Fr. Michael Gelsinger

Editor’s note: In 1938, Fr. Michael Gelsinger, with his daughter Mary, published a Handbook for Orthodox Sunday Schools. Gelsinger was one of the most influential convert clergymen in American Orthodox history. He served in the Antiochian Archdiocese, and this book was published with the blessing of Metropolitan Antony Bashir. Last week, we published the first of a four-part series, taken from the introduction to Gelsinger’s book. Today, we’re running Part 2, on “The Sunday School Session.” Gelsinger begins by talking, in minute detail, about how a Sunday School session should take place. He then allows himself to meander into topics of more general interest — language and music. We’ll run Part 3 of this mini-series next Thursday. 

The law of our Orthodox Church requires every Orthodox Christian to attend all the Services on Sundays and on other holy days. Therefore, the members of a Sunday School cannot be excused from attendance at the Divine Liturgy, the most important of all Services. And since the work of the Sunday School cannot be done well if the pupils are tired and restless, it is better to have the Sunday School meet before the Liturgy rather than after it. 

There is still another reason why the Sunday School should meet before the Liturgy. The Service of the Orthros (Matins) is much neglected among us, in spite of the fact that in importance it ranks next to the Liturgy itself. It is in the Orthros that we find the special meaning of any Feast most fully and elaborately expressed; and it is in the Orthros that we find the greatest variety of hymns by the Church’s most inspired poets and musicians. This Service is neglected in America mainly because many of our people are so lazy and slack that they cannot endure to spend more time in Church than is required for the Liturgy; and some of them complain that even the Liturgy is too long. Under present conditions the only hope of bringing the Orthros back into use is for the Sunday Schools to take over the responsibility for singing it, — a responsibility that possibly could be shared with organizations of young people beyond Sunday School age, such as the Orthodox Frontier Club. But the chief responsibility for the Orthros should be laid upon the Sunday Schools; and as the Orthros precedes the Liturgy, it is highly desirable that all our Sunday Schools at once begin to have their sessions before the Liturgy if such is not their custom already. 

The following Schedule is suggested as a guide in planning the Sunday School Session: 

• 9:45 — Secretary of the School must be in his place.
• 9:45-9:50 — Teachers get their Class Roll Books and other supplies from the Secretary of the School.
• 9:50 — Teachers must be in their classrooms.
• 10:00 — Pupils must be in their classrooms.
• 10:05-10:10 – The Secretary of the School visits each class to collect the Class Roll Books and the offerings, and then returns to his place to make out his report for the whole School. At the First Warning Bell messengers from the classes will bring him the offerings and the names of pupils who came in after roll call; at that time he will change the Absence marks for those pupils in the Class Roll Books to Tardiness marks, correct the entries for offerings, and bring the report into final form.
• 10:05 — Instruction begins in each class.
• 10:35 — First Warning Bell. Instruction ends, and each Teacher sends a messenger to the Secretary of the School with the names and the offerings of the pupils who have come in since Roll Call. The messenger may go from the Secretary to the place reserved for his class in the Assembly Hall.
• 10:40 — Second Warning Bell. All classes march to Assembly, each class going quietly to the seats reserved for it in the Assembly Hall.
• 10:43-11:00 — Assenbly, directed by the Superintendent (or by the Priest).
• 11:00 — Procession of the whole School, class by class, into the Temple for the Liturgy.

The following program is suggested for the Assembly: 

1. Song.
2. The Trisagion Prayers, recited by some pupil appointed by the Superintendent. The School should join in for the Lord’s Prayer at the end.
3. Recitation by members of different classes. (Memory Passages for which prizes are offered, summary of the Lesson taught in a class, quizzing of pupils by the Superintendent, or any other drill that is truly helpful and not contrived merely for display.)
4. Secretary’s Report.
5. Birthday Greetings. (Pupils who have had birthdays recently may drop into the Birthday Treasury as many pennies as they are years old. While they put in their pennies the School congratulates them by singing the Many Years for them.)
6. Comments and announcements by the Superintendent.
7. The Trisagion Prayers recited by the whole School in unison.
8. Song.
9. Procession of the whole School, by classes, into the Temple for the Liturgy. Each class is led by its Teacher, and the Teachers are required to stay with their classes until after the dismissal of the Liturgy.

Whenever possible, the Sunday School should enter the Temple in time to sing the Great Doxology and its Troparion (“This day salvation for the world is come”); after which the Priest begins the Liturgy of the Catechumens). 

The Trisagion Prayers and the Memory Passages referred to in the program suggested for the Assembly are printed in another part of this book. We are printing also a separate book of music so that our Sunday Schools may have something to sing; for the time has come when we must get rid of every book, every hymn, and every influence of any kind that is not Orthodox absolutely and exclusively. 

Until a Service Book with music appears, the Parish Priest should teach the young people as many hymns as possible in the language of the Parish (Arabic, Greek, Slavic, or whatever the language may be). It is very bad indeed for the different Parishes to sing different English translations instead of waiting for a standard English text approved for permanent use. Anyone who has even a slight understanding of our Orthodox Church must know that our Church Services cannot go on without the original languages, and must realize that a Parish will surely die if its young people are not taught to sing in the language of their parents. A standard English translation, prepared at the University of Buffalo and accompanied by the necessary music, is ready for publication; but even when it appears many things will still need to be done in the original languages. To translate all our Service Books into English suitable for public worship, and suitable for singing, will take years of work. Meanwhile our young people must learn to sing in the original languages as well as in English. They should learn to sing in English only such things as have been approved by proper authority as suitable to remain in permanent use everywhere. 

The program for Sunday School leaves little time for instruction in singing. Occasionally the Assembly period may be so used, but singing is so important in our Orthodox Church that it really deserves and requires to be developed in a program of its own entirely separate from that of the Sunday School. Accordingly, in every Parish at least one evening a week regularly should be set aside for instruction in music. 

We must not forget that our Orthodox Tradition forbids the use of musical instruments in Church Services. This is a rule which we should be very glad to obey, for obedience to it brings rich reward. No Parish that uses an organ or any other musical instruments in its services can ever have good singing. The use of a piano or organ to help people learn to sing something that is new to them is often good, and sometimes is even necessary. But it is one thing to use the piano for teaching, and quite another thing to get people into the habit of depending upon the piano so much that they cannot sing without it. Far better to teach without a piano or organ at all than to develop a habit of dependence upon an accompanying instrument. One of the greatest glories of our Orthodox Church is our music, all of it composed for singing and none of it intended for any musical instrument. Our children inherit with their Orthodox Catholic religion the grandest music ever heard on earth; and they should begin to know the delights of that inheritance as early in life as possible.

Gelsinger on Sunday Schools, Part 2: The Sunday School Session is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

One final note: St. Philaret makes reference to a Christmas liturgy celebrated by Honcharenko in New York. This appears to have been the first Orthodox liturgy in the history of New York City (or, for that matter, the first known liturgy in the eastern United States). It is earlier than the better-known liturgy celebrated by Honcharenko a couple of months later (and discussed here and here).

St. Philaret of Moscow

When the American spiritual leaders first showed the desire to have an Orthodox Church in America it seemed necessary for California but not for New York. Now a new outlook appears.

Already a priest has received from the Holy Church of Constantinople the antimens and the Holy Chrism. He has arrived in America and on the day of the birth of Christ performed there the first Orthodox liturgy from the time of the discovery of America. Then he performed the baptism of eight Slavs and two Russians. He writes, “I found there seven thousand Slavs, three thousand Greeks and three thousand Russians, without a Pastor.” If this is true, it is a strong reason to have in America a Russian Orthodox Church.

We are attaching to this a copy of the letter of Agapius Honcharenko written to the Editor of the newspaper “Orthodox Overview.” Won’t you take the decision if something should be done about this situation?

St. Philaret of Moscow on Orthodoxy in America in 1865 is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

"The Syrian Colony, Washington Street," by W. Bengough

Last week, I was alerted to a recent article in the New York Times, on the subject of New York’s long-ago Syrian enclave. The colony, which was located in downtown Manhattan (not far from what became the World Trade Center site) was home to Orthodox Christians, as well as Maronites and Melkites. It was the location of the original Syrian church of New York, founded by St. Raphael Hawaweeny. Later, St. Raphael moved the church to Brooklyn (which was full of Syrians), and I think people typically think of Brooklyn, not Manhattan, when they think of Syrians in New York.

Anyway, while the article doesn’t directly discuss Orthodoxy, it talks about the very same community into which St. Raphael came in 1895, and which included the first Antiochian parish on the continent. To read the article, click here.

NY Times: “When an Arab Enclave Thrived Downtown” is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

Fr. Michael Gelsinger. He is pictured in a suit and tie because he was, for most of his priestly career, also a university professor.

Editor’s note: In 1938, Fr. Michael Gelsinger, with his daughter Mary, published a Handbook for Orthodox Sunday Schools. Gelsinger was one of the most influential convert clergymen in American Orthodox history. He served in the Antiochian Archdiocese, and this book was published with the blessing of Metropolitan Antony Bashir. Today, we’re presenting the first of a four-part series, taken from the introduction to Gelsinger’s book. We’ll run this mini-series on each of the next four Thursdays.

It is impossible to operate a Sunday School without spending money. Some Parishes can afford to spend more than others can, but every Parish must be willing to provide for its Sunday School as generously as its resources permit. Afte the first year of operation a Sunday School can usually finance itself, especially if the Parish provides adequate equipment at the beginning so that the School can do its work effectively.

The first requirement is that a Sunday School must have a suitable place in which to meet. There should be a room or hall large enough to accomodate the whole Sunday School when it meets for Assembly; and there should be smaller rooms in sufficient number to provide each class with a room of its own, so that when classes are in session they cannot see or hear each other.

In many Parishes, however, it will be impossible to provide a separate room for each class. If several classes must be taught in one large room, they may be separated from each other by screens. Satisfactory screens can be easily and inexpensively contrived by nailing wallboard to wooden frames which have been hinged in pairs. When not in use the screens can be folded up and put away. Screens, of course, will not prevent classes from hearing one another, and a certain amount of noise and confusion is unavoidable when they must be used; but noise and confusion are deadly enemies to the effeciency of the School, and every effort must be made to conduct classes as quietly as possible.

Since the majority of the members of a Sunday School are young children, the accomodations provided must be both safe and pleasant as well as sufficiently spacious. There must be good light, good ventilation, adequate heating, spotlessly clean floors and walls, and spotlessly clean toilets to which no persons except members of the Sunday School are allowed to go while the School is in session. If the hall provided for the Assembly has a concrete floor, it is absolutely necessary that a good wooden floor be built in; for a concrete floor is a menace to the health of the children. The walls should be painted, not in some ugly utilitarian color, but in some pleasant tint; and on them should be hung some appropriate pictures. It will not matter if a child of wealthy parents finds that the Sunday School lacks luxurious appointments; but we are disgraced if we give any child the least reason to think that the place where the Sunday School meets is dirty and cheerless.

Every class needs a table and a supply of chairs. Strongly built card tables, two or more to a class, will serve very well; and an advantage in using them is that they can be folded up and put away when not in use. The chairs should be folding chairs, preferably metal ones that cannot easily be damaged. There should be at least twice as many chairs provided as there are members of the School, so that it will never be necessary to move chairs from one place to another during the session. Money saved by buying fewer chairs will be lost over and over again in damage to the School’s efficiency, for chairs cannot be moved without noise and confusion and loss of valuable time. In providing chairs as in providing other necessities for the Sunday School, stinginess does not save money but throws money away.

The Syrian Archdiocese is preparing lesson materials to meet every need of Orthodox Catholic Sunday Schools conducted in the English language. Music will also be provided. It is surely unnecessary to remind our people that only Orthodox books and Orthodox music should ever be used in teaching our children.

Roll Books and record books, of course, and other supplies of that kind, must be purchased from Sunday School supply companies. No supplies should ever come from any other religious organization, not even if they are offered as gifts; for we are disloyal to our Orthodox Catholic Religion whenever we give anyone even the least reason to believe that the Orthodox Church is dependent upon any other religious organization or in alliance with it. Supplies should always be purchased from a company which is not connected with any particular religious organization. One of the best companies of the kind is the David C. Cook Publishing Company, of Elgin, Illinois, whose catalogue lists an immense variety of supplies for Sunday Schools.

Gelsinger on Sunday Schools, Part 1: Religious Education in Orthodox Parishes is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

At the end of July this year I was able to spend an afternoon at the National Archives in London, UK. I was aware that certain documents pertaining to the history of the Russian Orthodox Community in London were held there and I was hoping to find more information with regard to the early presence of Orthodoxy in British America before the American Revolution. Whilst my original goal was achieved I also discovered a wealth of other documents relating to the history of Orthodoxy in America between 1865 -1945. There is much more to translate and to write. I am grateful to Matushka Marie Meyendorff for her initial draft translation of the documents that follow. Not every part is immediately readable, but God willing a more complete and refined translation can be made in due course.

Agapius Honcharenko in his later years

It would perhaps be helpful to briefly set a little historical background. There are three documents collectively filed under the heading of  “The Russian Orthodox Church in America and Its Clergy 1865” They consist of a covering letter written by the venerable and very elderly Metropolitan Filaret of Moscow to the “Ober Procurator” of the Holy Synod of Russia – effectively the Minister of Religion. The Metropolitan encloses two further documents: a detailed and generally negative overview of the case against Agapius Honcharenko with an explanation as to why he was defrocked as a deacon by the Russian Synod in 1861. The second is a letter to an unknown priest (most likely the Rev. Eugene Popov the Russian Orthodox priest in London) from Agapius Honcharenko pleading his side of the story and essentially petitioning to be taken back by the Russian Church. Since his defrocking as a deacon, he appears to have been made a priest, either by the Church of Constantinople or the Church of Greece.

It is interesting that Metropolitan Filaret does not simply dismiss Honcharenko’s claims but appears to treat them seriously enough to suggest to the Ober-Procurator that they provide sufficient grounds to lead the Russian Church to establish a full ecclesial presence in the United States. It should be remembered that these documents predate the US purchase of Alaska from the Russian Empire in March 1867. It should also be noted that the American Civil War was still underway when these documents were written and that the Russian Empire was an active supporter of the Northern States during the conflict. Many in fact credit Metropolitan Filaret as being one of the driving forces behind the abolition of serfdom in Russian Empire (1861) and Agapius Honcharenko was also known as an advocate of that cause. This may partly explain Filaret’s somewhat sympathetic stance to his case. 

The reference of Filaret to “American spiritual leaders” in California is also of interest and is most probably related to the overtures being made at that time by leaders of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the USA to the Russian Orthodox Church and efforts which had already begun toward the formation of a Russian Orthodox Parish in San Francisco.

Nicholas Chapman, Herkimer, New York, August 21 2010

A Brief Commentary on Documents Found in the National Archives in London under the Heading “The Russian Orthodox Church in America and Its Clergy 1865” is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

By 1874, the 54-year-old Barnum was a household name. He’d only been in the circus business for a few years, but before that, he had owned the Barnum Museum, the biggest attraction in New York City. It was, in short, at the height of his powers when the widowed Barnum married 24-year-old Nancy Fish, an English girl and the daughter of one of Barnum’s longtime friends. Here’s how the New York Times tells the story 20-odd years later (8/8/1895):

She was the daughter of a Lancashire, England, cotton miller named Fish. In 1858 Mr. Barnum lectured in Manchester, England, and after the lecture Mr. Fish called on the great showman to tell him that his success in life was due to his reading of Mr. Barnum’s autobiography, which fired his ambition to make money. When Mr. Fish built a new mill, his daughter christened the engine “Barnum.”

After the death of the first Mrs. Barnum, Mr. Fish visited America. His daughter’s letters so delighted Mr. Barnum that, as he put it, he fell in love with her before he saw her. They were married in 1874. The bride was half the age of her husband.

The couple remained together until Barnum’s death in 1891. Four years later, in 1895, Nancy Barnum remarried. She had been engaged in a very discreet courtship with Demetrius Callias Bey, a Greek from Turkey. Callias had supposedly made millions in the olive business, but there were rumors that he actually had no money at all. In any event, he was handsome, and according to one story (which may or may not be true), the pair met when Nancy was visiting Egypt and happened to fall off of the Great Pyramid, whereupon Callias caught her. The couple was married on August 7, 1895 at Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in New York City, with Fr. Agatheodoro Papageorgopoulos officiating.

At least, that’s according to the New York Times the following day. I’m inclined to believe the report, although the Boston Globe passed this along (by way of the Knoxville Daily Journal, 8/13/1895):

The minister who married Mrs. P.T. Barnum to her wealthy Greek lover Wednesday is named Rev. Agathedorus Papageorgepouto, according to the New York Journal, Priest Archimandrite Paisius Ferentinos, according to the New York World, and Agathodoros Papageorgopoulus according to the New York Herald. It would have delighted Mrs. Barnum’s late husband to get either of those names to put among his curiosities.

Fr. Paisius Ferentinos, mentioned above, was the former priest of Holy Trinity, New York’s other Greek church.

The name of the officiating priest notwithstanding, the marriage between Nancy Barnum and Demetrius Callias Bey didn’t last long. A little over a year later — September 22, 1896 — Callias died of liver disease in Constantinople. His wife was on a brief visit to America at the time, and after learning of her husband’s death, she left the United States for good. Two years later, in Paris, she was married for a third time, to a French nobleman. The marriage was apparently pure business — the baron got some of Nancy’s money to pay his debts, and Nancy got to call herself a baroness. Nancy’s real love, it seems, was her departed Greek husband. When she died in 1927, she was cremated and then buried, not next to P.T. Barnum, but to Demetrius Callias Bey.

In the grand scheme of things, the story of Nancy Barnum and Demetrius Callias Bey isn’t all that significant. It is, however, an early example of an Orthodox-related story that made its way into newspapers across the United States. And the marriage of Barnum and Callias has always struck me as a sort of distant forerunner to the union of another famous American widow to a wealthy Greek man — Jacqueline Kennedy and Aristotle Onassis.

[This article was written by Matthew Namee. In writing it, I relied on both contemporary newspaper articles and on the book P.T. Barnum: The Legend and the Man by A.H. Saxon (1995), 329-330.]

P.T. Barnum’s widow married in NY Greek church is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

Archimandrite Kyrill Johnson

Editor’s note: On Monday, we introduced Fr. Kyrill Johnson, who converted to Orthodoxy in the 1920s and spent most of his career in the Antiochian Archdiocese. Then, on Tuesday, we presented an article by Johnson reviewing a Protestant translation of the Divine Liturgy. Below, we’ve published another article by Johnson, on “The Prestige of the Oecumenical Patriarchate.” This piece originally appeared in the Orthodox American in its October 1944-February 1945 issue. Oh, and please be warned: Johnson can be… well, abrasive, I guess. I hope no one is offended by our publication of this historical document.

One of the pleasant myths in the uninformed Orthodox mind is that which infers that the various statements and pronouncements of certain individual Orthodox Patriarchs in conjunction with their Synods have binding force in the realm of Orthodox faith and morals. Nothing could be further from the facts.

It is true that there was a time in Orthodox history when such documents and pronouncements, although local and racial in origin, did have a certain weight and authority. That period came to an end with the reconstitution of the Greek nation and the consequent subservience of Orthodox faith and institutions to the Greek political ideal among ecclesiastics of Greek blood. Even the most casual student of Orthodox Church history is struck by the fact that all too often men of high ecclesiastical position in Orthodoxy, if they are of Greek blood, have been willing to use their positions to further and advance, not pure Orthodoxy, as such, but Greek political and racial aspirations.

Without doubt the ideal series of documents by which this thesis could be adequately proved is that which proceeded from the various Greek Patriarchates during the crises in Russian Church affairs after the Russian Revolution.

When the late Russian Patriarch Tikhon, of blessed memory, was deposed by a rump Synod of Bishops, the then Patriarch of Constantinople, Meletios, condemned this act as uncanonical. His successor, Gregory VII, reversed this pronouncement, and in his turn Gregory VII was reversed by his own successor, Basil III.

The Greeks who occupied the Patriarchate of Jerusalem reveal an equally unpleasant record of having no mind of their own, or any Orthodox mind at all for that matter, issuing document after document each in conflict with itself and with those, which had come before. Aside from the Russian Patriarchate of Moscow, only the Syrian Patriarch of Antioch seems to have had the ability to make up his own mind for himself and to stick to his decisions.

If one collates this series of pronouncements issued by Greek ecclesiastics with the political events and pressures, which paralleled their appearance, one soon discovers an obvious relation between their interpretation of Orthodox canon law and faith and the political tensions to which they were subjected.

Tempting as it is to explore this field in terms of the Russian question, we prefer at this time to direct attention to a lesser Greek political-ecclesiastical document. We do this because we have collected a considerable body of firsthand and as yet unpublished data relative to this lesser document. We refer to the pronouncement in the year 1922 by Meletios, Patriarch of Constantinople, on Anglican orders.

The facts necessary to understand the problems involved are simple enough. On July 28th, 1922, Meletios issued two documents. The first was in the form of a personal letter, not to the legal head of the Protestant religion established by law in England, the King, but to one of his political appointees, the senior of the two Protestant archbishops functioning in England. The other document was a sort of round robin addressed to “The Presidents of the Particular Eastern Churches.” The subject matter of both documents concerned itself with the much-debated question of the possible validity of Protestant ordinations in the state religion of England.

These two documents were hailed as a seven days’ wonder throughout the Protestant world. With this reaction we are in hearty agreement. Unfortunately their content was so neatly phrased in the subtle niceties of the Greek language that neither the casual nor learned reader could be quite sure what meaning they were intended to convey.

It is not our intent to add another essay in the necessarily dull exegesis of these documents. Obviously they follow the Pauline injunction, so dear to the Greek heart, of being all things to all men.

It is our purpose to throw some historical light on the confused background, which made these documents possible, and to trace the devious actions of the Greek mind when occasion demands of it that it say something without saying anything. It can be safely taken for granted that historical scholarship is fully justified in judging any document, not only in terms of its content, but also in terms of the conditions and the men, which brought it forth.

First let us consider the man over whose signature these two documents saw the light of day. He was one Meletios. By birth he was a Cretan; and if Pauline injunctions mean anything the wary should at once be put on their guard. His ecclesiastical career paralleled that of his fellow Cretan, Venizelos, in the realm of Greek politics. When this statesman was in power in the Greek world, Meletios also held a position of power. When the statesman fell, as he did many times, the ecclesiastic also fell. Let us grant at once that they were both very able men, intensely devoted to the Greek political ideal.

After the First World War Venizelos fell from power. Meletios, who was his Archbishop of Athens, fell with him and came to the United States as an exile. There is sufficient historical evidence to justify the statement that both the politician and the ecclesiastic were creatures whose power and position depended upon British foreign policy and backing. As exile in this country Meletios found favor with only a minority of Greek-Americans. He did receive much support from a section of the Protestant Episcopal Church in this country.

During this period of exile the Throne of Constantinople suddenly became vacant, and with equal suddenness Meletios was elected to the Patriarchate. How the Throne of Constantinople became vacant, and how Meletios was elected, does not concern us here.

In this country the Greeks with consternation received this election. Some were delighted; many refused to accept it as fact. It goes without saying that the Protestant Episcopalians received the news with great rejoicing. How tense the situation was in this country can be gathered from an article in the New York Tribune of Jan. 8th, 1922. The headline stated that this election “shakes the foundations of the Greek Church.” It did not hide the fact that Meletios’ chief support came from Protestant circles.

In Greece itself the Holy Synod of that country refused to accept the election of Meletios as canonical and valid. Meletios journeyed to his Throne by way of England, and it was currently reported that he entered the Golden Horn on a British man-of-war.

Let us now turn to analyze the conditions, which existed during the brief administration of Meletios in Constantinople. An inter-allied military control entered the city. It was made up of representatives of England, France, Italy and the United States. The city itself had been promised by secret treaty to Russia at the beginning of the war. All the nations represented in the city save the United States were playing the age-old game of power politics. As was natural, the religious issues of the centuries merged into the political issues. France and Italy, representing Roman Catholic ambitions, were moving with not too much caution to establish a claim to the Cathedral Church of Orthodoxy, Hagia Sophia. If anything was necessary to throw Meletios even further into the hands of the British, this was more than sufficient.

At the same time the drama of the tragedy of Christian Asia Minor was developing. A mutual and secret agreement by France and Italy on the one hand to support Turkish aspirations, and by England on the other to support Greek aspirations, to the end that a fatal collision of these two minor powers might ensue to the mutual profit of the Great Powers, sealed the doom of the ancient Christian Churches of Asia Minor.

It is quite probable that Meletios at that time knew only the externals of this situation. The hard fact was that he had to sit on his uncomfortable Throne at the Phanar and watch the growing tension between the various members of the Allied military control and to hear each day of new Greek disasters in Asia Minor.

The implications of the situation were obvious to Meletios. Each day the diminished Greek race was being decimated throughout Asia Minor; the Great Idea of a reconstituted Byzantine Empire was dissolving into dust and ashes before his eyes. Meletios, the Greek nationalist, became a desperate man. He had but one last jewel to spend on wooing British Imperialism to stop the decimation of his co-racialists in Asia Minor. The jewel was his Orthodox Faith. He would offer up this precious jewel to international politics in a last desperate gesture. Out of Meletios’ racial agony was born his pronouncement on Anglican ordinations.

A number of years after it was issued we spent a very pleasant afternoon with Meletios in Cairo, Egypt. (British influence had translated him to the Throne of Alexandria.) During our lengthy discussion of Orthodox affairs we introduced the subject of these two documents. Without any hesitation Meletios discussed them quite frankly. He admitted that they had been issued against his better Orthodox judgment. He also pointed out some pertinent facts, which should become part of the record if these documents are to be judged in their proper perspective.

From our notes on this conversation we outline those things, which seem to have some historical import. He prefaced his remarks by saying that as a Greek he could not have been expected to sit quietly and not use everything at his command in an effort to avert the Asia Minor disaster. He made it quite clear that he realized fully that if the Turks won he lost the throne of Constantinople. He did not try to excuse the incongruities contained in the documents. His only disappointment was that he misjudged British opinion (something which Greeks are always prone to do).

He made no attempt to deny that his documents accomplished nothing for the cause of Greece. This he could not quite understand. Like so many other Greek ecclesiastics he had been thrown into contact with only the High Church minority, and he had no clear notions about the staid and respectable Protestantism of the majority of the English church. He was actually convinced that the majority of the clergy and members of the Establishment were smarting under the sting of the pronouncement of Leo XIII declaring English ordinations null and void in form and intent, and would reward handsomely any statement to the contrary.

It was at this point that Meletios sighed and said, “But these English, they just do not have any sense of history.” Piqued by this statement we pursued it further, and Meletios replied fully as to his meaning, and the following is an outline of his convictions as an Orthodox theologian.

In the first place, he pointed out, as Patriarch of Constantinople he had no historical or canonical right to intrude into the ecclesiastical problems of the Christian West. He contended that the bases of the centuries’ old contention between the See of Constantinople and the See of Rome rested upon the thesis that the See of Rome had no canonical jurisdiction in the Christian East. By the same token he had to admit that the See of Constantinople had no canonical right to intrude into the domestic problems of the See of Rome; and certainly the question of Anglican Orders, deriving from Rome, was essentially a problem coming under the jurisdiction of that Patriarchate.

Obviously, he said, England could not by any perversion of logic be considered within the jurisdiction of any Eastern Patriarchate; and to presume to settle any ecclesiastical problem arising among non-Orthodox peoples in that area would destroy once and for all the foundation and corner stone upon which all contentions between the Eastern Patriarchate and Rome had been erected.

In writing his documents, Meletios contended that he made his Greek sufficiently vague and subtle so as not to commit Orthodoxy to any untenable position. When I raised honest doubts, he further pointed out that the most that any person could obtain in the way of satisfaction from his documents was a mere opinion; and that even though an opinion derived from the Patriarch and Synod of Constantinople, it still remained an opinion and nothing more, and opinions never had and probably never would have any binding force in the realm of dogma or upon the Orthodox conscience.

Because I was still unconvinced, he reiterated that if I would re-examine the documents with care I would discover that Constantinople had only reviewed the report of a committee, merely taking note of the things contained therein. He then made a distinction between his encyclical to the Orthodox Churches and his private letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury. The former he held was the document upon which Orthodoxy could pass judgment; the latter was a personal matter. An analysis of the two documents will reveal why Meletios made this distinction. It is interesting to note in this connection that all copies and translations released in England of this letter carry the simple signature of Meletios, not his rank and title. Meletios in our conversation desired me to keep in mind that in his encyclical it was clear that both he and his Synod in accepting the report of the committee accepted it as an opinion and requested further opinion from other Orthodox Patriarchates. If the English had any sense of history, Meletios continued, the English should know that the Orthodox Church can only speak as a whole.

“Opinions,” Meletios said with a twinkle in his eye, “are, after all, just opinions, and the Greeks, as a people, have a considerable reputation for being able to change them very quickly. Remember, my son, there is a world of difference between opinions and conclusions.”

This then is a brief summary of Meletios’ own estimate of his own documents.

There is another angle to this whole involved question of the historical setting of these documents, which merits passing attention. It has to do with the question of who constituted this committee and just what its full report said. When we were in residence in Constantinople, we were unable to locate this report, and so was everyone else. It was just counted as among the number of missing documents. While we are in no position to say with finality that no such report ever existed, until it is produced we will remain of the opinion that it never did exist. This does not mean that it never will be produced. Knowing the ability of the Phanar to produce documents when and where needed, we think it is entirely possible that if pressure were brought the report would come into being in short order.

At least two conclusions are justified by any historian of these particular documents. The first is, that since the reconstituting of the Greek nation to a precarious existence, Greek ecclesiastics are very prone to consider themselves as Greeks in the political sense first and as representatives of the Orthodox Faith afterward. Secondly, our Christian charity demands that we do not judge too harshly the acts of Greek hierarchs, when as men and members of a once great race they use every instrument at their command to stem the tide of the destruction of the Greek people by the Christian powers of the West. As documents these pronouncements, which we have considered, are no more than interesting ecclesiastical curiosa, reflecting the political stresses and strains of the Greeks as political beings. As statements of Orthodox teaching and dogma they are completely meaningless and not worth the paper they were written on.

Fr. Kyrill Johnson: The Prestige of the Oecumenical Patriarchate is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

Archimandrite Kyrill Johnson

Editor’s note: Yesterday, we introduced Fr. Kyrill Johnson (1897-1947), a 1920s convert who spent most of his career in the Antiochian Archdiocese. What follows is an article by Fr. Kyrill which appeared in the Orthodox American (September 1943), which was a sort of forerunner to the modern-day Word Magazine. (Just to clarify: St. Raphael did have a periodical called Al Kalimat, which is Arabic for “The Word.” After St. Raphael’s death, Al Kalimat continued for a little while, but it eventually ceased publication. Many years later, in the 1950s, Metropolitan Antony Bashir started a new magazine, also called The Word. While the two periodicals have the same name and the same general audience (Antiochian Americans), they really are two distinct publications. Anyway, before the modern-day Word Magazine began, there was the Orthodox American.

Regarding Fr. Kyrill Johnson’s article (below) — one of the things that immediately struck me about Fr. Kyrill’s writing was its similiarity to the style and tone of an earlier convert priest, Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine. The two priests never met each other (Irvine died before Johnson joined the Church), and they seem to have been very different in most other respects, but reading this article, it almost sounds as if Irvine wrote it. He almost certainly would have agreed with Fr. Kyrill’s conclusions.

In temporal warfare, when there is a desire to destroy those who do not agree with you, there are two methods open to the aggressor. The first is to marshal on a field of battle one’s material strength, and to engage the opposition in a test of strength and endurance to determine which side is to be destroyed and which side is to survive. The second is more a technique than a method, and was perfected by Hitler in recent years. It is to carry on undercover warfare through the functioning of a fifth column in the area for which there is the hidden and secret desire to destroy. The purpose of this technique is to avoid carrying on a frontal assault until there has been carried on a process of inner weakening. For this purpose everything is considered legitimate for gaining victory: lies, deception, bribery, the playing on natural human weaknesses and vanity, the deliberate misuses of terms and ideals to make them mean what they were not intended to mean and to use them as instruments of inner destruction. On the whole, this technique is pretty low and despicable, and it is disliked by civilized people.

Unfortunately, in the spiritual warfare in which the powers of darkness seek to destroy those of truth and light, one finds too often the use of methods of temporal wars; there is in some instances the clean clash of truth and error in the open, and an effort at honesty and sincerity on both sides. Then there is the Hitler technique, used to divide, to weaken, to invade the sanctities by fifth column methods through operation from within.

Recently we have observed an example of this second technique put into operation within the sanctity of our Orthodox fold here in America.

It appeared in the form of an innocent enough appearing publication, with the title inscribed “The Greek Orthodox Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, Arranged for Use in English.” It comes from the press of an educational institution of one of the more wealthy protestant sects and is sent out without any official imprimatur, so that those whose point of view it represents cannot be held morally responsible for its contents.

In his introduction the “arranger” writes his purposes as follows: “Finally, in making this adaptation, the editor has had in mind two possible uses, apart from private reading: first, for public use in English speaking congregations of the Orthodox in the United States; secondly, for occasional public use in churches of the Anglican Communion,” meaning, of course, the Protestant Episcopalian Church in the United States.

We must, as Orthodox Christians, grant a certain amount of Christian charity toward this self-appointed arranger of our sacred Orthodox Liturgy for our people in this country. We trust that he was merely simple-minded enough to presume that we are so bankrupt of scholarship and initiative as to be unable to perform this task for ourselves when we need to have it done.

At the same time we must confess that the result is an amazing performance of unmitigated effrontery toward Orthodox Christians. There is not the slightest understanding of the fact that for us, our Liturgy is part of Holy Tradition and therefore is entitled to the most scrupulous respect.

Before we are misunderstood let us make it crystal clear that this work is not a translation into English of the Greek text, nor does it pretend to be. Had the author, as a scholar, set himself to render into English any of the mss. or the printed texts, we could have understood and perhaps welcomed his efforts. This was not his purpose. His task, as he saw it, was to re-write our Divine Liturgy so that it might be brought into conformity with protestant notions as to what is [sic] should be. This intrusion into a realm which the Church safeguards with the strictest limitations is something for which there can be no forgiveness either on the score of intent or of performance.

Let us also make ourself clear on this point. We do not care a hoot what Protestant Episcopalians do among themselves. For their own use and spiritual edification they can adapt the Rig Veda, the poems of Walt Whitman, the Latin Mass, or even our own Sacred Texts. But when our sacred Mysteries are tampered with in the hope that they will be used by our Orthodox People in the protestant and not in the Orthodox sense, then indeed we protest throughout the entire length and breadth of universal Orthodoxy.

Let us examine this remarkable document ever so briefly. We have not the space for a detailed analysis. First we will list those sections which are cut out entirely, viz.: the First and Second Antiphons, with their prayers; the beautiful and necessary Prayer of the Trisagion; the Ektenia for the Dead; the First Prayer of the Faithful; all that follows immediately after “It is meat [sic] and right.” the Theotokion Megalynarion. It is suggested that in place of the Megalynarion a verse from a protestant hymnal be used- which it terms a “free translation of the original,[”] which it certainly is not. Also omitted is the Ektenia which follows the Great Eucharistic Prayer.

And there is added immediately after the Words of Institution a section which does not occur in the Liturgy but which gives the whole area a protestant Theological flavor. Moreover, prayers are changed about; Petitions are shifted hither and yon; liturgical directions are given which violate the whole spirit of the accepted Diataxis. In short, our most Sacred Mystery has been re-written to make it over and to make it acceptable to protestant ways of thinking. Besides the palpable heresy which comes to notice on almost every page (such as a mistranslation of “Theotokos” which would shock the Holy Fathers of Chalcedon) the total effect is one which will strike the heart of every Orthodox Christian as something very much akin to blasphemy.

Some of the omissions the “arranger” excuses by saying that his “edition” does not pretend to be an altar-book,” but the excuse looks pretty thin because he proceeds in a manner that is more capricious and arbitrary than it is systematic. For additions to the text and deformation of it no passable excuse is conceivable in the face of the expressed desire that the Orthodox themselves shall use it.

Had the “arranger” not stated his intention and hope that it would be used by Orthodox Christians, we would ignore it as another example of the working of the untutored protestant mind intruding into fields quite beyond the spiritual and academic depth of the intruder. Under the circumstances of the expressed hope of the dual function it is presumed to fulfill, we can inform the arranger that Orthodoxy will have none of such things. Any attempt to corrupt Orthodoxy by a fifth column of protestant heresy from inside is doomed to failure. We have intelligent and learned Bishops and no text can be used at the Altar without study by competent ecclesiastical authorities and due permission.

At the same time we expect from now on, in walking through various American cities, to find advertised on the conventicles of protestantism signs reading “The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.”

Our young people must from henceforth b[e] very much on their guard; and our ancient discipline which forbids us to worship with heretics must be vigorously enforced. We remind our people once again that to attend the religious exercises of people outside the bosom of Orthodoxy is reckoned a major sin by the Church. Even though the sign may read “The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom”, the stranger should make sure that it is under the jurisdiction of a lawful Orthodox Bishop.

We cannot view activities like this “arranging” of our Divine Liturgy otherwise than with alarm and sorrow, no matter how well intentioned are their perpetrators. God may pardon the sins of ignorance, but the Faithful must be on their guard lest the wiles of evil enter into the fold of Christ.

Fr. Kyrill Johnson: Review of a Protestant translation of the Divine Liturgy is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

Fr. Kyrill Johnson, 1930. This is the only photo I've seen of Johnson taken while he was an Orthodox priest. (Ipswich Historical Society)

For a while now, I’ve been meaning to introduce Fr. Kyrill Johnson, another of the many fascinating early American converts to Orthodoxy. He was born Arthur Warren Johnson in Roxbury, Massachsetts in 1897. I don’t know what happened to his parents, but Johnson was adopted by an unmarried aunt, who raised him in Ipswich. He went to college at William and Mary in Virginia, which is probably where he first encountered the Orthodox Church. One of his classmates was a fellow named Royce Burden, and both were almost certainly students of young Professor Michael Gelsinger.

Arthur Johnson graduated in 1921. The next year, both Burden and Gelsinger were ordained Orthodox priests and assigned to serve in the “English-speaking department” of the Russian Archdiocese. This “department” had its origins in 1905, when Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine converted to Orthodoxy and was charged by St. Tikhon to do “English work.” Irvine died in early 1921, by which point another convert priest, Fr. Patrick Mythen, had taken over the English-speaking department. Mythen brought numerous Americans into the Orthodox Church, but he was wayward and immature, and many of his converts (along with Mythen himself) ultimately left the Church.

I don’t know what role Mythen played in the conversions of Burden, Gelsinger, and Arthur Johnson, but that trio, unlike so many of their fellow 1920s converts, remained in the Church for the rest of their lives. I don’t know exactly when Johnson was ordained, but he was definitely a priest by 1924. The next year, he earned a Master’s degree from Harvard Divinity School.

Johnson — by now Fr. Kyrill — was a celibate priest, and he doesn’t seem to have had a parish in the 1920s. He may have been under the jurisdiction of Archbishop Aftimios Ofiesh, who oversaw the English-speaking department (and the American Orthodox Catholic Church, into which the English department morphed), but Johnson’s focus, in those years, seems to have been scholarly pursuits. In the mid-’20s, he was a key part of Harvard expeditions to Mount Athos and Mount Sinai, searching for ancient Biblical manuscripts. He also spent time in Syria, where he discovered rare proto-Semitic inscriptions.

In the early 1930s, Johnson was back in Ipswich, where he published several books on local history. In 1938, he became pastor of St. George Antiochian church in nearby Lawrence, Mass. — as far as I can tell, this was his first parish assignment in at least 14 years as an Orthodox priest. In 1940, he took on another job, becoming the head of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities. The organization, which today has the more palatable name “Historic New England,” owns and preserves historic homes and other buildings in New England. The next year, 1941, Metropolitan Antony Bashir elevated Johnson to archimandrite. Johnson lived only six more years, dying in 1947, at the age of just 50.

So far, I’ve basically given you a dry biography of Fr. Kyrill Johnson. What sort of person was he, though? Pat Tyler of the Ipswich Historical Society happened to know Johnson when she was young. A few years ago, she told me, “He lived across the street from me — to the Yankees in town, he was just ‘strange,’ in that black robe.” Later, she added, “I knew him in the 30′s just as the guy across the street – I was just a child. My mother, of course, knew him. She and her friend, Helen, actually spent the night at the beach (Crane’s) with Arthur. I picture the scene as teenagers spouting Shakespeare. And Platonic to the max.”

Here’s another account of Johnson, from the book Becoming What One Is, by Austin Warren: “Friends brought acquaintances; and I remember […] Arthur Johnson of Ipswich, a swarthy, lean, Byzantine-looking bachelor, who, a pure Yankee and reared a Methodist, had become (after an Anglican interlude) an ordained deacon in the Greek Orthodox Church.”

Arthur Johnson's graduation photo from the College of William and Mary, 1921 (Ipswich Historical Society)

Back in college, Johnson’s class elected him “most eccentric man.” He was extremely involved in his school activities — class historian, student council secretary, associate editor of the student newspaper, editor-in-chief of the college literary magazine. He was in a drama club, manager of the debate council… I could go on, but I think you get the point. He never married, of course, and I get the sense that nobody who knew him was surprised by this fact. He was odd, friendly, bookish. As we’ll see in the future, he was a pretty talented writer himself.

Of the three William and Mary converts — Johnson, Burden, and Gelsinger — Johnson was clearly the least well-known, and probably the least influential. But he lived a fascinating life, and stands out as one of the few convert priests of the 1920s who remained in the Orthodox Church until the day he died.

[This article was written by Matthew Namee.]

Fr. Kyrill Johnson, 1897-1947 is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

St. Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow, 1923

Editor’s note: The interview that follows originally appeared in a book published by the YMCA in Prague. I found it on the fascinating Alexander Palace Time Machine website (the original is here). Many thanks to Jenny Mosher, who posted a link to this interview on our SOCHA Facebook page. Bob Atchison, editor of the Alexander Palace Time Machine, graciously granted us permission to reprint the interview in full. 

After the decision to restore the Patriarchate, the most important act of the Sobor was the election of the man to fill that office. In the midst of the three days battle which resulted in the taking of Moscow by the Bolsheviks, the Sobor in orderly sittings earried out the routine it had defined for the election of a Patriarch. This was a minutely detailed procedure based upon the method first employed in 1634 for the election of Joasaf I and followed in the choice of aII subsequent Patriarchs. A secret ballot of all members was taken and the names of those receiving votes tabulated according to the number received. The choice of the Patriarch must be made from the highest three in the list. In this case they were Tikhon, Metropolitan of Moscow, Antonius, Archbishop of Kharkov, and Arsenius, Archbishop of Novgorod. On November 5th, after a solemn service in the Church of the Savior, the three names, carefully sealed in wax rolls of equal size and weight, were placed in an urn and the eldest of the recluse-monks present drew out one name. It proved to be that of Tikhon, whose election was forthwith proclaimed. On November 21st (1917) occurred the solemn consecration in the Cathedral of the Assumption, and a new epoch in Russian church history had begun. 

The man chosen to this high office was without question one of the most widely known and loved in all the Russian Church. He had been elected unanimously to the presidency of the Sobor. His appointment a few months earlier to the Metropolitanate of Moscow had simply indicated his prominence in Russian church affairs. The Patriarch is a native of Toropetz, a town near Pskov. His theological education was acquired in the Petrograd Academy, after which he served for three years as instructor in the Pskov Theological Seminary. In 1891 he took the monastic vow and after serving for six years as rector of the seminary in Kholm, he was consecrated Bishop of Lublin. One year later he was appointed Bishop of North America. In 1907 he returned to Russia as Bishop of Jaroslavl and in 1913 he became Bishop of Vilna, from which seat he was called four years later to the Metropolitanate of Moscow.

Patriarch Tikhon’s nine years in America were important ones in the affairs of the Orthodox Church there. During this period the episcopal seat was removed from San Francisco to New York. During this period Bishop Tikhon became Archbishiop Tikhon, the first American Orthodox hierarch to bear that title. These years made a deep impression upon the future Patriarch himself, and as will later be pointed out, the knowledge of the life and religious ideals of American people he acquired there have been very influential in later events in Russia. America has no better friend in Russia than Patriarch Tikhon and he seems especially pleased to maintain his connection with Americans and things American. In view of his unique position and significance for all the Orthodox Church, a brief sketch of the Patriarch as the author last saw him in November 1920, will possibly here be pertinent.

An erect, well-built man in a blaek robe: grey hair and beard which at first glance make him appear older than his fifty-six years: a firm handclasp and kindly eyes with a decided trace of humor and ever a hint of fire in the back of them: those are your first impressions. That, and his beaming smile. The next thing I thought of was how little he had changed in appearance in the two years since I last visited him. He does not look a day older, and his manner, in marked contrast to so many of my friends in Moscow, is just as calm, unhurried and fearless as though he had not passed through two years of terrible uncertainty and stress. He had put on the white silk cowl with its diamond cross and the six – winged angel embroidered above the brow which is the head-dress of the Patriarch on all official oceasions, but he had evidently just been sitting down to tea and the arrival of an old friend dispelled any formality. So in a minute the cope and gown had disappeared and we were sitting beside the samovar in his living room. First the Patriarch wanted to know all about the Church in America. The only recent news he had was a cablegram which had been over a year en route. Then I had to promise to convey his heartiest greetings and special blessing to a number of individuals and to “all American friends” in general. He was most anxious to know if the letter he addressed to President Wilson on Thanksgiving Day, 1918, had ever reached him. In it the Patriarch had expressed his Church’s participation in offering thanks for victory over the powers of evil, and congratulated President Wilson on his fine type of leadership. The letter then went on to speak of the seemingly severe terms imposed upon the enemy, and urged Christian forbearance and the alleviation of the conditions laid down, rather than the creation of a lasting hatred which could but breed more war. No reply was ever received, and the Patriarch was curious to know if it had ever reaehed the President. Later, I tried to get a copy of this letter, but found that all extant copies had been destroyed during a political raid in the home of the Patriarch’s secretary.

All those who know Patriarch Tikhon enjoy his well-developed sense of humor. I believe it is this whieh has helped him retain his poise and cheerfulness through the past three years. I asked him how he had been treated. He told me he had been under “home arrest” for more than a year, had been permitted to go out to conduct service in other churches about once in three months, but aside from this had suffered no personal violence; this in marked contmst to many of the Church’s dignitaries who had been sent to jail or even condemned to execution. “They think”, the Patriarch smilingly remarked, as he patted my hand confidentially, ’0, he’s an old chap: he’ll die soon….. we won’t bother him’. “Wait and see”, he went on, shaking his finger, schoolmaster-fashion – “I’ll show them, yet”. And the roguish twinkle in his eyes, remarkably young in contrast to his grey hair, gave you confidence that when the present nightmare has cleared in Russia, her Church’s leader will be found ready to take a most active part in the affairs of the new day.

But not a political part: we spoke of several churchmen who had dabbled in politics, and the Patriarch expressed his sorrow and disapproval; ‘What is right and just one may openly approve, and what is evil and unrighteous one must as openly condemn”, he said, “that is the Church’s business. But to meddle with the affairs of secular politics is neither the course of wisdom or of duty for a priest”. “What is the most urgent need of the Orthodox Church which the Christian world outside can supply?” I asked the Patriarch.

“Send us Bibles”, he replied. “Never before in history has there been such a hunger for Scripture in the Russian people. They clamor for the whole book – not only the Gospels but the Old Testament as well – and we have no Bibles to give them. Our slender stocks were exhausted long ago, and our presses have been confiscated, so that we cannot print more”. I assured him that Christians in other lands would doubtless find a way to supply this need.

It happened to be Thanksgiving Day at home, and the Patriarch remembered, and smilingly referred to its being known as “Turkey Day” in an American family he used to visit in New York. This brought on a discussion of American and Russian holidays and this in turn led to an interesting conversation “bout the present religious situation in Russia. At every step in this recital the Patriarch’s clear insight into men and events and his statesmanlike grasp of the affairs of the whole Church were clearly evident. I left him with a renewed conviction of his fitness for the high post he occupies.

Russian Christians believe the choice of the Patriarch was direeted by Divine Providence, and surely Patriarch Tikhon’s career thus far, offers basis for the belief. It would be difficult to imagine a man better fitted, mentally and temperamentally for the peculiarly difficult task of leading the Orthodox Church through these years of disorder and suffering in Russia. His good-humored friendliness, combined with a kindly firmness have become proverbial in the Russian Church. This is even more true of what Russians call his “accessibility”. It is common belief that anyone, be he bishop or priest or the most obseure layman, who has real need of his advice or decision, may get to see the Patriarch.

I recall a small incident which gives point to this statement. One day in 1918, late in the afternoon I called at the Patriarch’s house, by appointment, for in those troubled months the Patriarch was so busy and his presence so much in demand that we used to wonder when he found time for sleep. And as I passed through the hall I noticed a woman in a peasant’s dress, sobbing in a corner. In response to my question she poured out a long story of how some canonicaI difficulty in the marriage of her daughter could only be solved by, the personal decision of the Patriarch. “I’ve been here since early morning”, she said, wiping her eyes, “without eating or drinking, and now they say the Patriarch is home from the Sobor but he is too busy to see me”. The tall servant in the hall, who by the way was also in America with Patriarch Tikhon, told me in English that he felt the Patriareh was too busy with matters of national importance to be troubled with one woman’s private request. Knowing the Patriarch as I did, I ventured to tell him of the petitioner in the hall, and as I left he asked to see her. In some Russian village today there is a peasant family who think Russia’s Patriarch is the kindest man who ever lived.

But these glimpses of fatherly kindness in the leader of the Russian Church must not be allowed to give a one-sided impression. On account of his good nature a Russian writer has compared him to the first Patriarch of Russia, Job. In view of his proven statesmanship and his fearless insistence upon justice as well as the remarkable skill with which he has held the Church together when everything else in Russia was falling into ruin, it seems to me he more nearly resembles Hermogen, whose influence moved so powerfully in unifying and inspiring Russian spirit to throw off the Polish yoke. From the closing of the Sobor in September, 1918, the Patriarch continued its policy of protest against increasing encroachments of civil powers upon church property and church direction. With constantly increasing severity the government punished anyone who questioned or opposed its decrees, so that to make a public protest was something which might bring the gravest personal consequences. The policy of Red Terror had gone into effect. In the face of this, the Patriarch issued his classic Epistle to the “Soviet of People’s Commissars”: – “Whoso taketh a sword shall perish by the sword”, it begins. “The blood of our brothers shed in rivers at your order, cries to Heaven and compels us to speak the bitter words of truth. You have given the people a stone instead of bread, a serpent instead of a fish. You have exchanged Christian love for hatred: in the place of peace you have kindled the flames of class enmity”. A few lines later we read “Is this freedom, when no one may openly speak his mind without danger of being accused as a counterrevolutionary? Where is the freedom of word and press? Where is freedom of church preaching?” The epistle concludes with the formal excommunication of all those connected with the terroristic movements in the government. He is a stern man and a bold one, who can publish such sentences in the face of powerful enemies against whom he has not the slightest physical defence. The Head of the Russian Church has been absolutely fearless in condemning wrong and insisting upon justiee and right.

This boldness, tempered with a well-seasoned moderation, has enabled the Patriarch to maintain his position as leader and center of the whole church organization. With clear consistence he has refrained from interferenee with purely political affairs, save in so far as they touched upon matters of public morals or eommon justice. He is probably the only man of similar importance who was able to speak his mind so freely without punishment by imprisonment or worse, during four years of the Soviet government in Russia. His life during this time has been of the greatest importance to the Russian Church. In his person all Orthodox thinking has centered. His personality has kept alive the spirit of a Church unified in a time when every other institution had gone to pieces. His example has inspired new ideals of religion I and life in the hearts of millions of his people.

Chaotic as these years have been, they have witnessed at the same time a momentous deepening of religious feeling and spirit in Russia. Religion has become in the lives of most people something far more than ever before. What once was more or less formal theory has now been transmuted by the fires of the past four years into vivid reality, into lifeblood to strengthen men and women through boundless hardship. In the old days, one was often charmed by the peculiarly intimate and conscious sense of God shown by a peasant or a workman, something one finds much more rarely in western lands. Now, it is an experience to make one stop and think, to diseover in the lives of the “intelligentsia”, as well, exactly the same vivid certainty of God’s presenee and of the actuality of communion with Him. Is it something they have just learned, in these years of trial, or have they simply rediscovered the sense of God which has been latent all their lives? I think most Russians feel the latter is true, although most of the people I know frankly confess that never before has religion meant so much to them.

The Countess L. is an example of what I mean. As one knew her in the old days she was typical of her elass of the “intelligentsia” in her attitude toward the church and toward religion in general: a mild respect for the feeling of other people in matters religious but a very frank scepticism, at least on the surface, so far as her own interest in religion was concerned. That was three years ago. The reign of terror and the general suffering of these years have not passed her by, and she has undergone such experiences as at once horrify you and inspire you by the heroism exhibited. Today she is a striking personality, who impresses you primarily in a religious way. It is difficult to say what it is about Countess L. which so inspires you, whether it is her serene faith in the goodness of God and the power of prayer, her sincere charity toward those who have caused her so much ill, or the transparently beautiful character which has grown in the midst of so much sorrow. I only know that a talk with her makes one’s own faith seem so small and one’s own religion so puny, that you are driven to a resolve to deepen your own spiritual life, and make it count more than ever before for the service of others.

And although the common folk of Russia have learned much in the past four years, and although many attempts to teach them have had a decidedly anti-religious color, the total new culture has not altered that depth of religious feeling which has already been mentioned. I remember riding with a woman conductor on a freight-train, in 1920, who illustrated this point. She had been telling me of the different train-loads of troops, war prisoners and the like, it had been her fortune to help transfer. Then later we spoke of schools under the Soviet government and she expressed her chief criticism against the fact that no religious instruction was offered. “It’s a bad thing for folks who lose God,” she told me. “So many other people seem to have lost Him of late years. Thank Heaven we in Russia haven’t. Why just last week I had a trainload of Austrian communists and some of them tried to prove to me that there is not any God at all. ‘I don’t want to listen to your talk’, I told them, ‘you don’t act as though you had anything better than the old religion, and you need not talk to me against a God I know”’.

Even where common folk have been led to attempt casting off their faith together with everything else connected with the old life, the success of the assault upon religion has been only superficial. People could be harangued into a superficial acceptance of infidel doctrine, but when the matter actually came to the test, they discovered that the old faith still remained. I know no better illustration of this than an incident in Jaroslavl in Easter week, 1919. The radicals in charge of the town, apparently moved by the notable religious feeling among the populace, called a meeting to discuss religion. Among others, representatives of the clergy were invited. Some of the best communist orators of the district were brought in to present the case against rcligion. First a skillful speaker discussed the “Christ myth”. He explained that simple people had once been easily misled by priests into belief that Jesus was something more than a man, that He had worked miracles, had even risen from the dead. Now while Jesus deserved honor as the first Communist, He was simply a man, and an enlightened and revolutionary people should put “way all their old superstitions about Him. “Long live the Communist Internationale” – and he was fairly well applauded by the people. The second speaker was a Jewess who attacked the ancient stories about the birth of Jesus. When she closed with a statement that Mary was simply a woman of the streets, and nothing more, the applause was somehow less vigorous.

Now it came the turn of the senior priest of the town to present his case. He rose, made the sign of the cross, stood a moment silently facing the erowd and then pronounced the age-old Easter greeting: “Christ is risen.” Without a moment’s hesitation the crowd swayed toward him in reply: “He is risen indeed”. “Christ is risen”! the priest repeated, and the answer came almost before he had pronounced the words. A third time he said it, with” thunderous response from the people, then, waiting a moment, he asked simply, “What more is there to say? Let us go to our homes”, and the anti-religious meeting adjourned. It is this deep-seated sense of religion in the hearts of Russian folk of all classes which has come so mightily to the front in the past four years.

Concomitant with this rise in spiritual values, there has come notably broadened popular interest in any sort of religious instruction. Moscow, in the autumn of 1920, was placarded with posters, practically the only ones visible which were not put up by the government, announcing a series of meetings organized by the Russian Student Christian Movement, with Professor Martsenkoffsky as the chief speaker, all on purely religious themes. “The Way to New Life” and “The Coming Christ” were among other lecture topics. These meetings were held in one of the largest auditoriums in Moscow, and roused such popular interest that eventually the leaders were arrested, lest the movement turn against the government. To one returning to Russia after an absence of two years, it was astonishing to see many churehes open for service every day, with a sermon at each service. In former times, a sermon was a rarity. Most congregations did not care for them, and even those priests who would have been glad to preach were under such restraint from the government that they found it very difficult. A popular lecturer on religious subjects in Petrograd some years ago once remarked that frequently priests who came to his lectures told him how they envied the freedom with which he was allowed to speak of religion. Now the whole picture is changed, people demand sermons, and sermons of the most practical character. The few specimens which have gotten into Russia of such books as Fosdick’s with their very modern application of Christian teaching to everyday Jife, have been fairly worn out, passed from hand to hand by people eagerly seeking guidance in this new comprehension of religion. And priests have risen to meet this need, speaking truth in vigorous style, often at the risk of the gravest personal consequences. Sermons are no longer the pious, half-sentimental homilies such as one used to hear, and as are sometimes encountered today in old-fashioned churches in Europe or America, but open, direct instruction in the duty of Christian living. One of the most striking changes in the Russian Church in the past four years is that of clergy who practicalIy never prepared a sermon, now metamorphosed into a body of fearless preachers of the Gospel.

This same interest in religion is again exhibited in the universal demand for Scripture. I have mentioned the Patriarch’s opinion on the matter. The same situation persists everywhere. Two different women, one a lady formerly of high estate and the other a working girl, told me in Russia how they had been unable to buy a Bible. Red Army troops returning after eight months internment in Germany, begged relief agencies at the border for some bit of Scripture to take back into Russia with them. A talk with Father Hotovitsky brought out the same hunger for the Book, of which the Patriarch spoke. Three months later a British commercial agent, with no special interest in religious teaching, brought out another formal request from representatives of both the Orthodox Church and the Tolstoyan movement for assistance in procuring copies of the Bible for distribution. The fever of interest in Scripture which swept through peasant Germany at the dawn of the Reformation seems to have found a modern-day counterpart in Russia. Here however the Church, instead of attempting to suppress the spread of the Book, is the chief agency urging its use, and asking aid of foreign Bible Societies in producing the Scriptures which it eannot itself print since the confiscation of all its publishing plants. This hunger for Scripture is another indication of the new interest and meaning which religion has for all sorts of people in Russia since the Revolution.

It is also interesting to see how inevitably people connect their new-found religion with the old Church. To me this has been a new proof of the inherent vitality of Russian Orthodoxy, in this as in other times of crisis. The churches are crowded, and the worship in them is if anything more devout than before, but one senses a new spirit of comprehension, of the practicability of faith, if the term may be applied, which was not generally present four years ago. To be sure, there may be emotional or sentimental elements in this. One woman told me: “The church is the only place where one can get away from the terrible existence we must endure”. Another person, thinking along the same line, said: “O, Russia isn’t Russia any more; the only place you can feel at home is in church”. Be that as it may, the Church itself has made great advances in adapting itself to the newly apparent needs of its people, and religion as preached daily in its sanctuary has a new meaning for Russia. Take the purely external alterations, for example.

One of the differences from old times which immediately strikes a visitor in present-day Russia are the posters at the church door. Here is one announcing congregational singing-practice; another lists the services for the week, and you are surprised to note that there is a service with a sermon every day. Another gives notice of a special collection for a choir-director and a fourth, perhaps, appeals to all members to remain after this morning’s service and help put in place the mats which are used in winter to cover the cold pavement. In the congregation the men are surprisingly predominant, many of them wearing Red Army insignia. You notice that while people are constantly entering the chureh, as in the old days, there are practically none leaving it, a phase of church service which was always very disconcerting to a western visitor in a Russian church before the Revolution. Now people come and stay for the entire service, especially the sermon, an institution which in the last few months (autumn 1921) has become, except for government deliverance, the most liberal and fearless public utteranee to be heard. In general, the preachers confine themselves and their remarks pretty well within the limits set by the Patriarch in his quoted statement regarding the political activity of priests, but within these limits there has been the most vigorous, speaking of the “bitter truth”. The preaching priesthood has attained a new respect in the eyes of Orthodox people, through the power of the spoken word.

The anecdote I heard in Moscow about Father Hotovitsky, of the Church of the Savior is indicative of the sort of priests here mentioned. There is probably no more remarkable preacher in Russia than Father Hotovitsky. His sermons are very modern both in their theology and in their practical application. He was drawn into a discussion with Lunacharsky, Commissar of Education, on the omnipresence of God. “You say that God is everywhere”, Lunacharsky told him. “Now you will surely admit that one could imagine a small box somewhere without God’s being in the box”. “But why suppose an imaginary box”, Hotovitsky retorted, when we have you, Mr. Commissar?”

Easter, 1921, in Moscow was another indication of the present position of the Church. The Patriarch was released from his “home arrest” to officiate at the midnight service in the Church of the Savior. But even that great temple, accomodating ten thousand people, was utterly inadequate to serve the crowd which came. The whole of the grand square about the church was flooded with worshippers and several extra services were conducted simultaneously, in the open air, to meet the exigencies of the occasion. One very significant item about this service was the insistence of the people that it should occur at midnight by sun time, instead of by the daylight-saving chronometry of the Soviet government. So while the street clocks of Communist regime marked three-thirty a. m., the Orthodox people of Moscow celebrated” midnight service at midnight as the sun indicates time.

There is much more to be said of religious life in Russia today. These paragraphs have merely hinted at what will some day require volumes properly to outline and portray, but they will perhaps have indieated the remarkably deepened spirituality of these present times in Russia, with religion a more vital reality in the lives of all classes than ever before, with this new spiritual life manifesting itself in a keen interest in religious discussion and literature, with the old Church rising to meet the newly awakened needs of its people.

These needs present far more searching problems than merely those of organization or of church discipline. The new day in Russia demands new modes of thought, even new phases of religion. By its preaching the Church must endeavor to guide the thinking of its people as they grope their way in the dazzling light of a freedom they were as unprepared for as owls for sunshine. The Byzantine elements in religion, emphasizing the mystic in the teaching about Christ, and the less positive than negative attitude toward joyous activity, must gradually give part of their place to more modern ideas of the Christian conquest, the blessedness of Christian service, the reality of Jesus’ comradeship. This is not to say that the past as a whole is to be sloughed off like an outgrown shell. Such elements as the beautiful humility which has characterized Russian Christianity for so many centuries, or the mysticism in devotion which is one of its greatest charms, must not be permitted to fade from the picture. Rather, the idea of activity, of service for Christ who is living and loving men must be engrafted into the old stock, re. taining all the beauty and usefulness of the old, but providing a combination of religious thought better fitted to meet present-day needs. These ideas must be embodied in the homiletics of the new Russia.

Such preaching you may hear in Russian churches today sermons by Russian priests. A Westerner would never be able to produce the desired result: he would be too brusque, too positive, too little able actually to get within the Russian religious thought of the past generations. Among American Protestants there have been numerous volunteers to go and “Christianize” Russia – they may better remain at home and preach to folk whose temperament and background they ean comprehend. In Russia they would shout to unresponsive listeners. The Orthodox Church wishes every aid other Christian bodies can give it, but its preaching must be done by Russians if it is to appeal to the Russian mind.

With a rising culture in Russia, another age-old custom of Orthodoxy may come up for consideration. What will be the future of the holy pictures (ikons) of Russia? There are those who think ikons will gradually disappear from the service. If they do, it will be in the distant future. But even in these post-revolutionary years, events have often shaped themselves in a way to bring forcibly to mind the actual inconsequentiality of “holy” things and “holy” pictures. Popular feeling has revolted at cinematograph photos of the desceration of a shrine like that of Saint Sergius, but at the same time the half-unconscious impression has been made that the place or the relics are in themselves of small real worth to a Christian. The priceless treasures adorning some specially-revered ikon have been stolen and the century-old sanctity of the holy picture violated. And folk, half unknowingly, begin to take less interest in the ancient painting. It is somehow discovered to be not so efficacious as an aid to Christian living. Are these indications of the future? Perhaps, but with a custom as ancient as the usage of ikons in the Orthodox Church, alterations will be made but slowly. If the question may be called a problem at all, it is surely a secondary one. It is so unimportant in comparison with the new developments in religious thinking and comprehension that while the topic will interest future students of Russian life, it need not further occupy us here.

There are educational problems for the Church to face, as well as theological. How shall it provide a body of clergy with a training adequate to meet the demands of its membership, especially in times like the present when church schools of all sorts are quite eliminated from the government’s list of possibilities? This is one of the most immediate problems the Church has to solve. Up to now a general solution has not been discovered, the chief reliance at present being a return to the ancient custom of training young men in each church, a sort of apprentice-system for the priesthood. The ranks of the clergy have also been augmented by the ordination of many religiously minded laymen with suitable education. Although perhaps nothing better. is possible just now, both of these schemes have their serious deficiences, of course, and the Church’s leaders are keenly alive to the situation. The future will doubtless discover effective means to provide an adequately trained clergy. But the Churech’s efforts along educational lines are not to be limited to the training of priests. The Church has gone vigorously about the task of providing a substitute for its parish schools, and organizations of various sorts among the congregations have opened religious instruction for all the church membership. Bible-study groups and something like our American mid-week prayer meetings have appeared. Preaching missions to the villages have been encouraged. The Church has given its support to other than strictly ecclesiastical movements for the spread of religious instruction.

And not purely religious education alone, has received the support of’ the Church. As in former times, so now it is anxious to cooperate with every worthy ageney working for the general cultural uplift of Russia. The Patriarch’s open letter, prepared to accompany a rural-education expedition, is an example of the attitude of the Orthodox Church toward all sincere efforts for the well-being of Russia: 

“The Young Men’s Christian Association is undertaking the support of a series of movements having for their object the improvement of the moral atmosphere of Russian life, the preaching of God’s Word and, abstaining from politics, cooperation with Russian educational and economic improvement societies.

“With this object in view, an expedition is proposed with a special steamer on the Volga, stopping at different villages and landings. On this boat there are to be lectures on agriculture and other topics valuable for popular education, also short religious services with appropriate moral instruction by Orthodox priests.

“Sympathizing with everything whieh may be helpful, materially or morally, to our Russian people, we hereby confer our blessing upon the organizers of this good work, praying God’s aid for its successful accomplishment.

(Signed) Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia.”

The content of such an epistle evidences the remarkably modern position which this ancient Church has assumed in the face of the modern educational requirements of its people.

The widespread demand, already noted, for the Bible, indicates another line of development where the Orthodox Church has to blaze away. Although the Church has used and taught the Gospels and the New Testament generally, until Leroy-Beaulieu could write that “the Gospels are undoubtedly the book dearest to the Russian”, the Old Testament has been very little known, hence the Church faces just now an interest in Scripture study quite unprecedented in its history. And again the need evidenees itself for a transition from the old. mystic usage of Scripture to a vitalizing praetical study, relating with ever-growing distinctness the life-giving Book to life itself.

Realizing the need for expert direction in the religious life of his Church, one of Patriareh Tikhon’s first official acts was to call from New York Father Hotovitsky who for some years in America had been specializing on church organization, young people’s work and the like. As early as the autumn of 1918 parish organizations similar to the “Brotherhoods” in many American churches, had begun to make their appearance. They were followed by women’s organizations with the object of Bible study as well as assistance in church maintenance. Children’s, particularly boys’ groups. have been formed, until today in Russia thousands of congregations have one or more organized clubs of women, men or young people, existing for self-help in religious and moral edueation, and for helping others along the same lines. The preaching missions already mentioned, whieh from time to time have gone from city centers out into the villages, have been another evidence of the Church’s capacity to cope with this need for a more general edueation in practical religion.

Surely the history of the Church since the revolution offers a guarantee for its future place in the life of the Russian people. During times when all other phases of national life and organization were dissolved in a national disorder sueh as no other country of modern times has experienced, merely to have held itself together in unbroken unity would have been a performance worthy of the world’s notice. This the Church has done, but beyond that it has sueeeeded, in the faee of all the forces striving for its dissolution, in building for itself a new form of organization and government, with principles of democratic control such as it had never known before. In the Patriarchate. which as has been seen is not a restoration of the old autocracy or a centralization of authority in one person, the Church has found for itself a new center around which it has crystallized a firm unity.

In establishing the principle of coneiliar management, with democratic legislative bodies representing all classes of the people, men and women, clergy and lay, it has provided a form of government which harmonizes with the best progressive spirit of the Russian world. The Church has remodelled its administration to meet the new situation.

It has revised its services as well, so that now as never before the services in its sanctuaries are not merely for the people, but of the people. The new economic conditions have helped to bring each communicant into a position of participation in the affairs of his parish. The management of parish business by a committee chosen by the people has given them a new sense of responsibility for their Church. The introduction of congregational singing and the entirely new emphasis upon preaehing brings worship into a new phase of actual commonality. All the people are participants in the services, and these services are so ordered as to meet the marvellously new interest in practical religion whieh exists throughout Russia today.

These, changes the Church has made in itself in, order to minister to the new needs of the Russian people are simply what might have been expected in the light of its historic past. When Christianity first dawned in Russia, it was the Church which spread the light of learning and the acceptance of Christian morality throughout the land. When much of the old order was dissolved in the two hundred years Russia bowed beneath the Tatar yoke it was the Church again which offered a rallying point and actually inspired the effort which threw off the Asiatic tyranny. It was the Church under Hermogen, in the “Troublous Times”, which kept alive the spark of patriotism, for Russians always linked in an indissoluble way with the idea of Orthodoxy, and the glorious defence of the Sergievskaya Lavra marked a new turning point in Russian national affairs, with the Church in the leader’s role. In the light of the Chureh’s glorious past, when in every time of national crisis it has somehow maintained not only its own unity, but has been the center around which the spirit of the nation could rally, is it unduly optimistic to suggest that in our day we are witnessing another repetition of history! Surely the events of the past five years, with the Church as the only organization whieh still exists, standing like a temple miraculously preserved amid a city devastated by fire, offer ground for the belief that the Church in Russia will not belie its past performances. It is not only preserved amidst general ruin, but it has purged itself of the evils which a time of servitude had fastened upon it, remodelled its forms of government and worship, and ministers today to the needs of Russian people with a eompleteness it has never before known.

And if the history of the past offers bright hope for the future of the Orthodox Church, just as truly does the personality of the men who are guiding its affairs in the present. What has been said of the liberality and breadth of mind of the Patriarch, of his keen appreciation of the needs of Russian Christianity today and the measures the Church must take to meet them, is typical of the church leaders who form his immediate circle of advisers. It is no exaggeration to say that the most able and the most liberal men in the Orthodox Church are guiding its present efforts. Perhaps the fact is significant that many of them, like Patriarch Tikhon himself, have spent some years in America, where acquaintance has been gained with western religious ideals and practice. Father Hotovitsky using his knowledge of young people’s organizations in America to build up throughout the Russian Church similar groups, or Bishop Anatolii of Tomsk who even before the assembly of the Sobor began parochial organizations modelled after those he had known in America, are outstanding examples of the progressive leadership in the Orthodox Church today. Besides forming one of the strongest possible ties of friendship with America, these will by the very fact of their acquaintance with life in our country are bound to be of most valuable service in bringing the Russian Church up to the new and lofty standards she has set for herself. Their background of acquaintance with Western ideals of religion is likely to be of large influenee in the progress of the Church of Russia.

As these men go forward in the work of leading Russian Christianity out along lines of freer activity and more vital religion, they are looking to the Christians of other lands for support and assistance. It would be difficult to imagine an organization more truly desirous of learning from the best in others, of profiting by experience along the same paths it has laid out for itself, than is the Russian Church. It confidently expects that Christians of other nations will gladly offer whatever assistance is within their power. What contributions can members of other Christian confessions make toward the progress of Christianity in Russia?

To be of service to the Church of Russia, Christians of the West must first cultivate aequaintance with it. A study of its ideals and its history, a genuine effort to appreciate all that is valuable in its past and present – these must first lead us to a sincere recognition of the breadth and depth of Russian Christianity. Study its literature; if possible become familiar with its service. There are many Russian churches in America where one may begin this helpful acquaintance and any sincerely friendly approach will be met with equal friendliness.

Practical aid may be extended in the provision of books. The whole realm of our modern religious literature may be opened to Russia: educational courses for use in church schools and organized Bible-study groups will be eagerly utilized. Such books as homiletical aids, guild and society handbooks, would be most useful if translated and adapted to modern Russian conditions. The best religious thought of the modern West should be put at Russia’s disposal by translation and publication in Russian. In the interval until the Church is again in a position to publish the Bible and portions of it for itself, the other Christian communions will find it difficult to turn a deaf ear to the appeals of both the Church and the Russian people for copies of the Word of God. Cooperation should be encouraged along all lines of religious endeavor and all our own experience in religious organization and method should be open for the use of the Russian Church. They seek our aid, and we must not withhold it.

Any such assistance offered to Russia by Western Christianity will be welcomed with open arms, and if the suggestions here contained are borne in mind there will be no possibility for misunderstanding. Once a thorough appreeiation of the essential “Russianity” of the Orthodox Church is established, there will be no misguided efforts to help Russian Christianity through the propagation of other forms of church organization or sectarian propaganda. What Western Christianity gives to Russia must be given through the Orthodox Church and not in any sort of opposition to or competition with it. A church which regardless of the barriers of distance and language, has prayed daily for a thousand years for “the welfare of God’s ehurches and the union of them all” will welcome every sincerely friendly approach from other Christian bodies.

In all this talk of efforts toward the rapprochement of other Christian bodies to the Russian Church, and methods of extending aid in these trying years, one possibility overtops all the rest. We must cultivate acquaintance with the Orthodox Church and personal contact with its leaders. We must learn to appreciate the beauty and value in its worship and its teaching. We must realize that the Russian Church is essentially indigenous and adapt to that cardinal fact our efforts at effective assistance. We should put at its disposal the best of our modern religious thought in the form of books and periodicals. These are particularly vital for those Americans who go to Russia or who are directing the home churches. To all Christians at home, however, there remains the privilege of all Christians everywhere, that of intercession. It is doubtful if anywhere in the Christian world today there is a more vital belief in the value of prayer, than in Russia. When the Russian Church asks for our prayers, the request is more than an empty formality. Russia believes, she knows from experience, how the power of God may be invoked, and her people confidently expect the prayer support of Christians of other lands. In the midst of the terrible uncertainty of the summer of 1918, when no one dared plan anything more than a few days in advance, and even the Sobor carried on its orderly deliberations only in the face of unbelievable hindrances, the proclamation of President Wilson appointing “a day of humiliation, prayer and fasting” made a deep impression upon the leaders of the Russian Church. The feeling of the Patriarch is evident in his letter, written at that time, to his friend Dr. Mott, as one of the leaders among the Christian forces of America:

“It was with especial sympathy that we together with all believing Russians heard that the members of the churches of God in America. had been assembled by your President and ehurch leaders in the houses of God Memorial Day to fast and pray for peace among the nations at war. We also recall with deep gratitude the friendly feelings repeatedly expressed by your President toward Russia. 

“It would comfort us to know that the Christians of America will continue to remember our Russian Church and people in their prayers. We would feel deeply grateful if you could express to the Christian people in America our profound desire for their intercession, especially at this crisis in Russia. We are conscious in this dark hour that the moral support and prayers of all Christendom are vital for the rebuilding of Russia through Christ to her former strength”.

The head of Russia’s Church is here expressing the feeling of most of its leaders and millions of its people. Such a letter brings an almost irresistible appeal. As the old Church of Russia moves out into new fields of service for a people rising to the ideals of a modern world, may Christians of the West be not unmindful of this desire for their prayer-support. Joining in its age-old prayer for the welfare of all God’s churches, may we open our thought to every means of eooperation and assistance for the Church of Russia. The man chosen to this high office was without question one of the most widely known and loved in all the Russian Church. He had been elected unanimously to the presidency of the Sobor. His appointment a few months earlier to the Metropolitanate of Moscow had simply indicated his prominence in Russian church affairs. The Patriarch is a native of Toropetz, a town near Pskov. His theological education was acquired in the Petrograd Academy, after which he served for three years as instructor in the Pskov Theological Seminary. In 1891 he took the monastic vow and after serving for six years as rector of the seminary in Kholm, he was consecrated Bishop of Lublin. One year later he was appointed Bishop of North America. In 1907 he returned to Russia as Bishop of Jaroslavl and in 1913 he became Bishop of Vilna, from which seat he was called four years later to the Metropolitanate of Moscow.

Patriarch Tikhon’s nine years in America were important ones in the affairs of the Orthodox Church there. During this period the episcopal seat was removed from San Francisco to New York. During this period Bishop Tikhon became Archbishiop Tikhon, the first American Orthodox hierarch to bear that title. These years made a deep impression upon the future Patriarch himself, and as will later be pointed out, the knowledge of the life and religious ideals of American people he acquired there have been very influential in later events in Russia. America has no better friend in Russia than Patriarch Tikhon and he seems especially pleased to maintain his connection with Americans and things American. In view of his unique position and significance for all the Orthodox Church, a brief sketch of the Patriarch as the author last saw him in November 1920, will possibly here be pertinent.

An erect, well-built man in a blaek robe: grey hair and beard which at first glance make him appear older than his fifty-six years: a firm handclasp and kindly eyes with a decided trace of humor and ever a hint of fire in the back of them: those are your first impressions. That, and his beaming smile. The next thing I thought of was how little he had changed in appearance in the two years since I last visited him. He does not look a day older, and his manner, in marked contrast to so many of my friends in Moscow, is just as calm, unhurried and fearless as though he had not passed through two years of terrible uncertainty and stress. He had put on the white silk cowl with its diamond cross and the six – winged angel embroidered above the brow which is the head-dress of the Patriarch on all official oceasions, but he had evidently just been sitting down to tea and the arrival of an old friend dispelled any formality. So in a minute the cope and gown had disappeared and we were sitting beside the samovar in his living room. First the Patriarch wanted to know all about the Church in America. The only recent news he had was a cablegram which had been over a year en route. Then I had to promise to convey his heartiest greetings and special blessing to a number of individuals and to “all American friends” in general. He was most anxious to know if the letter he addressed to President Wilson on Thanksgiving Day, 1918, had ever reached him. In it the Patriarch had expressed his Church’s participation in offering thanks for victory over the powers of evil, and congratulated President Wilson on his fine type of leadership. The letter then went on to speak of the seemingly severe terms imposed upon the enemy, and urged Christian forbearance and the alleviation of the conditions laid down, rather than the creation of a lasting hatred which could but breed more war. No reply was ever received, and the Patriarch was curious to know if it had ever reaehed the President. Later, I tried to get a copy of this letter, but found that all extant copies had been destroyed during a political raid in the home of the Patriarch’s secretary.

All those who know Patriarch Tikhon enjoy his well-developed sense of humor. I believe it is this whieh has helped him retain his poise and cheerfulness through the past three years. I asked him how he had been treated. He told me he had been under “home arrest” for more than a year, had been permitted to go out to conduct service in other churches about once in three months, but aside from this had suffered no personal violence; this in marked contmst to many of the Church’s dignitaries who had been sent to jail or even condemned to execution. “They think”, the Patriarch smilingly remarked, as he patted my hand confidentially, ’0, he’s an old chap: he’ll die soon….. we won’t bother him’. “Wait and see”, he went on, shaking his finger, schoolmaster-fashion – “I’ll show them, yet”. And the roguish twinkle in his eyes, remarkably young in contrast to his grey hair, gave you confidence that when the present nightmare has cleared in Russia, her Church’s leader will be found ready to take a most active part in the affairs of the new day.

But not a political part: we spoke of several churchmen who had dabbled in politics, and the Patriarch expressed his sorrow and disapproval; ‘What is right and just one may openly approve, and what is evil and unrighteous one must as openly condemn”, he said, “that is the Church’s business. But to meddle with the affairs of secular politics is neither the course of wisdom or of duty for a priest”. “What is the most urgent need of the Orthodox Church which the Christian world outside can supply?” I asked the Patriarch.

“Send us Bibles”, he replied. “Never before in history has there been such a hunger for Scripture in the Russian people. They clamor for the whole book – not only the Gospels but the Old Testament as well – and we have no Bibles to give them. Our slender stocks were exhausted long ago, and our presses have been confiscated, so that we cannot print more”. I assured him that Christians in other lands would doubtless find a way to supply this need.

It happened to be Thanksgiving Day at home, and the Patriarch remembered, and smilingly referred to its being known as “Turkey Day” in an American family he used to visit in New York. This brought on a discussion of American and Russian holidays and this in turn led to an interesting conversation “bout the present religious situation in Russia. At every step in this recital the Patriarch’s clear insight into men and events and his statesmanlike grasp of the affairs of the whole Church were clearly evident. I left him with a renewed conviction of his fitness for the high post he occupies.

Russian Christians believe the choice of the Patriarch was direeted by Divine Providence, and surely Patriarch Tikhon’s career thus far, offers basis for the belief. It would be difficult to imagine a man better fitted, mentally and temperamentally for the peculiarly difficult task of leading the Orthodox Church through these years of disorder and suffering in Russia. His good-humored friendliness, combined with a kindly firmness have become proverbial in the Russian Church. This is even more true of what Russians call his “accessibility”. It is common belief that anyone, be he bishop or priest or the most obseure layman, who has real need of his advice or decision, may get to see the Patriarch.

I recall a small incident which gives point to this statement. One day in 1918, late in the afternoon I called at the Patriarch’s house, by appointment, for in those troubled months the Patriarch was so busy and his presence so much in demand that we used to wonder when he found time for sleep. And as I passed through the hall I noticed a woman in a peasant’s dress, sobbing in a corner. In response to my question she poured out a long story of how some canonicaI difficulty in the marriage of her daughter could only be solved by, the personal decision of the Patriarch. “I’ve been here since early morning”, she said, wiping her eyes, “without eating or drinking, and now they say the Patriarch is home from the Sobor but he is too busy to see me”. The tall servant in the hall, who by the way was also in America with Patriarch Tikhon, told me in English that he felt the Patriareh was too busy with matters of national importance to be troubled with one woman’s private request. Knowing the Patriarch as I did, I ventured to tell him of the petitioner in the hall, and as I left he asked to see her. In some Russian village today there is a peasant family who think Russia’s Patriarch is the kindest man who ever lived.

But these glimpses of fatherly kindness in the leader of the Russian Church must not be allowed to give a one-sided impression. On account of his good nature a Russian writer has compared him to the first Patriarch of Russia, Job. In view of his proven statesmanship and his fearless insistence upon justice as well as the remarkable skill with which he has held the Church together when everything else in Russia was falling into ruin, it seems to me he more nearly resembles Hermogen, whose influence moved so powerfully in unifying and inspiring Russian spirit to throw off the Polish yoke. From the closing of the Sobor in September, 1918, the Patriarch continued its policy of protest against increasing encroachments of civil powers upon church property and church direction. With constantly increasing severity the government punished anyone who questioned or opposed its decrees, so that to make a public protest was something which might bring the gravest personal consequences. The policy of Red Terror had gone into effect. In the face of this, the Patriarch issued his classic Epistle to the “Soviet of People’s Commissars”: – “Whoso taketh a sword shall perish by the sword”, it begins. “The blood of our brothers shed in rivers at your order, cries to Heaven and compels us to speak the bitter words of truth. You have given the people a stone instead of bread, a serpent instead of a fish. You have exchanged Christian love for hatred: in the place of peace you have kindled the flames of class enmity”. A few lines later we read “Is this freedom, when no one may openly speak his mind without danger of being accused as a counterrevolutionary? Where is the freedom of word and press? Where is freedom of church preaching?” The epistle concludes with the formal excommunication of all those connected with the terroristic movements in the government. He is a stern man and a bold one, who can publish such sentences in the face of powerful enemies against whom he has not the slightest physical defence. The Head of the Russian Church has been absolutely fearless in condemning wrong and insisting upon justiee and right.

This boldness, tempered with a well-seasoned moderation, has enabled the Patriarch to maintain his position as leader and center of the whole church organization. With clear consistence he has refrained from interferenee with purely political affairs, save in so far as they touched upon matters of public morals or eommon justice. He is probably the only man of similar importance who was able to speak his mind so freely without punishment by imprisonment or worse, during four years of the Soviet government in Russia. His life during this time has been of the greatest importance to the Russian Church. In his person all Orthodox thinking has centered. His personality has kept alive the spirit of a Church unified in a time when every other institution had gone to pieces. His example has inspired new ideals of religion I and life in the hearts of millions of his people.

Chaotic as these years have been, they have witnessed at the same time a momentous deepening of religious feeling and spirit in Russia. Religion has become in the lives of most people something far more than ever before. What once was more or less formal theory has now been transmuted by the fires of the past four years into vivid reality, into lifeblood to strengthen men and women through boundless hardship. In the old days, one was often charmed by the peculiarly intimate and conscious sense of God shown by a peasant or a workman, something one finds much more rarely in western lands. Now, it is an experience to make one stop and think, to diseover in the lives of the “intelligentsia”, as well, exactly the same vivid certainty of God’s presenee and of the actuality of communion with Him. Is it something they have just learned, in these years of trial, or have they simply rediscovered the sense of God which has been latent all their lives? I think most Russians feel the latter is true, although most of the people I know frankly confess that never before has religion meant so much to them.

The Countess L. is an example of what I mean. As one knew her in the old days she was typical of her elass of the “intelligentsia” in her attitude toward the church and toward religion in general: a mild respect for the feeling of other people in matters religious but a very frank scepticism, at least on the surface, so far as her own interest in religion was concerned. That was three years ago. The reign of terror and the general suffering of these years have not passed her by, and she has undergone such experiences as at once horrify you and inspire you by the heroism exhibited. Today she is a striking personality, who impresses you primarily in a religious way. It is difficult to say what it is about Countess L. which so inspires you, whether it is her serene faith in the goodness of God and the power of prayer, her sincere charity toward those who have caused her so much ill, or the transparently beautiful character which has grown in the midst of so much sorrow. I only know that a talk with her makes one’s own faith seem so small and one’s own religion so puny, that you are driven to a resolve to deepen your own spiritual life, and make it count more than ever before for the service of others.

And although the common folk of Russia have learned much in the past four years, and although many attempts to teach them have had a decidedly anti-religious color, the total new culture has not altered that depth of religious feeling which has already been mentioned. I remember riding with a woman conductor on a freight-train, in 1920, who illustrated this point. She had been telling me of the different train-loads of troops, war prisoners and the like, it had been her fortune to help transfer. Then later we spoke of schools under the Soviet government and she expressed her chief criticism against the fact that no religious instruction was offered. “It’s a bad thing for folks who lose God,” she told me. “So many other people seem to have lost Him of late years. Thank Heaven we in Russia haven’t. Why just last week I had a trainload of Austrian communists and some of them tried to prove to me that there is not any God at all. ‘I don’t want to listen to your talk’, I told them, ‘you don’t act as though you had anything better than the old religion, and you need not talk to me against a God I know”’.

Even where common folk have been led to attempt casting off their faith together with everything else connected with the old life, the success of the assault upon religion has been only superficial. People could be harangued into a superficial acceptance of infidel doctrine, but when the matter actually came to the test, they discovered that the old faith still remained. I know no better illustration of this than an incident in Jaroslavl in Easter week, 1919. The radicals in charge of the town, apparently moved by the notable religious feeling among the populace, called a meeting to discuss religion. Among others, representatives of the clergy were invited. Some of the best communist orators of the district were brought in to present the case against rcligion. First a skillful speaker discussed the “Christ myth”. He explained that simple people had once been easily misled by priests into belief that Jesus was something more than a man, that He had worked miracles, had even risen from the dead. Now while Jesus deserved honor as the first Communist, He was simply a man, and an enlightened and revolutionary people should put “way all their old superstitions about Him. “Long live the Communist Internationale” – and he was fairly well applauded by the people. The second speaker was a Jewess who attacked the ancient stories about the birth of Jesus. When she closed with a statement that Mary was simply a woman of the streets, and nothing more, the applause was somehow less vigorous.

Now it came the turn of the senior priest of the town to present his case. He rose, made the sign of the cross, stood a moment silently facing the erowd and then pronounced the age-old Easter greeting: “Christ is risen.” Without a moment’s hesitation the crowd swayed toward him in reply: “He is risen indeed”. “Christ is risen”! the priest repeated, and the answer came almost before he had pronounced the words. A third time he said it, with” thunderous response from the people, then, waiting a moment, he asked simply, “What more is there to say? Let us go to our homes”, and the anti-religious meeting adjourned. It is this deep-seated sense of religion in the hearts of Russian folk of all classes which has come so mightily to the front in the past four years.

Concomitant with this rise in spiritual values, there has come notably broadened popular interest in any sort of religious instruction. Moscow, in the autumn of 1920, was placarded with posters, practically the only ones visible which were not put up by the government, announcing a series of meetings organized by the Russian Student Christian Movement, with Professor Martsenkoffsky as the chief speaker, all on purely religious themes. “The Way to New Life” and “The Coming Christ” were among other lecture topics. These meetings were held in one of the largest auditoriums in Moscow, and roused such popular interest that eventually the leaders were arrested, lest the movement turn against the government. To one returning to Russia after an absence of two years, it was astonishing to see many churehes open for service every day, with a sermon at each service. In former times, a sermon was a rarity. Most congregations did not care for them, and even those priests who would have been glad to preach were under such restraint from the government that they found it very difficult. A popular lecturer on religious subjects in Petrograd some years ago once remarked that frequently priests who came to his lectures told him how they envied the freedom with which he was allowed to speak of religion. Now the whole picture is changed, people demand sermons, and sermons of the most practical character. The few specimens which have gotten into Russia of such books as Fosdick’s with their very modern application of Christian teaching to everyday Jife, have been fairly worn out, passed from hand to hand by people eagerly seeking guidance in this new comprehension of religion. And priests have risen to meet this need, speaking truth in vigorous style, often at the risk of the gravest personal consequences. Sermons are no longer the pious, half-sentimental homilies such as one used to hear, and as are sometimes encountered today in old-fashioned churches in Europe or America, but open, direct instruction in the duty of Christian living. One of the most striking changes in the Russian Church in the past four years is that of clergy who practicalIy never prepared a sermon, now metamorphosed into a body of fearless preachers of the Gospel.

This same interest in religion is again exhibited in the universal demand for Scripture. I have mentioned the Patriarch’s opinion on the matter. The same situation persists everywhere. Two different women, one a lady formerly of high estate and the other a working girl, told me in Russia how they had been unable to buy a Bible. Red Army troops returning after eight months internment in Germany, begged relief agencies at the border for some bit of Scripture to take back into Russia with them. A talk with Father Hotovitsky brought out the same hunger for the Book, of which the Patriarch spoke. Three months later a British commercial agent, with no special interest in religious teaching, brought out another formal request from representatives of both the Orthodox Church and the Tolstoyan movement for assistance in procuring copies of the Bible for distribution. The fever of interest in Scripture which swept through peasant Germany at the dawn of the Reformation seems to have found a modern-day counterpart in Russia. Here however the Church, instead of attempting to suppress the spread of the Book, is the chief agency urging its use, and asking aid of foreign Bible Societies in producing the Scriptures which it eannot itself print since the confiscation of all its publishing plants. This hunger for Scripture is another indication of the new interest and meaning which religion has for all sorts of people in Russia since the Revolution.

It is also interesting to see how inevitably people connect their new-found religion with the old Church. To me this has been a new proof of the inherent vitality of Russian Orthodoxy, in this as in other times of crisis. The churches are crowded, and the worship in them is if anything more devout than before, but one senses a new spirit of comprehension, of the practicability of faith, if the term may be applied, which was not generally present four years ago. To be sure, there may be emotional or sentimental elements in this. One woman told me: “The church is the only place where one can get away from the terrible existence we must endure”. Another person, thinking along the same line, said: “O, Russia isn’t Russia any more; the only place you can feel at home is in church”. Be that as it may, the Church itself has made great advances in adapting itself to the newly apparent needs of its people, and religion as preached daily in its sanctuary has a new meaning for Russia. Take the purely external alterations, for example.

One of the differences from old times which immediately strikes a visitor in present-day Russia are the posters at the church door. Here is one announcing congregational singing-practice; another lists the services for the week, and you are surprised to note that there is a service with a sermon every day. Another gives notice of a special collection for a choir-director and a fourth, perhaps, appeals to all members to remain after this morning’s service and help put in place the mats which are used in winter to cover the cold pavement. In the congregation the men are surprisingly predominant, many of them wearing Red Army insignia. You notice that while people are constantly entering the chureh, as in the old days, there are practically none leaving it, a phase of church service which was always very disconcerting to a western visitor in a Russian church before the Revolution. Now people come and stay for the entire service, especially the sermon, an institution which in the last few months (autumn 1921) has become, except for government deliverance, the most liberal and fearless public utteranee to be heard. In general, the preachers confine themselves and their remarks pretty well within the limits set by the Patriarch in his quoted statement regarding the political activity of priests, but within these limits there has been the most vigorous, speaking of the “bitter truth”. The preaching priesthood has attained a new respect in the eyes of Orthodox people, through the power of the spoken word.

The anecdote I heard in Moscow about Father Hotovitsky, of the Church of the Savior is indicative of the sort of priests here mentioned. There is probably no more remarkable preacher in Russia than Father Hotovitsky. His sermons are very modern both in their theology and in their practical application. He was drawn into a discussion with Lunacharsky, Commissar of Education, on the omnipresence of God. “You say that God is everywhere”, Lunacharsky told him. “Now you will surely admit that one could imagine a small box somewhere without God’s being in the box”. “But why suppose an imaginary box”, Hotovitsky retorted, when we have you, Mr. Commissar?”

Easter, 1921, in Moscow was another indication of the present position of the Church. The Patriarch was released from his “home arrest” to officiate at the midnight service in the Church of the Savior. But even that great temple, accomodating ten thousand people, was utterly inadequate to serve the crowd which came. The whole of the grand square about the church was flooded with worshippers and several extra services were conducted simultaneously, in the open air, to meet the exigencies of the occasion. One very significant item about this service was the insistence of the people that it should occur at midnight by sun time, instead of by the daylight-saving chronometry of the Soviet government. So while the street clocks of Communist regime marked three-thirty a. m., the Orthodox people of Moscow celebrated” midnight service at midnight as the sun indicates time.

There is much more to be said of religious life in Russia today. These paragraphs have merely hinted at what will some day require volumes properly to outline and portray, but they will perhaps have indieated the remarkably deepened spirituality of these present times in Russia, with religion a more vital reality in the lives of all classes than ever before, with this new spiritual life manifesting itself in a keen interest in religious discussion and literature, with the old Church rising to meet the newly awakened needs of its people.

These needs present far more searching problems than merely those of organization or of church discipline. The new day in Russia demands new modes of thought, even new phases of religion. By its preaching the Church must endeavor to guide the thinking of its people as they grope their way in the dazzling light of a freedom they were as unprepared for as owls for sunshine. The Byzantine elements in religion, emphasizing the mystic in the teaching about Christ, and the less positive than negative attitude toward joyous activity, must gradually give part of their place to more modern ideas of the Christian conquest, the blessedness of Christian service, the reality of Jesus’ comradeship. This is not to say that the past as a whole is to be sloughed off like an outgrown shell. Such elements as the beautiful humility which has characterized Russian Christianity for so many centuries, or the mysticism in devotion which is one of its greatest charms, must not be permitted to fade from the picture. Rather, the idea of activity, of service for Christ who is living and loving men must be engrafted into the old stock, re. taining all the beauty and usefulness of the old, but providing a combination of religious thought better fitted to meet present-day needs. These ideas must be embodied in the homiletics of the new Russia.

Such preaching you may hear in Russian churches today sermons by Russian priests. A Westerner would never be able to produce the desired result: he would be too brusque, too positive, too little able actually to get within the Russian religious thought of the past generations. Among American Protestants there have been numerous volunteers to go and “Christianize” Russia – they may better remain at home and preach to folk whose temperament and background they ean comprehend. In Russia they would shout to unresponsive listeners. The Orthodox Church wishes every aid other Christian bodies can give it, but its preaching must be done by Russians if it is to appeal to the Russian mind.

With a rising culture in Russia, another age-old custom of Orthodoxy may come up for consideration. What will be the future of the holy pictures (ikons) of Russia? There are those who think ikons will gradually disappear from the service. If they do, it will be in the distant future. But even in these post-revolutionary years, events have often shaped themselves in a way to bring forcibly to mind the actual inconsequentiality of “holy” things and “holy” pictures. Popular feeling has revolted at cinematograph photos of the desceration of a shrine like that of Saint Sergius, but at the same time the half-unconscious impression has been made that the place or the relics are in themselves of small real worth to a Christian. The priceless treasures adorning some specially-revered ikon have been stolen and the century-old sanctity of the holy picture violated. And folk, half unknowingly, begin to take less interest in the ancient painting. It is somehow discovered to be not so efficacious as an aid to Christian living. Are these indications of the future? Perhaps, but with a custom as ancient as the usage of ikons in the Orthodox Church, alterations will be made but slowly. If the question may be called a problem at all, it is surely a secondary one. It is so unimportant in comparison with the new developments in religious thinking and comprehension that while the topic will interest future students of Russian life, it need not further occupy us here.

There are educational problems for the Church to face, as well as theological. How shall it provide a body of clergy with a training adequate to meet the demands of its membership, especially in times like the present when church schools of all sorts are quite eliminated from the government’s list of possibilities? This is one of the most immediate problems the Church has to solve. Up to now a general solution has not been discovered, the chief reliance at present being a return to the ancient custom of training young men in each church, a sort of apprentice-system for the priesthood. The ranks of the clergy have also been augmented by the ordination of many religiously minded laymen with suitable education. Although perhaps nothing better. is possible just now, both of these schemes have their serious deficiences, of course, and the Church’s leaders are keenly alive to the situation. The future will doubtless discover effective means to provide an adequately trained clergy. But the Churech’s efforts along educational lines are not to be limited to the training of priests. The Church has gone vigorously about the task of providing a substitute for its parish schools, and organizations of various sorts among the congregations have opened religious instruction for all the church membership. Bible-study groups and something like our American mid-week prayer meetings have appeared. Preaching missions to the villages have been encouraged. The Church has given its support to other than strictly ecclesiastical movements for the spread of religious instruction.

And not purely religious education alone, has received the support of’ the Church. As in former times, so now it is anxious to cooperate with every worthy ageney working for the general cultural uplift of Russia. The Patriarch’s open letter, prepared to accompany a rural-education expedition, is an example of the attitude of the Orthodox Church toward all sincere efforts for the well-being of Russia: 

“The Young Men’s Christian Association is undertaking the support of a series of movements having for their object the improvement of the moral atmosphere of Russian life, the preaching of God’s Word and, abstaining from politics, cooperation with Russian educational and economic improvement societies.

“With this object in view, an expedition is proposed with a special steamer on the Volga, stopping at different villages and landings. On this boat there are to be lectures on agriculture and other topics valuable for popular education, also short religious services with appropriate moral instruction by Orthodox priests.

“Sympathizing with everything whieh may be helpful, materially or morally, to our Russian people, we hereby confer our blessing upon the organizers of this good work, praying God’s aid for its successful accomplishment.

(Signed) Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia.”

The content of such an epistle evidences the remarkably modern position which this ancient Church has assumed in the face of the modern educational requirements of its people.

The widespread demand, already noted, for the Bible, indicates another line of development where the Orthodox Church has to blaze away. Although the Church has used and taught the Gospels and the New Testament generally, until Leroy-Beaulieu could write that “the Gospels are undoubtedly the book dearest to the Russian”, the Old Testament has been very little known, hence the Church faces just now an interest in Scripture study quite unprecedented in its history. And again the need evidenees itself for a transition from the old. mystic usage of Scripture to a vitalizing praetical study, relating with ever-growing distinctness the life-giving Book to life itself.

Realizing the need for expert direction in the religious life of his Church, one of Patriareh Tikhon’s first official acts was to call from New York Father Hotovitsky who for some years in America had been specializing on church organization, young people’s work and the like. As early as the autumn of 1918 parish organizations similar to the “Brotherhoods” in many American churches, had begun to make their appearance. They were followed by women’s organizations with the object of Bible study as well as assistance in church maintenance. Children’s, particularly boys’ groups. have been formed, until today in Russia thousands of congregations have one or more organized clubs of women, men or young people, existing for self-help in religious and moral edueation, and for helping others along the same lines. The preaching missions already mentioned, whieh from time to time have gone from city centers out into the villages, have been another evidence of the Church’s capacity to cope with this need for a more general edueation in practical religion.

Surely the history of the Church since the revolution offers a guarantee for its future place in the life of the Russian people. During times when all other phases of national life and organization were dissolved in a national disorder sueh as no other country of modern times has experienced, merely to have held itself together in unbroken unity would have been a performance worthy of the world’s notice. This the Church has done, but beyond that it has sueeeeded, in the faee of all the forces striving for its dissolution, in building for itself a new form of organization and government, with principles of democratic control such as it had never known before. In the Patriarchate. which as has been seen is not a restoration of the old autocracy or a centralization of authority in one person, the Church has found for itself a new center around which it has crystallized a firm unity.

In establishing the principle of coneiliar management, with democratic legislative bodies representing all classes of the people, men and women, clergy and lay, it has provided a form of government which harmonizes with the best progressive spirit of the Russian world. The Church has remodelled its administration to meet the new situation.

It has revised its services as well, so that now as never before the services in its sanctuaries are not merely for the people, but of the people. The new economic conditions have helped to bring each communicant into a position of participation in the affairs of his parish. The management of parish business by a committee chosen by the people has given them a new sense of responsibility for their Church. The introduction of congregational singing and the entirely new emphasis upon preaehing brings worship into a new phase of actual commonality. All the people are participants in the services, and these services are so ordered as to meet the marvellously new interest in practical religion whieh exists throughout Russia today.

These, changes the Church has made in itself in, order to minister to the new needs of the Russian people are simply what might have been expected in the light of its historic past. When Christianity first dawned in Russia, it was the Church which spread the light of learning and the acceptance of Christian morality throughout the land. When much of the old order was dissolved in the two hundred years Russia bowed beneath the Tatar yoke it was the Church again which offered a rallying point and actually inspired the effort which threw off the Asiatic tyranny. It was the Church under Hermogen, in the “Troublous Times”, which kept alive the spark of patriotism, for Russians always linked in an indissoluble way with the idea of Orthodoxy, and the glorious defence of the Sergievskaya Lavra marked a new turning point in Russian national affairs, with the Church in the leader’s role. In the light of the Chureh’s glorious past, when in every time of national crisis it has somehow maintained not only its own unity, but has been the center around which the spirit of the nation could rally, is it unduly optimistic to suggest that in our day we are witnessing another repetition of history! Surely the events of the past five years, with the Church as the only organization whieh still exists, standing like a temple miraculously preserved amid a city devastated by fire, offer ground for the belief that the Church in Russia will not belie its past performances. It is not only preserved amidst general ruin, but it has purged itself of the evils which a time of servitude had fastened upon it, remodelled its forms of government and worship, and ministers today to the needs of Russian people with a eompleteness it has never before known.

And if the history of the past offers bright hope for the future of the Orthodox Church, just as truly does the personality of the men who are guiding its affairs in the present. What has been said of the liberality and breadth of mind of the Patriarch, of his keen appreciation of the needs of Russian Christianity today and the measures the Church must take to meet them, is typical of the church leaders who form his immediate circle of advisers. It is no exaggeration to say that the most able and the most liberal men in the Orthodox Church are guiding its present efforts. Perhaps the fact is significant that many of them, like Patriarch Tikhon himself, have spent some years in America, where acquaintance has been gained with western religious ideals and practice. Father Hotovitsky using his knowledge of young people’s organizations in America to build up throughout the Russian Church similar groups, or Bishop Anatolii of Tomsk who even before the assembly of the Sobor began parochial organizations modelled after those he had known in America, are outstanding examples of the progressive leadership in the Orthodox Church today. Besides forming one of the strongest possible ties of friendship with America, these will by the very fact of their acquaintance with life in our country are bound to be of most valuable service in bringing the Russian Church up to the new and lofty standards she has set for herself. Their background of acquaintance with Western ideals of religion is likely to be of large influenee in the progress of the Church of Russia.

As these men go forward in the work of leading Russian Christianity out along lines of freer activity and more vital religion, they are looking to the Christians of other lands for support and assistance. It would be difficult to imagine an organization more truly desirous of learning from the best in others, of profiting by experience along the same paths it has laid out for itself, than is the Russian Church. It confidently expects that Christians of other nations will gladly offer whatever assistance is within their power. What contributions can members of other Christian confessions make toward the progress of Christianity in Russia?

To be of service to the Church of Russia, Christians of the West must first cultivate aequaintance with it. A study of its ideals and its history, a genuine effort to appreciate all that is valuable in its past and present – these must first lead us to a sincere recognition of the breadth and depth of Russian Christianity. Study its literature; if possible become familiar with its service. There are many Russian churches in America where one may begin this helpful acquaintance and any sincerely friendly approach will be met with equal friendliness.

Practical aid may be extended in the provision of books. The whole realm of our modern religious literature may be opened to Russia: educational courses for use in church schools and organized Bible-study groups will be eagerly utilized. Such books as homiletical aids, guild and society handbooks, would be most useful if translated and adapted to modern Russian conditions. The best religious thought of the modern West should be put at Russia’s disposal by translation and publication in Russian. In the interval until the Church is again in a position to publish the Bible and portions of it for itself, the other Christian communions will find it difficult to turn a deaf ear to the appeals of both the Church and the Russian people for copies of the Word of God. Cooperation should be encouraged along all lines of religious endeavor and all our own experience in religious organization and method should be open for the use of the Russian Church. They seek our aid, and we must not withhold it.

Any such assistance offered to Russia by Western Christianity will be welcomed with open arms, and if the suggestions here contained are borne in mind there will be no possibility for misunderstanding. Once a thorough appreeiation of the essential “Russianity” of the Orthodox Church is established, there will be no misguided efforts to help Russian Christianity through the propagation of other forms of church organization or sectarian propaganda. What Western Christianity gives to Russia must be given through the Orthodox Church and not in any sort of opposition to or competition with it. A church which regardless of the barriers of distance and language, has prayed daily for a thousand years for “the welfare of God’s ehurches and the union of them all” will welcome every sincerely friendly approach from other Christian bodies.

In all this talk of efforts toward the rapprochement of other Christian bodies to the Russian Church, and methods of extending aid in these trying years, one possibility overtops all the rest. We must cultivate acquaintance with the Orthodox Church and personal contact with its leaders. We must learn to appreciate the beauty and value in its worship and its teaching. We must realize that the Russian Church is essentially indigenous and adapt to that cardinal fact our efforts at effective assistance. We should put at its disposal the best of our modern religious thought in the form of books and periodicals. These are particularly vital for those Americans who go to Russia or who are directing the home churches. To all Christians at home, however, there remains the privilege of all Christians everywhere, that of intercession. It is doubtful if anywhere in the Christian world today there is a more vital belief in the value of prayer, than in Russia. When the Russian Church asks for our prayers, the request is more than an empty formality. Russia believes, she knows from experience, how the power of God may be invoked, and her people confidently expect the prayer support of Christians of other lands. In the midst of the terrible uncertainty of the summer of 1918, when no one dared plan anything more than a few days in advance, and even the Sobor carried on its orderly deliberations only in the face of unbelievable hindrances, the proclamation of President Wilson appointing “a day of humiliation, prayer and fasting” made a deep impression upon the leaders of the Russian Church. The feeling of the Patriarch is evident in his letter, written at that time, to his friend Dr. Mott, as one of the leaders among the Christian forces of America:
 

“It was with especial sympathy that we together with all believing Russians heard that the members of the churches of God in America. had been assembled by your President and ehurch leaders in the houses of God Memorial Day to fast and pray for peace among the nations at war. We also recall with deep gratitude the friendly feelings repeatedly expressed by your President toward Russia. 

“It would comfort us to know that the Christians of America will continue to remember our Russian Church and people in their prayers. We would feel deeply grateful if you could express to the Christian people in America our profound desire for their intercession, especially at this crisis in Russia. We are conscious in this dark hour that the moral support and prayers of all Christendom are vital for the rebuilding of Russia through Christ to her former strength”.
 

The head of Russia’s Church is here expressing the feeling of most of its leaders and millions of its people. Such a letter brings an almost irresistible appeal. As the old Church of Russia moves out into new fields of service for a people rising to the ideals of a modern world, may Christians of the West be not unmindful of this desire for their prayer-support. Joining in its age-old prayer for the welfare of all God’s churches, may we open our thought to every means of eooperation and assistance for the Church of Russia.

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A visit to the Greek Church of the Holy Trinity, on Dolhonde near Barracks, will be found interesting. It stands in a little church-yard – a, small brick structure, with a bit of a house for the priest, by its side. A Greek flag, at half-mast, hangs from a tall staff by the front door.

The church consists of a small square room, with vaulted ceiling; its furniture, two reading desks, a baptismal font, the ark, a large cross bearing the crucified Saviour, and two candle-stands. The ark resembles a bier supporting a miniature two-story Greek temple. On the upper part is the story of Christ’s condemnation, agony, last supper and crucifixion. Most notable is the first little picture, wherein Pontius Pilate is to be seen literally “washing his hands” of the whole affair.

The back of the church is separated by a partition on which hang four paintings, singular in their lack of perspective. Two doors, one on either end, holds each a picture, one of St. Michael the other of Gabriel. Both dance upon clouds, but Gabriel, deprived of his trumpet, waves a bunch of flowers.

Another picture represents Herodias dancing off the head of John the Baptist. It is a curious and very antique picture, and guilty of a strange anachronism, for Herod and the party are represented seated at table.

Midway of the partition is an opening veiled with a banner bearing a picture of Christ partaking of the sacrament; around it in Russian: “He who takes the sacrament never dies.”

The baptismal font for babies looks like a magnified hour glass. There is a large one for grown people. Baptism, both for the young and old, is by immersion.

Chairs are brought in by obliging neighbors for the women and the guests. The devout gather candle in hand, and with many genuflections, each piously kisses a sacred spot upon the paintings, the infant Jesus’ toe seeming the most popular.

Scarcely a Greek nose was to be seen. Bronzed faces, toil-hardened hands, relieved by shirts of blue and red, plaid and plain, are illuminated by the upheld torches.

The services opening, the men range themselves in single file along the wall, the females and visitors occupying chairs on the other side. The banner is drawn aside, revealing an altar before which stands a priest. His face is Hebraic, his robe, of dark blue and white, fitted on very much after the fashion of Dakota Indians, by a convenient hole in one end. A long scarf of pale blue and white satin hangs over his capacious front.

Concluding a short chant, he comes among the people, lifting the cross, and kissing the wounds upon the body.

After a few more chants and reading of Scriptures, the holy ark, preceded by the priest, is borne out by four strong men, all chanting the Kyrie Eleison, “Lord, have mercy upon us.”

A long reading of the Scriptures follows, interrupted by admonitions in modern Greek from his reverence to his delinquent clerks.

A visit to the New Orleans Greek church in 1885 is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

Fr. Pythagoras Caravellas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From Harvard MD to Orthodox priest: the Fr. Pythagoras Caravellas story is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

Clockwise from top left: Vera Johnston, Charles Johnston, Henry Olcott, Vera Zhelihovsky, and Helen Blavatsky

In the early 1900s, a woman named Vera Johnston was involved with the Russian cathedral in New York and the seminary in Tenafly, New Jersey. With a name like Johnston, you might think that she was a convert, which is exactly what I thought when I first ran across her name. But Vera Johnston was actually a cradle-born Orthodox Christian. She was born in the Russian Empire, in what is now Ukraine, and her maiden name was Zhelihovsky. She was born in 1864, and her mother was also named Vera.

Before her marriage, the elder Vera, the mother, was named Vera Blavatsky. That last name, Blavatsky, might sound familiar to some of you. The elder Vera’s sister – so, our Vera’s aunt – was a lady by the name of Helen Blavatsky – also known as Madame Blavatsky, the founder of the Theosophical movement.

Theosophy has been described by some as a modern version of Gnosticism. It has a lot of occult and pagan elements, drawing in particular on Hinduism. Helen Blavatsky herself spent time in India. Beliefs included reincarnation, ancient pagan deities, secret teachings. Essentially, we’re talking about neo-paganism. They certainly had a kind of syncretistic place for Christianity, as one of the many pieces of the “truth” that could lead you into true knowledge, but basically, this is a neo-pagan movement.

Helen Blavatsky had founded the Theosophical movement in the 1870s, and in 1886, her niece Vera – the future Vera Johnston – spent some time with her aunt, and read drafts of her book The Secret Doctrine. Vera was in her early twenties at this point, and her mother was a follower of Aunt Helen, so it was only a matter of time before young Vera herself became a Theosophist.

Vera Johnston

In 1889, Vera published an article called, “Modern Magic” in the Theosophist journal, and by this time she had apparently joined the movement. The year before this, in 1888, she had married Charles Johnston, an English follower of Blavatsky. Johnston himself was one of the leaders in the Theosophy movement, and was especially noted for his translations of Hindu scriptures from Sanskrit into English. Vera and Charles spent some time in India themselves, and both wrote and translated numerous Theosophical articles in the coming years. For example, in 1895, they coauthored an article called, “The Priestess of Isis and Her Accusers.” This was sort of par for the course with Vera and Charles.

Helen Blavatsky herself died in 1891, and in 1896, Charles and Vera Johnston moved to New York City. Vera was still a very visible figure on the Theosophical scene, speaking at conventions and translating articles.

Sometime after the turn of the century, the Johnstons became associated with the Russian Orthodox cathedral in New York. Now, the details on this are very sketchy. What I’m giving you is basically incomplete research. I just haven’t been able to find very many materials on Vera Johnston’s life after 1900 or so, and of course this period in which we’re most interested, because this is when she was associated with the Russian Mission.

So please understand, much of this is a mystery. But I’m going to give you what I have.

In 1912, the Russian Archdiocese moved its seminary to Tenafly, New Jersey. Both Vera and Charles Johnston were professors. I don’t know what subject Vera taught, but Charles is listed in 1918 as “Teacher of English Language.” During this period, Vera ran the seminary’s booth at a Russian bazaar in New York City (New York Times, 3/28/1915). Both Johnstons were deeply involved in the work of the Russian Mission.

Also in 1915, she wrote an article in the Constructive Quarterly called, “The Coming of Archbishop Evdokim,” talking about the arrival of the new Russian bishop. One passage in particular seems to reveal something of Vera’s own religous outlook:

In the principle thus simply and eloquently enunciated by Archbishop Evdokim, what vistas there are of reconciliation, of genuine peace and good-will among men and nations: the differences between nations, in their religious as well as their secular life, are not stumbling-blocks but revelations of the wisdom of God. The mind of Christ is so wide, so deep, so rich, that no one race, nothing less than all humanity, suffices to embody and reveal it. [Emphasis in original.]

The same year, also in the Constructive Quarterly, she translated an article called, “Byzantium the Preserver of Orthodoxy.”

So it seemed, when I learned these things, that Vera Johnston had converted – or, re-converted – to Orthodoxy. She was involved, almost on a day-to-day basis, with the life of the Russian Mission. The thing is, she doesn’t seem to have given up Theosophy. Her husband Charles, who was also involved in the Russian Mission, remained a major figure in the Theosophical movement.

In early 20th century New York, a splinter Theosphical group was formed, calling itself the “Order of the Living Christ.” While small, this group included some of the city’s elite — Wall Street executives, professors, Episcopal priests, etc. – as well as Charles and Vera Johnston, whose ties to Helen Blavatsky helped bring legitimacy to the Order. The Order was essentially an attempt to merge Christianity and Theosophy. The group believed in reincarnation, but adopted the externals of Anglo-Catholicism (traditional Anglicanism). They revered the works of Helen Blavatsky and her associates, but also had a deep fascination with early Christian mysticism. Members saw it as perfectly acceptable to be a part of the Order and still participate in the life of, for instance, the Episcopal Church. It is likely that Vera Johnston shared this philosophy, and she may well have considered herself an Orthodox Christian while simultaneously adhering to beliefs which Orthodoxy recognizes as patently heretical. All this, while teaching future priests at the official seminary of the Russian Archdiocese in America.

Vera Johnston died in 1923, just shy of 60. Charles passed away eight years later. It is likely that documents survive — perhaps the OCA archives — which can help us to better understand the Johnstons’ role in the Russian Mission, and the extent to which their Theosophical ideas were known by the Russian clergy who employed them. If any of our readers can shed more light on this odd episode in American Orthodox history, please let me know.

[This article was written by Matthew Namee. I am indebted to Jake Benson for his help in researching Vera and Charles Johnston.]

Orthodoxy and Theosophy: the Vera Johnston story is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

The faithful of the Orthodox Church in America never considered any form of political dependence on Russia.  Just as in his own day the Russian Prince Vasili Dmitrievich (XIV century)  stopped commemorating the Byzantine emperor in Russian churches on the grounds that, although the Russians received the Church from Byzantium, “they did not receive the emperor and will not have him,” so too Bishop Nicholas Zyorov, in 1896, reported to the Holy Synod that, “the commemoration of the Emperor and the Reigning House during divine services brings forth dismay and apprehension among Orthodox in America of non-Russian background.  This practice is also a hindrance to the propagation of Orthodoxy among Russian Uniates who came to America from Austria-Hungary.” In an Ukase dated January 27, 1906, and addressed to Archbishop Tikhon, the Holy Synod confirmed the practice of commemorating the American President by name during divine services.

It’s not clear to me whether the Russian parishes in America actually ceased commemorating the Tsar, or whether they just began commemorating the US President along with the Russian Tsar. Frankly, I’d be very surprised if they simply removed the prayers for the Tsar altogether. They were, after all, still a diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church, and the Russian hierarchs were still subjects of the Russian Emperor. If anyone has more details on this, please let me know.

Prayers for the President: an addendum is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

Bishop Maxim (Vasiljevic)

Recently a historic event took place in New York: A pan-Orthodox Assembly of the Fullness of God’s Church on the North American continent, represented by the Hierarchs of the local Orthodox dioceses. The most important goal of this body is to witness Orthodox unity in a “new world,” and to secure a more effective organization of mission, witness, and cooperation of the local Orthodox Churches in the diaspora, faithful to the soteriological needs of contemporary man and society.

In accordance with the decision of the Fourth Pre-conciliar pan-Orthodox conference held June 6-12, 2009 in the Orthodox center of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Chambésy, Switzerland, and at the invitation of Archbishop Demetrios of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, the first Assembly of canonical Orthodox Hierarchs of North and Central America was held in New York May 26-28, 2010. Of sixty-six hierarchs of this region, fifty-five were present at this historic gathering.

It needs to be said that the entire gathering was held in a spirit and atmosphere of brotherly love, in the joy of the Pentecost Feast Day: Greeks, Serbs, Romanians, Bulgarians, Russians, Syrians, Arabs, Americans, and Latin Americans all together spoke with one mouth and one heart demonstrating that the ontological foundation of the unity of the Church is inconceivable without multiplicity. Discussions about various questions and problems of the “diaspora” went on in a spirit of understanding, while Archbishop Demetrios wisely and capably led the gathering. His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios presided over this Episcopal Assembly, having Metropolitan Philip (Antiochian Orthodox Church) and Russian Archbishop Justinian (Moscow Patriarchate) as co-chairs. Bishop Basil of Wichita (Antiochian self-ruling Archdiocese) was elected secretary. His Eminence Metropolitan Christopher of Libertyville/Chicago and His Grace Bishop Maxim of the Western American diocese represented the Serbian Orthodox Church.

One of the topics that was repeated many times as a refrain during this three-day Assembly was the will and desire of all participants “for the swift healing of all canonical anomalies which resulted from historical circumstances and pastoral necessity.” Above all, soteriology is of primary importance for this Assembly in its reflections on God, man, the Church, and the world today, and our unity must be visible, Eucharistic, and structured in accordance with the one-many life that the Eucharist imparts to the Church from its source in God Himself.

Along with this the participants emphatically called to mind the contributions of the Primates and representatives of the Orthodox autocephalous Churches gathered at the Ecumenical Patriarchate from October 10 to 12, 2008, to confirm their “unswerving position and obligation to safeguard the unity of the Orthodox Church” (Chambésy Rules of Operation, Article 5.1a). A slightly different view was presented by one of the hierarchs, who questioned the necessity of jurisdictional connections with autocephalous Churches which are, as he stated, over seven thousand miles away and do not have any ties with the “new world.” This was somewhat of an isolated opinion. If there was an opinion that it is only necessary to follow the Primates of the autocephalous churches, or so called “Mother Churches,” in spirit rather than in letter, Archbishop Demetrios gave a witty answer: “This would test the distinct American sentiment for independence and democracy.” Through this exchange of opinions the participants came to the conclusion that the relatively “young” American Orthodoxy has a need for guidance and help from the “mother Churches” of the Old World, Middle East, Bosporus, and Balkans. There is the need for both dependence and a certain independence in making decisions.

During this gathering, and in conformity with the rules for regional Episcopal Assemblies established during the Fourth Pan-Orthodox pre-conciliar conference, the following were accomplished: A registry of canonical bishops (Article 6.1); a committee to decide the canonical status of local communities in a region which cannot be connected with (have no reference to) any of the Holy autocephalous Churches (Article 6.2); a registry of canonical clergy (Article 6.3); committees that will take on the work of the Assembly in addressing liturgical, pastoral, financial, educational, ecumenical, and legal questions (Articles 11 and 12); a committee to plan the organization of the Orthodox in this region on a canonical basis (Article 5.1). In addition to the above, it was agreed that the Assembly establish and maintain a directory of all canonical congregations in our region. This is in conformity with the basic Orthodox ecclesiological principle: it is primarily the bishop who presides at the Eucharist in his local church, so the principal manifestation of the Church is the gathering of the whole community around the bishop and his presbyters and deacons for the Liturgy.

A decision was also reached regarding the question of SCOBA. This Episcopal Assembly understands itself as the heir of the Standing Conference of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas (SCOBA), and it has taken over all SCOBA agencies, dialogues, and other services. Interestingly, the question of the OCA (the Orthodox Church in America, formerly the Russian Metropolia) was not discussed, but it has become clear that its “autocephaly” (given by a unilateral decree of the Moscow Patriarchate in 1970) is understood only as autonomy. Even though the OCA’s autocephaly is not recognized by most Orthodox local Churches (including the Serbian Patriarchate), the fact is that her hierarchs at the Assembly enjoyed the same rights and honor as others. The order of seating at the Assembly followed the Diptychs (the established order of precedence of the ancient and newer Patriarchates and autocephalous Churches), so that the bishops of the OCA came after the Serbian and Romanian delegations (a representative of Georgian church was not present at this gathering).

Upon formal petition of the Hierarchs who have jurisdiction in Canada, the Assembly will send to the Ecumenical Patriarchate, in accordance with the rules of procedure (Article 13), a petition that the current region of North and Central America be divided into two separate regions, of the United States and of Canada. In addition, upon petition of the Hierarchs who have jurisdiction in Mexico and Central America, the Assembly will similarly recommend that Mexico and Central America join the regional Assembly for South America. For example, Serbian Bishop Mitrophan, who has jurisdiction in both those regions, would become a member of both those Episcopal Assemblies. Canadian Bishop Georgije, on the other hand, will be a member of the Canadian Episcopal Assembly, given that he has no jurisdiction outside Canada.

In open discussions about the demands of evangelization and enculturation, one could hear opinions on various questions of importance for Orthodoxy: questions of liturgical practice, pastoral challenges, financial aspects, the future of educational schools and programs, ecumenical dialogues, as well as some other legal issues. In this context, it was also clearly understood that contemporary Orthodoxy must be prepared to open up its theological frontiers to other sciences and cultural concerns and the challenges coming from the non-theological world.

It was clearly established that the Episcopal Assembly does not have jurisdictional power; rather it is of a consultative character, although in some questions it naturally has authority (as in establishing and maintaining the previously mentioned registries of canonical bishops, clergy, and parishes).

His Eminence Iakovos, Greek Metropolitan of Chicago, strongly emphasized that we Orthodox have a gift of dogmatic and liturgical unity that we already share, and that incidental differences (customs, liturgical practices, language, and similar things) need to be secondary. The Eucharist, understood in the light of the Trinitarian mystery, is the criterion for the functioning of the life of the Orthodox Church as a whole and the institutional elements should be nothing but a visible reflection of the reality of the mystery. The fact that this assembly-conference, as every church assembly from apostolic times to this day, can have its own controversial points need not discourage us; on the contrary, it should inspire participation and motivation. The use of the English language in services was also discussed, especially focused on the variations in usage of the personal pronoun when directly referring to God.

The question of the boundaries and limits of participation in theological dialogue with heterodox and non-Christians was raised, and in the discussion which followed the answer was crystallized: the Orthodox Church, not being afraid of dialogue because it has Truth, enters into such discussions with the deepest conviction that faithfulness to her Orthodox Tradition and active ecumenical engagement are not incompatible with each other, but rather one demands the other.

The Serbian Orthodox Church views this regional Episcopal Assembly as something positive, as is reflected in the Communiqué from the regular Holy Assembly of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church held in Belgrade from April 26 to May 5, 2010:

“The Assembly of Bishops heard and approved the following reports regarding the life of the Church over the past year since last year’s meeting: … on the decisions of the Fourth pan-Orthodox Pre-conciliar conference in Chambésy near Geneva in June 2009 on the theme of a more efficient and organized mission, witness, and cooperation of the local Orthodox Churches in the Diaspora and on the stand of the pan-Orthodox preparatory commission for the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, held in December of last year also in Chambésy, on the manner of proclaiming church autocephaly and autonomy. In this context, the Assembly especially analyzed the status and problems of the life of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the Diaspora and made appropriate decisions.”

Moreover, on the eve of the convening of this First Episcopal Conference of Orthodox Churches in North America, in the spirit of Pentecost, His Holiness Serbian Patriarch Irinej sent the Serbian hierarchs in North America his Patriarchal greeting for its successful work and for rich spiritual fruits of the descent of the Holy Spirit the Comforter to come upon all Orthodox in North America, calling them to take a part in this new Pentecostal work of historical significance. This conference is truly an excellent opportunity to clearly define a vision and establish a platform for the future of the Diaspora on a healthy theological and ecclesiastical foundation.

Here it is worthwhile to remember the visionary Saint Nicholai of Zicha and Ochrid, one of the first Serbian Orthodox laborers on the American continent. The most eloquent example of Nicholai’s openness and pan-Orthodoxy is his readiness to view the Serbian Orthodox Church in America in the context of the ancient orthodox canonical tradition and the wider, contemporary Orthodox context, as most eloquently witnessed by his words: “When, by God’s providence, the time comes for the realization of unity, it will be a joy for many. Undoubtedly, the primates and hierarchs of all of our Orthodox Churches, in Europe, Asia, Africa, guided by the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, will show love and understanding, and give their consent and blessing for the establishment of one new sister church in America” (Bishop Nicholai, Collected Works XIII, pages 565-572, Serbian text pages 573-579).

The appearing of Episcopal Assemblies throughout the world (these gatherings have already started work in Europe) should not be understood pretentiously, nor should they be presented one-sidedly, but rather it is necessary to take into consideration the reality and need for ecclesiastical unity on a pan-Orthodox level in its totality. A correct interpretation of this ecclesiologically and theologically important attempt from Chambésy to accomplish a fuller unity, cooperation, and catholicity (sabornost) on the territory of the diaspora only contributes to a stronger position for the particular Orthodox Churches and to the avoidance of their marginalization in their future ecclesiological formation on the American continent. With this, above all, we must be mindful of the pan-Orthodox consensus expressed in Chambésy.

Participation in the Episcopal Assembly is equally faithfulness to the Pneumatological catholic institution of the Holy Spirit who “holds together the whole institution of the Church” (hymn for Vespers on Pentecost). In this way we show faithfulness to the Apostolic Orthodox Faith, which obliges us to contribute “to this common work of addressing the pastoral needs of the Orthodox who live in our region.” By working together through this forum, the Serbian Church also has the opportunity to witness to its specific and particular place in the Orthodox family of America.

This synthetic and unifying work of the Assembly was also evident in the opening speech of Archbishop Demetrios. Regarding the equal dignity and particular gifts which each nation brings the Church, Archbishop wisely said: “In Pentecost, we celebrate the call to unity for all human beings through faith and obedience to the one Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. At the same time, however, in Pentecost, we celebrate the refreshing reality of the diversity, wonderfully manifested in the extraordinary fact of the proclamation of the one Gospel in many languages as a result of the advent of the Holy Spirit.” Alluding to the reality of Orthodoxy in America, he added:

“As we behold the event of Pentecost, we observe that the multiplicity of languages used by the Holy Apostle in proclaiming the single Gospel is not a cause of confusion or conflict, but a reason for thanksgiving and celebration. The one Gospel does not obliterate linguistic, ethnic, or cultural differences and particularities. The Gospel is clearly a call to unity, but as our history of 2000 years demonstrates, it does not cause an eclipse of the diversity within the Church. And this speaks directly to our case today.”

The hierarchs have called the clergy and faithful to join them in these efforts “to safeguard and contribute to the unity of the Orthodox Church in this region and her theological, ecclesiological, canonical, spiritual, philanthropic, educational, and missionary responsibility.”

The Assembly concluded its work by serving the Divine Liturgy on Friday, May 28, 2010 in the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in New York. During Liturgy, prayers were offered for the eleven reposed victims of the ecological accident in the Gulf of Mexico, for the consolation of their families, and for all those who are afflicted by this catastrophe.

Maxim (Vasiljevic)

Serbian Orthodox Bishop of Western America

Guest article by Bishop Maxim on the Episcopal Assembly is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

Metr. Jonah among the bishops of the Episcopal Assembly

Listen to both his prepared speech as well as questions and answers here (courtesy of Ancient Faith Radio).

Update: One particular item I thought of note, aside from the very interesting questions about the future of the OCA, was His Beatitude’s comment that the upcoming Great and Holy Synod could be in 2013.

Metr. Jonah on the Episcopal Assembly and the OCA is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

Fr. Sebastian Dabovich

Editor’s note: The following interview, with Fr. Sebastian Dabovich, originally appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and was reprinted in the Macon (GA) Telegraph on July 31, 1903. We’re reprinting it here in full.

Abbot Sebastian Dabovich, a priest high in the circles of the orthodox Russian church, passed through Seattle yesterday on his way to inspect the mission of that church in Alaska. The abbot is an authority on the Russian church in Alaska, and spoke very interestingly of the work there in an interview. He said:

Next to the Roman Catholics the Russian [Church] has the greatest number of communicants of any church in the civilized world. On the coast the two great strongholds of the Russian church are in Alaska and a section of California. Last year I made a trip of 6,000 miles in and along the Alaskan coast, inspecting our mission stations.

On this trip I go to consecrate a new church in Douglas Island, opposite Juneau, the communicants of which are mostly miners of the Slavonic race. From there I go to Sitka to look after the work. On the whole, the trip will be largely in the nature of a rest for me.

The work of our missions in Alaska is a continually growing one, and owing to the great floating population of that country, a work that is continually changing to meet the new demands.

The majority of native Alaskans are Christianized. Our own church has been organized in Alaska for nearly 110 years. Since the country has been occupied by the United States the Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, and several other missionaries have come to spread Christianity.

The Russians of Alaska in early days had some land grants in California, and they occupied the whole of what is now known as Sonoma county. From here they shipped wheat and fruit to Alaska. The quality of fruit, which took a prize in the World’s Fair at Chicago in 1893, came from Sonoma, and it was planted by the Russians, the seeds having been brought across Siberia from the Caucasian country and elsewhere.

Long before any one dreamed of a city of San Francisco there in San Francisco bay, in the little town of Sausalito flourished an iron foundry and machine shops. There in Sausalito the Russians built the first steamer that ever steamed to the north on the Pacific ocean. The engineer that brought the first steamer to Alaska is still living, now an old cripple of more than ninety years. He is an old Alaskan Creole, and lives with a son in Sedovia, Alaska.

On entering the old Russian capital of Sitka, the first building which attracts attention is the cathedral of St. Michael’s. The clock in the tower of this old church was made and put in its present position by Innocentius, the first bishop of Alaska.

Source of the week: an interview with Fr. Sebastian Dabovich is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

Archbishop Dionysius Latas of Zante

As we’ve discussed several times in the past, in 1893, a Greek archbishop visited the United States. His name was Archbishop Dionysius Latas of Zante, and he came to America to attend the World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago. That’s where we last saw him; today, we’ll pick up Abp Dionysius’ trail after the Parliament concluded.

The Parliament ended in late September, 1893. In October, Abp Dionysius was present in Boston for the consecration of an Episcopalian bishop (Boston Globe, 10/6/1893). The next month, he went to St. Louis and was the guest of the Episcopal Bishop George Seymour, who happened to be a friend of the future Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine. A couple of days after that, Abp Dionysius made his way back to Chicago, where he delivered a speech at an Episcopal Church conference. In fact, that speech is a good deal more interesting than anything Abp Dionysius said at the Parliament of Religions, and we’ll reprint the text in its entirety here. From the Galveston Daily News (11/12/1893):

My brethren in Jesus Christ: I consider myself again very happy in presenting myself before this most reverend council of the eminent divines and minsiters of your holy church. (You will excuse me if I make any mistakes in a language which is foreign to me, and in which of necessity I am obliged to speak before you.)

It is not the first time that a Greek archbishop approaches the Episcopal church and enters into the temples of this church, so eminent a member of the Christian body, a member of the Christian family. I am not the first and I think I shall not be the last. Twenty years ago another Greek archbishop, the archbishop of Syra, Alexander Lycurgus, was in London, when the Anglican clergymen and the archbishop of Canterbury solemnly and demonstratively received him and introduced him in the cathedral church of St. Paul, where the Greek archbishop, standing on the platform of the church, had the honor to give the blessing to the clergymen and laymen of the Anglican church.

By the opportunity of my invitation and my presence at the religious congress in this city, I have also had the great honor to present myself more than once in your churches, on your tribunes and platforms; and I am not only invited to this honor, but I also come self-invited and quite voluntarily, from the feelings which I have, with other bishops of Greece, toward your holy church. And I thank your dignified bishops, especially Henry C. Potter, bishop of New York, who not only opened to me, with brotherly feelings, the doors of the churches, but at the same time opened their arms and embraced me and conducted me to the most honorable places of your temples.

As self-invited also, and as voluntarily coming into the presence of this eminent council of your church, I speak before you to-day sincerely and with heart full of love, as a brother in Christ, as a friend in the love of the divinely inspired Gospel.

I approve and admire your practical work, your struggle and perseverance, and your great expenditures for the diffusion and propagation of Christian doctrine in every part of our globe; and lastly, for the pure moral Christian education, without distinction, to all members of Christian communities. We have such an instance and testimony in our country — the school established under the direction of the persons of happy memory, the Rev. Mr. Hill and Mrs. Hill, the Americans who sacrificed their lives while working incessantly for their lovely Greece. This school was the first girls’ school in our classic land after the freedom of Greece, which gave, nearly fifty years ago, many well brought up mothers to many families, rich and poor, without any distinction; and for that reason the entire Greek nation expresses her gratitude especially to your Christian association and generally to your American people. We regard not with indifference your church, but we look always to your work with the deepest interest, with hearts full of love, and also with hope for the future.

As regarding this hope for the future, it suffices me to repeat here before you, word for word, my address which I pronounced in Trinity church, at Boston, during the holy service of the consecration of the new Bishop Lawrence. “It is certainly,” I said, “a great pleasure for you to see a new bishop in your circle, but your pleasure can not be greater than the one I experience in being here and looking at your reverend persons and listening to the divine service of your church. For in your church, and in the eminent divines of that church, one can see concentrated the hopes of the union in the future of all the Christian churches in the world. Surely you are Protestants, but at the same time you are also Catholics. You are Protestants on the one hand; you only can embrace all the other Protestant bodies. And, on the other hand, as Catholics, you alone can command the attention of the Catholic churches. For wh ile you have protested, you alone have retained a great part of the rites of Catholicism, and you have not rejected all the traditions of the Catholic church.

“Hence your church, sister to the one on account of protesting, sister also to the other on account of the Catholic traditions, is the center toward which all the eminent persons of the distinctive churches will cast their eyes in the future, when, by the grace of God, they will decide to take steps for the union of all the Christian world into one flock, under one shepherd or pastor. In this pre-eminent idea and hope for the future, I embrace the new bishop and all the other bishops here present as my brethren in Christ. I embrace your church, the pen and ink of which anxiously awaits a bright page in the future history of the Christian religion.”

Needless to say, this sort of speech was music to the ears of the Episcopalians who heard it. Abp Dionysius expressed exactly the sort of role that so many Episcopalians envisioned for their Church: the great center towards which the Protestants and the “Catholics” (Orthodox and Roman) would ultimately move. It is quite possible that Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine, then an Episcopal priest, was present at Abp Dionysius’ speech. Years later, Irvine expressly rejected the idea that Anglicanism was the platform for Christian unity, instead arguing that Christian unity was possible only in the Orthodox Church — the “Mother Church of Christendom,” as he called it, the true Church from which all others had deviated. That Abp Dionysius adopted, not the Irvinian position (which really is the Orthodox position), but rather the standard Anglo-Catholic one, is rather remarkable.

After the Episcopal conference in Chicago, Abp Dionysius traveled west, visiting San Francisco in early December (Los Angeles Times, 12/17/1893). It isn’t clear whether he met with the Russian Bishop Nicholas Ziorov, but he almost certainly encountered some of the hundreds of Orthodox Christians in the city.

On his return trip to Greece, Abp Dionysius went across the Pacific. On a train ride from Singapore to Calcutta, he happened to run into a Methodist bishop, who invited him to attend a Methodist conference in Calcutta. Abp Dionysius accepted. According to one American periodical, “Although he remarked privately that Bishop Thoburn was not a real bishop, he bestowed upon him when taking leave the apostolic kiss” (Congregationalist, 4/26/1894). At his host’s request, Abp Dionysius delighted the Methodists by delivering St. Paul’s Mars Hill sermon in its original Greek. (Christian Advocate, 4/5/1894)

Abp Dionysius made it home to Greece by the middle of 1894, but soon thereafter, late in the summer, he died. The New York Observer and Chronicle (1/24/1895) offered a fine obituary:

Some interesting details connected with the death of Archbishop Dionysios Latas of Zante, who died last August, and whose name is familiar to Americans since his visit to Chicago the year before, have very recently been sent to this country by Bishop Potter. Archbishop Latas was greatly beloved by the people of Zante. As a preacher he was eloquent and tireless; and in his work as a leader of the clergy he was most efficient, giving to the island good priests, and developing those whom he had found already there.

His own training was well rounded. Besides his native tongue he was a master of German, Italian and English. He was distinguished by his fine presence and sonorous voice and by the gentleness and sweetness of his manners. Though far past the prime of life he had still before him many years of work. A writer in one of the Athenian journals, referring to the time of the late earthquake in Zante, says: “I remember him when the island was shaking and the houses falling in ruins, going about in his carriage through the narrow roads of the settlements from morning till night, comforting and advising, cheering and inspiring confidence in divine help, the only hope of people in the perilous state of the hapless Zacynthians. And I saw him, as they grasped his hand, secretly giving material help along with his prayers.”

The funeral took place with great magnificence, and in the midst of great emotion and sorrow, the people all through the two days previous flocking in crowds to the central church of the town, where the body had been placed, and reverently kissing the hand of their beloved priest.

A British writer, in the journal Academy, offered these comments (reprinted in The Dial, 10/1/1894):

A greater breadth of thought — acquired probably from his long studies in Germany — brought him closer to the intellectual classes in modern Greece than most of his brethren. Whenever he preached in the Metropolitan Church of Athens, the building was closely packed. When it was my privilege to hear him, his restrained yet burning eloquence and the but half suppressed applause of his hearers brought to my remembrance the accounts that are extant of the effect of the preaching of the Golden-mouthed [Chrysostom] at Constantinople, fifteen centuries ago.

Archbishop Dionysius Latas was 58 when he died, and had served as bishop of Zante (Zakhynthos) for ten years.

The American tour of a Greek archbishop in 1893 is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

Fr. Nikolai Grinkevich may be one of the clergy in this photo, from the American tenure of Bishop Vladimir Sokolovsky (1888-1891)

Working out the theme “Belarus and the Indians”, we Belarusian Indianists, accidentally have come upon the trace of our compatriot, Nikolai Grinkevich, the son of Stepan Fedorovich Grinkevich, an Orthodox priest from the Rogachev uezd of the Mogilev province, a possible relative of the mother of the well-known writer Uladzimir Karatkevich. By the way, the bulletin Vesnik BIT that reflects the life of the Belarusian-Indian Society is published in Gomel. 

Recently, the list of Belarusians connected with the history of Alaska was updated essentially due to the reference book Who’s Who in the History of Russian America by Andrei Grinev that was issued last year. Definitions from this biographic dictionary impress: “a native of the Vitebsk province”, “a Polotsk petty bourgeous”, “a Mogilev petty bourgeois”, “an appanage peasant of the Vitebsk province”, “was baptized in Polotsk” and so on. And do the surnames Bobrovskii, Bobchenko, Dudarev, Ivanov, Kovanskii, Kumachev, Pogurskii, Pushkarevich, Torkulov, Timofeev, Shapiro, Evstifeev tell you of anything?.. I suppose it will be interesting for present-day creators of genealogical trees in Belarus to search for their own ancestors among them. But the list of “Belarusian Alaskans” continues to be updated. 

In North America of those times there were a lot of working people, hunters, sailors, merchants in stores… Among them was the priest Nikolai Grinkevich, a teacher of a spiritual school, where Indian children were also taught. By the level of education and the real scale of personality, N. Grinkevich is perhaps second among the Belarusians of America “in the diocese” after the famous doctor Russel (Nikolai Sudzilovskii) [...*]. From the accumulated material emerges an interesting figure of the “eternal traveller”, whose first significant trip was, probably, the arrival at the Gomel Theological School for training. The Grinkevich brothers, Dmitrii and Nikolai, were born at the village of Repki in 1862 and 1864, respectively, and were taught together at the Mogilev Theological Seminary and the St. Petersburg Theological Academy. When Nikolai was in his fourth year, Vladimir, the new Bishop of the Aleutians and Alaska, was recruiting students at the Academy to participate in his mission. The Academy’s governing body satisfied the desire of the “true student” Grinkevich “to devote himself to serving the Orthodox church in the remote Diocese of the Aleutians”, having released from the final oral exam and having postponed the awarding of a scholarly degree of candidate of theology until Grinkevich could complete his dissertation. 

In the spring of 1888, the group headed by Bishop Vladimir sailed to New York. From there it reached San Francisco, the diocesan center, by train. And here Alaska has drawn nearer to priest Nikolai in the form of Native boys, other Alaskans. Our compatriot was a clerk, treasurer of the Ecclesiastical Consistory, and church rector. A photograph from the  M. Vinokouroff Collection in the Alaska State Library shows the milieu in which Belarusian N. Grinkevich in 1888-92 was known also as a teacher of the “theological school”. In the photo, we see pupils with sextons, priests and other persons, who took care of them, all surrounding the bishop. The school was experimental. Both Russians, Ukrainians, Anglo-Saxons, Jews and other “whites” and the indigenous inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere – Indians (Athapaskans and Tlingits), Eskimos, Aleuts, as well as mixed-bloods – met in it as pupils and teachers. The parish also included those coming from Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece; Macedonians, Romanians, Bulgarians, and Orthodox Arabs also appeared in the enormous territory of the diocese. 

Grinkevich has made the acquaintance with many notable people representing these ethnic groups. He ”often called on” the revolutionary Doctor Russel. While not so obviously and sensationally as his countryman and namesake, Grinkevich has left his name in “social history”, concerning both public charitable activities and ones of a clerk-organizer close to archival science. In 1893, he was sent for three months to Chicago to the World Exhibition on the occasion of 400th anniversary of the discovery of the New World, where he collected donations and served, as one of the first priests, in a local church. And before that he actively participated in relief to the victims of the bad harvest of 1891-1892 in Russia. 

In 1896, Nikolai Grinkevich, already in the rank of archpriest, returned to Russia. At the same time he was approved in the degree of candidate of theology for the work “The Laws of the North American United States on the conclusion and termination of marriage in comparison with Russian church-civil legislation on marriage and divorce”, which received a positive review at the Academy. At the turn of the century he supervised the Orenburg Theological School, and afterwards he served in the Tula province. 

The last known position of Father Nikolai is a religious teacher of the Tashkent Cadet School. What happened to him, his wife (the daughter of an Alaskan missionary), and children after the revolution, remains a mystery. After the events of October 1917, the School had to be evacuated to Irkutsk. Did the “Repki wanderer” try to reach his brother, who worked as a teacher of arithmetic and geography at the Blagoveschensk Spiritual School on the Amur? 

I think if Uladzimir Karatkevich knew of the life path of his more then possible, but “forgotten” relative, it is possible that he would have written a story about him. 

Ales Simakou, Gomel 

The Golas Radzimy editorial staff’s caption for the photo: 

Perhaps, one of the priests in the photo is our compatriot Nikolai Grinkevich. 

The Belarusian original was published in the weekly Golas Radzimy (Minsk) on February 4, 2010, No 4 (3172). Click here to view the original. 

*THE AUTHOR’S NOTE *[who was the first president of the Republic of Hawaii in 1893-1902"] This phrase that blatantly misinterprets the role of Nicholas Russel in the political history of Hawaii is an “insertion” of someone from the newspaper’s staff. The Republic of Hawaii’s period was from 1894 to 1898. This widely-spread mistake can be found even in some Belarusian encyclopedias, including the national universal Belaruskaia entsyklapedyia in 18 vols. 

Link for the photo (Michael Z. Vinokouroff Photograph Collection,
Alaska State Library – Historical Collections, P.O. Box 110571, Juneau, Alaska). 

http://vilda.alaska.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/cdmg21&CISOPTR=4972&REC=25

From Repki to the New World: A Belarusian Priest in America is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

Rt. Rev. Charles R. Hale, the first biographer of St. Innocent

What follows is Part 3 of Charles Hale’s 1877 biography of St. Innocent. Click here to read Part 1, and click here to read Part 2.

Consecrated for a great work he [Innocent] was as prompt to set about it as he was earnest in his labor. Stourdza’s “Remembrancer” contains a number of letters from Innocent to the revered Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow. Mouravieff well says of these that, “describing apostolic labors carried on for so many years for the conversion of savages in Northeastern Siberia and in Russian America they would furnish a series of Lettres Edifiantes as interesting as any of those in which the Jesuits so delight.”

We have space here to give translations of but a few extracts from these.

The first of the series tells of his arrival in America as Bishop and of the beginning of his work there.

April 30, 1842

At last, thank the Lord God, in America! I must now tell you of my voyage, my arrival, etc.

On the 20th of August, 1841, we sailed from the mouth of the Ochot River, in the brig Ochotsk, under most favorable circumstances, and directed our course towards one of the Kourile islands named Simousir, which we reached September 2d. On the evening of that day we left the island and sailed for Sitka. For about twenty days the winds were favorable, the weather clear and warm, so that September 21st we were but 500 miles from Sitka, about 4,000 from Ochotsk. The weather was so pleasant that we held services every holyday, not in the cabin, as is usually the case, but on deck. September 25th, St. Sergius’ Day, about 4 p.m., but at Moscow about 4 a.m., we sighted Mt. Edgecumbe, near New Archangel, and the next day, September 26th, the day on which we commemorate the death of the Beloved Disciple of Christ, a day on which the Church prays that the darkness which has so long covered the heathen may be dispersed, we entered the harbor of Sitka, and dropped anchor about 4 p.m. Saturday, September 27th, I went ashore, where I was received by all the chief authorities, the officials and the entire body of the Orthodox, amongst whom were some baptized Koloshes standing by themselves. In a partly official dress I went to the Church, where I delivered a short address to my new flock and offered up a prayer of thanksgiving to our Lord God. September 28th, I celebrated the Divine Liturgy.

The Church, at New Archangel, which is growing old and will need to be rebuilt in four or five years I found otherwise in fair condition and handsomely ornamented as if they really expected a Bishop to come. But all this is to be ascribed to the zeal of the principal warden, Etolin, who from the time of his coming to the colony has been earnest to have the church in good order.

Our doings since we came to Sitka have not yet been very important.

1st. A mission has been sent to Noushstan which will reach its place of destination not sooner than the middle of June next. The priest in charge is full of hope, though he is not one of the most learned of men. We have furnished him with full instructions and with everything we could provide.

2d. December 17th, a sort of theological school was opened, containing, now, 23 persons, Creoles and natives. The monk M., a student of the Moscow Spiritual Academy, has it in charge.

3d. The theological student J.T. was sent to Kadiak [sic] to learn the language and in four months has had wonderful success. He is a person of decided ability.

4th. The monk M. has been preaching to the Koloshes, and not without success. I hardly dare say how great the success may be. He has about 80 candidates for Holy Baptism and asks it for them, but I do not care to be over hasty with them; the more and the better they are taught the more they can be depended on.

5th. I went this Spring to Kadiak to examine into the affairs of the Church there and was comforted beyond expectation. The report of my arrival in America, the zeal and piety of their priest and the Christian co-operation of the Governor, Kostromitinoff, have all been most useful to the Kadiaks. Poor things, until now they had heard little of what is good, and, as they said, they now begin to go from darkness to light. Previously perhaps scarcely one hundred of them came to church, even irregularly, and they knew scarce anything of devotion. Now the church is full every holyday, and Lent was kept by more than four hundred of them, some coming from distant places. The iniquity of cohabiting in unblessed marriages, formerly common, is now at an end. Things had fallen into such a neglected state that of the 3,700 souls reported in the census of 1841 there were more than 1000 unbaptized. There are now about 100 children unbaptized between the ages of two and nine. And how many such died, especially at the time of the small-pox, which took the lives of over 2000.

Image of St. Innocent from the New York Public Library Digital Gallery

The next letter from which we quote shows Innocent’s care for the young.

April 5, 1844

On the eleventh of January I began to assemble about me, in my chapel, all the children, both boys and girls, who do not belong to the schools and to teach them the law of God. The children here (at Sitka), between the ages of one and eighteen, are very numerous. In the Theological school, in the Company’s school, and in two girls’ schools, there are about one hundred and forty scholars, and yet I gathered about one hundred and fifty others. The girls I taught on Tuesday, the boys on Wednesday.

About two years ago, in all our American Churches, and also in the Cathedral of Kamchatka, the priests in charge of the Churches assembled the children of both sexes in Church once or twice a week and taught them the law of god and their duties in general. And I am happy to say that this year, if the priests in all the Churches of the Diocese have not kept up that custom, yet the greater part of them are diligent in this part of their work.

At this time the children receiving instruction in the Churches throughout the Diocese must number about four hundred, besides the scholars in the schools, who would swell the number to more than six hundred or the thirty-fifth part of all the inhabitants.

In another part of the same letter he speaks of the Koloshes,

The Koloshes, our neighbors, thank God, continue to come to Holy Baptism. In Easter week thirty-five of them were baptized, at their own request, and at no one’s persuasion. In the Lent just past those already baptized, who all lived near the fort, were very particular in keeping the fast and that without any special suggestion on my part — indeed they were not a whit behind the Russians in their observance.

[Hale continues, quoting from another letter of St. Innocent to St. Philaret:]

June, 1845

The word of truth begins to extend more and more in the northern coasts of America. The priest Golovin was in those parts last year, 1844, and during his stay there had an opportunity of seeing, in their settlements, almost all of those baptized by him on the occasion of his first visitg, the year previously, and, thank God, if not all, still a good part of them remembered and tried to fulfil the promises made at their baptism, and some of those most penetrated with the word of truth have tried to bear testimony of Christianity to their heathen friends and have persuaded many of them to be baptized. The Kvichpak Church, in September, 1844, numbered more than two hundred and seventy natives and thirty foreigners, whilst in 1843 there were of the Christians there thirty foreigners and four natives, the same of whom the Holy Synod told me when I was in St. Petersburg. One of these especially very heartily co-operated with the priest. The natives expressing with one mouth a desire to have a priest living amongst them it only remained for me to proceed to the founding of an independent mission there and, thank God, the mission is already organized and has gone there this year. The priest Jacob Netchvatoff is in charge of this mission, the same whom I wished to send to the Kenae mission and who was reported as belonging to it, but as the work in the north was more important I sent him to the Kvichpak mission. To the Kenae mission has been sent the Monk Nicholas (a deacon), who has gone there this year.

This year, 1845, after leaving Petropaulovsky, where I arrived by the mercy of God, June second, I expect to visit the Aleoutine Islands and next summer to take a sea voyage to Kamchatka.

[And another letter:]

May 1, 1848

From reports received by me last September from Kenae and Kvichpak missionaries it is clear that the Lord does not cease to bless their labors with visible success. The missionaries too, labor with all zeal and judgment, not striving to increase unduly the number of the baptized, on the contrary they exercise great circumspection in receiving those who come to them desirous of Holy Baptism. The Kenae in general receive Christianity with gladness and in a spirit of obedience to God’s law. They listen to instruction with untiring attention, fulfil their Christian duties heartily and with all care and, what is very noteworthy, on a single expression of the missionary’s wish they give up their national dances and songs, replacing the latter with our hymns, so far as they are translated into their language.

All of their former Shamans have been baptized, and the greater part of them show themselves to be very good Christians. Some of them, on a very slight hint from the missionary, cut off their hair (which previously they had highly prized), in token that they not only followed, but were glad to fulfil, their missionary’s teachings.

The word of God sown by the missionaries on the border of the ocean has been conveyed without any direct instrumentality of theirs, by those converted from heathenism, to a people living at the extreme north part of the continent of America, called Koltchans, who had never seen a missionary.

The Kenae missionary writes that, in the Spring of last year, 1847, there came to one of the Kenae villages some families of Koltchans with the intention of going to the mission to be baptized, but were not able to go by boats. The Kenae who saw them said that, when they prayed, some of the Koltchans who came to them burst into tears, and said: “God has forsaken us, and does not call us to him. How shall we die, for there evil awaits the unbaptized!” The missionary was not able to visit these Koltchans, and fulfil their pious wish, having the charge also of hte Noushagin Mission, which now, from the lack of men suitable for missionaries, was dependent upon the Kenae missionary.  Their former missionary, the Priest Paitchelin, on account of illness, has been compelled to go to the Kadiak Church. In the summer of the year 1846 there came in boats to the redoubt at the upper part of the River Kouskokvim a number of Koltchans and their families, 54 persons in all, desiring to receive Holy Baptism. They received it at the hands of a layman, the person who was in charge of the redoubt, for the missionary was not and could not be there at that time, owing to his having so much other needful work. In the summer of 1847 these same newly baptized persons again came to the redoubt to see the priest, and with them there came also other Koltchans, about sixty in number, who also wished to be baptized, but, for the same reason as before, were unable to see the priest, and were baptized by the layman already mentioned.

The selection from Innocent’s letters published in Stourdza’s “Remembrancer” makes no further mention of the Koltchans, but we may surely believe that they were not left to walk in darkness, “for God ever provideth teachers for them that would learn of Him, and maketh known the way of truth to them that love the truth.”

The good Bishop has little to say of himself in his letters. As to what he did, we must learn from others. He was not only, in his vast diocese, the chief of the missionaries, but the chief missionary; not only a spiritual governor but a model of faithfulness and zeal. We are told that he became master of six dialects, spoken in the field committed to his charge. He himself translated, and assisted others in translating, large parts of God’s Word and the Liturgy of his Church for the use of the natives. For forty-five years, ten of them as Bishop of Kamchatka, eighteen more as its Archbishop, he labored on, in season and out of season. Towards the close of 1867 God called to Himself one of the most remarkable prelates of modern days, Philaret of Moscow, who lived to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of his Episcopate, and then “fell asleep.” The writer was, a few weeks after, in Moscow, where speculations were rife as to who could worthily follow such a man. When it was announced that Innocent of Kamchatka had been chosen to the vacant See, there was a general satisfaction. It could not be said of him that nearly half a century of toil and exposure had left his natural force unabated. But, though he had passed the limit of three score years and ten, he entered upon his new duties with earnestness. Assisted in the administration of his diocese by two efficient Vicar Bishops, one of whom, Leonide, has recently died, just after his promotion to the Archi-episcopal See of Yaroslav, and yet by no means leaving all to them, he has been diligent in using his vast influence for the good of his whole church. Withdrawn, like Selwyn, from the missionary field, like the Bishop of Lichfield he labors as heartily as ever for the missionary cause. He feld that the missionary work which had been carried on so well by individual zeal, could be prosecuted more effectively by organized efforts. He knew, too, that the Church of Russia had need, for its own sake, to be heartily interested in the missionary cause, as has any church on which God has laid the duty of laboring rather than of suffering for Him. And so he brought about the foundation of the Orthodox Missionary Society, in behalf of which he issued the following pastoral [letter]:

November 21st of this year, 1869, the approval of the Czar was given to the Constitution of the Orthodox Missionary Society, under the august patronage of Her Imperial Highness, the Empress Maria Alexandrovna. By virtue of this Constitution the Council of the Society belongs to Moscow and to me has been committed the duty of being its President. It has pleased God that here, in the centre of Russia, in my declining years, I should still take part in missionary work, to which, by the will of Divine Providence, on the most distant borders of our country almost the whole of my life was dedicated from early youth.

The object of the Missionary Society is to aid Orthodox Missions in the work of converting to the Orthodox Faith those not Christians, living within the borders of our country, and of building up those so converted in the truths of our holy religion as well as in the practice of the duties of the Christian life. Of such persons we have as fellow-countrymen many millions untaught in the holy truths of the faith, or needing to be built up in them. Compared with the number of these our missions are very small, and what we have need means to support and extend their work.

How holy a work this is, how very necessary for our Orthodox Church and Empire, must be self-evident to you. The true source of means for the development of this work must be found in the sympathy and zeal in its behalf of all Orthodox Christians. The Missionary Society is founded for all, rich and poor, who are ready to aid in this great work, which asks for and which needs them.

As your chief pastor and as the President of the Society I ask and pray Christ-loving Moscow, with my people and clergy, not to leave me in this holy work without their sympathy and co-operation. In a short time, please God, I hope to meet my beloved flock, that together we may offer up to the Lord our prayers for His blessing upon the Orthodox Missionary Society, in the work it is undertaking, and may hold at Moscow the first public meeting of the Society.

INNOCENT, Metropolitan of Moscow, President of the Orthodox Missionary Society

It is the purpose of the writer, God willing, on another occasion to give a somewhat detailed account of this Orthodox Missionary Society and of the work carried on by it, already extending beyond the wide borders of the Russian Empire, its primary field of action.

As we look back on the record of Innocent’s labors let us bless God for the good example of His faithful servant and pray Him to crown with His richest blessing the close of such a life.

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