paul, it’s been a problem since the beginning of the Church. He writes that an episcopos should be “Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil” (1 Tim 3:6); of deacons, he writes, “And let these also first be proved; then let them use the office of a deacon, being found blameless” (3:10).

It’s funny; to become an OCMC missionary, one must have been Orthodox for at least three years. (There are other requirements as well; for instance, one must provide a written history, and must be approved by the OCMC Board.) In some respects, it’s harder to become a lay missionary than it is to become a priest — and yet, are not all priests missionaries themselves, to their flocks and their communities?

Chrystal and Bjerring had barely set foot in an Orthodox church before they were chrismated, and the chrism was not yet dry before they were ordained to shepherd souls. Neither had been initiated into the mind of Orthodoxy; neither had been properly trained to be both priests and pastors; neither had been given the opportunity to truly know the life of the Church and to submit his reason to the wisdom of the Church. And so it’s little wonder that both men, driven to Orthodoxy by their minds and emotions, were driven out of Orthodoxy by the same.

I know that plenty of good priests have been ordained immediately after chrismation. Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine, who has been discussed at length on this website, is one of them. I’m not trying to make a sweeping generalization, or argue for a hard-and-fast rule. But it’s been 140 years since the Greek and Russian Churches rushed to ordain these neophytes, and we still haven’t learned the lesson. It’s high time we did.

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The vast majority of Orthodox Christians in America in 1906 were male. In fact, we’ve got some solid numbers on that — according to the Census of Religious Bodies conducted that year, only 14.8% of American Orthodox parishioners were female. Among the Greeks — by far the largest group — that number was 6.1%. As you might expect, a lot of those Greek men were single, and many of those Hellenic bachelors found American brides. And while those American wives didn’t always join the Orthodox Church, many of them did. I would guess that the majority (and perhaps the overwhelming majority) of early converts were American women marrying ethnic Orthodox men.

Fr. Joachim Alexopoulos was pastor of St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Church in Washington, DC in 1906

St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Church in Washington, DC was founded in 1904. By 1906, its priest was Fr. Joachim Alexopoulos, who later became one of the first bishops in the Greek Archdiocese. In June 1906, one of the DC Greeks, Nicholas Pappajohn (who had Anglicized his name to “Davis”) married a German-American girl named Helen Mohr in an dual Lutheran-Orthodox ceremony.

The whole thing took place in a local hall, rather than a church. An improvised altar was set up, and a local Lutheran pastor married the couple in a standard Lutheran ceremony. At the close of the service, the pastor left, and Fr. Joachim Alexopoulos entered, and celebrated the Orthodox wedding service from beginning to end. He certainly didn’t concelebrate with a Lutheran minister, but this compromise was apparently deemed acceptable to all parties. (Details from the Washington Post, 6/25/1906.)

Another, more complex, scenario played out the same year. In January, Nicholas Pappajohn/Davis’ good friend, a Mr. Anagost, married a German-American woman named Mollie Dietz. Although Ms. Dietz was of German ancestry, she was an Episcopalian, and the couple was married in an Episcopal church. But they didn’t turn around and celebrate an Orthodox ceremony, as did the Davis couple in June. Instead, the new bride spent the next nine months studying the Orthodox faith, preparing to be baptized into the Orthodox Church. The Washington Post (9/17/1906) reports, “Although it is not required, it is considered desirable that all who receive the Greek sacrament of marriage should be baptized according to Greek rites, so Mrs. Anagost, after study and preparation, decided to give up her old church affiliations and cast her lot with her husband’s church.”

Mollie Anagost was thus baptized in September, and she and her husband were then wed in an Orthodox ceremony. Her godfather was the aforementioned Nicholas Davis. The godmother, according to the Post, was Helen Davis, the newlywed Lutheran. It’s not clear whether Mrs. Davis converted to Orthodoxy shortly after her marriage and thus was actually the godmother, or whether she was merely on hand to provide assistance.

The whole Greek congregation was present at the beginning of the baptism. Mr. Anagost translated the priest’s words into English for his wife, and she swore that she was joining the Orthodox Church not out of compulsion, but by free choice and out of a sincere belief in the teachings of the Church. It was up to the godfather, Nicholas Davis, to decide the baptismal name of Mollie Anagost, and he chose “Sophia.”

The Post reports that, when the time came for Mollie to be immersed, “the congregation moved toward the kitchen, leaving Mrs. Anagost with her mother, husband, and priest. The real baptismal service was not performed in public, for only a night robe is worn, and the body is entirely dipped in the consecrated water.”

Once Mrs. Anagost was initiated into the Church, she joined the rest of the congregation, who crowded around her and congratulated her. The Post reporter, Elizabeth Ellicott Poe, writes, “The Post reporter was called back and a silver quarter presented to her in observance of the ancient Grecian custom of giving coins to the witnesses, especially those who left first… With hearty congratulations, these friendly Old World people prepared for an evenign of festal enjoyment.” The following Sunday, Mr. and Mrs. Anagost were married in an Orthodox ceremony.

I am interested in the contrast between the two couples, the Davises and the Anagosts. As I said, the Anagosts were married in the Episcopal Church back in January, but waited to have an Orthodox ceremony until after Mrs. Anagost was baptized in September. The Davises, on the other hand, had back-to-back Lutheran and Orthodox services, one right after the other. I can’t tell whether Mrs. Davis became Orthodox or not, but if she did, it wasn’t until after her wedding(s). Thus, in one parish, we see two very different approaches to “mixed marriage.”

[This article was written by Matthew Namee.]

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Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine

Recently, I happened to revisit an essay by Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine, published in St. Raphael’s Al Kalimat (The Word) magazine. I don’t have the precise date, but I think it was written in 1907. The whole article is on the subject of “Church Unity” — what, today, we would call “ecumenism.”

Irvine’s ecclesiology is interesting. Focusing just on his terminology, it is easy to mistakenly think that he has a rather “liberal” position on ecumenism. He speaks of Orthodoxy as being a “portion of the Church of Christ,” and he makes multiple references to the “undivided Church,” which implies that the Church was “divided” after 1054. But, when reading this sort of thing, it is essential to remember that Irvine was the product of late 19th century Anglicanism. While his underlying ecclesiology is indeed Orthodox, his vocabulary retains traces of Anglican ecclesiology, which can lead to confusion.

As a practical matter, Irvine was uncompromising. Unity, in Irvine’s view, meant that other Christian bodies had to conform to the Orthodox standard. The Orthodox Church, writes Irvine, is “the only one which has a right to dictate conditions of Unity if any approachment should be made to her.” Irvine flatly rejected any notion of papal supremacy: “The Church of Christ will never be brought together either under the lash of the Roman Curia or by the wiles of the need of an earthly universal, visible head, or on the ground of Papal claims to a Divine right of existence.” In fact, Irvine was so opposed to any compromise with Rome that he actually considered the fall of Constantinople, while tragic, to be ultimately providential:

We regard the destruction of the Eastern Empire by the Turk and Mahamadon as a providence of God to protect the Holy Eastern Church from the influence which might have been brought to bear upon her by the West. He knew what the result would be if there would not have remained any portion of His Holy Church steadfast “in the Apostles’ doctrine, fellowship and in breaking of bread, and in the prayers.” There would have been left no part of His Church true to Antiquity if the East had followed in the wake of the West in adding new doctrines or accepting those which had been proclaimed from time to time by Rome.

It is Orthodoxy, declares Irvine, which is the “Mother Church of Christendom,” and has alone “neither added to nor taken from ‘the Faith once for all delivered unto the Saints.’” Irvine continues:

The chief factor in the unity of Christendom, therefore, is the Holy Orthodox Eastern Catholic Church. This Church is free from all the entanglements of Rome; free from the perplexing questions of the Anglican Reformation or the Continental Protestant Revolution. She has had neither hand nor part in any of these. Rome, of course, will still hold on to her presumptions. She will still blindly hold herself up as the centre of Catholicity and Christianity, but her stand in this matter will, as it is now apparent, be passed by; for as the dismembered portions of Western Christianity come together they will ask the question Where can the Ancient Faith be found unchanged and unadulterated? And learned and reasonable men will say as they have already said “it can be found alone in the Holy Eastern Church.”

According to Irvine, the Orthodox Christians in the West — and particularly in the United States — have a particularly serious responsibility. First, says Irvine, the Orthodox in America must remain true to the Church, “and under no circumstances whatever be induced to either join the Church of Rome, the Anglican Church or any Protestant Church.” Furthermore, Orthodoxy must adapt, externally, to its new home in America. Speaking as a Westerner, Irvine writes, “We want to see the Eastern Church in the dress of the language of England and America. We can never study her well in either Slavonic, Greek or in Syrian Arabic or in any other foreign language.” This leads to Irvine’s second point:

We want, therefore, the Holy Orthodox people to build Churches for their English speaking children and place at those altars priests who can speak the English language and look upon the Christians of the English speaking world as friends who are enquiring after “the truth as it is in Jesus.”

Finally, says Irvine, “We need here a class of priests of the Holy Orthodox Church who, however dear their native land may seem to be to them, and however great the temptation in a financial way, should regard the building up of the Holy Eastern Church in the United States and the proclaiming of her Ancient Faith and practices a greater duty than going home.” In other words, American Orthodoxy needs missionary, rather than mercenary, priests.

Especially at this early stage of his Orthodox career, Irvine viewed himself as a bridge between Western and Eastern Christianity. He closes his article with an anecdote about a recent Divine Liturgy at St. Nicholas Cathedral in New York. Bishop Innocent Pustynsky of Alaska (not to be confused with the earlier St. Innocent) was the celebrant, and was assisted by Irvine and the cathedral dean St. Alexander Hotovitzky. An Episcopalian priest, Rev. Dr. Calbreth Perry, was allowed to stand in the sanctuary, wearing his Anglican vestments, and while he in no way concelebrated or communed with the Orthodox clergy, he was clearly treated with great honor. For Irvine, Perry’s presence was especially important. Perry had been Irvine’s Sunday School teacher, and was representative of those in the Episcopal Church who were not upset by Irvine’s Orthodox “reordination” in 1905.

Irvine argues that he — Irvine — is “the one man who could well explain the position of the Holy Eastern Church to a congregation of Anglican Priests. There ought to be such a gathering.” He goes on, “Both sides now, surely understand that there was never intercommunion and that, therefore, the reordination of Dr. Irvine was no offence but God’s way of giving a terrific shock to the dreadful sin of schism. May the effect of that shock raise us all up to the real sense of our duty.” To Irvine, that “duty” is the “reunion” of Christendom, which is nothing less than the conversion of other Christian groups to Orthodoxy, whether individually or institutionally.

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Ingram N.W. (Fr. Nathaniel) Irvine and Bishop Alexander Burgess is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

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Last August, I discussed the Irvine-Talbot controversy in some detail in a podcast on Ancient Faith Radio. Click here to listen to it.

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St. Alexander Hotovitzky baptized a Jewish convert to Orthodoxy in 1897

We don’t know his name, or his story, but the event was sufficiently notable that the New York newspapers reported on it. The convert — baptized with the name “Vladimir” — was received on Sunday, February 14, 1897, at St. Nicholas Russian Church in New York City. The convert, described by the New York Times (2/16/1897) as “young,” renounced the “false doctrines of the Hebrews,” including the teachings of the Talmud. He swore that he was joining the Church only out of genuine conviction of faith and love for Christ, and not because of fear, coercion, the hope of personal gain, or any other reason. While the Hours were read, a wooden baptismal font was filled with water. The font was behind a low screen, which blocked the baptism from the view of the congregation. From the New York Sun (via the Atlanta Constitution, 2/25/1897):

The priest, the convert and the male sponsor went behind the screen. The woman sponsor staid [sic] outside. The screen was not high and the congregation could some times see garments that were raised in the convert’s complete disrobing. They could hear the solemn words of the service by those within. They could hear the splashing and gurgling of the water as the convert was immersed for the first, second and third time. They saw the symbolical white robe and the cross as they were raised above his head. Meanwhile they joined in singing the hymn of baptism.

The ceremony coincided with the Feast of the Entrance of Christ into the Temple, and the officiating priest was St. Alexander Hotovitzky. Presumably, St. Alexander played a major role in bringing this young Jewish man to Christ. But how, exactly, did a young New York Jew come to join the Russian Orthodox Church in 1897, just two years after St. Nicholas parish was founded? What effect did this conversion have on his life? Was he unique, or were there other Jews who converted around the same time? It’s likely that a record of this baptism still survives, perhaps in the OCA archives, and it’s possible that the Vestnik, the official diocesan publication, may have mentioned the event, so information is out there to be found.

In many ways, the conversion of a Jewish man to Orthodoxy in New York in 1897 is just as remarkable as the conversion of the black Jamaican Fr. Raphael Morgan a decade later. And, as with Morgan, this anecdote leaves us wondering about the rest of the story. Hopefully, one day, we will learn more.

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From 1870 to 1883, Fr Nicholas Bjerring was pastor of a Russian Orthodox chapel in New York City. Bjerring was a convert from Roman Catholicism, and he basically operated an “embassy chapel.” He held services for Russian and Greek officials stationed in America, he ministered to the few Orthodox Christians living in New York, and he strongly discouraged inquirers.

In 1883, the Russian government informed Bjerring that they intended to close his chapel, apparently to save money. They offered Bjerring a comfortable teaching position in St Petersburg. Bjerring, upset and disheartened, turned down the offer and instead became a Presbyterian.

Word of Bjerring’s apostasy eventually reached the ears of one Fr Stephen G. Hatherly, an archpriest of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Hatherly was a convert himself. An Englishman, he had joined the Orthodox Church way back in 1856, and he was ordained a priest in 1871. He was based in England, but in May of 1884, he arrived in America. His plan was to band together the handfuls of Orthodox on the East Coast (mainly New York and Philadelphia) and establish a new church to replace the defunct Russian chapel.

Hatherly spent three months in America, and his mission was a resounding failure. There was simply not enough interest from America’s meager Orthodox population. At the close of his stay in the US, the New York Sun ran the following story (August 18, 1884):

S.G. Hatherly, the Greek arch priest who came to New York from Constantinople and established a chapel in St. John’s School in Varick street two months ago, conducted service yesterday for the last time, and the chapel will be closed. About a score of the Greek colony in attendance and as many curious minded spectators. Athanasius Athos, the son of a Greek priest, was reader. Father Hatherly did not deliver an address, but said briefly to the worshippers that it was because of their want of faith that the effort to establish a Greek chapel had failed.

In conversation Father Hatherly, who is an Englishman by birth, said that he wrote from Constantinople to the authorities in Russia to learn whether the coast was clear for him in New York. The official reply was that no effort to establish a Greek Church chapel in New York would be undertaken after their “cruel experience” with N. Bjerring, who is now a Presbyterian. The Russian colony, Father Hatherly said, has kept away from this chapel in Varick street. Two or three Russians, he said, had said that they wanted something grander than Father Hatherly’s chapel.

“The collection to-day,” he added, “is $4.32. You can see that the chapel would not be self-supporting. However, that is not the only reason why the chapel is given up. The people do not attend as they should. I had hoped when I came on my mission of inquiry to be able to hold services alternately in New York and Philadelphia. It’s all over now, and I go to Constantinople in a few days.”

That’s an interesting article for a variety of reasons, but one in particular jumps out — the statement that Hatherly wrote to the Russian authorities “to learn whether the coast was clear for him in New York,” and the Russian reply that it indeed was.

Up to now [July 2009], I’ve felt that the Russian closure of the New York chapel was an implicit abandonment of the city, and that the Greeks who, seven years later, formed their own church, were under no obligation to contact the Russian bishop on the other side of the continent. But Hatherly’s story drives that point home even further. The Russians didn’t implicitly abandon New York; if this report is correct, they explicitly did so.

[This article was written by Matthew Namee. After I originally published it in July 2009, I contacted the Ecumenical Patriarchate to see if they still had, in their archives, the letter from the Russian Church to the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Alas, they couldn't find anything. It's possible that the letter is there somewhere, and it's also possible that something remains in St. Petersburg. Of course, a century and a quarter after the fact, it's just as likely that we'll never find the original document.]

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St. Alexis Toth

101 years ago today, May 7, 1909, Archimandrite Alexis Toth died in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Here is the obituary that ran in the evening newspaper, the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader:

Rt. Rev. Alexis G. Toth, pastor of St. Mary’s Orthodox Greek Catholic Church of North Main street, this city, died at 2 o’clock this afternoon from a complication of ailments. He was 66 years of age and was born in Hungary. He was educated in a Roman Catholic preparatory college, taking a degree in theology and concluded his studies in one of the universities of the Orthodox Church. He travelled extensively and was conversant with many languages. One branch of his family was Russian and that brought him into close communion with the adherents of the Orthodox Church of which Czar Nicholas, operating through the Holy Synod, is the acknowledged head. In concluding his studies he was in many of the European universities and enjoyed a personal acquaintance with the present emperor of Russia.

Father Toth at one time is said to have held a government position in Russia and was considered one of the most eminent men in the Orthodox church. With Archbishop Tichon, of New York, he was one of the foremost men in the American branch of that church.

Some years ago he received a gold ecclesiastical crown from the Czar, which was brought here by a special emissary. It was a substantial token of the esteem in which he was held by the governing powers in Russia. He kept the crown in a safe at his residence here, as well as other valuable presents from high churchmen in Europe, and several autograph letters from the Czar. An altar covering used in St. Mary’s church on special feast days was of rich gold embroidery, valued at $5,000, and a present to Father Toth from the sisters of one of the large convents of Russia.

Father Toth was of princely bearing, not much in sympathy with democratic institutions, but very deferential to the customs of the people here. He was a rigid disciplinarian but very popular among the members of his congregation here. His death will be a great surprise. He was ill about five months, but because of his somewhat secluded position few outside the members of his congregation knew of his indisposition. He has relatives in Dakota and Minnesota. Though the rules of his church permitted him to marry he believed priests should remain single and did not avail himself of the marital concession. The remains will be in state at the church here and the funeral services will likely be conducted by Archbishop Tichon of New York.

There are several odd things about this obituary. Most obviously, it doesn’t say a word about St. Alexis’ actual conversion to Orthodoxy. Today, of course, he is most famous for his conflict with the Roman Catholic Archbishop John Ireland, but the Wilkes-Barre paper seems to have been unaware of this. The paper was also unaware of the fact that St. Alexis was married, while still an Eastern Rite Catholic priest, but that his wife died before he came to America. Finally, the reporter mistakenly thought that St. Tikhon was still the Russian Archbishop of North America, but by 1909, that position was held by Abp Platon Rozhdestvensky.

Despite the errors, I wanted to reprint this obituary in part because it was the first notice of St. Alexis’ death, published just hours after his repose.

[This article was written by Matthew Namee.]

Today in history: the death of St. Alexis Toth is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

Those desiring to read it may find the article here:

http://www.equinoxjournals.com/BT/article/view/6861/6042

This is not the most comprehensive look at any one of the people noted here (for example, I discussed Fr. Raphael Morgan to a greater extent in my dissertation, a work I am editing with the hopes of future publication).  It is, however, the first time in academic print that Fr. Raphael Morgan has been linked to the African Orthodox Church and that church to the Brotherhood of St. Moses the Black.  The former connection is historical and direct, the latter is a thematic connection.

Matthew Namee had mentioned the connection of Fr. Raphael and the AOC in a post on SOCHA’s website:

http://orthodoxhistory.org/2009/07/indirect-conversion-of-thousands-theory/

So, interested readers now have the opportunity to learn more about the connections that some of us have known about but not published about extensively.

[This article was written by Fr. Oliver Herbel and originally published on Frontier Orthodoxy.]

Fr. Raphael Morgan, the African Orthodox Church, and the Brotherhood of St. Moses the Black is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

By now, a lot of people know that Fr. Raphael Morgan was the first black Orthodox priest in America, ordained in 1907 and based out of Philadelphia’s Greek church. But the second black priest in America, and the first under the Russian Archdiocese, is still virtually unknown. And, while Morgan’s life is full of mystery, the man who followed him — Fr. Antony Hill — is even more of an enigma.

We don’t know when Hill was born, where he was born, or how he came to join the Orthodox Church. His given name was Robert F. Hill, and the first traces I’ve found of him are from a New York Times article dated January 3, 1921. Orthodox and Episcopalian clergy had gathered together for a prayer service, asking God to restore the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople to the Orthodox. The Orthodox included Russians, Greeks, Serbs, and Syrians, and among the Russian contingent was “the Very Rev. Anthony R.F. Hill, a canon of the Russian Cathedral.” Also in the group was another recent American convert, Fr. Stephen (Geoffrey) Lang.

Several months later, in September 1921, Hill and Fr. Patrick Mythen attended the First General Synod of the brand-new “African Orthodox Church.” As we’ve discussed before, this noncanonical body was headed by “Patriarch” George Alexander McGuire, who had been consecrated by the vagante Old Catholic bishop Joseph Rene Vilatte. McGuire was an associate of Marcus Garvey, and he most likely had known Fr. Raphael Morgan.

In the 1956 book The History of the African Orthodox Church, A.C. Terry-Thompson writes extensively about the AOC’s initial General Synod. From Terry-Thompson, we know that Fr. Patrick Mythen gave a rousing speech on the Synod’s first day, comparing the AOC’s organizers to Christ’s apostles in the upper room on Pentecost, and expressing the hope that all of Orthodoxy would accept the AOC as a legitimate Church. Hill then offered a few words, “recording his earnest desire to see us launch out successfully.”

Shortly after this, Hill decided to leave the Russian Archdiocese and throw his lot in with the African Orthodox Church. He became rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd, which had been McGuire’s parish before he became a bishop. It was Hill who, on September 15, seconded the motion that the new ecclesiastical body be known as the “African Orthodox Church.”  The next day, he was appointed dean of the AOC’s seminary. In other words, he was a major player in the new organization.

In his book Words Like Freedom: Essays on African American Culture and History (1996), Richard Newman writes that Hill “was released by the Russians to work with McGuire and the fledgling AOC.” Further on, though, Newman says that Hill “was excommunicated by the Russians.” I find it hard to believe that the Russian Archdiocese would actually release Hill to a noncanonical body. However, in 1921, Archbishop Alexander Nemolovsky was primate of the Russian Archdiocese. He was a highly ineffective hierarch, and he delegated an unusual amount of authority to Fr. Patrick Mythen. Given Mythen’s own affinity for the AOC, it’s very possible that Mythen himself granted Hill a “release,” but that later Russian leaders recognized this as irregular and went on to defrock Hill.

Hill lasted about 13 years in the AOC. According to Terry-Thompson, “Due to some difference of policy Father Anthony resigned his post late in 1934.” It’s worth noting that 1934 is the same year that Patriarch McGuire died, and it’s possible that Hill’s resignation was part of the fallout from McGuire’s death. Richard Newman writes, “When he left the AOC he founded an independent church in Harlem.” Newman adds, “This story needs to be told.” Alas, Newman died in 2003, so we can’t ask him for more information.

Hill’s career in the Russian Archdiocese must have been extremely brief. He most likely joined the Russians in mid-to-late 1920, when Fr. Patrick Mythen’s short-lived, English-speaking Church of the Transfiguration was in operation in New York City. We know that he left Orthodoxy in September 1921, when he joined the AOC. But beyond the scant details I’ve presented in this article, we know next to nothing else about Fr. Antony Hill.

[This article was written by Matthew Namee.]

Fr. Antony Hill: the second black Orthodox priest in America is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

Marcus Garvey

Marcus Garvey was a widely influential black nationalist from Jamaica. He promoted black pride and championed the “back to Africa” movement. In 1916, when he was just 29 years old and at the outset of his public career, he visited the United States and embarked on a 38-state speaking tour. Not all of the black Americans who attended his lectures liked what they heard. Among those unhappy with Garvey was Fr. Raphael Morgan, the first black Orthodox priest in America. As we’ve discussed in the past, Morgan was born in Jamaica, and in 1916, he was living in Philadelphia, affiliated with the city’s Greek Orthodox church. In response to Garvey’s speeches, Morgan and some associates addressed the following letter to the editors of the Jamaican newspapers:   

Philadelphia, U.S.A.   

September 19, 1916   

The Editor, Dear Sir, –   

We the undersigned Jamaicans, residents of the United States for several years beg your permission to call to your attention and the public of Jamaica a matter affecting the welfare of Jamaicans at home and abroad.   

Under the caption of Journalist and President of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, Jamaica, W.I., one Marcus Garvey, Jr., is giving an extended series of lectures in this Country, pertaining to the social and economic conditions of Jamaica.   

We, having attended his lectures, found them to be pernicious, misleading, and derogatory to the prestige of the Government and the people.   

Among the many assertions of the speaker are the following: –   

1. Governmental misrule, causing economic depression, poverty, and misery with their detrimental consequences.   

2. The falsity and hypocrisy of the existing social condition between the white and black races – to wit:   

Absorption by inter-marriage of the intellectually superior and advanced blacks with whites, with the view of estranging and nullifying their usefulness to their race.   

Result – Acquiescence, arrogance, and unapproachableness, on the part of these blacks who inter-marry. The white wife tires. There is an ultimate separation. Wife returns to her native land. Husband in Jamaica contributes to her support abroad.   

3. The Governmental and Commercial interests connive to keep the scale of wage so low that the labouring classes are unable to meet the necessary demands to sustain their needsand wants. The girls of Jamaica are resorting to vice and immorality through lack of industrial opportunities and poor economic conditions. Praedial larceny is rampant and the jails are filled[.] Education is restricted and limited to the children of the poorer classes causing intellectual deficiency to the masses.   

4. He drew a deplorable picture of the prejudice of the Englishman in Jamaica against the blacks, portraying hypocrisy and deceit of his attitude towards the blacks, and stated his preference for the prejudice of the American to that of the Englishman.   

Mr. Editor, the above are only a few of the damaging statements being disseminated by the aforesaid Marcus Garvey, Jr., among the American public.   

Further details would be a repetition of the demoralising utterances of the speaker.   

The bad effects of these lectures on the minds of the American public are deplorable and are causing great indignation among Jamaicans here, who feel greatly humiliated.   

Thanking you for space and hoping through this medium Jamaicans will be enlightened on the seriousness of this matter. We are,   

Father Raphael, O.C.G., Priest-Apostolic, the Greek Orthodox Catholic Church, Dr. Uriah Smith, Ernest P. Duncan, Ernest K. Jones, H.S. Boulin, Phillip Hemmings, Joseph Vassal, Henry H. Harper, S.C. Box, Aldred Campbell, Hubert Barclay, John Moore, Victor Monroe, Henry Booth and many others.   

Fr. Raphael Morgan

This letter was published in the Kingston Gleaner (10/4/1916) and the Jamaica Times (10/7/1916). A month later, Marcus Garvey issued a reply. According to the Gleaner (11/14/1916), “Mr. Garvey said that the letter which is a concoction and a gross fabrication, was written by his enemies in Jamaica and sent to Philadelphia to be transmitted to the Gleaner, for the purpose of prejudicing him in the eyes of the Government and those who have always wished him well in his efforts in Jamaica, as well as with the intention of interfering with his success in America.”   

The original letter, by Morgan and friends, raises all sorts of questions. Take, for instance, the letters after Morgan’s name — “O.C.G.” From other sources, we know that this stands for “Order of the Cross of Golgotha,” a body of which Morgan was the “founder and superior.” But what, exactly, was the Order of the Cross of Golgotha? Roman Catholicism has all sorts of religious “orders,” but the concept is exceedingly rare among the Orthodox. I suspect, but cannot prove, that Morgan may have created the Order for black Americans. Were the other 13 signers of the Garvey letters members of this Order? Was its membership restricted to Orthodox Christians, or did Morgan welcome non-Orthodox to join? Was its establishment blessed by the Church of Greece — of which Morgan was a priest — or was Morgan operating independently? The whole Order is almost a complete mystery.   

Could Morgan’s fellow signers provide clues, both about the Order and about Morgan’s whereabouts after 1916? Many of the signers seem to have been working-class people. Here are a few of them, with ages and occupations from the 1910 or 1920 Censuses:   

• Ernest K. Jones, 37, construction worker
• Philip Hemmings, 43, sailor
• Henry H. Harper, 29, waiter
• John Moore, 51, contractor
• Henry Booth, 32, laborer

I found another signer, Hubert Barclay, on an Ellis Island passenger manifest dated March 31, 1915 (i.e., about 18 months prior to the Garvey letter). Barclay, a 42-year-old coachman, was coming to the US from Jamaica. He was born in Chapelton, Clarendon, Jamaica — the same town as Fr. Raphael Morgan. The two men probably grew up together.  

H.S. Boulin was the owner of a black doll company in Harlem. And while he signed the 1916 letter against Garvey, he eventually became one of Garvey’s closest confidants. Unbeknownst to Garvey, though, Boulin was also Agent P-138 — a spy for J. Edgar Hoover’s new Federal Bureau of Investigation. Here’s some background on Boulin, from Robert A. Hill’s multivolume collection of Garvey documents:  

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1873, Herbert Simeon Boulin served in the British army from 1902 until 1907. After spending most of his term of service in Africa, he returned to Jamaica in 1907. In 1908 he visited Philadelphia, where he decided to make his home. He opened up a school for teaching shorthand, but it soon failed. Afterward, he worked as a laborer at a local shipyard and then as an employee of the Pinkerton Detective Agency between 1915 and 1920. In January 1920 Boulin became a U.S. citizen. In July 1920 he was hired by the Bureau of Investigation to investigate the Garvey movement. After J. Edgar Hoover sent him a letter terminating his services in August 1921, Boulin opened his own detective agency, promoting his services by advertising his status as a former employee of the Department of Justice.  

Boulin infiltrated Garvey’s organization, funneling information back to FBI headquarters. I’d guess that Boulin met Morgan in 1908, upon his arrival in Philadelphia. It’s entirely possible that there is information on Morgan — by way of Boulin — in the FBI archives. 

Philip Hemmings also became close with Garvey, although in his case, he was no secret agent. In 1920, he was one of the signers of Garvey’s famous “Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World.” Another signer of the 1920 Declaration was a man named George Alexander McGuire. Of course, we’ve talked about McGuire before — he was a black Episcopal priest from the West Indies, and he almost certainly knew Fr. Raphael Morgan. Later, in 1921, he established a noncanonical body called the “African Orthodox Church.” McGuire and Marcus Garvey eventually had a falling-out, but the African Orthodox Church spread to Africa itself, and the group in Africa ultimately joined the canonical Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria.   

The 1916 letter against Marcus Garvey is the last thing I’ve found on Fr. Raphael Morgan. After that, Morgan vanishes from the historical record. His end is one of the great mysteries of American Orthodox history.

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Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine

Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine has probably had more of his letters published in the New York Times than any other Orthodox clergyman. Just in the period from 1907-1918, the Times published no fewer than six Irvine letters. One of them appeared in their March 17, 1916 issue — that is, exactly 94 years ago:

To the Editor of The New York Times:

It is with no desire for controversy or of a lack of tender feelings toward my fellow-countrymen of Irish birth or their descendants of every religious persuasion that I write to you on the subject of some Hibernian fallacies.

While St. Patrick’s Day has passed beyond the vulgar ridicule of former years, yet it still remains a day of questionable sincerity toward unqualified American citizenship. It is still observed in a too sectarian spirit and with hatred of Great Britain.

I may remark, however, and I am not a Protestant Irishman, but a Russo-Greek Catholic, that nothing touched me more respectfully than to have seen a great United States flag hanging between the two spires of the Roman Catholic Cathedral on last St. Patrick’s Day. There was no other emblem there. That flag was an object lesson to Irishmen in the parade, viz., that the Stars and Stripes recognized no other authority or prejudice, either ecclesiastical or national, but those which could live in peace and toleration beneath its sway. That flag welcomed the sons of Irish birth and blood to the full and free use of Fifth Avenue. But, on the other hand, it frowned upon any man in the St. Patrick’s Day procession who dared to carry the Irish flag merely to dictate to our Government or disturb our neutrality.

I am convinced that after this terrific European strife is over we shall be apt to see fewer foreign flags borne in processions. Hyphenism in nationality will be so abhorred in the United States that those who carry an emblem to proclaim it will meet with the same welcome (?) as those who bear the red flag of anarchy.

St. Patrick was the great Celtic missionary to Ireland. In this broad and yet strictly orthodox Catholic way there is no sect, party, or, if the title “Church” is more desirable, which does not own St. Patrick and which ought not here in America and elsewhere honor his name and keep his natal day as one of the greatest sub-apostolic missionaries of Christian civilization.

Every Irishman and every person benefited by what Irishmen have done to advance morals, Christianity, and good government in the world can and ought to celebrate. But if the keeping of the day as sacred means hyphenated nationality or anything un-American, then let the sons of Ireland remember that they have no place in the respect or love of this great Republic, and especially in these trying times for our Government. We want no flag but the Stars and Stripes. No “Irish-Americans,” but American citizens.

INGRAM N.W. IRVINE.

St. Mary’s College, Brooklyn, N.Y., March 13, 1916.

I should note that Irvine himself was from Ireland. He immigrated to America with his mother and siblings when he was a teenager. His comments should not be taken as anti-immigrant or nativist; indeed, he worked closely with immigrants from Syria and Russia. Irvine grew up Anglican, not Roman Catholic, so his position that no Church “owns” St. Patrick is understandable. That said, from his other writings, it is clear that he viewed the Orthodox Church as the Church, so he wasn’t espousing some sort of relativist ecclesiology. 

It’s interesting to note that Fr. Patrick Mythen, who joined the Russian Archdiocese a few years later (in 1920), was a leading proponent of Irish independence from Great Britain. That is, Mythen (who at the time was an Episcopal priest) was one of those people Irvine decried as trying “to dictate to our Government or disturb our neutrality.” Both Irvine and Mythen were outspoken Irish Episcopalians who converted to Orthodoxy, but they were as different as night and day.

Irvine on St. Patrick’s Day, 1916 is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

St. Raphael Hawaweeny

Last week, we discussed St. Raphael’s involvement with the Episcopal Church — his role in an Orthodox-Anglican dialogue group, and his June 1910 letter permitting Episcopalian clergy to minister to Syrian Orthodox people in limited circumstances. Later that year, one of St. Raphael’s top assistants, Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine, wrote a lengthy open letter, warning the Orthodox bishops in America of the Episcopalian threats to Orthodoxy. “Permit me to remind you, Fathers, that already the decks of the Protestant Episcopal battleships are cleared for action,” Irvine wrote. “Her Diocesan regiments, well equipped and united, are in ecclesiastical array.” He continued:

I say with solemn earnestness that the battle will be fought in the United States between Orthodoxy, by which I mean “the faith once for all delivered unto the saints,” as saith St. Jude, and now alone kept by the Holy Orthodox Church of which you and I have the honor of being members, and all others, whether Roman Catholic, Anglican, Protestant, Unitarian or Nothingarian.

Irvine’s full letter is a highly significant document, and we will examine it in detail in the future. For now, suffice it to say that Irvine warned the Orthodox bishops that these seemingly harmless ecumenical dialogues posed serious threats to the survival of Orthodoxy in America. In part, this is because such dialogues seemed to legitimize the Episcopal Church in the eyes of the untrained Orthodox layman. Combined with statements such as St. Raphael’s June 1910 letter, the door was opened for Episcopalians to say to the Orthodox, “Look, we are just like you! You needn’t worry about seeking an Orthodox priest; come to our churches instead!” Irvine warned,

Samson lost his strength when he played the fool with Delilah, who pretended love so as to disarm him of his source of power over the foes of the ancient Israel. We Orthodox, both Clergy and Laity, will lose all our strength if for the sake of society blandishments, whether clerical or lay, of those who hold not the Faith, betray our trust. Sooner or later we will find the Philistines rushing in upon us.

Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine

On September 25, 1911 — so, 15 months after issuing his letter of permission to the Episcopalians — St. Raphael formally withdrew from the Anglican and Eastern Orthodox Churches Union. He sent a letter to the Union, tendering his resignation, and then sent a pastoral epistle to his flock. Irvine’s influence is apparent in both letters. In fact, it is clear, based on the language and writing style, that Irvine himself authored both documents. This is not to say that St. Raphael had no hand in their content; on the contrary, he most certainly agreed with everything expressed in the letters, and he signed his name to both. But given Irvine’s position as a trusted advisor, his vast knowledge of Anglicanism, and his considerable writing ability, it is understandable that St. Raphael would delegate to him the actual task of letter-writing. (Incidentally, I can document at least one other instance in which Irvine ghost-wrote a letter for St. Raphael, and he almost certainly did the same for St. Tikhon on at least one occasion.)

To the letters. In the first, to the Union itself, St. Raphael (via Irvine) said,

There is a great and growing misunderstanding on the part of the Laity to wit, that, there is actually a union, or that, there will be, in the very near future, a corporate Union, between the Protestant Episcopal Church and the Holy Orthodox in America at least. The result is that the Laity in some sections are being confused in their doctrinal belief as well as growing careless about other requirements of the Holy Orthodox Church. In fact they neither know what to believe nor to reject, – much less which Church it is their duty to sustain.

To make matters worse, as we noted above, some Episcopalian clergymen had taken too far the limited permission in St. Raphael’s June 1910 letter:

Some of the Protestant Episcopal Clergy have taken upon themselves, through misunderstanding, to offer their services to Orthodox people, when even Orthodox Priests were within calling distance to minister to them; thus conveying the idea that, they, the Protestant Episcopal Clergy, were accepted as Holy Orthodox and that, there was no need of the ministrations or pastoral care of their own Orthodox Bishops and Clergy.

Thus, St. Raphael respectfully withdrew from the Union. He followed this with a 2200-word pastoral epistle. He (again via Irvine) stated, “I am convinced that the doctrinal teaching and practices, as well as the discipline, of the whole Anglican Church are unacceptable to the Holy Orthodox Church.” Therefore, “I direct all Orthodox people residing in any community not to seek or to accept the ministrations of the Sacraments and rites from any clergy excepting those of the Holy Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church.” But St. Raphael didn’t stop there. It was not enough for the Orthodox to avoid the ministrations and sacraments of non-Orthodox bodies. He went on, “I further direct that Orthodox Christians should not make it a practice to attend the services of other religious bodies, so that there be no confusion concerning the teaching or doctrines.”

The full text of this letter may be found at this link.

Now, imagine the position of St. Raphael. He was a vice president of the Anglican and Eastern Orthodox Churches Union. He had frequent dealings with Episcopalians, as did his associates in the Russian Archdiocese. Talk of union was in the air. His June 1910 letter was well-received by Episcopalians and not publicly criticized by any Orthodox people. But he saw, and Irvine called attention to, the error of that 1910 letter. It must have taken immense humility for St. Raphael to rescind his permission and withdraw from the Union. I’m sure he had many long discussions with Irvine beforehand, and he must have ultimately instructed Irvine to draft two letters on his behalf. St. Raphael read them, and perhaps edited them (for an unadulterated Irvine letter could be abrasive).

The whole affair must have been painful for St. Raphael, but, a century later, I am amazed at his openness and humility. As the June 1910 letter proves, he was not perfect, but his actions in 1911 are evidence of his genuine love for his flock. He was a great bishop.

The Reversal of St. Raphael is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

Fr. Nicholas Bjerring in his New York chapel

On the morning of Sunday, February 9, 1873 — that is, 137 years ago today — a crowd assembled in Holy Trinity Russo-Greek Chapel in New York City. The priest, Fr. Nicholas Bjerring, gave an address on “Unbelief and the Indifference in Religion.” The whole speech was printed in the next day’s New York Times. It is one of the few full Bjerring homilies that has survived, and it is reprinted below in full:

The subject about which, by the grace of God, I intend to speak to-day, is the perversion of this age in which the enemies of God and of man confuse the minds, corrupt the morals, undermine religion, and, rending asunder all bonds, seek to overthrow Divine and human order. It is the spiritual blindness of so many who attack Christianity, preach vice under the name of virtue, allow themselves everything with lawless audacity, proudly disregarding every authority, mislead the innocent, who poison the spirits and murder the souls. It is the deadly unbelief and the religious indifference which denies everything Divine and holy, the indifference, which is lukewarm and cold toward all that is good — this it is that troubles my heart and fills my soul with pain.

The greatest evil in the world is unbelief, the apostacy from God. This apostacy from God is the continual source of corruption. This is a law of the eternal justice. For the man who falls from God and recognizes infidelity is nothing more holy; for him ceases everything that religion highly esteems — family, property, father-land. A nation in which skepticism gains the dominion is sure to meet perdition. Unbelief undermines all foundations of society, till finally regarding neither divine nor human authority it seeks seeks to upset everything existing. Thus teaches the history of all times.

Was it not during the rule of the Commune in Paris, as if there the angel of the Apocalypse had opened the abyss from which ascends scorpions? Was it not the lot of the Prince of Darkness to plunder and murder; was it not a picture of unspeakable misery, which there unfolded itself under the red, blood-steeped banner? God permitted for a short time of t his unlimited rule, in order to remind the nations again into what abyss apostacy from God does lead, and how everywhere, at all times, the truth of the law of eternal justice does stand, that unbelief is the source of all evil, and the end of corruption. “The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” This eternal truth appears very clearly, when one considers more closely the watchwords and phrases of unbelief, and compares with them the deeds which were seen as the last consequences of the same in the days of the Parisian Commune.

The devil is only the ape of God; he knows no other inducements to allure to his kingdom than the promises which the Lord has made to His believers, only that he explains them in his way, and thus turns the divine truth into a lie. Man was created in the image of God, and “ye shall be as God,” were the words of the first temptation of the serpent, but it led, through sin, to corruption. To the Son of God was promised dominion over the world, and the devil endeavored to seduce Him through the promise of “all the kingdoms of the world, and their glory.” The same value have the promises of the Internationalists and the communists. They incite men to their service through all that which God has named as the prize in His service.

“Liberty” is the first watchword that resounds from the ranks of these enemies of order and government, and the glorious liberty of the children of God is also the reward of those who follow the Gospel. But the evangelical liberty is freedom from slavery of sin, from the power of death; it is the sonship of God. The liberty at which the Internationalists aim is the despising [of] the commandments of God, the self-willed separating from His ordinances upon earth, as Church authority, family — these all are instituted to bring man into the service of God, or to preserve him in the same.

“Equality” proclaims the Internationale to its adherents eager after unjust good and enjoyment, and agreeably falls the word upon the ear of the envious multitude. The equality of men is also the doctrine of Christianity. All men are equal before God; all were created alike in His image; to all has appeared the same salvation. The equality of the Commune is the claim alike to the enjoyments of the world, possession, power, and the gratification of the passions. The desire after this equality is the opposite of the commandment, “Thou shalt not covet.” The motives are envy, disloyalty, and indolence, and the way to satisfaction is the putting aside of every authoritative order, the plundering of those who hold possessions, and the emancipation of the flesh.

“Fraternity” is the third word upon the red flag — the beautiful battle-cry also of the Christian. The children of God are brethren, and are to be of one mind and soul, and to communicate among themselves that there be none among them that lacketh. The common love of man becomes among Christians brotherly love, and the standing salutation of the Apostle, “Beloved brethren,” is the language of every Christian heart. But what does the Commune understand by “fraternity”? The answer was given to the world in the howling of rage and murder, of petroleurs and petroleuses, even the names of which point to crime, because only the Commune had invented them.

The abuse of those words shows us that words in themselves are dead, and receive life only by the spirit that enters into them. “Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!” Only Christianity gives us the true meaning of these words, and never have the greatest philosophers of the world so highly spoken about the relations of men to each other as Christ has taught and His Church proclaims. The Christian Church with her doctrines and sacraments is, in this respect, to become the leader. She is the medium whereby the Divine life is communicated to each human being, in order to complete the Divine image in him and to unite him most intimately with God. Continually must we cherish the desire to be more and more in unity with the eternal, infinite Deity; and this bond of men with God will then also unite mankind into one family, and make them beloved children of God. That is the meaning of liberty, equality, and fraternity, in the Christian sense.

If we look around us, we cannot fail at the same time to perceive how religious indifference in so many families has also disturbed the Christian life. That faithful, pious mind, that strong trust in God, that content, experienced in former times, have severally disappeared. Acquisition, gain, employment are often the first items in the home, but the last is religion. Prayer has disappeared — nothing more is known of a lifting up of the soul to God. The cares of the body reign over all — religious indifference rules the home. Business flourishes, the master of the house is esteemed, the lady of the house is courted by society, but are we not deceived? The good fortune of such a family is only in appearance, and treacherous, because it is without a foundation. How will it be there when the plays of misfortune and sadness appear? How will it be there when the blessings of this world forsake such a house, for God’s blessing was never sought? Even if the children are so educated as to understand how to acquire with skill the goods of this world, can they endure the trials which life imposes upon them? Will they approve themselves in the hour of temptation, when sin with her seductions approaches near; when the excitement of vice decked with flowers misguides them, when the advantage of chrime blinds them? Surely not.

On the contrary, the certain end of an education without religion and the fear of God, will be that they do not approve themselves. And suppose it were not so; suppose God suffered such a family and their children’s good fortune until the end in the full enjoyment of earthly goods, because their whole heart was attached to them, yet this end must be at the last. Then such a family shall know by experience that they have sowed to the earth, also reaped only from the earth, for heaven they have done nothing, and shall also receive nothing. How often one meets in families a lukewarmness which stifles all Christian life. The faith is dead, the will without power; cold and indolent is the exercise of religion, the life spirit is vanished away. But the exterior practice of religion is nothing without a union with the inner, spiritual. The spirit giveth life, but the flesh profiteth nothing.

However many lights may be burning here in this chapel, and however beautiful the robes of the clergy appear, that will be of no avail either to me or to those that are present, if we are not converted unto repentance. Let us above all not forget prayer, this bond which joins in a mystical manner mankind to God, and the Saviour, who for us all died on the cross, will, let us hope, have mercy on us. For we are all bought with the blood of Christ; we are all to attain to the possession and the vision of God, to drink of the well-spring of eternal love and bliss. May we not forget this final object, but when we celebrate upon our terrestrial pilgrimage the Christian mysteries may we, looking for that heavenly home and spirit, exclaim: “O God, grant us that we may yet be filled with the enjoyment of thy Divinity, whose presence we here celebrate in the reception of thy body and blood.” Amen.

Today in American Orthodox History: Bjerring’s sermon on unbelief is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

The church held its first services on Sunday, July 18, 1920. Six days later, the New York Times ran an article on the parish under the headline, “Americanizing a Church.” The Church of the Transfiguration was, according to the article, part of a broader initiative, supported by Archbishop Alexander Nemolovsky, to “Americanize” the Russian Archdiocese. He had apparently commissioned a fresh English translation of the Divine Liturgy. English was the primary language of instruction in the Russian seminary in Tenafly, New Jersey, and Orthodox Christians in America were encouraged to obtain US citizenship.

Bolshevik sympathizers allegedly poisoned a chalice later consumed by an elderly Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine

On Saturday, July 31, someone reportedly broke into the church. Mythen told the Times (8/16/1920) that, oddly enough, nothing at all was taken. This was surprising — the burglars could have stolen the holy vessels made of gold and silver, and expensive clergy vestments, but they didn’t. From the Times:

The priests were puzzled by the objectless burglary, but on the following day, when he drank the sacramental wine from the chalice at the end of the service, Canon Ingram N.W. Irvine became conscious of an agonizing pain in his mouth, throat and stomach. Believing that in some manner the chalice had been filled with acid instead of wine, he acted immediately to save his own life. By his promptness he escaped without serious injury, though he was very sick for a day or more. Canon Irvine is 70 years old.

Immediately after this incident an investigation was made of the receptacle containing the wine intended for sacramental purposes, but not yet consecrated. The wine there was found to be perfectly pure and fresh.

The priests then considered they had found the explanation of the burglary. One or more persons, who hated the Orthodox Church, had forced an entrance into the church in order to put poison in the chalice in the hope of killing a priest.

Fr. Patrick Mythen connected this alleged poisoning to other recent incidents. He told the Times, “In addition to this certain other churches have been attacked and broken into within the last few weeks, and other priests assaulted. One Roman Catholic priest of Greek nationality was bound and beaten. An Orthodox priest in Bayonne was also attacked by three men, but the priest being of very powerful physique, seized the man with the revolver so quickly that when the weapon was discharged, the assassin shot himself. The man was taken into custody by the United States Secret Service and found to be an anarchist.”

The Orthodox leaders, and the Times, thought that all this was connected to the Americanization program that the Russian Archdiocese was instituting. Bolshevik sympathizers, who hated both America and Orthodoxy, supposedly found the mingling of the two to be intolerable. The Times article from which I’ve been quoting is actually all about another incident, which took place on August 15 (and which I’ll discuss in another post).

Now, about the Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine poisoning — They checked the container that held the unconsecrated wine, and it was clean. So, the poison was presumably put in the chalice itself. But if that were the case, wouldn’t someone else have gotten sick, too? Then again, it was pretty common then for people to take communion only a few times a year. Combine that with the fact that the Church of the Transfiguration was a tiny, new place, and it’s entirely possible that there were no lay communicants that day. On the other hand, the church had several attached priests who probably would have partaken. Why would Irvine have been the only one affected? There are two possibilities: one, Irvine may have been the only celebrant that day, and thus the only one to partake of the Eucharist. Two, it’s possible that the poison would only cause problems if consumed in large quantities. If the other priests only took a few sips, and Irvine finished the whole chalice, it may well have only affected Irvine.

So, was Irvine really poisoned? We will probably never know for sure. I’m confident that he wasn’t a liar, but I’m just as confident that he could be a bit melodramatic at times. I’m inclined to believe him when he says he was poisoned, but the circumstances are rather odd. It would be great to see the police report of the incident, but I don’t know if one has survived.

Another thing — note the statement that Irvine “acted immediately to save his own life.” It sure sounds like he forced himself to expel — vomit — what he had just consumed. That is, he intentionally threw up the Eucharist. I realize that he thought it was filled with acid, and that he was protecting his life. And he probably took measures to ensure that what he had just expelled was disposed of in a proper manner. But still, while I fully understand his actions, I find them rather shocking as well.

Irvine was back in church on August 19, preaching a sermon on the Feast of the Transfiguration. He died the following January — 5 1/2 months after being poisoned. That said, I don’t think there was any connection between the poisoning and his death. He regained his health pretty quickly after the poisoning incident, and, according to his obituary, he died of heart disease.

A Poisoned Chalice? Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine in 1920 is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

Fr. Sebastian Dabovich

Fr. Sebastian Dabovich was a monumental figure in American Orthodox history. An American-born Serb, he founded numerous parishes — Serbian and otherwise — under the auspices of the Russian Mission in America. He is currently being considered by the Serbian Orthodox Church and the OCA for glorification as a saint.

Dabovich knew Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine rather well. He was serving in Philadelphia when Irvine, who was also in that city, decided to convert to Orthodoxy in 1905. Dabovich was instrumental in arranging a meeting between Irvine and St. Tikhon, which ultimately led to Irvine’s ordination in November of that year. Nevertheless, Irvine, who was nothing if not bold, felt compelled to rebuke Dabovich in 1916, for the latter’s relations with the Episcopal Church. A former Episcopalian himself, Irvine felt that Dabovich was going too far in his ecumenical activity, and he wrote a strongly-worded letter. It’s rather long, but I am reprinting it in full below. The letter is dated September 16, 1916, and was found in the OCA archives.

Very Rev. and dear Brother:

I am very much perplexed and no one but you can give me a satisfactory explanation. However, I am sending a copy of this letter to our Archbishop for fear that, your acts are authorized by him, and, therefore I may have from him through you a sufficient answer.

You will surely remember that, when I was about to enter the Holy Orthodox Eastern Catholic Church, I called upon you in Philadelphia, and  through you and by your kindness and courtesy, I transmitted my credentials and applications as an Anglican to the Most Reverend, and ever dear to America, Archbishop Tikhon. You, My Very Rev. and dear Brother, were my first door to a Church, wherein I am happy and for whom I am ready to live and die as well as serve in the humblest capacity.

Now, I entered the Holy Orthodox Russo-Greek Catholic Church believing that she, waiving all and every political and worldly consideration, brought my mind, soul and convictions nearer to God’s peace, “which passeth all understanding” than Anglicanism or any other portion of the Church founded by the Great Head of the Church, our one and only Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. In the Russo-Greek Church My Soul is at peace with the whole family of God in Heaven and Earth, my only aim is to prove by a loving heart that, within her fold we see revealed as the Mother Church of Christendom, the “Faith once for all delivered unto the Saints” and held in trust to be transmitted, age after age, to a world hungry for the Bread of Life and the Living Water which alone are found in the Incarnate One’s bosom the Son of the Ever Virgin Mary and only Begotten of her and the Eternal Father by the operation of the Holy Spirit.

But, Very Rev. and dear Brother, though my peace, personally, is satisfactory I am anxious about what you are doing and what the results may be, for it seems to me that you are, unintentionally, tearing down the house which you helped to build as a refuge of Souls.

I read in the “Churchman” of September 16th, that you, clad in the Clerical Robes of the Orthodox Church attended both the Morning and Evening services of the Protestant Episcopal Church at Bar Harbor, Maine, and preached to large congregations. Is this true? Is it true that, you took part with the Rector of a Protestant Episcopal Church, a Clergyman whose Holy Orders are not acknowledged by the Holy Orthodox Church? I need not remined you of the Apostolical Canons. You are too well versed, I am sure, for me to quote any of them to you and show wherein you have overlooked the seriousness of your act.

But I need say no more on the following points, permit me only to add the facts as follows, namely: –

There is no intercommunion between the Holy Orthodox Church and the Anglican Communion. This you surely know. Then think of the incongruity of any Orthodox Archimandrite standing at or near the Altar of a Church, side by side of one of her priests, which one half of whose clergy look upon as more benighted than the Church of Rome and only a relic of the dim past of Christianity and Icon Superstition! Think of the perplexing thoughts of the summer guests of Bar Harbor and the Laymembers of the Protestant Episcopal Parish, but, alas, think of the disturbed feelings of the members of the Holy Orthodox Church if any were present in that Congregation or in that watering place!

Perhaps, I may be pardoned if I remind you that, while the Protestant Episcopal Church may welcome you personally as a priest of the Holy Orthodox Church at her Altar and likewise any of our Bishops, she honestly and sincerely in her heart of hearts has no use for our Bishops. Why should she? Will you not please read again if you have before the Appendix written to my Booklet on “Anglican Claims” by t he Rev. William J. Seabury, D.D., late Professor of Canon Law in the  General Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church. The Anglican Church claims full jurisdiction in the United States. Of course her claims and the Preface to her Book of Common Prayer contradict each other, for while in the former she claims full jurisdiction, in the latter she only speaks of herself as one of the Churches of the Republic. However, our Bishops are regarded as only provisional — Bishops in the United States of a Church whose members can not understand the English language and who in time may be swallowed up in the embrace of Anglicanism and fall under the supervision of the Anglican Episcopate.

Are you, my Very Rev. Brother, willing to concede this?

I believe that, the Orthodox have been led into traps by a certain Society known as the “Anglican and Eastern Orthodox Churches Union.” We have been misinterpreted and misrepresented by that Society. Rome, and the unlearned Orthodox surely have misinterpreted our Prelates. And some of our Prelates have made mistakes, and some have seen then after having become members or advocates of such a Society.

We cannot be united with the Anglican Communion if we truly hold the faith fo the Holy Orthodox Church. A fraction of the former believe as we do, but two thirds disagree with us in Matters which we deem essential.

We, as a Church, have but one view of Doctrine, Discipline and Worship. Not so with the Anglican. That Communion, is as varied in views as the Shades of the members of Protestant Sects or Romish perverts who may drop into her fold.

But, Very Rev. Brother, there is something bordering on to an Ecclesiastical tragedy in our hob-nobing with the Anglican Church.

It is cruel to the Anglicans. You know and so do I that, there is no intercommunion. Why should we not be honest and say that while we love all who believe in our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, yet there are essentials important to us that are lacking to them, that, it would be cruel to deceive by Society Courtesy those who do not believe in its entirety the “Faith once for all delivered to the Saints?”

But the Tragedy is still more appalling in this respect, namely, we are disturbing the faith of the Youth of the Holy Orthodox Church. Remember, please, that no Anglicans come to us except it be to hear our music, which by some outside and others within the Russian Church is exploited for mercenary purposes. On the other hand, hundreds of our people, and, running up into thousands of our young are being lost to us because of, on the one hand our folly and the superciliousness of some of our Ecclesiastics, and, on the other, our lack of preparation to hold them, our priest being hide-bound to their own foreign language in a Country where nothing scarcely is taught but English to the Young of ever Nationality coming to our shores.

Won’t you, very Rev. and Dear Brother, review the past? Please do. Just think of my coming to the door of the Russian Church through you and knocking for entrance. Think of the day when I was ordained at St. Nicholas Cathedral. Think of the first service ever said in English of the Holy Orthodox Church. You and I said that service in the Russian Cathedral. What now does it all mean that you should help to tear down the house which you had helped to build?

I have prepared a long article on the reunion of Christendom etc., and the great danger in which the Orthodox Church in the United States stands in having any thing to do with such a step, as “Federation” or “Unions” at the present time. I hope some day, when I have the means, to have it published. It will explain fully to my brother priests our dangerous position stoical indifference and in flirting with the Anglican Church.

Trusting that you will pardon my long letter and any unintentional grief which it may give you, I am,

Affectionately Yours,

Ingram N.W. Irvine, D.D.

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Mythen was born James Grattan Mythen, in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1883. At least, I’m pretty sure it was Baltimore in 1883; I’ve also seen Boston in 1885, or New Orleans in 1886. I’m confident about the 1883 date, because that’s what Mythen gave, but I’m not 100% sure about the city.

As far as religion went, Mythen was… well, he was confused. His mother, a Roman Catholic, died while giving birth to him. His father was an agnostic Episcopalian, and after being widowed, he married a German Lutheran woman. But, according to Fr. Patrick, his father “lost his mind,” leaving young James to be raised by an uncle. He was brought up in the Episcopal Church, but when he was 14, he visited some of his mother’s relatives in Chicago, who acquainted Mythen with Roman Catholicism.

I think Mythen converted to Roman Catholicism at this point. He decided to become a priest, and at about 14, he entered the Roman Catholic Epiphany College in Baltimore. While he was there, the founder of the school became a Unitarian, of all things. At 17, Mythen moved to Villanova College (now University), where he was scandalized by a professor who focused a great deal of attention on the “bad popes” of history. So Mythen became an Episcopalian again — all while still a teenager.

Over the next decade or so, Mythen continued to bounce back and forth between Rome and Anglicanism. At 21, he enrolled at the Episcopalian General Theological Seminary in New York; when he graduated, he was ordained a deacon and was sent to Santa Fe, New Mexico. But soon he went to Rome and was received back into the Roman Catholic Church… And, just as quickly, he returned to the Episcopal Church and was ordained a priest. For a little while, in his mid-20s, Mythen tried to become an Old Catholic Benedictine monk in the Episcopal diocese of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin (the diocese of Bishop Charles Grafton, who was old friends with St. Tikhon).

From 1912-1914, Mythen was very active in the women’s suffrage movement, participating in marches, speaking at conventions. Then the war came — World War I, of course — and Mythen joined the Navy. Later, he explained his reasoning to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (8/30/1919):

On Easter Day I preached a sermon in favor of the war, and when the young men of my parish enlisted I felt that I, being unattached, economically responsible for no one, that it was unbecoming of me to be content merely to stand in the pulpit and urge other men to give their lives for the principles which I considered worthy of life giving. And so, with countless numbers of young men of the Nation I enlisted voluntarily, although I was exempt from the draft on account of my clerical profession, and also since I was beyond the draft age. I was content to serve in the ranks in the humblest capacity, feeling that the menial tasks which fell to my lot were noble because even in their small way they were aiding in achieving the high purport of the sacred mission to which our country had committed itself.

By the end of the war, Mythen had become a strong advocate of Irish independence. He pressed his cause with the Senate, saying, “The Irish issue might well be called the acid test of our international honesty.” He went on,

As a Protestant, sir, and a clergyman of the Protestant religion, I resent the implication that Protestantism requires the sustenance of British imperialism to maintain itself in Ireland or elsewhere. Were I convinced that this were a fact, that only through the power of British arms could my religion maintain itself in Ireland, then I would repudiate my religion at once. [...]

I want to say to you, sir, and gentlemen, that as a Protestant Irishman, whose family to-day in Ireland are representatives of the Protestant religion, that we would all gladly have Ireland free under any religious leadership rather than remain, as we are, the only white race still in slavery.

Mythen became the secretary of a group called the Protestant Friends of Irish Freedom, and he toured the country, speaking on behalf of Irish independence. This understandably did not sit well with the Episcopalian hierarchy in America. After all, they were Anglicans, bishops of the Church of England. Pressured to quiet down, Mythen, of course, refused. Instead, he made yet another religious change — he decided to join the Orthodox Church.

I don’t know exactly when he converted to Orthodoxy, but it was sometime between February and July, 1920. In that period, he spent some time in Europe (perhaps Ireland, though he returned to America via England). He came back to America in April, and I would guess that he became Orthodox in May or June. As we discussed yesterday, by July, he was rector of the all-English Church of the Transfiguration in New York.

We’ve covered quite a bit of ground so far, so I’m going to pause here, at the time of Mythen’s conversion to Orthodoxy, and pick up the rest of the story in another article.

The Erratic Life of Fr. Patrick Mythen is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

To start — well, you know about Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine, who converted to Orthodoxy in 1905. (If you don’t know about Irvine, you can read our earlier posts about him, or listen to two podcasts I did on Ancient Faith Radio.)

So Irvine converted in 1905, and he remained an Orthodox priest until his death, in January 1921. During that time, in both the Russian and Syrian Missions, he was a strong advocate of the use of English in American Orthodox worship. He felt that, for Orthodoxy to survive and thrive in America, it was imperative that it, to some extent, “Americanize.” (This is the term that was used at the time.)

For most of Irvine’s Orthodox career, there were not many converts. Irvine spent a lot of his time working with Orthodox young people, and interacting with Episcopalians, but he didn’t actually bring a lot of people into the Church. Late in his life, however, things started to change. An Episcopal priest named James Grattan Mythen converted to Orthodoxy in 1920. He was immediately ordained a priest by Abp Alexander Nemolovsky, and he took the name, “Fr. Patrick.”

Mythen would prove to be the first of a surprisingly large number of convert priests to enter the Russian Archdiocese in the early 1920s. Irvine was quite old by this point, in his early 70s at a time when most people didn’t live past 60. He was not really capable, physically, of running his own church. But Mythen was young — just 37 at the time of his conversion — and he became the leader of a group of convert clergy.

Within a very short period of time, Mythen was joined by the following men:

• Dr. Geoffrey A. Lang, ordained Fr. Stephen
• Robert F. Hill, ordained Fr. Antony
• Fr. Paul Ihmsen
• Dr. George Gelsinger, ordained Fr. Michael
• Royce M. Burden, ordained Fr. Boris
• Arthur W. Johnson, ordained Fr. Kyrill
• Sgt. William H. Schneider, ordained Fr. A. (not sure what it stood for)

Irvine didn’t know all of these men; several of them came along after he had already died. And Irvine doesn’t seem to have been the main person driving this enterprise; Mythen was. Abp Alexander put an enormous amount of trust in Mythen. For a while, in the early 1920s and before Metropolitan Platon took over the Russian Archdiocese, Mythen basically ran the whole Archdiocesan operation, even signing ordination certificates (a task properly done by a bishop). Needless to say, Mythen supplanted the aging (and then deceased) Irvine as the leader of the English Department of the Russian Archdiocese.

And in 1920, the newly-converted-and-ordained Mythen became the rector of the “American Orthodox Catholic Church of the Transfiguration,” the first all-English, all-convert parish in history. The church was located at St. Vladimir’s Immigrant Home, 233 East 17th Street in New York City. The first services were held on July 18, 1920. This is part of an article from the New York Times (7/17/1920):

In the establishment of this English-speaking church by the Russian hierarchy the efforts of fifteen years of the Rev. Dr. Ingram N.W. Irvine, a canon of the local Russian Cathedral, have been realized.

Archbishop Tikhon, who was head of the Russian Church in America for several years, favored such a move, but he was recalled to Russia before he could organize such a branch. Appeal was then made to Archbishop Nemoloski, who agreed that an English mission would fill a need. Abbot Patrick (James Gratton Mithen), who came here from England three months ago, was designated as rector of the new branch. Dr. Irvine will be the associate rector. He and Abbot Patrick are major canons.

The other two members of the staff are minor canons. The first vicar is Canon Stephen, who came to America with Canon Patrick, and the second vicar is Canon Paul, who was ordained a priest of the Russian Church in Pittsburgh by Bishop Stephen of the Uno-Russian Diocese of Pittsburgh. He is a brother of Max Ihmsen, a newspaper editor. Dr. Irvine is Professor of the English Department in the Russian Seminary, Tenafly, N.J., and Canon Paul is his assistant.

A few things… One, I find the whole “canon,” “vicar,” language to be slightly amusing, borrowed as it is from the Episcopal Church. Is a “major canon” supposed to be an archpriest, in this context? I don’t know. I’m not aware of Irvine having ever been raised to archpriest, but it is possible.

Two, while Mythen did travel from England to the US, he was only in England for a few months. We’ll talk about his life in a separate post in the future, but he was born in Baltimore and was an American citizen. Like Irvine, Mythen was of Irish ancestry, but was an Anglican clergyman. He was very involved in politics and art — he was a vocal proponent of women’s suffrage and of Irish independence, and he moonlighted as a playwright. One of his allies in the Irish independence movement was Geoffrey Lang (aka Fr. Stephen), who, along with Mythen, helped run a group called Protestant Friends of Irish Freedom.

Fr. Paul Ihmsen — I’m not certain, but I think his given name was Charles. His brother Max, the newspaper editor, was a major figure in the newspaper industry of the early 20th century. He was a protégé of William Randolph Hearst, with titles ranging from “political manager” to “henchman.” He then went to California and ran the Los Angeles Examiner, and on the side, he became a pioneering apple farmer. The Ihmsens came from an old, prominent German family from Pittsburgh.

Another priest in these early years was Fr. Antony (Robert) Hill, who happens to be the second black priest in American Orthodox history, after Fr. Raphael Morgan. Hill was Orthodox for a very short time; he soon joined the upstart “African Orthodox Church,” about which, more in the future.

The other clergy I mentioned above — Gelsinger, Burden, etc. — came along later, after the Church of the Transfiguration had closed. And close it did, very soon — the New York Times has advertisements for the church through November 1920, but nothing afterwards. The church’s few months of existence were eventful, though. Two prominent literary figures, T. Everett Harre and Reginald Wright Kauffman (both, apparently, friends of Mythen), converted to Orthodoxy. In August, Irvine was apparently poisoned, allegedly by Bolshevik sympathizers. And in September, Abp Alexander raised Mythen (who was unmarried) to the rank of archimandrite. We will discuss all of these events, and the history of the broader English-speaking mission, in future articles.

The First English-Speaking Parish is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine

If you are a regular reader of this website, you already know about Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine. Briefly, for those unfamiliar with him: Irvine was a longtime Episcopal priest who was defrocked by his bishop — unjustly, so he said. St. Tikhon agreed, and, in 1905, Tikhon ordained Irvine to the Orthodox priesthood. He put Irvine in charge of “English work,” and Irvine spent the rest of his days as a zealous proponent of the use of English in American Orthodox worship. St. Raphael recognized the value of Irvine’s work, and he soon commissioned Irvine to write English-language articles in Al-Kalimat (The Word, the official magazine of Raphael’s Syrian Mission). Today, I am reprinting one of those articles, which was probably written in 1907. In it, Irvine speaks with great boldness to the Syrian parents in America, exhorting them to bring up their children in the Orthodox faith and send them to Orthodox Sunday Schools. Reading this article, it is easy to see why Irvine was such a polarizing figure. It also provides a glimpse into the challenges facing people like Irvine and St. Raphael, as they tried to preserve the Syrian people in the Orthodox faith.

I write to night specially to the Holy Orthodox Parents of the United States. I address you personally as if I sat with you in your homes surrounded by your children and I plead with you to hearken unto my words.

And first I ask you: Do you teach your children to pray, to believe and to obey?

You answer me that “such work appertains unto the Church.”

There was a time when parents taught their children to pray. I do not mean just to lisp off a few petitions with the Lord’s Prayer to Almighty God but to hold daily communion with God. To meditate upon His attributes, to come to Him with cares. To tell Him the heart aches. To ask his forgiveness, – His help and His guidance.

There was a time also when parents taught their children the Creed and explained to them the meaning of the Articles therein.

There was a time when they taught their children how to obey not only at home but the Officers of the State and those of the Holy Church who are higher than the State.

But there came a time when parents became careless in these respects and the result was that, the Church had to open Sunday Schools.

The Sunday School is without any doubt, one of the most blessed and useful institutions of the Church of God today. It takes the place of negligent, ignorant and God-forgetting parents. It is one of the merciful provisions of the Church of God to teach and feed the Lambs of Jesus Christ’s Fold who are left neglected by thoughtless, sinful and rebellious parents.

I am using very, very strong language, but if I could use stronger so as to pierce the consciences of parents I would be willing to do so at any risk.

In the Holy Orthodox Church all parents are married according to the law of God. You are not joint parties to a secular contract to be severed at the will of either or both. You are united “for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do you part”. And you are married to “increase, replenish and multiply the earth”. You are therefore responsible for both the mental, spiritual and physical training of your children. God Almighty will hold you eternally responsible for the loss of one soul you have brought into this sinful world. You cannot cast your children off like the cuckoo or the ostrich. You are bound before God and man to see that your offspring are brought up in the love and fear of God and respectful toward the Civil Authorities as well as toward their parents – the father and mother who have brought them into this sinful world. And without a shadow of doubt it is your duty to teach them to love and respect God’s Holy

Church in which alone they have a promise of Eternal Life through Jesus Christ our Lord and only God.

Now the priests of God’s Church who are the stewards of His mysteries have, because of the neglect of parents to thoroughly instruct their children, adopted the method of instruction known as Sunday School Teaching. When the Church speaks she ought to be heard. She studies every age and knows its needs. She knows what is the best method of being assured that her children are well instructed in a knowledge of God. Thus it is that she demands, as a loving duty on your part, to send your children to Sunday School.

Well, you say that you like to take them visiting or to the Park or some where else on Sunday afternoon. You cannot, you say, take them during the week, for it would be taking you away from your business. Strange excuse! You do not want to rob yourself out of a Dollar but you do not care whether you rob God out of the souls of your children for whom He shed His Precious Blood upon the Cross.

You make it a point to send them to Day School, so that they may not lose a mark but come out with high earthly honors, yet you do not consider the fact that their souls may go down to the darkest abyss of Hell because you have taught them to dishonor God’s Sabbath and neglect His Holy Church.

Oh, foolish parent, who hath bewitched you! What demon is it which has blinded your eyes, dulled your understanding and filled you with unnatural love for your children? Do you think that love only means the satisfying of the eye, the ear, the palate and the body? Alas, these are the last to be thought of. I do not say that you must not make your children happy and take good care of them. Far from this. They ought to be treasured as jewels. But Oh, remember the words:

Tis not the whole of life to live

Nor all of death to die.

Yes, and those other words;

“I have another life to live without which life

This life is incomplete.”

The Holy Church has both lives in view. But she impresses the needs of preparation for the next world’s life, for

As man lives so shall he die:

And as he dies so shall he be

All through the years of Eternity.

But we will take it for granted that you send your children to Sunday School and that they are much pleased with the reception and instruction which they receive there. Which Sunday School is it? You belong to the Holy Orthodox Eastern Catholic Church? “Yes,” you say. Well then do you think that if your children go to a Roman Catholic, Protestant Episcopal, Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Maronite, Lutheran, Congregational or what other Religious Body you thus may select that they are instructed in the Doctrine,

Discipline and Worship of the Church to which you belong? Why you are wild to think so. If you want your children to grow up in your Faith, the Faith of the Holy Martyrs of the first eight Centuries you will never have them do so unless they are sent to their own Sunday School.

Now please understand me. I am not saying one word against those great churches. They are all trying to lead people to God their own way. May the Holy Sprit guide them aright. But I am sure if I were a minister of any one of those churches, I would teach them all about the church to which I belonged, and not one word about any other. I am perfectly honest in this. I would not throw stones at other churches, but I would take mighty good care to help make my Sunday School children love my Church.

You must remember, that your duty lies in this direction, namely to send your children to your own Sunday School. If you are away from the care of a Priest, just club together as Orthodox Catholics and form a Sunday School.

Encourage the children. Do everything for them which will enable them to see that you love both their souls and bodies.

As I will have something further to say unto you on this matter of Sunday Schools I will now close.

Praying to God to guide you aright,

I am,

Lovingly yours,

Ingram N.W. Irvine.

“Oh foolish parent, who hath bewitched you!” is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.