In its early years, the Russian cathedral in San Francisco had a number of homes, including:

• 3241 Mission St. (the home of a parishioner named Mr. Seculovich)
• 509 Greenwich St.
• 911 Jackson St.
• 1108 Pierce St.
• 829 Greenwich St. (owned by a German Lutheran church)
• 1713 Powell St.

Most of those buildings were occupied for only a few years each, but in the Powell St. location, the cathedral found a long-term home. They took up residence there in 1881, and remained at that address until the 1906 earthquake. The present cathedral was built on Green St., in 1909.

In 1889, the Powell St. cathedral was seriously damaged in a fire, and had to be completely renovated. There were all kinds of conspiracy theories about the cause of the blaze, and many parishioners suspected arson. This took place in the middle of the Bishop Vladimir scandals. I’ll talk about those scandals, and the fire itself, another time. Today, I want to present a rather exciting new discovery — photos of the Powell St. cathedral both before the fire, and after the 1889 renovation.

Here is the “before” shot, taken sometime in the 1880s:

And here is a photo of the cathedral after the renovation. This latter image is from sometime in the 1890s:

The latter photo appears in the 1975 OCA book Orthodox America: 1794-1976, but I don’t know if any Orthodox are aware of the existence of the earlier image. Taken together, these two photos clearly show how dramatic the 1889 renovation was.

UPDATE: I had erroneously said that the Powell Street cathedral was occupied until 1909. In fact, it was destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. I’ve corrected the above text to indicate this.

In the comments, Fr. Andrew Damick posted a link to another photo of the post-1889 Powell St. cathedral. It appears to be from the back of the church, and it’s such a great shot that I have to post it here:

On Friday morning, many of us in the American Orthodox world learned of the untimely repose of His Eminence, Archbishop Job, bishop of Chicago and the Diocese of the Midwest in the OCA.  This is sad news for both the OCA and the Orthodox Churches in America across jurisdictional lines.  As the member of the executive board of SOCHA who is in the OCA and as one whose life has been directly affected by him, I have decided to write a personal reflection on what his ministry means to me and what I hope it can mean to us in America as we move forward.

On January 18, 2003, Archbishop Job ordained me to the priesthood at Holy Trinity Orthodox Church in St. Paul, Minnesota.  Following this liturgy, knowingly in the presence of extended family who were not Orthodox, he gave basic but important pastoral advice that I remember to this day—a priest must love his parishioners.  Love must come above all other feelings.  Everything must be done out of love for them.  I am sure I am hardly alone.  I would think that all priests remember the advice given to them on the day of their ordination.  Perhaps, this was Archbishop Job’s standard admonition at priestly ordinations.  Regardless, this advice speaks of the concern His Eminence had for the life of the Church.  It must be founded on love because that is how people are to know that we are the true followers of Christ.  That is our evangelism!  If a person wants to know how to succeed in parish life, both in terms of sustaining the life already there and increasing the life of the parish, one need only read St. John the Theologian’s epistles.  We don’t need schemes and programs.  We need love.

Not long after my ordination, he showed me that love personally.  I had applied to a few doctoral programs in the Midwest, but had heard negatively from all but one.   Therefore, I was likely soon to be assigned to a mission in the Upper Midwest.  Not long after +Job and I had begun discussing the details, Saint Louis University, the only school from which I had not yet heard, accepted me and offered me a research assistantship to cover my costs.  I did not know what to do, so Lorie and I received counsel from two priests whom we trusted.  They suggested we lay it out before +Job, which we did.  His Eminence, being reasonable and prudent, agreed with the perspective of these priests, that academic doors do not open often, and gave me his blessing to attend SLU.  He knew of our commitment to being in the Diocese of the Midwest and he spoke of how things are directed by God’s providence.  Not all bishops would have done this, but Archbishop Job did.  He has done much more for other priests, for I have seen that as well.  Mine is but a small example of how he loved his priests.

As a pastor who has spent several years attached to another parish, where I assisted the rector in his ministry, and who has been pastoring a mission with its own turbulant yet admirable history, I have come to see the full dimensions of what it means for a priest to love his congregation.  When times are difficult, we are there.  When times are good, we are there.  When people cower in the sight of parish life and run, we remember that love entails free will and allow them such freedom, all the while keeping the door open for their return.   When parishioners struggle with aspects of Church life or tradition, or even something we have said, we show patience and endurance.  In rare cases, we even know that loving the congregation means the vine must occasionally be pruned, painful though this process is to all.  We also know that when the times are difficult, we are the ones who must step up and take the blame, for we will receive it, and when times are joyous, we praise the parish.

Archbishop Job himself knew of the struggles of loving the flock under his care.  I have seen him in deanery meetings, providing solutions to problems.  We have all seen him as he stood up and asked whether the allegations of financial misconduct were true or false.  Yes, it is true that it took behind-the-scenes cajoling and much support to encourage him but he did it.  He asked the question all other OCA bishops were too scared to ask or refused to ask.  What he did was not miraculous, but it was episcopal, it was what a bishop must do—ultimately, when push comes to shove, stand for what is good and true.  Would that the Churches in America would have many bishops willing to ask such questions and take such stands!

We have also seen His Eminence demonstrate extreme humility even when there was no need to do so.  We know he prostrated before Bishop Nikolai and asked forgiveness.  This was unnecessary, but in the heat of the moment, Archbishop Job chose to forego any pretense, even though there would have been no sin at all not to have done this.

Recently, I and the parishioners here in Fargo, North Dakota, also benefitted from his willingness to stand firm and further the development of Orthodox Christianity within the diocese of the midwest.  Archbishop Job responded to the actions and appeals of the faithful themselves.  Not every bishop would have done this, but he did what he felt was best for the growth of Orthodoxy in the Upper Midwest.

Ultimately, it is this concern for the ongoing health of Orthodoxy that I hope we take from his memory.  He cared about the health of Orthodoxy in the Midwest.  We must care for the health of Orthodoxy wherever we are.  Without good health, it will not matter what methods are devised for uniting Orthodox jurisdictions in America.  Without good health, it will not matter what we enact in our parishes to build them into even more loving communities.  Without good health, we will fall far too short of the glory of God to attract others or save ourselves.  Archbishop Job has served Christ’s Holy Church to this end.  May we do the same, and may his memory be eternal!

The longest-serving hierarch in American Orthodox history was Abp. Kyrill Yonchev (1964-2007), until late this past June, when his record tenure of nearly 43 years was exceeded by Metr. Philip Saliba of the Antiochian Archdiocese. Kyrill was well-known and well-loved as the OCA’s diocesan bishop for Western Pennsylvania as well as its Bulgarian diocese. What is perhaps less well-known is how the OCA came to have a Bulgarian diocese.

The OCA’s Bulgarian diocese, like one of its other ethnically defined dioceses (the Romanian), had its origins in a schism within the American jurisdiction of an Orthodox church based in a then-Communist nation. In both cases, there were factions dedicated to remaining within the canonical purview of the mother churches, but there were also factions who felt that such a stance represented capitulation to Communism, which had, to one extent or another, compromised the church authorities in the homeland. Communism split not only the Bulgarians and Romanians in America, but also the Russians and Serbs. (Of these, only the Serbs have subsequently reunited.)

In the case of the Bulgarian diocese, the dissent against Metr. Andrei Petkov, the bishop aligned with the homeland, was led by one of his clergy, an archimandrite named Kyrill Yonchev. During World War II, Andrei broke relations with authorities in Bulgaria, and then in the late 1950s petitioned the Russian Metropolia (itself then on bad terms with its mother church) for admission, but was rebuffed. In 1964, he regularized his relations with the homeland. This latter move stirred significant rancor in the Bulgarian-American ranks, and Kyrill broke relations with the aging Andrei and persuaded several parishes to follow him.

Kyrill was subsequently consecrated by the ROCOR, renowned for its anti-Communist feelings, to serve as the head of the Bulgarian Diocese in Exile. His career as a ROCOR bishop came to an abrupt end, however, when in 1976 he led his diocese of nine parishes into the OCA, where he served until his death in 2007, acquiring a second diocese (Western Pennsylvania) in 1978. At the time of this development, in the wake of the Metropolia’s reconciliation with Moscow and subsequent independence as the OCA, ROCOR/OCA animosity was perhaps at its apex.

In 1976, the energy from the OCA’s newly-proclaimed autocephaly was still flowing freely, and the entry of the Bulgarian Diocese in Exile into its ranks was regarded as another sign of the inevitability of the OCA as a catalyst for American Orthodox unity, particularly at the OCA’s Fifth All-American Council that year, which also elected Theodosius Lazor to be the new OCA primate.

Since Kyrill’s death, the OCA’s Bulgarian diocese has been without an appointed hierarch, and the Bulgarian parishes under the Patriarchate of Bulgaria remain as their own jurisdiction, whose numbers were nearly doubled in 2000 with the reception of a number of parishes of the former Christ the Saviour Brotherhood. While the two Romanian jurisdictions in America have had ongoing talks regarding reunification, there has not been a parallel development in Bulgarian-American Orthodoxy.

Update Dec. 26, 2009: Fr. Alexander Lebedeff writes with some corrections to this post:

Archbishop Antony (Sinkevich) of the ROCOR was consecrated Bishop of Los Angeles in August 1951 and served until he was retired in 1995. He reposed July 31, 1996. He was a bishop for 45 years.

Of course, Metropolitan Vitaly (Oustinoff) of the ROCOR was made bishop in 1951 and retired in 2001 after celebrating 50 years as a bishop (he reposed in 2006). However, he did not come to North America until 1955. Still, 1955-2001 is 46 years. There are those in offshoots of the ROCOR who consider him to have continued being First Hierarch of the ROCOR up to the point of his repose. In any case he was a bishop for 55 years and a bishop in North America for 51.

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.

The video takes a few minutes to get going, but here is a roughly 80-minute history of the Russian council of 1917-18, bracketed by history of the Russian Metropolia, entitled True Faith and the Ground of Liberty (subtitled St. Tikhon and the 1917-1918 Council: Architect and Blueprint for the Orthodox Church in America), delivered by OCA chancellor Fr. Alexander Garklavs. It was delivered on June 18 at the recent conference held at St. Vladimir’s Seminary (the same conference which featured our own Matthew Namee).

The first fifteen minutes or so are the conference’s opening talk by seminary dean Fr. John Behr and the introduction of Garklavs by seminary chancellor Fr. Chad Hatfield.

Toward the beginning, Garklavs does include some sidelong remarks indicating he agrees with the conventional depiction of a mono-jurisdictional Orthodox administration prior to 1921, but his narrative largely avoids this question. He does comment at one point when mentioning the Greeks under the Russians that there were also Greeks outside the Russian jurisdiction.

Regarding America, he mainly focuses on the life of St. Tikhon and his work in America, as well as the effect of the Russian council of 1917-1918 on the Russian Metropolia and, subsequently, the OCA (and Tikhon’s effect on it, based on his experience in America). The bulk of the talk is on the council itself, based on reading primary sources coming out of the council. The last fifteen minutes come back to America and cover mainly administrative history.

There’s nothing too controversial here, as the parts of this speech concerned with America revisit well-worn ground regarding one of the great heroes of Orthodox history in America. One controversial comment is his suggestion that Tikhon’s model for administration—independent bishops whose jurisdiction is based on ethnicity rather than geography, but sitting together in synod—might represent a best hope for Orthodox unity in America.

It is probably not terribly controversial when Garklavs hails the 1917-18 Russian council as a proper “blueprint” for the OCA. What is more debatable, of course, is whether the blueprint was followed in the construction. Despite this conventional take on the council, I do recall one of my seminary professors (a cleric of the Moscow Patriarchate), who seemed to believe that the council was largely a failure and that the Bolshevik Revolution was God’s final judgment on such a colossal apostasy. That, I think, is somewhat of a minority view, at least here in America. I’d be interested to read what modern Russian Orthodox have to say about the council. To be sure, its effects are not felt there hardly at all (probably at least partly because of the later association of anything “progressive” with the Soviet-sponsored “Living Church” movement). I imagine American Orthodox talk about it quite a lot more.

Hat tip to Byzantine, TX.