Category: Pre-1921 Unity

“When we speak of Tsarist pressure”

In the late 1920s, after Abp. Aftimios Ofiesh (the successor to St. Raphael in the see of Brooklyn and the subject of my M.Div. thesis and possible future book) had in 1927 established, with the blessing of the Russian Metropolia, the so-called "American Orthodox Catholic Church," he engaged in something...

Two Columns from 2005

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...

Not Quite SCOBA

Few photos from the early 20th century history of American Orthodoxy are so rich in significance as this one. This was taken during the 1921 visit of then-deposed Abp. Meletios (Metxakis) of Athens to America, beginning the process of founding the Greek Archdiocese. He came traveling with Bp. Alexander (Demoglou),...

The Failed Mission of Fr Stephen Hatherly

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...

St Raphael’s Consecration

    St Raphael was consecrated Bishop of Brooklyn on March 13, 1904, by St Tikhon and Bishop Innocent of Alaska (not to be confused with the earlier St Innocent). What follows is a little article I wrote on the consecration. My plan is to include the article in a...

July 4, 1892

Last month, I did a podcast on the attempt to form a pan-Orthodox parish in Chicago in 1888. (You can also read a post about it here.) That attempt failed, and in 1892, separate Greek and Russian parishes were founded in Chicago. The Greek church was founded in April, under the jurisdiction...

St. Tikhon, the Russian Council of 1917-18, and the Metropolia

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...

St. Vladimir’s lecture

The talks from the recent conference at St. Vladimir's Seminary may now be viewed online, courtesy of St. Andrew House in Detroit. You can also listen to the audio at Ancient Faith Radio. The video of my own talk, "The Myth of Past Unity," can be found here: (A direct link is...

Chicago, 1888

In 1888, a pan-Orthodox parish was almost established in Chicago. On my Ancient Faith Radio podcast, American Orthodox History, I devoted an episode to that story. I read from a couple of newspaper articles, the most interesting of which is below (Chicago Daily Tribune, May 14, 1888):

Matthew Namee at SVS

At the "Orthodoxy in America: Past, Present and Future" conference at St. Vladimir's Seminary in New York, SOCHA member Matthew Namee presented his paper The Myth of Past Unity, addressing the issue of the character of administrative unity prior to the establishment of the Greek Archdiocese in 1921. You can...