It’s the end of another year, and I thought I’d do what so many others are doing, and take a look back at the year that has passed. But I won’t be revisiting all the significant events that took place in 2009; rather, I want to consider the progress of American Orthodox historical studies in the past year.

Early this year, the “myth of unity” was still widely believed. It was pretty common to hear church leaders make the claim that all Orthodox Christians in America were united under the Russian Archdiocese until 1917 or 1921. Now, though, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone saying that. Most everyone seems to generally acknowledge the reality that the Russian Archdiocese did not, in fact, include every American Orthodox Christian. That claim has been replaced by another: that everyone should have been in the Russian Archdiocese — that the Russian Archdiocese was the rightful, canonical authority in America, regardless of whether everyone recognized it at the time.

This shift, from “what was” to “what should have been,” has accompanied a greater reliance on evidence. There seems to have been a general realization that we can no longer simply make bald statements, not based on facts. People still make claims for their favorite jurisdictions, but those claims seem to be more grounded in evidence than they were a year ago. The more we can get away from cherry-picking our facts, or ignoring evidence altogether, the better off we’ll be.

It has been a year of transition in other respects, as well. This year witnessed the retirement of Fr. John Erickson, the longtime church history professor at St. Vladimir’s Seminary, and arguably the leading authority on American Orthodox history. (Although Fr. John has by no means disappeared, and we hope to see even more of his work now that he is no longer in the classroom.) Also in 2009, our own executive director, Fr. Oliver Herbel, was awarded a PhD in Historical Theology from Saint Louis University. I point this out not only because of Fr. Oliver’s position with SOCHA, but also because he is one of only a handful of academics with an expertise in American Orthodox history.

This year, of course, saw the arrival of SOCHA, our website, and my own podcast on Ancient Faith Radio. The summer’s conference at St. Vladimir’s Seminary paid considerable attention to the question of our history in America. The pan-Orthodox mandate of regional Episcopal Assemblies has also led to a heightened interest in our history — it seems that forward-thinking developments often inspire a reevaluation of the past. That reevaluation is made all the more exciting by new discoveries, such as story of Orthodoxy in colonial Virginia.

In many respects, 2009 has been a year of great tumult and change in American Orthodoxy in general. In terms of our historical thinking, I daresay there has never been a year quite like 2009. I cannot possibly convey my amazement at the sheer numbers of people who want to learn about American Orthodox history. When we started this website, we expected a few dozen, or perhaps a hundred people to follow our work. Instead, it has been thousands.

On behalf of everyone here at SOCHA, I’d like to thank all of you for reading and listening and commenting. We’ve got some big plans for 2010, so stay tuned.

This week, I’ve written about two topics that can be somewhat divisive: clergy dress, and pews. From the feedback I’ve been getting, it seems that some people want me to come down on one side or the other. Should priests wear cassocks everwhere? Should they wear collars? Should our churches have pews, or shouldn’t they?

I have been reticent to get into those questions, for a couple of reasons. First of all, I support neither the vehemently “traditionalist” position, which would require all cassocks all the time and nary a pew in sight, nor the just as vehemently “modernist” side, which would ban all cassocks and mandate a one-hour liturgy with frequent ups and downs in the pews. I’m not this way on every issue, but when it comes to clergy dress and pews, I’ve heard all the arguments on both sides, and I’m pretty middle-of-the-road. Sorry.

But then, there’s a more important issue: should I, as an historian, be required to pass judgment on the people of the past? Must I take a side? Ultimately, I do think the historian can, at times, say of some past decision, “This was a good decision,” or, “This was a bad one.” But we need not always do so. And if I am going to “judge” past decisions, I would rather focus on the broader issue — namely, Americanization in all its forms — than on the narrow question of whether a parish should or should not have installed pews.

And what does “Americanization” involve? Among other things:

• forms of church governance (e.g. trustees; also administrative unity)
• the use of English
• church architecture (including pews)
• music (including organs and mixed choirs)
• clergy appearance (dress, facial hair)
• intermarriage with non-Orthodox
• fasting
• the calendar issue
• reception of American converts

I know that I’m missing other relevant topics, but, when I talk about Americanization, those are the sorts of things that I have in mind. If I’m going to pass any judgments at all, they will be more broad than a simple pro or con. Every one of those issues listed above is complex, and many have both positives and negatives.

And here’s the other thing: nobody — literally, not a single person on this earth — knows enough about American Orthodox history to make those sorts of judgments. At least, not yet. I mean, how many people have deeply studied American Orthodox history — not just one jurisdiction or ethnic group, but the whole field? I think I can number such people on one hand, maybe two. And none of those (including me) are experts, in the sense that someone might be a Civil War expert or an expert in Byzantine history. We’re only beginning to learn our history; it’s a little soon to be making sweeping judgments.

From our privileged position as the latest people in the history of the world (so far), we can sometimes look back and say, “This turned out well,” or, “This turned out poorly.” But you and I don’t yet know why Greek churches began to install pews in the 1920s — I’ve only just learned that they did this in the first place. So, if it’s your idea of a good time, feel free to debate the merits of pews and cassocks and collars all you want. As for me, I will be busy trying to figure out why those decisions were made to begin with. That, I think, is a far more interesting question.

I happened to pick up an old favorite off the bookshelf recently — E.H. Carr’s classic What Is History?, published in 1961. It’s a wonderful little book about the method of history; if you majored in history in college, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of it. It’s not quite Robin Collingwood, but it’s pretty darned close.

Anyway, I ran across this passage, which I’d dog-eared years ago. It had always resonated with me, but, having now presented my unfinished wanderings to the general public over these past five months, it means more to me now than ever.

Laymen — that is to say, non-academic friends or friends from other academic disciplines — sometimes ask me how the historian goes to work when he writes history. The commonest assumption appears to be that the historian divides his work into two sharply distinguishable phases or periods. First, he spends a long preliminary period reading his sources and filling his notebooks with facts: then, when this is over, he puts away his sources, takes out his notebooks, and writes his book from beginning to end.

This is to me an unconvincing and unplausible picture. For myself, as soon as I have got going on a few of what I take to be the capital sources, the itch becomes too strong and I begin to write — not necessarily at the beginning, but somewhere, anywhere. Thereafter, reading and writing go on simultaneously. The writing is added to, subtracted from, re-shaped, cancelled, as I go on reading. The reading is guided and directed and made fruitful by the writing: the more I write, the more I know what I am looking for, the better I understand the significance and relevance of what I find. [...]

I am convinced that, for any historian worth the name, the two processes of what economists call “input” and “output” go on simultaneously and are, in practice, parts of a single process. If you try to separate them, or to give one priority over the other, you fall into one of two heresies. Either you write scissors-and-paste history without meaning or significance; or you write propaganda or historical fiction, and merely use facts of the past to embroider a kind of writing which has nothing to do with history.

Before I started writing almost daily here at OrthodoxHistory.org, I kept copious notes of my research findings. I drafted and re-drafted dozens of articles — some long, some short, but none for immediate publication. I wrote, with myself as my only audience, because I could not resist the urge to write. And as Carr said, the act of writing fueled the act of researching, and led me to grapple with the evidence and better understand it in the process.

Now that I write for public consumption, that process has only intensified. I still keep private notes (hundreds of pages’ worth, by now), but I also put a lot of my unfinished work here at OH.org. I have been pleasantly surprised to find so many people who are also interested in American Orthodox history, and many of you have turned the tables, writing to me and, in the process, teaching me and forcing me to look at my own research in a fresh light. The whole experience has been extremely gratifying.

So, in this season of Thanksgiving here in the United States, I would like to thank each of you who read what we write here at OrthodoxHistory.org, be it on the website itself, on Facebook, on Google Reader, or via some other means. I am humbled that you would take the time to read our work, and I am very happy to know that there are thousands of you out there who care about this subject. I know I speak for all of us here at SOCHA when I say: Thank you.

One issue that has come to the fore in discussions at SOCHA’s website has been the use of historical sources. This got me thinking about what it means to be an historical theologian. It is not strictly the same as being an historian, though members of SOCHA, such as Matthew Namee, may consider themselves to be precisely that. Yet, historical theology is not systematic theology or philosophical theology. It is, after all, historical. So, where to start?

Let me start with the term theologian in historical theologian. Evagrios, though not a saint of the Church, did correctly note that a theologian is “he who prays rightly.” Theologians pray. They become spiritual fathers and leaders. They defend the faith. They build up the Body of Christ. Sometimes, they even heal people, feed people through miracles, and raise the dead. That is what theologians do when they “do theology.”

When combined with a contemporary, Western understanding of “theology,” which tends to mean treatises and reflections about God and Christianity, theology serves to articulate a vision of God, to uplift the faithful, to defend the faith, to express discernment, and to further a life of prayerful contemplation. This sort of theology does so making use of systematic, philosophical methods with contemporary concerns in mind (e.g., how does the Christian faith affect women and minorities?). Therefore, Orthodox theology in our current context is a movement from active prayer and contemplation and asceticism to intellectual apprehension and articulation of one’s spiritual experience(s).

What makes the historical theologian unique is that he or she does not concentrate only on the systematic and philosophical, but descends into the murkiness of the historical, for all that it implies, including overlap with anthropology, archaeology, and sociology. This assumes, of course, that the “historical theologian” brings his or her own experience and questions to historical studies. For this reason, an ascetic rigor of dispassionate openness to the historical evidence becomes paramount. Indeed, the historical theologian can only be faithful to the historical witness if he or she is able to maintain a healthy balance and dispassion in the face of his or her own theological experience and questions. Dispassion is a key factor here, but not in the sense of not caring, but in the sense of fighting the passions. The historical theologian must never allow an agenda to have a passionate hold on his or her own soul.

The basis for this understanding lies not so much in the historical distance between the Orthodox historical theologian and the people and events under study, but in the deifying or sanctifying distance that lies between the historical theologian and people and events in question. For God is the God of the living, and a cloud of witnesses surrounds and uplifts the historical theologian as he or she engages in prayer within an essentially structured community. In this experience, the difference in sanctification between a saint, or the witness of the fathers, and the historical theologian becomes all too obvious. Therefore, as a matter of humility, the Orthodox historical theologian seeks to learn from God’s presence in his saints throughout all the ages, and so remains open to the historical context rather than simply and anachronistically applying a contemporary and personal agenda.

The results of the historical investigation are then brought to bear upon the theological expressions at the systematic and philosophical level. In turn, these re-investigated expressions and understandings are applied to the realm of theology proper (prayer, discernment, and Christian action within the community).

“Historical theology,” therefore, denotes a circular process. It does not exist as an end in itself, but constantly evokes reflection and investigation on the part of the religious scholar. This process begins with an ascetic prayer life, expresses that experience through academic intellectual means, embraces and investigates history, and applies the results of historical inquiry to the academic intellectual expressions, which together shape prayer. As such, this circle is not a continual repeating of the same things, but the same process experienced anew each time. When done properly, historical theology becomes one small means by which we can circle the mind back up that downward spiral we have created since the first moment of Adam and Eve’s existence.

Back in June, I gave a paper at St. Vladimir’s Seminary entitled, “The Myth of Past Unity and the Origins of Jurisdictional Pluralism in American Orthodoxy.” The unwieldy title notwithstanding, the premise of my paper was simple: that the commonly-held story of a unified American Orthodoxy which fragmented after the Russian Revolution is, quite simply, not accurate. In fact, administrative division has been part and parcel of Orthodox life in the United States from the very beginning.

In my latest American Orthodox History podcast on Ancient Faith Radio, I interviewed our own Fr. Andrew Damick on the “American Orthodox Catholic Church,” which was an attempt, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, to form a single American Orthodox jurisdiction. This is part of my miniseries on past attempts at administrative unity.

In that interview, Fr. Andrew explained that it was from the American Orthodox Catholic Church (henceforth, “AOCC”) that the “myth of past unity” originated. Until the AOCC came along in 1927, nobody, so far as I can tell, ever claimed that all of American Orthodoxy was administratively united prior to 1917. Sure, from time to time, Russian church leaders would claim that everyone should have been under their authority. That was the ideal, but it was obvious enough to everyone at the time that the ideal wasn’t being lived out in practice. It was only later, with the advent of the AOCC, that people started saying that administrative unity had been a fact prior to 1917.

Who first made this claim? As best I can tell, it was Fr. Boris Burden, one of the leading priests in the AOCC. In 1927, Burden wrote,

The advent of Greek-speaking Orthodox Catholics followed this establishment of the Russian Hierarchy by many years, and the early Greek churches and faithful were naturally and canonically under the protection and care of the Orthodox Catholic jurisdiction thus established by the Russian Holy Synod for all American Orthodox residents. [...]

For nearly fifty years after the Russian Hierarchy in America had thus established the first Greek church in this country [in New Orleans,] Greek churches and faithful continued to increase and multiply under the care and authority of the Russian Bishops of America. [...]

We have viewed the history of all these [ethnic groups] in outline down to the period just preceding the World War and seen them, at that time, united solidly under one Hierarchy of the Church in America established for them by the Russian Holy Synod.

Burden wrote that in the first issue of the Orthodox Catholic Review, the short-lived official publication of the AOCC. I won’t bother to refute Burden’s assertions here, since I’ve done that elsewhere. But it’s worth noting that Burden himself only converted to Orthodoxy in the early 1920s, so he wasn’t personally around during the supposed period of blissful unity.

A couple years after Burden’s article in the Orthodox Catholic Review, the head of the AOCC, Archbishop Aftimios Ofiesh, propounded the myth in a series of letters to Archbishop Alexander Demoglou, who was the head of the Greek Archdiocese. These letters appear in Volume II of Paul Manolis’ The History of the Greek Church in America in Acts and Documents. On January 15, 1929, Aftimios wrote,

[...] I secured from the Synod of Russian Bishops in America, who alone exercise the sole and exclusive canonical jurisdiction and authority in America held solely by the Patriarchate of Moscow from 1764 to 1927, the right and authority to establish and conduct an independent American Orthodox Church.

Aftimios repeatedly referred to the “sole and exclusive” canonical authority of the Russian Church in America, which established the AOCC, but at the same time he spoke of the AOCC itself as the “sole canonical jurisdiction” in America. He said that, for 130 years, the Russian Church had “undisputed [...] administration over all Orthodox people in America.”

Aftimios repeated his claims in another letter, dated February 14. Echoing Fr. Boris Burden, he wrote, “[I]n 1860 the first Greek-speaking church was dedicated in the United States with its Greek Priest [...] under and by the sole and exclusive Russian canonical authority and all without ever a word of protest or claim of jurisdiction on the part of Constantinople.” He went on to say that “the first intimation of any Constantinopolitan claim of American jurisdiction” came in the 1908 Tomos of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, in which the EP gave over its authority in America to the Church of Greece. Aftimios continued:

In characterizing any claim to Orthodox jurisdiction in America other than the Russian as recent, uncanonical, and unhistorical no offence is intended — only the truth is stated plainly and the foundation of the true American jurisdiction derived from the Russian Bishops set forth in essential contrast to others. All others not derived from the Russian Bishops are recent, because they have appeared only during the last twenty years of more than a hundred and fifty years of American Orthodoxy, uncanonical, because they deliberately ignore the Sacred Canons [...] and unhistorical, because they ignore the fact of a long Orthodox history in America under Russian Jurisdiction still continuing and still canonically excluding their claims.

Archbishop Alexander was not impressed. On February 23, he wrote to Aftimios, “[A]s long as Alaska was a Russian territory, the Russians had jurisdiction in their own house, but it makes a great difference thence to jump to Canada, to the United States, etc.”

That logic is reasonable; unfortunately, Alexander had a claim of his own to make. He went on, “The jurisdiction over all Orthodox in the Diaspora, including the whole Western Hemisphere, which includes Alaska as well, being no more a Russian territory, belongs undisputably to the Oecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.”

A few days later, in another letter, Alexander said,

It is not true that any group of Greeks in America did ever willingly recognize the asserted Russian jurisdiction in America. [...] And not only the Greeks, but also the most important sections of other Orthodox nationalities in America, did and do reject Russian jurisdiction. [...]  Thus, your assertion that the Russian Church and its creations in America were universally accepted by the Orthodox people in America, and that they “governed the whole North American Province undisputedly, peacefuly and without opposition”, falls to pieces.

Basically, what we have here are dueling claims to exclusive jurisdiction, with Alexander appealing to Canon 28 of Chalcedon, and Aftimios holding to what might be called the “flag-planting theory.” And, to support his claims, Aftimios also espoused the myth of past unity, saying that not only did Russia have rightful jurisdiction in America, but that everyone — Greeks included — acknowledged it.

How did the leaders of the AOCC come up with this rendition of history? It makes sense that a newcomer like Fr. Boris Burden might not know the true story, but Aftimios Ofiesh had been in America since 1905. He certainly knew full well that there were numerous Greek and other Orthodox parishes which had no connection at all to the Russian Mission well before the First World War.

I suspect what was really happening was spin, pure and simple. The legitimacy of the AOCC depended entirely upon the legitimacy of the Russian Mission in America. If the Russian Mission wasn’t the “sole and exclusive canonical authority” in the New World, then the mission of the AOCC was in jeopardy. That explains why Aftimios would hold to the flag-planting theory, but why bother concocting an obviously false story about everyone actually being under one jurisdiction until 1917?

Well, really, Abp Alexander was right, partly: it was one thing for the Russians to claim Alaska, but to jump from there to Canada, Florida, and all points in between was another matter entirely. To really secure his claim that the Russians were the rightful authority, Aftimios (and Burden) had to act like everyone — the EP included — accepted this reality. He had to act like the very notion that America was up for grabs was, itself, a novel concept. Then, he could make another jump and claim that he, as head of the AOCC, held  “sole and exclusive canonical authority” over all of America.

Nobody really believed Aftimios when he made that claim, but the broader myth of unity has hung around a lot longer, all the way up to the present.

ONE MORE THING: A couple of disclaimers, here at the end… I am not saying that the Russian Mission was not the rightful canonical authority in America. I’m not saying that they were, either; as I’ve said before, the question of what was is different than the question of what should have been.

Also, I promised I wouldn’t refute the myth of unity here, but I realized that using the term “myth” might cause some controversy, so I feel like I should justify myself. Here is my point:

• American Orthodoxy didn’t really exist prior to 1890. There was Alaskan Orthodoxy, and there were parishes in San Francisco and New Orleans, but the United States proper just didn’t have a significant Orthodox presence until after 1890.
• As soon as Orthodox parishes started popping up in the US after 1890, there was jurisdictional pluralism. This is a well-documented fact.

Thus, the “myth of unity” is a myth in multiple senses. One definition of “myth” is as follows:

A traditional or legendary story, usually concerning some being or hero or event, with or without a determinable basis of fact or a natural explanation.

Whether you agree with my conclusions or not, the “myth of unity” fits this definition. It is a commonly held simplification of our past. Of course, “myth” also has negative connotations, as in, a false story, a fiction. An alternate definition of the word is, “an unproved or false collective belief that is used to justify a social institution.” I would argue that the “myth of unity” fits this category as well. It is based in truth — in the ideal of the Russian Mission — but it isn’t accurate, and it is often used as a bludgeon with which some American Orthodox Christians beat others over the head.

I thought I’d let all the readers of this website know that I’ve launched a bit of a miniseries on my Ancient Faith Radio podcast. For the next five or six episodes, I’ll be interviewing experts (and SOCHA members) Fr. John Erickson, Fr. Andrew Damick, and Fr. Oliver Herbel. In each interview, we’ll be talking about a different historical attempt at American Orthodox administrative unity. The first episode, which went live late this afternoon, is Part 1 of an interview with Fr. John on the subject of the Russian Mission in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Here’s the plan for the miniseries:

• Fr. John Erickson on the Russian Mission (1890s-1910s) (2 parts)
• Fr. Andrew Damick on Abp Aftimios Ofiesh’s American Orthodox Catholic Church (1920s/1930s)
• Fr. Oliver Herbel on the Federated Greek Orthodox Catholic Primary Jurisdictions in America (1940s)
• Fr. John Erickson on SCOBA (1960s-present)
• Fr. John Erickson on the OCA (1970-present)

Every single one of those efforts tried, in different ways and with different specific goals, to bring together Orthodox Americans of various ethnic backgrounds. And while each of those groups accomplished some significant things, none of them has resulted in a single, unified, canonically-regular American Orthodox Church. In unpacking their stories, we will, in part, be unpacking the story of American Orthodoxy. By the end, I hope we’ll all (myself included) have a much fuller understanding of just how we got where we are today.

All of this, of course, is done with a present elephant in the room — IV Chambesy, and the upcoming first meeting of the North American Episcopal Assembly in late May 2010. Can Chambesy succeed where others have failed? And how exactly is Chambesy any different than these past efforts? By the end of this miniseries, I hope we’ll all have a better understanding of all that.

Interested parties may be interested(!) in taking a look at this essay by Richard Barrett: American Orthodox Christian Historiography: The Methodological Problem.

Yesterday, we announced the addition of some new pages on the SOCHA website, including a Resources page. In the past day, we’ve added links to dozens and dozens of web pages that deal with various aspects of American Orthodox history. There’s actually a huge quantity of material out there on the Internet, freely available, but it’s scattered among a confusing array of websites. Hopefully, with the Resources section of our site, we’ll make sifting through all that material a bit easier for researchers.

I’d like to highlight one part of the Resources page in particular: the Parish Histories. At this writing, we have links to the histories of 103 different Orthodox parishes in the U.S. and Canada, and we’ll be adding more. Many of these parishes are old, with histories dating to before World War II (and most going back long before that). Individually, these parish histories may be interesting, but they can only tell us so much about American Orthodoxy in general. Taken together, though, they provide a valuable insight into the history of Orthodoxy in America as a whole.

If you study historiography, you’ll quickly become acquainted with the “Great Man” theory of history. This theory was popular in the 19th century, and Wikipedia defines it as “a philosophical theory that aims to explain history by the impact of ‘Great men,’ or heroes.” In other words, when you do history — so the theory goes — you should focus on the “great men”: kings, presidents, generals, and statesmen. If you extend that to Church history, it means you should focus on bishops, saints, and prominent theologians.

The Great Man Theory is no longer popular among academic historians, but it still holds sway among many in the Orthodox Church. It’s one reason why so many people just can’t wrap their minds around the idea that all the Orthodox in America were not a part of the Russian Mission prior to 1917. “The only bishops were Russian,” the argument goes, “ergo, all the Orthodox were under the Russians.”

This way of thinking tends to marginalize the laity and most parish clergy (with the rare exception of prominent priests like St Alexis Toth). But of course, the Church is not just the hierarchy. It is composed of the whole body of the faithful — bishops, priests, and non-clergy alike. The overwhelming majority of clergy are not bishops, and the overwhelming majority of Orthodox Christians are not clergymen at all. To ignore the priests and their flocks is to ignore more than 99% of the Church.

So when I do history, I try to pay special attention to the way things were “on the ground” — at the local level. That means reading old local newspapers, scouring the Internet for parish histories, and even calling dozens of parishes to ask questions. This sort of local history, repeated countless times, is the only way to answer many of the most interesting questions about our past. For instance: When and why were pews introduced into American Orthodox churches? How about organs? I’ve heard the same old answers over the years, but until now, nobody has bothered to systematically study the issue. What did American Orthodox clergy wear in the early 1900s? How many priests shaved, and how many had beards? Were the Russians more “conservative” than the Greeks, or was it the other way around? Did communities tend to construct their own churches, or buy existing Protestant buildings? How often did parishes change clergy? What percentage of American Orthodox were women? How about children? How prevalent was the use of English in church services, and how did that change over time?

To answer these and a thousand other questions, you have to look individual, local communities. The good news is, you can now do a lot of that research without getting into a car or catching a plane. Most established Orthodox parishes now have their own websites, and those websites usually include a parish history. (And, as an aside, many parishes have hard-working parish historians, and we hope SOCHA can help network those people.) If you want an overview of American Orthodox history, you can buy Fr John Erickson’s simple but enlightening Orthodox Christians in America: A Short History. But if you want to know more, take a look at our Resources page, and especially the Parish Histories section.

On today’s episode of my American Orthodox History podcast, we’re airing my talk, “The Myth of Past Unity,” given at the St Vladimir’s Seminary conference in June. For video of that lecture, click here.

I wrote an “author’s note” to go at the end of my paper. I didn’t have the opportunity to read that note at the conference, but I’m reprinting it here:

I am a lifelong Orthodox Christian of Lebanese descent, and I was raised in and am a member of the Antiochian Archdiocese. I have long been a proponent of Orthodox administrative unity in America, and I grew up wholly believing what I have now termed the “myth of unity.” When I began the research which ultimately led to this paper, my goal was to compile primary source documentation to support the view of the American Orthodox past as a “golden age.” I expected to find many and various pieces of evidence which would testify to the pre-1917 unity of American Orthodoxy, and I intended to publish this evidence in a book. This would, so I thought, help further the present cause of unity.

In the process of my research, it became apparent to me that the golden age of unity never actually existed. In fact, what I discovered was a great volume of evidence which directly contradicted this view. I reached my conclusions with not a small measure of disappointment, as it is always difficult to experience the virtual debunking of a long-held belief. However, I felt an obligation to continue my research and document, as best I could, the actual American Orthodox past. As I have done this, my perspective has changed. While I am still a very strong advocate of administrative unity – perhaps even more so than I was at the outset of my study – I no longer view the truth of the past as a disappointment or an obstacle. Quite the opposite: as I have argued in the conclusion to my paper, I consider the real past to be more positive, more encouraging, and more helpful to the present and future unity efforts than the old myth.

In this paper, I have singled out, among others, Fr. Alexander Schmemann as a prime advocate of the myth of unity. I have done this with some trepidation, as I am a great admirer of Schmemann. More than any other writer, he has had a profound influence on my life, and I consider his book For the Life of the World to be a defining text for me. While he was not principally an historian, his Historical Road of Eastern Orthodoxy is an admirable study of Church history. In his journals, he writes, “Ideally, the study of Church history should liberate people from enslavement to the past, which is rather typical for the Orthodox consciousness… I remember how slowly I became liberated from idealizing Byzantium, Old Russia, etc.” He goes on to say,

The historical events of the Church – such as the Ecumenical Councils – are important inasmuch as they are an answer to the world, an affirmation of salvation and transfiguration. As soon as they are absolutized, as soon as they gain a value per se, and not as related to the world; in other words, as soon as we transform them into sacred history, we deprive them of their genuine value and meaning. Therefore, the prerequisite for the study of church history must be to liberate it from being a sacred absolute, and not to be enslaved by it – which is so often a burden on Orthodoxy.

[Entry for Tuesday, November 12, 1974, published in The Journals of Father Alexander Schmemann: 1973-1983 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2000), 53-54.]

Schmemann unintentionally fails to follow these principles when he engages the American Orthodox past. Yet this is understandable: he engages that past not as a scholar but as an advocate for unity in the 1960s and 1970s. He – who, it should be remembered, arrived in America decades after the supposed golden age had ended – seeks, with the best of intentions, to use history as a tool to achieve a worthy end in the present. Because of his influence, I have had little choice but to quote and rebut him in particular. In doing this, however, I have meant no disrespect, and my high regard for Schmemann has in no way been diminished.

In making these clarifications, I hope I have demonstrated that I have not written this paper as an attack on any person or persons, and I have certainly not intended to hamper the effort for American Orthodox unity. I believe that an honest and accurate reading of our past is actually a step towards that unity, rather than away from it.

Those of us who are doing the tinkering on the machinery of the newly founded SOCHA have been astounded by the outpouring of attention that our site has received. From the stats, we’re getting around 200 views per day on the site, and we now have more than 500 fans following us on Facebook (from less than 10 three weeks ago). There clearly seems to be a building interest in the subjects that are being covered here.

I believe it’s thus important for us to comment every so often on why it is we’re doing this work. I can’t speak directly for the other members of the Executive Board, but we’ve spoken about this, and I think they’re of similar minds. (You can listen to Matthew talk about why he thinks this subject is important on his inaugural podcast from May 5.)

As for myself, I got interested in the subject of American Orthodox history most particularly while I was in seminary. Initially, I started looking into our common history because while in seminary I ran (for the first time in my Orthodox life) headlong into some rather shrill jurisdictional agendas, most of them being based on historical claims. Though I had never really bothered much with such things in parish life prior to seminary, I found it all strangely compelling. At first, this is what I spent most of my historical reading time on, trying to determine whether the claims really had any merit. Over time, though, I started running into stories that I found a lot more interesting than the claims about who was “here first” or whatnot. (I also came to the conclusion that it didn’t really matter who was here first, both because that wouldn’t help us now and also because the canonical tradition actually doesn’t support ecclesiastical flag-planting.)

Some of the stories seemed mainly irrelevant to the issues of jurisdiction, claims, etc., such as the queer tale of Archbishop Aftimios Ofiesh (regarding whom I did my M.Div. thesis). But what tied many of them together, if only in a certain culturally thematic way, is the question of unity.

I believe I speak for all the core members of SOCHA when I say that we want unity of every sort in Orthodox America. (That’s not a party line, though, mind you. It just happens to be what all of us want.) So that leads us to the question of why we decided to form the Society and why we took the step of making this website our first major project together.

I believe our true motivation comes down to the sheer joy of the narrative. There is something ugly about subjecting a narrative to an agenda, and it distorts not only the historical record itself but also the humanity and humaneness which are inherent in all stories about God’s sons and daughters. Ideology is not the same as theology or history. The latter two are much more akin to each other than either are to the former. In all true theology, we have a narrative into which we find ourselves initiated. The Gospel itself takes the form of a story. Thus, history is something like the Gospel and may well communicate the Gospel. And we know that History, when revealed in the eschaton in all its grandness and glory, will indeed reveal the Gospel. We will have found that all human history was really the Gospel all along.

Thus, we study history and try to learn the stories of our forebears in the faith, not merely so we can “learn from” the past, but so we can enter into the story itself. American Orthodox Christian history is really far more fascinating, varied and diverse than any of the jurisdictional ideologues prefer to admit, because it impinges upon their systems. Nothing can be admitted into those hermetically sealed thought systems except what feeds the ideology.

But as we sift through the letters, newspaper clippings, photographs, documents, oral histories, and so on which constitute the archaeological flotsam and jetsam of the historian, we discover something so much more wonderful than a “rightful” claim to jurisdiction. There is even a greatness and dignity that we can see in people only after they are departed from this life. In all that historical matter we may actually see Christ, because a true engagement with sources without any ideology demanding their service always yields things that are far more surprising and delightful. In the end, it’s mankind we see, and through him, often quite unexpectedly, we also see his Creator.

So, that’s why I love American Orthodox history.

In various places on the Internet, there have been debates and discussions concerning the question of Orthodox administrative unity prior to 1921. Often, people seem to be talking past one another. The issue of “Orthodox unity” actually encompasses a variety of areas, some of them historical, some not. I thought I would try to summarize just what those areas are.

The Historical Question: What was

Some, including myself and Fr Oliver Herbel, have made the argument that early American Orthodoxy was not administratively united. This is simply an expression of the reality on the ground, so to speak. The once-common (but increasingly rare) claim that all Orthodox in America were members of the Russian Mission prior to the foundation of the Greek Archdiocese in 1921 is simply untrue. Rather, all the evidence points to a chaotic, confusing administrative situation well before that.

I should also note that the only way to answer this question is to delve into the sources. One must engage historical evidence to be able to answer the question, “What was it like?”

The Canonical Question: What should have been

Whether everyone was a part of the Russian Mission is one question. Whether they all should have been a part of the Russian Mission is another issue entirely, and one to which historical facts are only somewhat relevant.

Some say that, because the Russian Mission was the first Orthodox Church to establish itself on the North American continent, it had de jure jurisdiction over the entire land, from Alaska to Florida and all points in between. Following this logic, any priest, parish, or parishioner who was not a member of the Russian Mission was “uncanonical.” Others contend that the Ecumenical Patriarch has jurisdiction over all “new territories” anywhere in the world.

Regardless of where you stand on this issue, it is only somewhat “historical.” More significant are the canonical presuppositions that underlie the argument. Is it in fact true that the first Church to “plant its flag” on a piece of land “gets” that entire land, from a canonical standpoint? Or is it true that the Ecumenical Patriarch has authority over all “new territories”?

I’m not a canonist, but for what it’s worth, my own answer is, “Neither.” I would argue that America presents an entirely new situation for Orthodoxy, and one for which there is very little guidance in the canons. Our corpus of canon law was mostly set down in the Byzantine era, a time when the world was smaller and the Church was very closely aligned with the State. It doesn’t seem to me that church leaders in the fourth or the fourteenth centuries were thinking about an entirely undiscovered hemisphere and how it would be governed. Because America presents a new problem for Orthodoxy, I believe we need to come to a new consensus, and possibly produce new canons to ensure that Orthodox ecclesiology is preserved in this unusual situation. The recent meetings in Chambesy are an extremely positive step in this regard.

In any event, this is a matter less for historians than for canon lawyers.

The Present Question: What should be

It seems to me that many who engage in debates regarding Orthodox unity in America confuse the historical and canonical questions with this, the question of what should be. This is not a directly historical issue. Should we all join the OCA? Should we all be under the Ecumenical Patriarch? Should SCOBA (or, now, the new Episcopal Assembly) become the new model for American Orthodox unity?

Just before I presented my paper, “The Myth of Unity,” at St Vladimir’s Seminary in June, another presenter warned me that, while I did not necessarily intend it, my arguments would be co-opted by the Ecumenical Patriarchate and used to justify an EP agenda in America. This presenter seemed to feel that, if the facts were inconvenient, they were best ignored.

The thing is, I am an historian. The purpose of my paper was to explore what was. What should be is a question that must be answered by the hierarchs, canonists, and American Orthodox faithful today. It is important for us to know how things were in the past, because such knowledge is essential in understanding how we got where we are today. That said, the past does not have to be a model for the future. It certainly should not be a bludgeon with which we batter our ecclesiastical “opponents” into submission.

Bottom line, the argument that there was not, in the past, a period of administrative unity under the Russian Church, is not a threat to unity today. And as an historian, I refuse to cater to the agendas of anybody, be they the OCA, the EP, or some other acronym. Historians are at their best when they deal with history, which is why people like Fr Oliver and I have focused so much attention on the first (historical) question. The canonical question — what should have been – is a bit of a minefield, and it has only partial relevance to the present day. And as for that present day, I am personally quite encouraged by recent developments, and I look forward to a future when American Orthodoxy will, at long last, be administratively united.

Interested parties may care to look at this post from the American Orthodox Institute weblog commenting on the SOCHA website. The comments section contains some notable material, as well, highlighting what SOCHA members feel is vital: an earnest engagement with the primary sources of American Orthodox history unencumbered by jurisdictional agendas.

Readers may be interested to read the following two columns from 2005, written by Theophilus Eardwine and appearing on the OrthodoxyToday website. Both are notable in that they deny the commonly held notion that pre-1921 Orthodoxy in America was united under the Russian Archdiocese, something that in 2005 was unthinkable in many circles. The first column is a response to a 2005 article by the now-retired Bp. Nikolai (Soraich) of Sitka, while the second is a more generally addressed column.

• Sobornost: Uniting Orthodoxy in America, February 19, 2005

• De-Mythologizing American Orthodox History, July 22, 2005

The second column is incorrect in at least one point: Germanos Shehadi was not sent to the U.S. by the Antiochian synod in Damascus, but was here on his own recognizance, eventually staying against the express wishes of the synod.

Readers may be interested to take a look at an informal “debate” which took place on the OCANews.org website in April and May of 2009 between SOCHA member Fr. Oliver Herbel and George C. Michalopulos on the subject of the unity of Orthodox administration in America prior to the establishment of the Greek Archdiocese. Here are the posts, in chronological order:

• Jurisdictional Disunity and the Russian Mission, by Fr. Oliver (April 22)

• A Response to Fr. Oliver Herbel, by Michalopulos (April 27)
• A Response to Some Objections, by Fr. Oliver (May 1)
• A Letter to Fr. Oliver, by Michalopulos (May 28)

Fr. Oliver Herbel is a priest of the OCA currently on loan and serving at an Antiochian parish in Fargo, ND. He holds a Ph.D. from Saint Louis University in Historical Theology, and his doctoral dissertation covers patterns of conversion in American Orthodox history. George C. Michalopulos is a layman in the OCA and the co-author of the book The American Orthodox Church: A History of its Beginnings (see an interesting review of this book here).

The above discussion is particularly of note for those interested in history and historiography in that two different historical approaches are being taken by the interlocutors: one which is dedicated to examining primary sources and trying to tell the story from them, and the other, which is more concerned with an ecclesio-political agenda of how and on what basis administrative unity may be achieved. These approaches are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but used as starting points, they clearly yield different results.

Anyone who has made a comparative study of the history of Orthodox Christianity in North America has probably quickly surmised that there is something of a historiographical problem.  That is, the writing of the history of Orthodox Christianity in America has been plagued with jurisdictional squabbles, claims to primacy and other agendas, often with little attention to what primary sources actually yield up as the story contained within them.  Myths and ideology have often dominated these histories, rather than a close reading of historical documents.

With the formation of the Society for Orthodox Christian History in the Americas (SOCHA), the membership desires to begin to shift the approach to studying and writing the history of Orthodoxy in the Americas (and elsewhere, of course, should members desire it) to reflect an earnest engagement with primary sources.  There is no jurisdictional agenda attached to SOCHA, and there is no specific ideology or philosophy which members are required to share, excepting only the basic integrity crucial to historical study and the honesty required to have one’s premises challenged and revised should the evidence warrant it.

This site will host essays, links to podcasts, book reviews, tidbits discovered in the course of research, photographs, and more.  Stay tuned.