The location of Fr. Paul Kedrolivansky's skull wound, based on the surviving portion of the autopsy report. Image courtesy of Richard Green.

On today’s episode of my American Orthodox History podcast on Ancient Faith Radio, I tell the story of Fr. Paul Kedrolivansky’s suspicious death. For the whole story, you’ll want to listen to the podcast. There are quite a few characters involved, and I thought it might be helpful to provide a brief introduction to each of them here:

Archpriest Paul Kedrolivansky: Dean of St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in San Francisco from 1870 to 1878. There was no Russian bishop in America from 1877 to 1879, so at the time of his death, Kedrolivansky was the highest-ranking Orthodox clergyman in the Alaskan Diocese.

Priest Nicholas Kovrigin: Assistant priest of the Cathedral. Kovrigin was actually the founding pastor of the church, back in 1868, but Kedrolivansky was soon assigned to be dean. In what must have been an awkward arrangement, Kovrigin was made his assistant. Kovrigin was repeatedly accused of being a corrupt philanderer, and in 1879, Bishop Nestor basically kicked him out of the Alaskan Diocese.

Mindeleff: Kedrolivansky’s roommate, with whom he went drinking on the night of his fatal injury.

Mr. Rosenthal: Owner of a tobacco shop, one of the places Kedrolivansky visited on his last night. Rosenthal said that Kedrolivansky had exhibited an official-looking document, and claimed that Fr. Nicholas Kovrigin “would give $10,000 to have it from him.”

Dr. Stivers: The police surgeon. He tried to save Kedrolivansky’s life, but it was too late. He also said that Kedrolivansky was almost certainly the victim of murder, and not an accident. On the basis of Dr. Stivers’ testimony, the coroner’s jury declared the death to be murder by person or persons unknown.

Vladimir Welitsky: The Russian consul in San Francisco. From the very beginning, Welitsky insisted that Kedrolivansky’s death was just an accident, not murder. He also downplayed the importance of the “$10,000 document,” which he claimed to have translated.

Gustave Niebaum: Head of the Alaska Commercial Company. Niebaum’s company had previously accused Kedrolivansky of transporting contraband. After Welitsky returned to Russia, Niebaum became the acting Russian consul. He accused Kedrolivansky’s widow of having an extramarital affair, thereby driving her husband to drink and thus to his (accidental) death. Alexandra Kedrolivansky sued Niebaum for defamation of character; the case went to the California Supreme Court, and Mrs. Kedrolivansky won.

Elizabeth Kedrolivansky: Widow of Fr. Paul. As I said above, Gustave Niebaum accused Mrs. Kedrolivansky of having an affair and driving her husband to drink. She later won a defamation lawsuit against Niebaum.

Detective Jehu: San Francisco police detective. He was investigating the Kedrolivansky case, and found three witnesses who claimed to have seen Kedrolivansky fall and hit his head on the ground. On the basis of this testimony, the police declared the death to be an accident, and they closed the case.

Chief John Kirkpatrick: Chief of the San Francisco police. Kirkpatrick wrote a letter to Consul Welitsky, explaining the conclusions of the police.

Bishop Nestor Zass: Bishop of the Alaskan Diocese from 1879 to 1882. Upon arriving in America, Bp Nestor immediately expelled Fr. Nicholas Kovrigin from his diocese. In 1882, Bp Nestor died at sea.

Bishop Vladimir Sokolovsky: Bishop of the Alaskan Diocese from 1888 to 1891. Bp Vladimir’s tenure was occupied by almost constant scandal. While he was nowhere near America when Kedrolivansky died, Bp Vladimir accused the Alaska Commercial Company and a man named Amosov of killing Kedrolivansky.

Amosov: A mysterious man who some later claimed had murdered Kedrolivansky. It’s not clear whether Amosov even existed in reality, much less whether he was guilty of murder.

Also, for the record, I am going to reprint the description of Kedrolivansky’s wound. This was printed in the San Francisco Examiner on May 23, 1889. It is all that survives of the original autopsy report.

The autopsy disclosed the fact that the scalp of deceased was very thick and strongly adherent, and on the whole of the left side there was a large amount of suffused blood. On the left side was found a fracture of the skull, commencing in the temporal bone, running upward and slightly backward into the parietal bone, being three inches in length; thence at right angles backward half an inch; thence downward and slightly backward two inches; thence at right angles forward one and three-fourth inches intersecting the first line described, leaving a detached piece pressing upon the brain. This portion of the skull was quite thin. From the point of intersection there was a fracture running across the temporal bone and ending in the median line of the frontal bone at a distance of about four and a half inches. There was also a fracture from the lower corner of the detached piece running backward across the parietal bone a distance of about half an inch. The brain directly under the fracture was lacerated and a brain clot weighing four ounces was found. The brain was in a healthy condition.

Kedrolivansky’s death remains an unsolved mystery. Was it an accident, or murder? If murder, then, by whom, and why? We may never know.

Tags: 1878, AFR, America, civil authorities, Nestor Zass, newspapers, Nicholas Kovrigin, Paul Kedrolivansky, primary sources, Russian, San Francisco, Vladimir Sokolovsky

The latest episode of my American Orthodox History podcast is up over at Ancient Faith Radio. In it, I discuss the feast of Theophany, focusing on several historical celebrations of the feast, including the famous annual celebration at the Greek cathedral in Tarpon Springs, Florida. In the podcast, I read from a number of old newspaper articles. Here’s something that I didn’t get a chance to read — a brief notice about an occasion when the cross was lost in the water. From the St. Petersburg (FL) Evening Independent (1/6/1930):

Tarpon Springs, Jan. 6. — (Special to The Independent) — Ietroheos Aehanaffion, swarthy Greek diver of this city, for the third successive time today recovered the cross thrown into the water in observance of Epiphany. It was the fifth time that this diver has recovered the cross in the last several years.

Though the cross was recovered, it was lost again when the ceremony was repeated for the benefit of the Pathe news cameramen, and had not been found at a late hour today.

A crowd estimated at between 15,000 and 25,000 greeted the 27th observance of Epiphany here.

For more on Theophany, be sure to read the article on the 1910 Serbian celebration in Kansas City, posted here a couple of days ago. To listen to the podcast, just click here.

Tags: 1930, AFR, America, Greek, newspapers, parishes, primary sources

Meeting of bishops to "reorganize" the Federation. This led to the creation of SCOBA in 1960.

On today’s episode of the American Orthodox History podcast, I interviewed SOCHA executive director Fr. Oliver Herbel on the subject of the “Federated Orthodox Greek Catholic Primary Jurisdictions,” a 1943 attempt to create a national, pan-Orthodox organization.

The Federation is to SCOBA what the League of Nations was to the United Nations. Both the Federation and the League of Nations were missing a crucial player: the Federation lacked the involvement of the Russian Metropolia (today’s OCA), while the League of Nations didn’t include the United States. Both SCOBA and the UN were essentially trying to do the same things as their predecessor organizations, but they were obviously more successful and long-lasting.

Metropolitan Antony Bashir was the head of the Antiochian Archdiocese of New York, and he was one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the Federation. Even after it was basically defunct in 1944, Bashir tried to keep it going, at least on paper. In the 1955 and 1956 Yearbooks of American Churches, for instance, Bashir is listed as the President of the Federation, even though it has been non-functioning for more than a decade. In a 1961 publication commemorating Bashir’s 25th anniversary as Metropolitan, we find this sentence: “In March of 1960, he spearheaded the reorganization of the Federation into the much stronger Conference of Orthodox Bishops of the Americas, which he now serves as Vice-President.”

In a way, then, the Federation was SCOBA.

UPDATE (12/3/09): Fr. James Early sent an email asking if I could identify the people in the above photo; in particular, he asked whether the “right-most suit-wearing hierarch” was Metropolitan Antony Bashir. Here is my reply:

Metropolitan Antony is indeed the right-most suit-wearing hierarch, standing near the center of the picture. However, I don’t know who most of the other men are. Certainly, the bishop in the white hat is Metropolitan Leonty Turkevich, and I assume the bishop in between Antony and Leonty is Archbishop Michael Konstantinides of the Greek Archdiocese. Abp Michael died on July 13, 1958, so if he’s in the photo, we can be sure it was taken before that date. His successor, Abp Iakovos, is not in the photo, which further suggests a date of 1958 or earlier.

I doubt that all of the individuals in the photo are bishops. In fact, it may be that Bashir is the left-most bishop in the photo, as all the men to the left of him look like priests. 

UPDATE (12/23/09): According to Fr. Alexander Lebedeff in the comments (below), the second man from the left is Fr. George Grabbe, Chancellor of the ROCOR Synod of Bishops. Fr. Alexander writes, “The ROCOR had been very involved in the precursor of SCOBA, and participated in the organizational meetings of SCOBA, as well. The ROCOR withdrew when informed that the Bishop in charge of the Moscow Patriarchal parishes in America would be invited to join SCOBA. That did not occur, but the ROCOR never returned to the table.”

UPDATE: (2/23/10): I have just received an email from Fr. Demetrius T. Dogias, in which he identifies several other individuals in this photo. According to Fr. Demetrius, the man standing at the far left is Bishop (later Metropolitan) Germanos Polyzoides. The fifth man from the left (that is, the man standing to the left of Met Antony Bashir) is Bp Demetrios of Olympus, who, at the time, was Chancellor of the Greek Archdiocese. The fourth man from the right (that is, the man with his head down, next to Met Leonty Turkevich) is Bp Bohdan, of the Ukrainian Archdiocese associated with the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Fr. Demetrius also offered this background information on the Greek Archbishop Michael, who is in the center of the photo (in between Bashir and Turkevich):

It may interest you to know that Archbishop Michael, also in the Dec. 2 picture, had studied in Kiev and that one of his teachers was the later Metropolitan Anastassy of the Russian Chuch Outside Russia.  Michael went to London as the priest at the St. Sophia Cathedral, and was granted the extremely rare title of Great (or “Grand”) Archimandrite.  He then was elected Metropolitan of Corinth in Greece, from which position he was elected Archbishop of North and South America.

Many thanks to Fr. Demetrius for providing all this information. We can now identify quite a few of the individuals in the photo. Here it is again, with numbers to make the identification easier:

Click on the photo to see a larger image. Here are the people we’ve identified so far:

1. Bp Germanos Polyzoides of Nyssa, Greek Archdiocese
2. Fr. George Grabbe, ROCOR Chancellor
5. Bp Demetrios of Olympus, Greek Archdiocese Chancellor
6. Met Antony Bashir, Antiochian Archdiocese
7. Abp Michael Konstantinides, Greek Archdiocese
8. Met Leonty Turkevich, Russian Metropolia
9. Bp Bohdan, Ukrainian Archdiocese

As more identifications come in, I’ll continue to update this article. And once again, thanks to all those who have sent in identifications so far.

Tags: 1944, 1955, 1956, 1960, AFR, Antiochian, Antony Bashir, Federation, primary sources, SCOBA

Gov. Thomas Dewey of New York signs the bill creating the Federation

I also wish to note that I failed to make an important connection within the interview itself. Near the beginning of the podcast, I mentioned the difficulties Fr. Boris Burden had with Metropolitan Platon. I meant to return to this later to note that the tense relationship between the two may have also been a factor that excluded the Metropolia from membership. It was not the only factor, as I mentioned the FOGCPJA’s requirement that each jurisdiction be under a Mother Church/Patriarch, but it may well have played a role. Metropolitan Benjamin (Moscow Patriarchate) relied quite heavily on Fr. Boris Burden.

I should further note that Phillies’s membership in the Masons may not have been as ill received since Archbishop Athenagoras and Metropolitan Antony were also Masons. Although Masonic membership would have likely concerned Fr. Boris Burden, it is possible that Metropolitan Benjamin showed some restraint in this regard.

Fall of 1942 (September or October): The Selective Service attempted to draft Fr. John Gelsinger. When that happened, Fr. John Gelsinger, and his father, Fr. Michael Gelsinger, contacted George E. Phillies, a family friend and local attorney in Buffalo, New York.

October 9, 1942: Phillies appealed to the federal authorities, via General Lewis B. Hershey, having gone before the local and state selective service boards. The response from Washington D.C. was that they needed to see proof of an organized Orthodox Church in America. In response to this, the hierarchs of the four primary jurisdictions met.

Fr. Michael Gelsinger (New York Syrian) and Fr. Boris Burden (Moscow Patriarchate) were the instrumental people behind the movement. Fr. Michael received commitments from Archbishop Antony Bashir and Archbishop Athenagoras and Fr. Boris Burden convinced Metropolitan Benjamin and the Bishop Dionisije, the Serbian bishop.

At the subsequent hearing at the Pentagon, Bishop Germanos, an auxiliary bishop of Constantinople, was the only testifying witness. U.S. Senator James Mead (NY, hometown of Buffalo) and Representative James Wadsworth (NY) also appealed on behalf of the Orthodox Church.

December 8, 1942: Major Simon P. Dunkle signed the paperwork instructing the selective service of New York to recognize Fr. John Gelsinger as a priest and providing Orthodox the Opportunity to enlist as Orthodox. Orthodox priests were granted the opportunity to serve as chaplains.

Phillies hailed this as the first time the four primary jurisdictions had provided a united front in America. He quickly built upon this momentum to pursue another venture: amending New York state law for religious corporations. He did this because his reading of the laws of New York convinced him that it was possible the Roman Catholic Church might claim sole legal right to the terms Greek, Catholic, and Orthodox. He also had found no legal incorporation of an Orthodox Church (jurisdiction) that would mitigate this. Individual parishes had incorporated, but the only large scale incorporations were Roman Catholic, such as the Greek Catholic incorporation in Pennsylvania.

February 10, 1943: George E. Phillies wrote to Gov. Dewey, recommending that the hierarchs visit and Dewey replies by stating they should do so after the signing.

February 19, 1943: Charles J. Tobin, secretary of the New York State Catholic Welfare Committee, wrote to State Senator Charles Burney, objecting to the proposed legislation, claiming that only Rome could use the terms Catholic or Greek Catholic.

February 25, 1943: Rev. Philemon Tarnavsky (chancellor of the diocese of Philadelphia) also wrote to Gov. Dewey and agreed with Tobin. He objected to the use of the word Catholic, which he said was linked to the Holy See in Rome. He even noted that the word Orthodox is also used by Greek Catholics, questioning whether Orthodox should use it as a self designation. Rev. Turnavsky was a Greek Catholic himself.

March 5, 1943: Episcopal diocese of Western New York wrote to support the bill (Rt. Rev. Bp Cameron J. Davis)

March 8, 1943: Phillies asked “Charlie” [Burney] for a moving picture crew and claimed there were five million Orthodox in America.

March 10, 1943: Tobin wrote to consul of the governor to object again. He included the assessment of Monsignor Tarnavsky.

March 15, 1943: Memorandum by Phillies stated the purpose(s), excluded the Metropolia, responded to Roman Catholic critics, and noted that the FOGCPJA was set up to parallel the federal/state division in the United States of America.

March 25, 1943: Governor Thomas Dewey signed the bill.

August 2, 1943: The Buffalo Evening News called Phillies the “lay head,” noted that he had dual membership in the GOC and the PEC, and was a Mason.

August 8, 1943: Concelebration.

August 22, 1943: Divine Liturgy in Kleinhans Hall (GOC too small). Archbishop Athenagoras presided, with Metropolitan Antony and Bishop Bogdan assisting (Ukrainian). By this time, the Ukrainians and Carpatho-Russians who were under Constantinople were participating in the FOGCPJA. A small internal disagreement ensued, because Frs. Boris Burden and Michael Gelsinger thought the service should have been in a larger non-Orthodox church building rather than one that was strictly secular.

Bishop Dionisije was bothered by the fact that the Carpatho-Russians and Ukrainians were under Constantinople and had other unnamed concerns. He soon quit participating.

October 3, 1943: At a meeting in Bayonne, NJ, the officers of the FOGCPJA passed the “Bayonne Resolution.” This resolution stated all officers of the Federation must be Orthodox, with no sacramental participation in non-Orthodox churches. Another problem that arose was that the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America had received a letter (likely sent by Phillies) asking for membership.

October 7, 1943: Articles signed by the bishops and the Federation is legally incorporated. Archbishop Athenagoras had been chosen as the presiding hierarch. Fr. Peter Horton-Billard was chosen as secretary, replacing Fr. Boris Burden. Phillies remained the elected chancellor.

October 8, 1943: Burden called the elections “conditional.”

November 1, 1943: Russians threatened to leave over concerns with Phillies.

December 18, 1943: Marriage served jointly by Fr. E Wolkodoff, a Metropolia priest, and PE priest J. Coseby. Metropolitan Benjamin suspended the priest. At this point, the Federation was suspended.

February 2, 1944: Meeting: 1) no “lay head” 2) hierarchs are the leaders 3) Orthodox cannot be communicants elsewhere 4) “chancellor” means “legal advisor” and nothing more. Metropolitan Benjamin also said he had the support of Patriarch Sergius.

Around this same time, Patriarch Sergius wrote to Metropolitan Benjamin, offering permission to be active in the Federation, but Metropolitan Benjamin and Fr. Boris Burden were preparing to renege on the FOGCPJA.

Early October 1944: Metropolitan Benjamin said Phillies was no longer the chancellor. Phillies claimed he was.

November, 1944: Russians officially pulled out. By early 1945, the FOGCPJA was basically dead, though Metropolitan Antony Bashir kept it alive on paper.

Tags: 1942, 1943, 1944, AFR, Antony Bashir, Athenagoras Spyrou, Benjamin Fedchenkov, Boris Burden, Federation, Freemasonry, Frontier Orthodoxy, George Phillies, Michael Gelsinger, Platon Rozhdestvensky

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tags: 1927, 1929, AFR, Aftimios Ofiesh, Alexander Demoglou, America, American Orthodox Catholic Church, Boris Burden, early unity, Greek, Historiography, primary sources, Russian

St. Tikhon, flanked by his two vicars, Bishop Innocent and St. Raphael

In 1905, the Holy Synod of Russia was preparing for an All-Russian Council. In advance of this, the Synod asked all the diocesan hierarchs of the Russian Church to send in their opinions on various church reform issues. St. Tikhon was among the respondents, and a portion of his reply has become rather famous among American Orthodox Christians. There are a couple of translations of this section of Tikhon’s response; I’ll print one of them here:

The diocese of North America must be reorganized into an Exarchate of the Russian Church in North America. The diocese is not only multi-national; it is composed of several orthodox Churches, which keep the unity of faith, but preserve their peculiarities in canonical structure, in liturgical rules, in parish life. These particularities are dear to them and can perfectly be tolerated on the pan-orthodox scene. We do not consider that we have the right to suppress the national character of the churches here; on the contrary, we try to preserve this character and we confer on them the latitude to be guided by leaders of their own nationality. Thus, the Syrian Church here received a bishop of its own (the Most Rev. Raphael of Brooklyn), who is the second auxiliary to the diocesan bishop of the Aleutian Islands, but is almost independent in his own sphere (the bishop of Alaska having the same position). The Serbian parishes are now organized under one immediate head, who for the time beign is an archimandrite, but who can be elevated to the episcopacy in the nearest future. The Greeks also desire to have their own bishop and are trying to settle the matter with the Synod of Athens. In other words, in North America a whole Exarchate can easily be established, uniting all orthodox national Churches, which would have their own bishops under one Exarch, the Russian Archbishop. Each one of them is independent in his own sphere, but the common affairs of the American Church are decided in a Synod, presided by the Russian Archbishop. Through him a link is preserved between the American Church and the Church of Russia and a certain dependence of the former on the latter. It should be remembered however that life in the New World is different from that of the old; our Church must take this into consideration; a greater autonomy (and possibly autocephaly) should therefore be granted to the Church of America, as compared with the other Metropolitan sees of the Russian Church. The North American Exarchate would comprise: (1) the archdiocese of New York, with jurisdiction over all Russian Churches in the United States and Canada. (2) the diocese of Alaska, for the orthodox inhabitants of Alaska (Russians, Aleutians, Indians, Eskimos). (3) The diocese of Brooklyn (Syrian). (4) the diocese of Chicago (Serbian). (5) a Greek diocese.

That translation comes from St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, in 1975. There was, however, an earlier translation, commissioned by St. Tikhon himself. This earlier version appeared in the Vestnik (the official periodical of the Russian Mission), in March of 1906. There are some notable differences between the two translations. Among them:

• The 1906 version includes St. Tikhon’s full (and fascinating) response to the Holy Synod, which runs 22 pages. The 1975 version consists only of the section quoted above, thus lacking the context of St. Tikhon’s proposal.
• The 1906 version says that St. Raphael is “nominally the second vicar”; the 1975 version does not include the word “nominally.”
• The 1906 version does not include the parenthetical “(autocephaly)”, which the 1975 version has. On this point, the 1975 version appears to be more accurate; I am told by those who can read Russian that the original Russian text does include that parenthetical.
• The 1906 version, when it mentions a diocese (bishopric) for the Greeks, includes a question mark: “The bishopric (?) of the Greeks.” The 1975 version omits this question mark, which does in fact appear in the original Russian.

Otherwise, the two versions basically agree with each other, aside from the obvious differences in word choice in translation. I don’t know who translated either version — neither the 1906 nor the 1975 version credited anyone.

Needless to say, St. Tikhon’s vision was never fully realized. Fr. Sebastian Dabovich never became bishop for the Serbs, and the Greeks weren’t about to submit to Russian authority. And, as pragmatic as it might have been, St. Tikhon’s proposal was also completely uncanonical, predicated as it was upon overlapping episcopal territories that were a total violation of Orthodox ecclesiology. But St. Tikhon’s vision would inspire two later efforts to form a single American Orthodox jurisdiction — the “American Orthodox Catholic Church” in the 1920s/30s, and, in 1970, the OCA — and it is still hailed by many today as a viable solution to our present jurisdictional situation.

PODCAST NOTE: Today on the American Orthodox History podcast on Ancient Faith Radio, we’re airing Part 2 of my interview with Fr. John Erickson, on the subject of the Russian Mission. In this two-part interview, Fr. John gives us, among other things, the context to understand St. Tikhon’s vision.

Tags: 1905, 1906, 1975, AFR, America, early unity, language, OCA, primary sources, Russian, St Tikhon

Roman Catholic writer Andrew Shipman

In 1905, the Roman Catholic religious writer Andrew Shipman wrote an article on the Russian Church in America. It’s an enlightening piece, a snapshot of the Russian Mission taken by an intelligent outsider. Given that the Russian Mission is the subject of my latest podcast on Ancient Faith Radio, I thought this would be a good time to reprint part of Shipman’s article.

Much of the article isn’t actually Shipman; it’s Fr. John Nedzelnitsky, a Russian priest from Pittsburgh. Shipman translated an article by Nedzenitzky into English — an appeal to the Russian Holy Synod to elevate the North American Diocese to the status of an Exarchate. Given that the Russian Mission is the subject of my latest podcast on Ancient Faith Radio, I thought this would be a good time to reprint much of Shipman’s (and Nedzelnitsky’s) article here. (By the way, the article comes from the June 1905 issue of The Messenger, a Roman Catholic monthly.)

In the United States the Russian Orthodox Church has been established for a hundred years. At first it was confined to Alaska, — then known as Russian America, — then it came to San Francisco and along the Pacific coast. Then it flourished along the Atlantic coast and the adjoining States, and now has its chief and most splendid temple in the City of New York. The episcopal title has varied as the fortunes of the Church have waxed. First, it was “Bishop of the Kodiaks,” afterwards “Bishop of Kamchatka, the Kurile and Aleutian Islands,” (Bishop Innocent), then “Bishop of New Archangel” (Bishop Paul), then “Bishop of Aleutia and Alaska” (Bishops John, Nestor, Vladimir and Nicholas), and finally now it is “Bishop of Aleutia and North America” (Bishop Tikhon). The latter bishop has been provided with two vicar-bishops or auxiliary bishops, Bishop Innocent, “Bishop of Alaska,” and Bishop Raphael, “Bishop of Brooklyn.”

It is now proposed by the Russian Orthodox Church to form the United States into an Exarchate or at least an Archiepiscopal province. This is to be an ecclesiastical organization, the head of which will be subject directly to the Holy Governing Synod, but which in other respects will be completely autonomous, the bishops and clergy of which will be ruled by the Exarch.

To appreciate the significance of this, let us consider a moment the latest official figures of the Russian Orthodox Church in the United States. They are as follows for 1905:

• Russians from Russia – 1,706
• Russians (Ruthenians) from Galicia — 7,747
• Russians (Ruthenians) from Hungary — 4,676
• Bukovinians and Wallachians — 3,653
• Servians and other Slavs — 6,386
• Greeks — 731
• Syro-Arabians — 5,484
• Half-breeds — 2,124
• Indians — 2,281
• Aleutians — 2,272
• Esquimaux — 3,210
• Americans and others — 71
• TOTAL — 38,341

These figures show a slight increase over those for the preceding year. Among themre 772 persons who were formerly Uniate Greek Catholics.

I cannot better explain the purpose and scope of this movement to erect an Exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church than by translating an article on that subject by the Reverend Archpriest John Nedzelnitzky, of the Russian Church of St. Michael, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. After giving a short history of the Russian mission in America, he says:

“The American Orthodox diocese, after a century of its existence, has grown in the number of its members, both clergy and lay, and has become exalted in its significance in the eyes of those of other faiths, — such as the Episcopalians and the old Catholics of America, and it has so important a missionary purpose in spreading orthodoxy among the Uniates, the Slavs and other peoples of the new world, that in justice, both by reason of its purpose and by the merits of its bishops, it ought to have for its visible head in America an Exarch or at least one with the title of Archbishop. For this the following facts will speak:

“In the past year, 1903, the Holy Synod in Russia established in America a vicariate with the cathedral see at Sitka, and on February 24, 1904, the first vicar-bishop arrived in America. He was the Right Reverend Innocent, with the title of ‘Bishop of Alaska.’ On the first of February, 1904, the Holy Synod established a second vicariate for the Syro-Arabian missions, with the cathedral see in the city of Brooklyn, and on February 29th there was celebrated in New York the first Orthodox consecration of a bishop in America, when the Archimandrite Raphael was made Bishop of Brooklyn. There are therefore now America two vicariates and the ruling bishop, who continues to bear the title of ‘Bishop,’ the same as for a century past. There is nothing in the title to distinguish him from his vicars, and he is only differentiated from them by the powers exercised by him, although in reality it follows that a ruling bishop should be distinguished from assistant bishops even in title. For the effectiveness of an archbishop and two vicar-bishops in America, the Diocese of Aleutia ought to be placed first in rank of Orthodox dioceses, not only by the alphabet, but in reality. It ought to be an Exarchate like the Exarchate of  Georgia, or at least an Archbishopric. If in Russia there is not a diocese where the ruling bishop with two vicars bears only the title of ‘Bishop,’ but is called ‘Archbishop,’ so it should be in the American Exarchate or Diocese of Aleutia and North America.”

Fr. Nedzelnitsky goes on for another paragraph, comparing the American Orthodox situation to that of the Roman Catholics, who had an Apostolic Delegate, 16 archbishops, and 85 bishops. He then asks,

“If the dioceses of the Roman Catholic Church in America are ruled by archbishops, why then does not our Orthodox Church in America have even one archbishop, especially now, when the Holy Synod, having established two vicariates in America, has thereby extended the importance of the diocese of Aleutia and its head? And of course it will soon establish also a third vicariate, for the Servians in America, since the Servians, having erected their churches and parishes, wish to have a bishop of  their own nationality.”

Nedzelnitsky then notes that the Episcopalian bishops oversee a relatively small number of parishioners — an average of 7,825 per bishop. He continues,

“Our Orthodox diocese in America is comparatively great in the number of its members, only there are now regular statistics, in view of the huge territory in America, of those scattered in towns and villages, where the Orthodox may live, the majority of them leading a nomadic form of life, such as factory hands (Russians, Servians and Ruthenians), and a few tradesmen (Syro-Arabians and Greeks) and the like.

“The official publications of the American government and of our diocesan organization in regard to the number of the Orthodox differ widely in view of the causes we point out. Dr. H.K. Carroll, late special agent of the United States Census Office, informs us that up to 1905 there were in the United States of America 40,000 Russian Orthodox (including probably also Ruthenians), 21,230 Greek Orthodox and 15,000 Syrian Orthodox. Therefore, according to the information of this government official, there are 76,230 Orthodox souls in the United States, but from his statistics there does not appear the quantity of Orthodox Servians, Bulgarians, Macedonians and Roumanians, who altogether amount to more than 10,000. Nor does this official reckon in the half-breeds, Indians Aleutian and Esquimaux, who comprise the Orthodox inhabitants of Alaska and its islands. And there are not a few of these last-named races! In Canada there dwell more than 5,000 Bukovinians and Wallachians. An official of the United States of course cannot count them in, for Canada belongs to England. Our missions, for instance, count only those Greeks who go to confession to Russian priests, and in America there are many purely Greek parishes which do not give us their statistical results, but all these really have common ground with us and our bishops, as they are one in faith with us. And in the eys of the Greeks the presence in America of an Orthodox Metropolitan or Archbishop-Exarch would have tremendous importance, as they, as well as the Syro-Arabians and Servians of Austrian territory are accustomed in Europe and in Asia to have many metropolitans, archbishops and bishops of their own.

Nedzelnitsky makes more arguments — that an exarchate would help combat imposter clergy, and that it is essential in drawing Uniates to Orthodoxy. Shipman then concludes his piece:

Thus far the archpriest. But other articles have appeared in the Russian Orthodox papers, showing the proposed foundation of an ecclesiastical seminary in Cleveland, Ohio, the laying out of an extensive school plan and other signs of progressive church work. The latest news in a statement in the daily papers that Bishop Tikhon, with his entire cathedral staff, is about to remove from San Francisco to New York, which latter will hereafter be his chief see city. The change is expected to be made in the month of May of this year, and if San Francisco thus becomes a vicariate with a new bishop, the American Exarchate may be an accomplished fact within a very short time.

St. Tikhon did move from San Francisco to New York City, and a seminary was indeed established (but in Minneapolis, rather than Cleveland). No bishop was assigned to San Francisco, though, and the dream of a full-fledged American Orthodox exarchate never really came to fruition.

Another interesting thing to note is the demographics of the Russian Mission, which I believe Shipman got from the Diocese itself. There were only 721 Greeks in the Russian Diocese, but according to Nedzelnitzky, there were over 21,000 in the country (and the next year’s Census of Religious Bodies would put the figure at more than 90,000).

Also, there were very few actual Russians in the Diocese — just 1,706, or less than 5% of the reported total. The biggest groups in the Diocese were actually the Ruthenians / Bukovinians / Wallachians (16,076 / 42%) and various types of Alaskan natives (9,887 / 26%).

Tags: 1905, AFR, America, Andrew Shipman, John Nedzelnitsky, primary sources, Russian, St Tikhon

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

Here’s the plan for the miniseries:

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

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

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

Tags: AFR, America, Chambesy, early unity, John Erickson, media, Russian, SOCHA

A few days ago, there was a conference called, “In the Footsteps of Tikhon and Grafton,” held at Nashotah House, the famous Episcopalian seminary in Wisconsin. The conference included a number of well-known Orthodox figures, among them the OCA’s Metropolitan Jonah and Bishop Melchizedek, and St. Vladimir’s Seminary’s Fr. Chad Hatfield and Mrs. Anne Glynn-Mackoul. Recordings of the whole conference are available at Ancient Faith Radio.

I point this out mainly because of the first recording on the list — “The History of Anglican/Orthodox Relations,” which is actually a pair of talks given, respectively, by Fr. Chad Hatfield and the Episcopal priest Arnold Klukas. Fr. Chad’s talk focuses primarily on the relationship between St. Tikhon and Bishop Grafton at the turn of the last century. Klukas speaks about the broader history of Anglican-Orthodox relations.

Given the relevance of this subject to American Orthodox history, I thought I would mention it here. Of course, we’ve published a good deal of relevant material here at OrthodoxHistory.org, which you can read by clicking here. For a lot of good primary sources, check out this page on the AnglicanHistory.org website.

Tags: AFR, Chad Hatfield, Charles Grafton, Episcopalians, St Tikhon, svs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tags: 1869, 1870, AFR, converts, Greek, James Chrystal, New York, Nicholas Bjerring, Russian

In the latest episode of my American Orthodox History podcast,  I talk about Rev. A.N. Experidon, better known as “the Bulgarian Monk.” He was, without a doubt, the weirdest man in the history of American Orthodoxy.

For the whole story, I’d encourage you to listen to the podcast, but below, I’m reprinting an article from the San Jose Daily Evening News (March 28, 1889):

A BULGARIAN MONK

He Will Preach on Santa Clara Street This Evening

A Man With a Mission and a Strange History – A Former Guide in the Holy Land

A Bulgarian monk, was on the streets to-day and attracted much attention. He called at the office of the Mayor this morning to secure permission to preach at the corner of First and Santa Clara street, in the open air, this evening. A large crowd gathered around the man, attracted by his strange garb. He was dressed in a long black gown reaching to his heels. His hair is long and he wears a red cap.

A reporter for the EVENING NEWS engaged the monk in conversation and found him to be a man of pleasing address, and evidently of intelligence and education. His name is Rev. A.N. Experidon and he says he is a Bulgarian monk of the Christian Church of Jerusalem. He is 60 years of age and has been engaged in his mission for 30 years.

FORMERLY A LAWYER

He is a Bulgarian by birth and in his own country was a lawyer by profession. In his early life he acted as a guide at Jerusalem to many prominent American tourists, among them the United States party under Dr. Gibson. In this party was Mark Twain, then a young man, and it was during this journey that Mark got his material for “Innocents Abroad.” The traveling monk therefore finds numerous old friends among prominent people in the United States. There is one gentleman in Woodland, a clergyman there, who was piloted through the

WONDERS OF THE HOLY LAND

By him. Thirty years ago the monk entered upon his mission of teaching the gospel to the people of the earth in accordance with the belief of his church. He studied at St. Marys, Oxford, being associated there with many who are now prominent in the politics of England and Canada. He afterwards studied at Paris, St. Petersburg, Berlin and Constantinople, his studies there being largely devoted to theology and languages. He speaks now thirty-two languages and dialects, and if he has the same command of the others as he exhibits in English he may be said to be fluent in all.

The Christian Church of Jerusalem, of which the Rev. Experidon, or “the Bulgarian Monk,” as he advertises himself, is a member, is what is known in Russia as “Stahto Bratsu,” “The Old Brotherhood.” It preaches the Gospel of Christ, love and charity, regardless of any sect, and recognizing no arbitrary teachings,

NO TRADITIONS

And no canonical laws. Indeed, the monk seems to delight in demonstrating from the Bible the inconsistency of the teachings of each of the Christian sects. He quotes Timothy to prove that women are forbidden to preach until after they are 60 years of age, and offers it as an indication of the absurdity of any divine inspiration being received by the Salvation Army or the Methodist female revivalist.

The Bulgarian monk has been thirteen years in America and has preached through Mexico and

EVERY STATE IN THE UNION

Except California. He is now “doing” every county in this State and from here goes to South America. If he manages to finish the countries there he will return to the United States and end his days here. He will die somewhere on this continent, and while prosecuting his self-appointed mission of preaching the gospel of Christ, free from arbitrary interpretations and canonical laws. He is engaged also in the preparation of what he states is a cyclopedia of the world, which he intends for publication.

He will lecture this evening at the corner of Santa Clara and First streets. He states that his subject will be “To Convert all American Preachers, Priests and Christians.”

Was he Orthodox? Originally, yes, but by 1889, I’d guess not. He had been in the United States for around 15 years at that point, and he became stranger and stranger as time passed.

The message of the Bulgarian Monk, if indeed there is a message, seems to be this: America is a frontier for Orthodoxy. I’ve said this before; Orthodox America, like the Wild West, attracted both heroes and outlaws — the good, the bad, and the ugly. And the Bulgarian Monk is one of the ugly ones.

I think the point is, not all of the Orthodox clerics who came to America were saints, or missionaries, or even normal human beings. We had our fair share of oddballs, of whom the Bulgarian Monk might be the oddest.

Tags: 1889, AFR, Bulgarian, newspapers, primary sources, The Bulgarian Monk

Father Alexander Schmemann

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tags: AFR, Alexander Schmemann, America, early unity, Historiography, primary sources, svs

On today’s episode of the American Orthodox History podcast, we’re running a lecture I gave at the Brotherhood of St Moses the Black conference in Indianapolis at the end of May. The subject is Fr Raphael Morgan, the first black Orthodox priest in America. The text of the lecture is below. Also, later this year, St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly will be publishing a paper I wrote on Fr Raphael.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: 1907, 1913, 1916, AFR, African Orthodox Church, African-American Orthodoxy, America, converts, Episcopalians, Greek, Jamaica, Jerusalem, Missions, newspapers, Philadelphia, primary sources, Raphael Morgan, Russian, St Raphael

Bishop Nicholas (Ziorov)

In my latest American Orthodox History podcast on Ancient Faith Radio, I spoke with Eric Peterson about Alaskan Orthodoxy in the period following the 1867 sale of Alaska by Russia to the United States. This was a tragic period, and for decades, a Presbyterian missionary named Rev. Sheldon Jackson ruled Alaska with an iron fist. He opposed anything native — languages, clothing, customs, and Orthodox Christianity. In his view, “Americanization” (which implied a conversion to Protestantism) was the only way for the “savage” Alaskan natives to become “civilized.”

 In 1899, Bishop Nicholas (Ziorov), the outgoing head of the Russian Mission in America (who had just been replaced by St Tikhon), wrote a letter to U.S. President William McKinley, expressing his concerns over abuses in Alaska. He singled out Jackson, “Alaska’s irremovable guardian.” That letter was reprinted in newspapers across America, including the Alaska Mining Record (January 18, 1899). Here is a  transcript:

Alaska stands in need of radical reform in all directions. A limit must be set to the abuses of various companies, more especially of the Alaska Commercial Company, which for over thirty years, has had the uncontrolled management of affairs and has reduced the country’s hunting and fishing resources to absolute exhaustion, and the population to beggary and semi-starvation. A limit must be set to the abuses of officials who, as shown by the experience of many years, are sent there without any discrimination and exclusively on the recommendation of Alaska’s irremovable guardian, Sheldon Jackson. And, lastly, Alaska must be delivered from that man. By his sectarian propaganda he has introduced dissension, enmity and iniquity where those evils did not before exist. It was the Orthodox Greek Church which brought the light of truth to that country; why, then, try to drive her out of it by every means lawful or unlawful?

In the name of humanity and justice, and freedom – of those very blessings for the sake of which you declared war against Spain – I make these requests. Will you be acting consistently if, while waging war for the liberty of Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines for their human rights, you ignore all those things at home, in part of your own country which has been waiting thirty years for the blessings promised to it? And are not we Russians fully entitled to demand of you for Alaska that for which you have taken up arms against Spain?

The only thing that may possibly be brought up against us is that we practice the true faith, and have not yet divested ourselves of our sympathies for Russia, the land of our own faith. But is that really sufficient ground for blame and persecution? There is no danger whatever in that to American rule in Alaska, as some persons would probably have you believe, if only for the reason that our church never meddles with politics and our clergy never busied itself at home or abroad with intrigues.

Rev. Sheldon Jackson

Jackson’s response was swift. Within days, he fired back,

The greatest enemies to public schools in Alaska are the priests of the Greek Church. They have even imprisoned boys to keep them out of the schools. They do not want their children to learn English for fear that they may leave the Greek congregation. However, the cause of the Greek priests in Alaska is dying. They are not citizens, but are sustained by the Russian government, and have been required to renew their oaths of allegiance every time there has been a change in Russian authority. For the support of the Greek Church in the territory the Russian government pays annually the sum of $60,000. Their work is not progressing, and my opinion is that twenty-five years hence will see the end of the Greek Church in Alaska.

[Excerpt taken from the New York Evangelist, January 19, 1899.]

Needless to say, despite the strenuous efforts of the U.S. government and most of the country’s major Protestant groups, Jackson’s prediction was proven false.

Tags: 1899, AFR, Alaska, America, civil authorities, Missions, newspapers, Nicholas Ziorov, primary sources, Russian, Sheldon Jackson

The talks from the recent conference at St. Vladimir’s Seminary may now be viewed online, courtesy of St. Andrew House in Detroit. You can also listen to the audio at Ancient Faith Radio.

The video of my own talk, “The Myth of Past Unity,” can be found here:

For audio only, click here.

Tags: AFR, early unity, media, primary sources, svs

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

On my Ancient Faith Radio podcast, I’m in the midst of a three-part interview series with Eric Peterson on the subject of Alaskan Orthodox history. Today, AFR aired Part 2 of that series, focusing on the period from 1824 (St. Innocent) to 1867 (the sale of Alaska to the United States).

Below is an article that originally appeared in a Protestant religious journal called The Pacific, and was reprinted in the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin on April 29, 1864:

The people of California have reason to know that there is such a region as Russian America, because Sitka supplies them with ice. They do not realize that in those cold, waste, inhospitable lands, dwell a population of 60,000 human beings. It is a comfort to know that there are Christians, not indeed of our sort, but Christian, nevertheless we hope, who care for these Esquimaux souls. Priest Benjamin [i.e., Veniaminoff], now Archbishop of Kamchatka, and resident there, commenced missionary work, in 1823, on one of the Aleutian Islands. He learned the language of those tribes, translated portions of the Scriptures and other religious books, and taught the islanders to read and write. From 1830 onward, those people rapidly became Christians. After a time the priest removed to Archangel, on the island of Sitka. Other missionaries succeeded him. One, Sitziazen by name, baptized 530, and the number annually baptized since, has been about 40; the whole number of converts has been estimated at 4,700. Greater success has attented the work on Cook’s Sound, farther northwest. A Missionary, by the name of Netzvetoff, has labored with the tribes so far up as Bhering’s Straits. In all these colonies of Russian America, there were in 1860, seven parish churches served by 27 priests. There were besides 35 chapels. The old priest Benjamin, now called Innocent I., visits every part of this cheerless diocese, and kindles its very snows with his warm zeal. There is one great fact for encouragement in these Missions of the Russian church. The Bible is translated into the language of the people, and they are urged to read it. Doubtless the Russian church keeps too much the traditions of corrupted ages, but we may well rejoice in the knowledge that the Missionary spirit, carrying the Bible to the savage tribes of our borders, is thus active and vigorous. The established church in Russia, is a component part of the “Greek Church.”

Tags: 1864, AFR, Alaska, Missions, newspapers, primary sources, Russian, Saints, St Innocent

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

Tags: 1888, AFR, America, Chicago, early unity, Greek, newspapers, primary sources, Russian, Serbian

At the “Orthodoxy in America: Past, Present and Future” conference at St. Vladimir’s Seminary in New York, SOCHA member Matthew Namee presented his paper The Myth of Past Unity, addressing the issue of the character of administrative unity prior to the establishment of the Greek Archdiocese in 1921. You can listen to the recording of his presentation here (courtesy of Ancient Faith Radio).

For anyone interested in the topic of Orthodox administrative unity in America, this paper is must-read (or “must-listen”) material.

I watched some of the brief Q&A session that followed, and although there were a couple of criticisms of Matthew’s remarks, the most directly negative of them amounted to a restating of the “myth” that Matthew identified without offering counter-evidence. Another commented that there had been a single hierarchy in America, but that essentially begs its own question (i.e., does appointing a bishop for Alaska really give Russia control over a whole continent?) and misses Matthew’s actual assertion (i.e., no matter what may have been “officially” the case, the reality on the ground was clear disunity). Even if one accepts the focus-shift required by the “single hierarchy” comments, that still leaves the embarrassing problem of the Russian-American hierarchy’s lack of actual claim over well over 100 non-Russian parishes in its own published lists. That is, it represents an anachronistic reading of history.

Update: Mark Stokoe (of OCANews.org) offers some commentary on Matthew’s lecture.

And here’s a bit more from Lydia Berzonsky.

Tags: AFR, early unity, media, primary sources, svs

At the “Orthodoxy in America: Past, Present and Future” conference at St. Vladimir’s Seminary in New York, SOCHA member Matthew Namee will be presenting his paper The Myth of Past Unity, addressing the issue of the character of administrative unity prior to the establishment of the Greek Archdiocese in 1921. A live video stream of the presentation can be seen on Saturday, June 20, starting at approximately 11:30am-12pm EDT:

The video can also be viewed at the dedicated website. Ancient Faith Radio should have the audio up in about an hour after the presentation. Take a look at AFR’s dedicated site for audio from the conference.

Update: The above embedded video is a recording.

Tags: AFR, early unity, media, primary sources, SOCHA, svs