Photo from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle obituary for Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine, January 24, 1921

I’ve written more words about Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine than about any other historical figure. Irvine was an Episcopal priest who converted to Orthodoxy in 1905, was ordained by St. Tikhon, and played a major role in American Orthodoxy until his death in January 1921. He was a trusted assistant to St. Raphael Hawaweeny, and he was the chief advocate of the use of English in Orthodox worship. Irvine’s significance to American Orthodox history is difficult to overstate.

I’m now working on a book about Irvine. No specifics yet, but I plan to finish it by the time I graduate from law school in a year. I’ve slowly begun to review my sources on Irvine, and I stumbled onto a really, really strange bit of information.

Irvine died in Brooklyn on January 23, 1921. The first obituary was published the next day, in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. This obituary seems to have been the main source for the obituaries that appeared in numerous other papers in the following days. Here’s the weird part:

The Rev. Dr. Ingram N.W. Irvine, 71 years old, in charge of the English division of the Eastern Holy Orthodox Catholic Church of America, died on Sunday, of heart trouble, at his residence, 677 Sterling pl. The funeral services will be held tomorrow morning at 11 o’clock, at Dr. Irvine’s late home, the Rev. A.L. Charles, rector of St. Mark’s P.E. Church, officiating, and the internment will follow in Greenwood Cemetery. Dr. Irvine is survived by his wife, Mrs. Emmalena Wilson Irvine, and a daughter, Mrs. Annie Chapin.

There’s not really any question that Irvine remained Orthodox to the end of his life. Even this obituary speaks of him as being the head of the “English division” up to his death. And if you know anything about Irvine, you know that he was a stubborn mule who wouldn’t just cut and run from a church at the first hint of discomfort. I’m 99.9% certain that Irvine did not revert to Episcopalianism in the month before he died.

So why was Irvine’s funeral in his home and not in a church — and why did an Episcopal priest officiate? Apart from the almost impossible prospect of a deathbed apostasy, here are the most likely scenarios I can come up with (with help from Aram Sarkisian and Fr. Oliver Herbel):

1. Irvine’s widow and/or daughter arranged for an Episcopalian funeral. This, in my view, is the most likely scenario. We don’t know much of anything about Emmalena, Irvine’s wife. Yes, she helped Irvine with his teaching ministry, but we don’t even know if she formally converted to Orthodoxy. For all we know, she remained Episcopalian even after her husband’s conversion. As for daughter Annie, she was a very dysfunctional person. It’s a story for another day, but suffice it to say that Annie stole from a lot of people, probably was a con artist, and left her children to be primarily raised by their grandparents (the Irvines). I doubt she’d demand an Episcopalian funeral, but her motives are difficult to follow. In any case, Emmalena and/or Annie may have asked Rev. A.L. Charles of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church to officiate.

2. Irvine himself asked for an Episcopalian funeral, but remained Orthodox. This is less crazy than it sounds. According to Aram Sarkisian’s research, Irvine’s bishop, Abp Alexander Nemolovsky, was in Canada when Irvine died. And Irvine had just been through a bad experience with a failed convert parish led by the erratic Archimandrite Patrick Mythen (who, incidentally, was probably in Canada with Abp Alexander when Irvine died). The nearest Orthodox bishop was the Syrian Bishop Aftimios Ofiesh of Brooklyn — a man Irvine hated. Irvine may have been so upset with the nearby Orthodox authorities that he preferred to be buried in a quiet ceremony officiated (perhaps) by an Episcopal priest that Irvine respected.

3. Irvine had an Orthodox funeral and an Episcopalian memorial service. This theory, suggested by Fr. Oliver, assumes that the newspapers just didn’t know about the Orthodox service. Along similar lines, Fr. Oliver points out that the Orthodox and Episcopalians may have officiated at the same funeral service. After all, in that era, it wasn’t unheard of for Orthodox and Episcopalian priests to officiate at the same marriage ceremony. I find this suggestion somewhat less likely than the possibility of dual funerals, simply because the Episcopalian funeral reported in the Eagle took place at Irvine’s home, rather than a church. Which suggests that it was something less than an “official” event. If Orthodox clergy were involved, why not do it at a church?

Anyway, at this point, we don’t know what was going on with Irvine’s funeral. But the three of us — Fr. Oliver, Aram, and I — are trying to track down what happened.

This article was written by Matthew Namee.

Tags: 1921, Aftimios Ofiesh, Alexander Nemolovsky, Episcopalians, Nathaniel Irvine, New York, newspapers, Patrick Mythen, primary sources

Earlier today, I posted this note from the January 1850 issue of the Home and Foreign Record of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America:

Efforts are now making in New York to form a congregation of Greek Christians. We observe an announcement that a priest of that denomination, with an interpreter, is now in New York, and will doubtless take charge of the movement.

I’ve tracked down a bit more on this intriguing story. The December 8, 1849 issue of the North American and United States Gazette (published out of Philadelphia) reported, “Efforts are making in New York to form a congregation of Greek Christians, from the many Greeks, Russians, etc., now in that metropolis. One has lately been formed in London.”

Three days later, the same newspaper published this:

We have already noticed the efforts now making in New York to form a congregation of Greek Christians. We observe an announcement that a priest of that denomination, with an interpreter, is now in New York, and will doubtless take charge of the movement.

Obviously, the 1850 Presbyterian source quoted above got its information from the Gazette; that, or they both got it from some third source.

Finally, on February 14, 1850, the Gazette published this:

There are now in Harrisburg, Pa., the Rev. Flabianos, a priest of the Greek Catholic church, from near Mount Lebanon, and Nasseef Shedady, from Beyroot, in Syria, his private secretary and interpreter, who speaks our language quite fluently. Their object is to secure aid for their brethren in Syria, who are suffering very much, and are in a state of destitution, in consequence of the wars between the Mahometans and Druses, by which the country has been devastated.

Okay. It’s not clear whether this Rev. Flabianos of Mount Lebanon is the same priest who was in New York in December 1850. Also, I’m not certain whether Rev. Flabianos was Orthodox or Maronite. Given the references to both Greeks and Russians in New York, it’s clear that the New York priest — whoever he was — was indeed Orthodox. It seems unlikely, although certainly not impossible, that two Orthodox priests happened to visit the United States in the winter of 1849-50.

Anyway, this story remains very, very cloudy, but we’ve now got multiple sources and at least some specifics. I’ll continue researching this one.

This article was written by Matthew Namee.

UPDATE: I just found an article from later in 1850 which seems to refer to the same visitors from Lebanon. From the Syracuse Daily Standard, 8/8/1850:

For several days past a couple of singularly dressed personages have been parading our streets, attracting considerable attention by their strange appearance. It is generally understood that they were soliciting aid for a convent in Syria and one of them represents himself to be a monk from the Greek convent of Kurkafen on Mount Lebanon, accompanied by his interpreter. The Puritan Recorder declares them to be impostors, and publishes a somewhat lengthy article signed by four missionaries at Beirut, Syria, warning the people of the U. States against their impositions. According to this article they belong to the Greek Catholic Church, a sect of which but little is known in this country, and are not entitled to the countenance of either Protestants or Roman Catholics. It is intimated that their sole object in visiting this country is to see foreign lands without any cost to themselves, and those who make donations cannot be sure that what they bestow will ever reach the object for which it is solicited.

Sounds kind of like the Bulgarian Monk, doesn’t it? But he came along a quarter century later.

Anyway, this article makes me skeptical that this priest from Mount Lebanon is the same person as the priest who was trying to start a multiethnic church in New York in December 1849. At this point, I think we’re dealing with two unrelated clergymen who happened to visit America at the same time.

Tags: Antiochian, Greek, New York, primary sources

Yesterday, I published a brief article on Fr. Stephen Andreades, the first resident priest of the first Orthodox parish in the contiguous United States — Holy Trinity in New Orleans. The entire early history of that parish is something of a mystery. We know who the early priests were — Andreades, Fr. Gregory Yiayias, Fr. Misael Karydis — but we don’t know much about them, and we don’t have a clear understanding of the early life of that parish. The hints that we do have are tantalizing. For instance, Holy Trinity used an organ decades before any other American Orthodox church is known to have added one. But we don’t know the story behind it.

Anyway, all this got me to thinking about some of the toughest cases to crack in my research into American Orthodox history. I’ll run through some of them today.

The Ludwell-Paradise story

This is really Nicholas Chapman’s turf, and it’s just loaded with great mysteries. Among them:

• How exactly did a young Philip Ludwell III decide to convert to Orthodoxy?
• What was his family’s connection to the Orthodox Church prior to his conversion?
• Were there any other Orthodox converts in colonial Virginia, aside from the Ludwell family?
• How long did Ludwell’s descendants remain Orthodox?
• What — if any — connection existed between the Ludwell-Paradise family, the New Smyrna colony, and the Russian mission to Alaska?
• Etc.

St. Peter the Aleut

Did he exist? If so, was he martyred? If not, how and why did the story of his martyrdom develop? We’re making progress on this front, but the critical questions remain unanswered. The frustrating thing is that I know that the Russian government contacted the Spanish government about this at the time, and the Spanish did an investigation, and there are records of this investigation in Madrid. But I can’t get anyone there to get back to me.

The aborted New York church of 1850

The January 1850 issue of the Home and Foreign Record of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America reported this:

Efforts are now making in New York to form a congregation of Greek Christians. We observe an announcement that a priest of that denomination, with an interpreter, is now in New York, and will doubtless take charge of the movement.

But the first documented Orthodox congregation in New York wasn’t organized until Fr. Nicholas Bjerring arrived in 1870 — 20 years later. So what was going on in 1850? I haven’t found any other traces of this story.

The phantom Galveston parish of the 1860s

Lots and lots of secondary sources refer to a very early Orthodox parish in Galveston, Texas. This parish was supposedly formed in the 1860s and used the name “Ss. Constantine and Helen.” But the earliest traces I’ve found of organized Orthodoxy in Galveston are from the mid-1890s, when Fr. Theoclitos Triantafilides founded a parish of the same name, which still exists. In fact, according to Triantafilides’ biography by Milivoy Jovan Milosevich, Triantafilides intentionally revived the old parish name. From the bio:

It is known that with the outset of the American Civil War, a group of multi-ethnic Orthodox Christians were having regular prayer meetings in Galveston, as early as 1861, and they called themselves “the Parish of S.S. Constantine and Helen.” [...] [I]t was Arch. Fr. Theoclitos’ decision to use the name S. S. Constantine and Helen Church, because the congregation that started on its own should be remembered.

But was this “congregation” a full-fledged parish, as some have suggested? Was it simply a group of Orthodox laypeople gathering for reader’s services? Was it somehow connected to the New Orleans parish — perhaps the earliest “mission” community (as we now commonly use the term) in the contiguous United States? We just don’t know.

Another tantalizing piece of information: at exactly the time when this congregation was supposedly formed, the descendants of Philip Ludwell III were living in Galveston. Were they still Orthodox? And were they connected to this “parish”?

The mysterious death of Fr. Paul Kedrolivansky

We’ve covered this one before: Kedrolivansky, the dean of the Russian cathedral in San Francisco, died under suspicious circumstances in 1878. I’m pretty sure that Kedrolivansky was murdered, but I don’t know by whom. Was it his rival priest, Fr. Nicholas Kovrigin? Gustave Niebaum and the powerful Alaska Commercial Company? A “nihilist,” as some later speculated? We don’t know, and this is a mystery that will probably never be solved.

The Kodiak Bell

The bell from the first Orthodox church in the New World — Holy Resurrection in Kodiak, AK — currently hangs in a Roman Catholic church in California. And nobody really knows how it got there.

Fr. Raphael Morgan

For a long time, all we knew for sure was that the first black Orthodox priest in America was alive in 1916, and disappeared from the historical record afterwards. Now, we can say with confidence that he was dead by 1924. But 1916-1924 is a pretty big range, and we still don’t know how and where he died, where he’s buried, and whether he remained Orthodox until the end.

This little run-down is just the tip of the iceberg as far as American Orthodox historical mysteries go. If you have any insight into these conundrums, shoot me an email at mfnamee [at] gmail [dot] com.

This article was written by Matthew Namee.

Tags: Colonial Virginia, Galveston, Greek, John Paradise, Kodiak Bell, New Orleans, New York, parishes, Paul Kedrolivansky, Peter the Aleut, Philip Ludwell III, Raphael Morgan, Russian

If you’ve read the last two issues of our SOCHA newsletter, you know that Holy Protection OCA Cathedral in New York City is in the middle of a fight with the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC). Here’s how I described the situation in the most recent newsletter:

In last month’s newsletter, I mentioned the plight of Holy Protection OCA Cathedral in New York City. The cathedral community is in a fight with the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, which is trying to have the cathedral declared a historic landmark against the wishes of the cathedral itself and its diocesan bishop. If the Commission is successful, the cathedral will be forced to get government approval for any changes to the church exterior. They may also be forced to make “improvements” deemed appropriate by the city. This is an unacceptable infringement on the religious freedom of the cathedral community in the name of “historic preservation.” As I said last month, I’m (obviously) a huge supporter of preserving history, but we don’t need the government telling us how to do it. Here is an update from Fr. Christopher Calin, dean of the cathedral: “The Community Board #3 voted 32 to 9 to endorse the Landmark District which would include our Cathedral and other houses of worship in the EV [East Village]. We are currently working with a Local Faith Communities group to find alternatives to the forced landmarking of our buildings and have a meeting scheduled for 9/12 with the Commissioner of the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) Tierney. There is support to NOT designate religious institutions as individual landmarks, but the well-funded and staffed preservationists are lobbying the LPC and city council members very hard.” We at SOCHA strongly and officially support the cathedral in its efforts to resist the coerced landmarking. In a future article, we’ll let you know how you can help.

As I indicated, Bishop Michael Dahulich has already voiced his disapproval of the forced designation of his own cathedral. In a letter to the chairman of Community Board 3, Bishop Michael wrote,

We are not against preservation or even an historic district designation for the East Village, but the forced individual landmark status of our cathedral and other houses of worship and will place time-consuming and costly demands on parishes to make application and receive permission from the Landmarks Preservation Commission every time the parishioners need to change a window, put in an air conditioner, paint a gate, install a new sign, or replace doors, roofs or steps.

But  it’s actually even worse than that. The cathedral was originally a Protestant church. Fr. Christopher Calin told me that back when the then-Russian Metropolia acquired the building in the 1940s, it drew up plans for a complete redesign of the exterior. The plan called for a much more traditional Orthodox appearance, with cupolas and so forth. The plans have never been enacted, in part because of funding issues, but there’s still hope that the community will eventually raise the money for it. If the landmark designation is imposed, though, the cathedral would have to get government approval of the design before they could move forward. As I understand the process, that would involve a public hearing at which any citizen could come in and argue against the cathedral’s plans. So you could have the City of New York blocking the addition of Orthodox architectural elements (such as domes and icons) because they would alter the historic (Protestant) exterior of the building. In that case, “preserving history” would amount to preserving Protestant architecture and suppressing the Orthodox owners’ right to freely exercise their religion via Orthodox architectural expression.

In Orthodoxy, and indeed in nearly all religions, religious architecture is a religious matter. Domes, icons, crosses, the shape of the building; it’s impossible to separate these elements from our Orthodox faith itself. When I attended St. George Cathedral in Wichita, they added gorgeous mosaics to the exterior of the building. Had the cathedral been a historic landmark, the church would have needed government approval for those icons — and if the government thought that the icons unacceptably changed the original look of the church, then the church would have been prohibited from adding them. This is a blatant violation of religious freedom.

But it goes beyond the simple fact that church architecture is intrinsically religious. Take, for instance, the addition of an air conditioner. Should the church be prevented from adding the air conditioner of its choice, simply because it happens to be in an old building? Should it be forced to make a case to the government, and undergo a public hearing, simply to replace a broken window? This is what Historic Preservation does: it puts decision-making power over churches into the hands of government bureaucrats.

To those who say that one’s choice of air conditioning unit is not really an ecclesiastical matter, I ask this: who gets to decide whether an issue is ecclesiastical or not? Who is qualified to make that decision? As I’ve argued in the past, the question of whether something is ecclesiastical is, itself, ecclesiastical. And we absolutely, constitutionally, cannot have the civil government making those decisions.

Forced preservation has another problem: it violates the authority of the bishop. Ultimately, the proper authority over Holy Protection Cathedral is the OCA Bishop of New York, Michael Dahulich. Above him is the Holy Synod of the OCA. As long as the church architecture doesn’t present a safety problem, how on earth can the civil government justify usurping the bishop’s authority and dictating to a church what design elements are acceptable and what are not?

We’re not talking about the type of government justifications that most people accept — things like fire code, building code, etc. The government’s interest isn’t safety — it’s the nebulous concept of “history.” Why, exactly, is the City of New York the proper judge of what constitutes proper preservation of Orthodox Church history? As an Orthodox Christian historian, I would argue that the work of church history, including its preservation, is an inherently religious exercise. To compartmentalize it, and to divorce it from the life of the church, is contrary to Orthodoxy. But that is what the historic preservationists of New York are attempting to do: they’re attempting to place the final decision over church architectural design into the hands of the civil government. That, my friends, is both unconstitutional and just plain wrong.

And if you think this is just a minor issue for one community, think again. How old is your church? If it’s more than, say, 50 or 70 years old, it’s at risk of the same problem. We all have an interest in preserving history, but we have a greater interest in preserving religious freedom. We have an interest in preserving our freedom to preserve our religious history as we, as Orthodox, see fit. We do not need the government to tell us how to preserve our history, against our will. That does violence to the First Amendment and, indeed, to the actual preservation of history itself.

This article was written by Matthew Namee.

Tags: civil authorities, historic preservation, New York, OCA, parishes

Recently, Holy Cross Orthodox Press published the Atlas of American Orthodox Christian Churches, edited by Alexei D. Krindatch. I contributed several pieces to the Atlas, including the article “Ten Interesting Facts About the History of Orthodox Christianity in the USA.” With Alexei’s permission, we’ll publish excerpts from that article over the next couple of months. To purchase your own copy of the Atlas(for $19.95), click here.

3. The first two American Orthodox convert priests went to Orthodox countries, were ordained very quickly, and ultimately left the Church.

James Chrystal and Nicholas 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, and he lived there the rest of his life.

Both men became Orthodox for ideological reasons. Chrystal was an Episcopalian intellectual obsessed with the history of baptism, and he concluded that Orthodoxy alone had preserved the correct method of baptism. Bjerring was a Roman Catholic intellectual who was scandalized by Rome’s recent declaration of papal infallibility. He, too, came to believe that only the Orthodox Church had preserved the truth.

Both men came to Orthodoxy without having actually attended an Orthodox church, and both traveled to Orthodox countries to seek ordination. Chrystal went to Greece and impressed church leaders with his vast theological knowledge. Bjerring went to Russia and impressed church leaders with his zeal. Both were immediately received into the Church, quickly ordained priests, and sent back to America — specifically, to New York City.

Chrystal was the first to leave. As soon as he returned to America, he repudiated the Orthodoxy, declaring that he could not accept the veneration of icons. He started his own sect, and spent the rest of his life railing against “creature worship.” Bjerring lasted a good bit longer. He was priest of the New York chapel for 13 years, but he didn’t have sufficient training for the priesthood and made errors that any seminary student learns to avoid. Even worse, he didn’t speak Russian or Greek (the primary languages of his small congregation), and he reportedly spoke English with a thick Danish accent. He actively discouraged conversions, viewing himself not as a missionary but as a religious ambassador to America, promoting goodwill between Orthodoxy and Protestantism (especially the Episcopal Church).

Bjerring’s chapel community never grew; in fact, it stagnated. By 1883, the Russian authorities had seen enough, and they closed the chapel. Bjerring was offered a teaching position in Russia, but he wasn’t interested; instead, disgruntled, Bjerring abandoned Orthodoxy and became a Presbyterian minister. By the end of his life, he came full circle, rejoining the Roman Catholic Church as a layman.

This article was written by Matthew Namee.

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

Recently, Holy Cross Orthodox Press published the Atlas of American Orthodox Christian Churches, edited by Alexei D. Krindatch. I contributed several pieces to the Atlas, including the article “Ten Interesting Facts About the History of Orthodox Christianity in the USA.” With Alexei’s permission, we’ll publish excerpts from that article over the next couple of months. To purchase your own copy of the Atlas(for $19.95), click here.

2. The first Orthodox liturgies in New York and New Orleans were celebrated by a controversial Ukrainian who claimed to be hunted by Tsarist agents.

Born in what is now Ukraine in 1832, Agapius Honcharenko attended the Kiev Theological Academy and then became a monk at the renowned Kiev Caves Lavra. He was ordained a deacon at 24, and the following year, he was assigned to the Russian Embassy church in Athens, Greece. From the beginning, there was trouble. Honcharenko was insubordinate, and at one point a young boy accused him of making improper advances. Honcharenko also claimed to have secretly wrote articles in a famous socialist journal. At some point, he may have been ordained to the priesthood by a Greek bishop, although the circumstances surrounding this ordination aren’t clear and our only source for this information is Honcharenko’s own later testimony. In late 1864, Honcharenko set sail for America, where he would be subject to much less oversight. He arrived in New York, and in 1865, he celebrated the first Orthodox liturgy in the city’s history. A choir of Episcopalians sung Slavonic words which had been transliterated into English.

Soon, Honcharenko received word that there were Orthodox people in New Orleans. Arriving in the city just two days after the Civil War ended, Honcharenko celebrated the first Orthodox services in the American South, borrowing an Episcopal church that had, during the recent Union occupation, been used as a stable for horses. Honcharenko spent Holy Week and Pascha in New Orleans before returning to New York. But in his short time away from the city, things had changed. As news of his landmark New York liturgy spread around the world, reports of his more controversial activities began to surface. The Orthodox of New York informed the renegade priest that they no longer had any use for him.

Thus began Honcharenko’s life outside of the Orthodox Church. He traveled across the country – marrying an woman in Philadelphia along the way – and he eventually reached San Francisco. There, in 1867, Honcharenko attempted to set up a “Russo-Greek Methodist Episcopal Church.” San Francisco already had a lot of Orthodox residents, who, motivated by the embarrassing activities of Honcharenko, decided to unite and form an Orthodox parish. Led by the local Russian consul, they asked the Russian Bishop of Alaska to send them a priest. This marked the first-ever presence of a Russian parish in an American state.

Honcharenko purchased land just outside of Oakland, and over the coming decades, reporters would occasionally find their way to the Honcharenko ranch. They wrote articles about the “Apostle of Liberty,” and Honcharenko began to make increasingly outlandish claims – that he had been the Russian ambassador to Greece; that he was Leo Tolstoy’s confessor; that he was the first to discover gold in Alaska;  and that he was hunted by Tsarist assassins. Honcharenko died on his ranch in 1916, at the age of 83.

This article was written by Matthew Namee.

Tags: 1865, Agapius Honcharenko, New Orleans, New York

From the New York Times, November 25, 1952, page 31:

U.S. COURT VOIDS ACT ON RUSSIAN CHURCH

State Law to End Communist Sway in Orthodox Cathedral Here Is Upset by Ruling

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM CITED

8-to-1 Decision Holds Action Violated 14th Amendment — Jackson Lone Dissenter

BY CLAYTON KNOWLES

WASHINGTON, Nov. 24 — The Supreme Court of the United States ruled today that a New York law, seeking to eliminate Communist influence in Russian Orthodox churches chartered in the state, fell into the realm of religious control barred by the Constitution of the United States.

Under the state law, the Rev. Benjamin Fedchenkoff, Archbishop of the church in North America by appointment of the Patriarch of Moscow, was removed from his pulpit at St. Nicholas Cathedral, 15 East Ninety-seventh Street, New York.

The Court of Appeals, highest tribunal of the state, upheld the validity of the state law under which the ouster was undertaken but the Supreme Court, reversing this finding in an eight-to-one decision, held that such a law violates the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteeing freedom of religion in this country.

The majority opinion, written by Associate Justice Stanley F. Reed, said a state Legislature “cannot validate action which the Constitution prohibits.”

Argument by Jackson

Registering his lone dissent, Associate Justice Robert H. Jackson held that the argument that the state law violated the Fourteenth Amendment safeguards of religious freedom was “so insubstantial that I would dismiss the appeal.”

“To me, whatever the canon law is found to be and whoever is the rightful head of the Moscow Patriarchate,” he wrote, “I do not think that New York law must yield to the authority of a foreign and unfriendly state masquerading as a spiritual institution.”

A bitter factional fight has raged at St. Nicholas Cathedral since 1917, when the Russian revolution brought changes in the central church. A faction, headed by the late Archbishop John S. Kedrovsky, got control of the cathedral in 1926 and kept it up to 1945, when a legal battle was begun over it.

Joined with Archbishop Fedchenkoff as an appellant in the present case has been the Rev. John Kedroff, a son of the late Archbishop. The basic fight has been between those supporting the mother church at Moscow and adherents of the Russian Church in America, recognized under New York law as having the authority over Russian Orthodox churches within the state. This latter group was set up in 1924.

It was on the basis of this law that officials of the cathedral sued to remove Archbishop Fedchenkoff, whose Moscow-bestowed title was Archbishop of the Archdiocese of North America and the Aleutian Islands.

The prevailing court opinion held that the New York law undertook to transfer control of the New York church from the central governing hierarchy and thereby “violates the Fourteenth Amendment by prohibiting in this country the free exercise of religion.”

Majority Opinion Stated

The Reed opinion took cognizance of the fact that the Court of Appeals felt that, since the Russian Government exercised control over the central church authorities, the state legislature had been reasonably justified “in enacting a law to free the American group from infiltration of such atheistic or subversive influences.”

“This legislation, in view of the Court of Appeals,” wrote Justice Reed, “gave the use of the church to the Russian church in America on the theory that this carry out the purposes of the religious trust. Thus, dangers of political use of church pulpits would be minimized.

“Legislative power to punish subversive action cannot be doubted. If such action should be actually attempted by a cleric neither his robe nor his pulpit would be a defense. But in this case, no probation of law arises. There is no action by any ecclesiastic. Here there is a transfer by statute of control over churches. This violates our rule of separation between church and state.”

In a concurring opinion, Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter stated that St. Nicholas Cathedral was “not just a piece of real estate . . . no more than is St. Patrick’s Cathedral or the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.” The cathedral, he maintained, was “an archiepiscopal see of one of the great religious organizations” in stating that the essence of the controversy was “the power to exercise religious authority.”

Finding Called “Sound”

Philip Adler, attorney for St. Nicholas Cathedral [actually, the attorney for the Moscow group], said last night that the position of the Supreme Court was “sound,” regardless of one’s attitude toward Soviet Russia. He emphasized that while he was uncompromisingly opposed to communism, “the church must be preserved.”

Ralph Montgomery Arkush, the opposing counsel [for the Metropolia group], said that he preferred not to comment until he had an opportunity to study the court’s opinion. He added, however, that there “still may be a remedy at common law.”

Editor’s note: That last line by Arkush, the Metropolia’s attorney, is important: that there “still may be a remedy at common law.” The Supreme Court struck down an act of the New York legislature, but the Metropolia didn’t give up. They went back to court, this time arguing that even if the legislature couldn’t decide the property dispute in the Metropolia’s favor, the New York courts could.

New York’s highest court agreed. It found, as a factual matter, that the Patriarch of Moscow was dominated by the secular authority of the USSR, and because of this, his appointed Archbishop could not, under New York common law, take possession of the Cathedral. It was a blatantly anti-Communist rationale, and the case made it all the way back to the Supreme Court in 1960, under the title Kreshik v. Saint Nicholas Cathedral. In an opinion far shorter than the 1952 case, the Supreme Court struck down the New York ruling, reasoning that it doesn’t matter whether the state violates religious freedom through the legislature or the judiciary — either way, you’ve got the state violating religious freedom, and that’s unconstitutional. “[O]ur ruling in Kedroff is controlling here,” reads the opinion, and once again Moscow won.

St. Nicholas Cathedral remains the property of the Moscow Patriarchate to this day. Any future dispute over the ownership of the Cathedral was put to rest by Moscow’s 1970 Tomos of Autocephaly, granted to the OCA, which stipulated that the Cathedral (among other properties) is “excluded from autocephaly on the territory of North America.” Today, the Cathedral is the official representation church of the Moscow Patriarchate in America.

Tags: 1952, 1960, civil authorities, Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, New York, newspapers, OCA, primary sources, Russian, Russian Metropolia, Supreme Court

St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Cathedral, New York

To read my previous articles on the 1952 Supreme Court case Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, click here. For the full text of the Supreme Court opinions, click here.

In my last four articles, I summarized the majority, concurring, and dissenting opinions in Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral. Here, I will offer my initial impressions of the case. Please keep in mind that these are initial — I may well change my position down the road. I’m quite open-minded about the whole thing, and I regard both sides of the case as having very legitimate arguments.

The crucial sequence of facts in this case, as I see it, is as follows:

• The Russian Orthodox Church (“Moscow,” for our purposes) had undisputed authority over the North American Archdiocese (the future Metropolia) up to at least 1917.
• In 1920, Patriarch Tikhon issued a decision which granted to the Metropolia “a large measure of autonomy, when the Russian ruling authority was unable to function, subject to ‘confirmation later to the Central Church Authority when it is reestablished.’” (Quoting from Justice Reed’s majority opinion, which in turn quoted from St. Tikhon’s decision.)
• In turn, at the 1924 Detroit Sobor, the Metropolia set itself up as a temporarily autonomous church.
• In 1945, Metropolia delagates went to Moscow for the election of Patriarch Alexy I. They were delayed and were thus unable to participate in the All-Russian Sobor as they had intended, but they later met with the Patriarch and Holy Synod and presented a request for autonomy.
• Rather than granting autonomy, the Patriarch and Holy Synod instead offered the Metropolia reunion with Moscow, subject to several stipulations (including a promise that the Metropolia abstain “from political activities against the U.S.S.R.”
• At the 1946 All-American Sobor in Cleveland, the Metropolia rejected Moscow’s offer.
• Even so, in 1952, the Metropolia still recognized Patriarch Alexy I as the legitimate Patriarch of Moscow.

It is because of this sequence of events that Justice Reed could assert, “The record before us [...] shows administrative control of the North American Diocese by the Supreme Church Authority of the Russian Orthodox Church, including the appointment of the ruling hierarch in North America from the foundation of the diocese until the Russian Revolution. We find nothing that indicates a relinquishment of this power by the Russian Orthodox Church.”

Now, imagine if things had been a little different. Imagine, for instance, that the Metropolia had gone to Russia in 1945 not to participate in the All-Russian Sobor as members of the Russian Orthodox Church, but only to attend as observers. Imagine if the Metropolia had not made a formal request for autonomy from Moscow, but rather had entered into negotiations with the aim of reuniting with autonomy (basically what ROCOR did a few years ago).

The point here is that the Metropolia did not have to officially recognize Patriarch Alexy and the Russian Synod as a legitimate “Central Church Authority.” The Metropolia could have recognized the Russian Church as truly Orthodox, but at the same time refused recognition of the purported Central Church Authority based on the argument that that Authority operated under constant duress from Stalin’s Soviet government.

Let me try this another way. St. Tikhon’s grant of temporary self-administration was subject to “confirmation” by the Central Church Authority “when it is reestablished.” Had the Metropolia withheld recognition of the Moscow authorities as a true Central Church Authority, they could have argued that St. Tikhon’s stipulation was not yet operative — that a real Central Church Authority hadn’t been established. But as soon as the Metropolia recognized the Moscow Central Church Authority, they activiated the “confirmation” element of St. Tikhon’s decision.

From a legal standpoint, in my opinion, the Metropolia’s strongest argument against Moscow’s claim of authority would have been that Moscow had no legitimate Central Church Authority, and thus St. Tikhon’s grant of self-administration was still in force. This would have given the Supreme Court the necessary justification for rejecting Moscow’s argument of hierarchical superiority — the argument that ultimately won the case, since the Court defers to the judgment of the higher authorities in a hierarchical church.

But given the actual circumstances — given that the Metropolia did recognize Moscow as a legitimate Central Church Authority — the Court’s hands were tied. The Metropolia’s recognition meant that the Metropolia was subordinate to Moscow, and even New York property law cannot trump Russian Church law when both parties are part of the Russian Church.

*****************************************

Given the Metropolia’s recognition of Moscow as a Central Church Authority, the only plausible argument I think could have been made for the Metropolia was Justice Jackson’s argument that this isn’t really a religious dispute at all — it’s a property dispute. From my article on Jackson’s dissent:

According to Justice Jackson, just because property is “dedicated to a religious use” does not make the property dispute into a deprivation of religious liberty. “I assume no one would pretend that the State cannot decide a claim of trespass, larceny, conversion, bailment or contract, where the property involved is that of a religious corporation or is put to religious use, without invading the principle of religious liberty.”

It’s a really compelling argument. The problem is this: that while the Metropolia had legal title to the Cathedral, Moscow could point to a church law which gave possession of the Cathedral to the Moscow-appointed Archbishop. Justice Jackson says that church law doesn’t trump New York law… but is that right? If the property in question was owned by a part of the Russian Orthodox Church, why wouldn’t Russian Church law apply? We’re back to the problem of the Metropolia’s recognition of the Moscow Central Church Authority. By extending that recognition, the Metropolia made itself subject to Moscow’s whims. The Metropolia couldn’t just disagree with Moscow and take refuge in New York law, once it activated the “confirmation” element of St. Tikhon’s self-administration grant.

Ultimately, had the Metropolia followed ROCOR’s lead and totally rejected Moscow’s legitimacy as a Central Church Authority, it probably would have retained St. Nicholas Cathedral. I am personally sympathetic to the Metropolia in this case, but, at this point in my analysis, I think that the Court came to the right legal decision.

This article was written by Matthew Namee.

Tags: 1952, civil authorities, Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, New York, Russian, Russian Metropolia, Supreme Court, Tikhon Belavin

Justice Robert Jackson wrote the dissenting opinion in Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral

Lately, I’ve been analyzing the Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, a landmark 1952 Supreme Court case. For all the articles I’ve written on the case, click here. In this article, I am focusing on Justice Jackson’s dissenting opinion. (A brief note: in the past articles, I erroneously referred to Justice Jackson as Justice Black. I have no idea why I confused the two men. Justice Black actually agreed with the majority. Sorry for the mistake.)

Justice Jackson lets us know how he feels from the very beginning of his opinion: “New York courts have decided an ordinary ejectment action involving possession of New York real estate in favor of the plaintiff, a corporation organized under the Religious Corporations Law of New York under the name ‘Saint Nicholas Cathedral of the Russian Orthodox Church in North America.’ Admittedly, it holds, and since 1925 has held, legal title to the Cathedral property. The New York Court of Appeals decided that it also has the legal right to its possession and control.”

This is something we haven’t heard before — that the Metropolia party (i.e., “Saint Nicholas Cathedral”) actually held legal title to the property. All the New York courts tried to do, in Justice Jackson’s view, is uphold that legal title. Justice Jackson continues:

The appellant [Archbishop] Benjamin’s defense against this owner’s demand for possession and the basis of his claimed right to enjoy possession of property he admittedly does not own is set forth in his answer to the ejectment suit in these words: ‘Said premises pursuant to the above rules of the Russian Orthodox Church are held in trust for the benefit of the accredited Archbishop of said Archdiocese, to be possessed, occupied and used by said Archbishop as his residence, as a place for holding religious services, and other purposes related to his office and as the seat and headquarters for the administration, by him, of the affairs of the Archdiocese both temporal and spiritual.’ And, says the appellant Benjamin, he is that Archbishop.

Again, this is information that wasn’t clear from the majority and concurring opinions we’ve already seen. On the one hand, the Metropolia group has legal title to the property. On the other hand, the Moscow group points to a claim that, by way of Russian Church rules, the property is held in trust for the Archbishop.

Justice Jackson goes on to offer his own perspective on the history leading up to the case:

I greatly oversimplify the history of this controversy to indicate its nature rather than to prove its merits. This Cathedral was incorporated and built in the era of the Czar, under the regime of a state-ridden church in a church-ridden state. The Bolshevik Revolution may have freed the state from the grip of the church, but it did not free the church from the grip of the state. It only brought to the top a new master for a captive and submissive ecclesiastical establishment. By 1945, the Moscow patriarchy had been reformed and manned under the Soviet regime and it sought to re-establish in other countries its prerevolutionary control of church property and its sway over the minds of the religious. As the Court’s opinion points out, it demanded of the Russian Church in America, among other things, that it abstain “from political activities against the U.S.S.R.” The American Cathedral group, along with others, refused submission to the representative of the Moscow Patriarch, whom it regarded as an arm of the Soviet Government. Thus, we have an ostensible religious schism with decided political overtones.

Justice Jackson argues that this case concerns “the ownership and possession of real estate” in New York, and “the vexing technical questions pertaining to the creation, interpretation, termination, and enforcement of uses and trusts.” These are matters for the states, not the United States Supreme Court. Justice Jackson writes, “This controversy, I believe, is [...] not within the proper province of this Court.”

Justice Jackson continues, “As I read the prevailing opinions, the Court assumes that some transfer of control has been accomplished by legislation which results in a denial of due process. This, of course, would raise a question of deprivation of property, not of liberty, while only the latter issue is raised by the parties.” In other words, everyone here is talking about freedom of religion and the First Amendment, but really, this is about property, plain and simple. The fact that the parties involved are religious groups is not really relevant.

In point of fact, says Justice Jackson, no religious freedom has been violated.

It is important to observe what New York has not done in this case. It has not held that Benjamin may not act as Archbishop or be revered as such by all who will follow him. It has not held that he may not have a Cathedral. Indeed, I think New York would agree that no one is more in need of spiritual guidance than the Soviet faction. It has only held that this cleric may not have a particular Cathedral which, under New York law, belongs to others. It has not interfered with his or anyone’s exercise of his religion. New York has not outlawed the Soviet-controlled sect nor forbidden it to exercise its authority or teach its dogma in any place whatsoever except on this piece of property owend and rightfully possessed by the Cathedral Corporation.

The above paragraph stands in direct opposition to Justice Frankfurter’s opinion (discussed in my previous article), which equated possession of the Cathedral with spiritual authority itself. In Justice Frankfurter’s view, the State of New York all but deposed Benjamin as Archbishop of North America when it awarded St. Nicholas Cathedral to the Metropolia. In Justice Jackson’s view, all New York did was uphold the Metropolia’s legal ownership of the Cathedral, while doing nothing to interfere with Benjamin’s position as Archbishop.

According to Justice Jackson, just because property is “dedicated to a religious use” does not make the property dispute into a deprivation of religious liberty. “I assume no one would pretend that the State cannot decide a claim of trespass, larceny, conversion, bailment or contract, where the property involved is that of a religious corporation or is put to religious use, without invading the principle of religious liberty.”

And furthermore, aren’t both sides in this controversy religious groups? “But if both claimants are religious corporations or personalities, can not the State decide the issues that arise over ownership and possession without invading the religious freedom of one or the other of the parties?”

Referring to Archbishop Benjamin as “the Soviet Ecclesiast,” Justice Jackson writes that the Archbishop’s claim, “denial of which is said to be constitutional error,” is that the Cathedral property is “impressed with a trust by virtue of the rules of the Russian Orthodox Church” — not by virtue of New York law. “To me, whatever the canon law is found to be and whoever is the rightful head of the Moscow patriarchate, I do not think New York law must yield to the authority of a foreign and unfriendly state masquerading as a spiritual institution.”

This, then, is the dichotomy: New York property law and a New York title, versus Russian Church law and a purported trust under that law. And in Justice Jackson’s mind, when New York property law conflicts with Russian Church property law, New York law wins.

I will offer my own intitial, tentative impressions in the next article.

This article was written by Matthew Namee.

Tags: 1952, Benjamin Fedchenkov, civil authorities, Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, New York, Russian, Russian Metropolia, Supreme Court

Justice Felix Frankfurter authored a concurring opinion in Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral.

In my previous two articles (available here), I discussed the majority opinion in the 1952 Supreme Court case Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral. Today, I’ll discuss the concurring opinion of Justice Frankfurter. And just to be clear — “concurring opinion” means that Justice Frankfurter agreed with the ultimate outcome of the case (a victory for the Moscow Patriarchal jurisdiction), but differed to some extent in his reasoning.

The majority opinion, authored by Justice Reed, relied on the idea that the Russian Orthodox Church had undisputed jurisdiction over its North American Archdiocese until 1917, never relinquished that jurisdiction after 1917, and therefore still had jurisdiction in 1952. Thus the whole issue was an internal church dispute, and Moscow, as the higher church authority, had priority over the Metropolia.

Justice Frankfurter, concurring, begins by simply stating the problem. “[T]his proceeding,” he writes, “rests on a claim which cannot be determined without intervention by the State in a religious conflict. [...] St. Nicholas Cathedral is an archiepiscopal see of one of the great religious organizations. What is at stake here is the power to exercise religious authority. That is the essence of this controversy.” According to Justice Frankfurter, St. Nicholas Cathedral is not merely a piece of property — it is “the outward symbol of a religious faith.” Control of the Cathedral is a physical manifestation of religious authority; thus, determining who owns the Cathedral is tantamount to determining who has religious authority.

I find this logic questionable. Nobody was going to shift their loyalties from Metropolitan Leonty to Archbishop Benjamin, or vice versa, on the basis of who physically possessed the Cathedral building. I’m no theologian, but my understanding is that Justice Frankfurter’s logic has things somewhat backwards: it is the bishop who makes the cathedral, not the cathedral the bishop. After all, “cathedral” simply refers to the “cathedra” — the bishop’s throne, or seat. Metropolitan Leonty could — and did — make a different building his cathedral, and to this day, Holy Protection (not St. Nicholas) is the OCA cathedral for New York.

Citing Watson v. Jones (discussed in my previous post), Justice Frankfurter points out that, even in property disputes where secular courts must get involved, “the authority of courts is in strict subordination to the ecclesiastical law of a particular church prior to a schism.” So the courts can get involved to some limited degree, sometimes. On the other hand, “Legislatures have no such obligation to adjudicate and no power.” It would be one thing, says Justice Frankfurter, for the New York courts to deal with a dispute over ownership of St. Nicholas Cathedral. But that isn’t what happened; instead, the New York state legislature stepped in and passed a law, transferring property rights from Moscow to the Metropolia.

If this principle is allowed to stand, reasons Justice Frankfurter, it “would give each State the right to assess the circumstances, in the foreign political entanglements of its religious bodies that make for danger to the State,” and the power to “divest such bodies of spiritual authority and of the temporal property which symbolizes it.” Again, Justice Frankfurter returns to this notion that the cathedral makes the bishop — a notion which I consider theologically and ecclesiologically (not to mention legally) suspect.

However, Justice Frankfurter’s broader point is spot on. He writes, “Memory is short but it cannot be forgotten that in the State of New York there was a strong feeling against the Tsarist regime at a time when the Russian Church was governed by a Procurator of the Tsar. And when Mussolini executed the Lateran Agreement, argument was not wanting by those friendly to her claims that the Church of Rome was subjecting herself to political authority.” It is entirely possible that foreign governments could influence American citizens via religious institutions such as the Russian Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church. But the state cannot be driven by these fears. Justice Frankfurter continues, “Such fear readily leads to persecution of religious beliefs deemed dangerous to ruling political authority. [...] The long, unedifying history of the contest between the secular state and the church is replete with instances of attempts by civil government to exert pressure upon religious authorities.” Thus, while states have a legitimate interest in combating Soviet ideology, and while the Soviets may exert an influence over the Russian Orthodox Church, “under our Constitution it is not open to the governments of this Union to reinforce the loyalty of their citizens by deciding who is the true exponent of their religion.”

But according to the Metropolia, “the present Moscow Patriarchate is not the true superior church of the American communicants. The vicissitudes of war and revolution which have beset the Moscow Patriarchate since 1917 are said to have resulted in a discontinuity which divests the present Patriarch of his authority over the American church.” Problematically, though, the Metropolia does recognize Patriarch Alexy as the “legitimately chosen holder of his office.” So do Alexy’s “co-equals,” the other Orthodox patriarchs (and even, adds Justice Frankfurter, “the present Archbishop of York”). The New York legislature can’t just step in and declare Alexy illegitimate.

Justice Frankfurter concludes that the New York legislature, in enacting a law in favor of the Metropolia over Moscow, “enter[ed] the domain of religious control barred to the States” by the Constitution.

This concurring opinion isn’t long, but it incorporates several arguments. In summary (as best I can figure):

1. The Cathedral is the symbol of spiritual authority, so to decide its owner is essentially to decide a religious question reserved for the church.
2. The New York state legislature doesn’t have the power to adjudicate church property disputes; that is a matter for the courts, and even those courts cannot override church law.
3. It’s extremely dangerous to let governments restrict churches based on fears of foreign political influence.
4. Everybody agrees that Patriarch Alexy is the legitimate head of the Russian Church, and as such, he has authority over the Russian Church in America.

Next time, we’ll unpack Justice Jackson’s very different dissenting opinion.

This article was written by Matthew Namee.

Tags: 1952, civil authorities, Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, New York, Russian, Russian Metropolia, Supreme Court

Supreme Court Justice Stanley Reed, author of the majority opinion in Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral

Yesterday, I discussed Justice Reed’s majority opinion in Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, a landmark 1952 Supreme Court case pitting the Moscow Patriarchate’s North American jurisdiction against the Metropolia (today’s OCA). The dispute was about which group — Moscow or the Metropolia — was the rightful owner of St. Nicholas Cathedral in New York. The majority of the Court ruled in favor of Moscow.

Before moving on to the concurring and dissenting opinions, I wanted to touch on an aspect of Justice Reed’s opinion that I neglected yesterday. Justice Reed devoted a great deal of attention to Watson v. Jones, an 1871 case which served (and still serves) as important precedent in church-state relations. Here are the basics of Watson:

In 1865, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of the United States denounced slavery and required its members to do the same. In Louisville, Kentucky, the Presbyterians were divided on whether to comply, and the Walnut Street Church ended up in the hands of proslavery members. The parish then joined the Presbyterian Church of the Confederate States. The US General Assembly condemned the proslavery party and, for all intents and purposes, excommunicated them from the Church.

In 1866, some antislavery members of the Walnut Street Church sued for control of parish property. According to Justice Reed’s summary, “The suit was to decide [...] which one of the two bodies should be recognized as entitled to the use of the Walnut Street Presbyterian Church.” The Court in Watson held that, “whenever questions of discipline, or of faith, or ecclesiastical rule, custom, or law have been decided by the highest of these church authorities to which the matter has been carried, the legal tribunals must accept such decisions as binding on them.” In this case, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church had already recognized the antislavery group as the legitimate owners of Walnut Street Church. The Supreme Court refused to override the decision.

The Court reasoned, in Watson, that if you unite yourself to a hierarchical church, you do so “with an implied consent” to the government of that church, “and are bound to submit to it.” You cannot, said the Court, appeal to secular courts when you don’t agree with a decision of your church. If you could, this “would lead to the total subversion of such religious bodies.”

Justice Reed found obvious parallels between Watson and the present case, Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral. According to Justice Reed, “This controversy concerning the right to use St. Nicholas Cathedral is strictly a matter of ecclesiastical government, the power of the Supreme Church Authority of the Russian Orthodox Church to appoint a ruling hierarch of the archdiocese of North America. No one disputes that such power did lie in that Authority prior to the Russian Revolution.”

In the end, this all seems to boil down to historical interpretation. As I discussed yesterday, the majority’s logic goes like this:

1. The Russian Orthodox Church had undisputed authority over the North American Archdiocese prior to 1917.
2. The Russian Orthodox Church never relinquished that authority.
3. Therefore, the Russian Orthodox Church still has that authority, and its decisions are binding upon the North American Archdiocese (that is, the Metropolia).

Now, it’s true that Patriarch St. Tikhon granted some measure of temporary self-government to the North American Archdiocese. But this grant was not at all clear. Justice Reed doesn’t get into it, but St. Tikhon issued multiple and contradictory decisions during that tumultuous period. And even the strongest, most pro-Metropolia of those decisions was subject to “confirmation later to the Central Church Authority when it is reestablished.” Whatever you think of the Central Church Authority between 1917 and 1945, certainly by 1945 the Metropolia recognized that a legitimate Central Church Authority existed in Moscow. And that authority refused to confirm St. Tikhon’s grant of temporary autonomy for America. Legally speaking, the Metropolia’s position was weak.

As promised, next time, I’ll focus on Justice Frankfurter’s concurring opinion.

This article was written by Matthew Namee.

Tags: 1952, civil authorities, Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, New York, Russian, Russian Metropolia, Supreme Court

It’s been forever since I wrote an article here at OH.org. I’ve been incredibly busy, with my family, my local parish, and law school classes taking up all of my time. I’m in summer classes, as well, so there won’t be much reprieve over the next couple of months. Fortunately, I’ve found a way to mix law school and American Orthodox history. This summer, I am writing, for credit, a paper on Orthodoxy in the American courts. As best I can tell, there has been very little published on the subject, although awhile back one reader (a recent law school graduate) sent me a paper he had written on the very subject. I hope to publish my own paper at some point.

Right now, I’m up to my neck in case law, reading judges’ opinions from throughout the 20th century. There are two major US Supreme Court cases dealing with Orthodoxy — Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral (1952) and Serbian Eastern Orthodox Diocese v. Milivojevich (1976). Today, I’m going to share some thoughts on Kedroff. For the full text of the Supreme Court opinions, click here.

Kedroff deals with a dispute between the Russian Metropolia (today’s OCA) on the one hand, and the Moscow Patriarchate’s North American Archdiocese on the other. At issue is which group — the Metropolia or Moscow — should have possession of St. Nicholas Cathedral in New York City.

The basic history is as follows. Until 1917, all Russian Orthodox churches in America were under the authority of the Orthodox Church of Russia, which was governed by a Holy Synod. In 1917… well, a lot happened in 1917. First there was the February Revolution, which dethroned the Tsar. An All-Russian Sobor was then held, and St. Tikhon (formerly of America) was elected Patriarch of Moscow — the first such election since Peter the Great abolished the office of Patriarch. Just as this happened, the Bolsheviks swept into power and began to persecute the Orthodox Church.

On November 20, 1920, Patriarch Tikhon issued a document granting to the North American Archdiocese what Justice Reed (writing for the majority) refers to as “a large measure of autonomy, when the Russian ruling authority was unable to function, subject to ‘confirmation later to the Central Church Authority when it is reestablished.’” In 1924, the North American Archdiocese held an All-American Sobor in Detroit. American Orthodox historians typically view the 1924 Detroit Sobor to be the moment when the North American Archdiocese was transformed into the autonomous Russian Metropolia. Justice Reed writes, “This was followed by [...] a spate of litigation concerning control of the various churches and occupancy of ecclesiastical positions [...]”

Patriarch Tikhon died in 1925. In 1933, Metropolitan Sergius, locum tenens of the patriarchal throne, appointed Archbishop Benjamin Fedchenkov to head a new Russian Archdiocese in North America. A decade later, Sergius was elected Patriarch, but he died soon thereafter. Justice Reed: “After Sergius’ death a new patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Alexi, was chosen Patriarch in 1945 at Moscow at a sobor recognized by all parties to this litigation as a true sobor held in accordance with church canons.” I hadn’t realized this — that the Metropolia recognized the election of Patriarch Alexy I as canonical.

Representatives from the American Metropolia were supposed to participate in that 1945 Sobor that elected Alexy, but they were prevented. I don’t know what the story is there (Justice Reed doesn’t know, and he’s who I’m relying on right now), but I seem to recall reading something about that in an OCA history book somewhere… I’ll have to look. Anyway, when the Metropolia reps finally made it to Moscow, they presented to the Patriarch and Holy Synod a report on the Metropolia and a request for formal autonomy. A few days later (February 14 or 16, 1945), Moscow responded with an ukase, stipulating that, for Moscow and the Metropolia to reunite, the Metropolia must:

1. Promptly hold an All-American Sobor,
2. Express the decision of the American dioceses to reunite with Moscow,
3. Declare the agreement of the Metropolia to abstain “from political activities against the USSR,” and
4. Elect a Metropolitan subject to confirmation by Moscow.

The ukase stopped short of promising autonomy, instead suggesting only that the American Metropolitan “may be given some extended powers.”

At an All-American Sobor in Cleveland in 1946, the Metropolia rejected Moscow’s offer. Thus began the events which led to this 1952 Supreme Court case. The Metropolia was headquartered in New York, and in New York state, religious corporations are incorporated by acts of the state legislature. In fact, at about this time, the other major American Orthodox jurisdictions (e.g. the Greeks and Antiochians) incorporated in New York. So too was the Metropolia incorporated by a legislative act. Justice Reed explains the act thusly:

The purpose of the article was to bring all the New York churches, formerly subject to the administrative jurisdiction of the Most Sacred Governing Synod in Moscow or the Patriarch of Moscow, into an administratively autonomous metropolitan district. That district was North American in area, created pursuant to resolutions adopted at a sobor held in Detroit in 1924. This declared autonomy was made effective by a further legislative requirement that all the churches formerly subject to the Moscow synod and patriarchate should for the future be governed by the ecclesiastical body and hierarchy of the American metropolitan district.

The majority of the Supreme Court found this act to be unconstitutional. Justice Reed: “We conclude that Article 5-C undertook by its terms to transfer the control of the New York churches of the Russian Orthodox religion from the central governing hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Patriarch of Moscow and the Holy Synod, to the governing authorities of the Russian Church in America, a church organization limited to the diocese of North America and the Aleutian Islands. [...] Such a law violates the Fourteenth Amendment. It prohibits in this country the free exercise of religion.” In other words, the New York legislature can’t do that! They can’t modify or cut off Moscow’s jurisdiction — and, as Justice Reed explains, “Nothing indicates that [Moscow] relinquished that authority [over Russian Church in America] or recognized the autonomy of the American church.”

Furthermore, the legislative act requires the New York churches to conform to Orthodox doctrine, etc. This sounds fine and good, but, says Justice Reed, “their conformity is by legislative fiat and subject to legislative will. Should the state assert power to change the statute requiring conformity to ancient faith and doctrine to one establishing a different doctrine, the invalidity would be unmistakable.”

Of course, all this legislation was taking place at a tension-filled time in American history. This was the McCarthy Era, the Red Scare, when even a hint of Communist sympathies could ruin your life. Justice Reed agrees with the need to curtail Communist sentiments, saying, “Legislative power to punish subversive action cannot be doubted. If such action should actually be attempted by a cleric, neither his robe nor his pulpit would be a defense. But in this case no problem of punishment for violation of the law arises. There is no charge of subversive or hostile action by any ecclesiastic. Here there is a transfer by statute of control over churches. This violates our rule of separation between church and state.”

The rationale of the majority is pretty straightforward: this is an internal church dispute in which the government may not interfere. In the view of the majority, Moscow never surrendered its authority in America. Of Article 5-C, Justice Reed concludes, “By fiat it displaces one church administrator with another. It passes the control of matters strictly ecclesiastical from one church authority to another. It thus intrudes for the benefit of one segment of a church the power of the state into a forbidden area of religious freedom contrary to the principles of the First Amendment. [...] Article 5-C directly prohibits the free exercise of an ecclesiastical right, the Church’s choice of its hierarchy.”

It’s remarkable, isn’t it, that in 1952, the Supreme Court of the United States decided a case against a local American church and in favor of a church widely regarded as under Soviet influence? But, in the majority’s eyes, they had no choice. Next time, we’ll look at Justice Frankfurther’s concurring opinion, which takes a somewhat different approach but reaches the same ultimate conclusion (that is, that Moscow wins and the Metropolia loses). After that, we’ll discuss Justice Jackson’s dissenting opinion.

I should say (and probably should have said at the beginning) that this analysis of mine is a work in progress. I’m definitely not an expert on this stuff, and I’m learning as I go. It’s entirely possible that I’ve butchered the analysis, and I’ll be revisiting everything many times before I complete my paper. I would appreciate any feedback my readers might have, and I’d especially love to hear what the lawyers out there think of the Kedroff case. These articles I’m writing are really just my own notes and impressions, but I thought readers might find the case interesting. I hope you’ll all forgive me for the inadequacies of my initial analysis. Consider yourself forewarned.

This article was written by Matthew Namee.

Tags: 1952, Benjamin Fedchenkov, civil authorities, Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, New York, Russian, Russian Metropolia, Supreme Court

This article was originally published on October 30, 2009.

On July 19, 1870, a Philadelphia newspaper called the North American and United States Gazette published the following report:

The Russian Ambassador has received instructions from his government that three bishoprics of the Greek Church are to be established forthwith in this country – one at New York, one at New Orleans, and one at San Francisco, in each of which last named places there is already a Greek church and a Russo-Greek priest.

A few days later, the journal Christian Union (7/23/1870) reported on the move of the Russian bishop from Alaska to San Francisco, and on the founding of Bjerring’s chapel in New York City. Citing the Pacific Churchman as its source, the article then stated the following:

New York is expected to be, in time, the seat of a Greek Orthodox Eastern Church arch-diocesan, and of the cathedral church of that hierarchy on the American continent, while New Orleans and San Francisco are to be episcopal seats. It is further stated that Mr. N.L. BJERRING, of Baltimore, a recent convert from the Roman Church, has been selected as one of the Orthodox bishops for this country, and that he has been invited by telegraph, from St. Petersburg, to proceed thither, to be baptized, ordained into the ministry, and be consecrated a bishop.

It’s interesting to read about a plan calling for New York to be the headquarters of an archdiocese; it would be more than three decades before this would actually happen. Also, Bjerring, being married, could not have become a bishop. It’s possible that the Russian Church wasn’t initially aware of this, and did at some early stage consider him a candidate for the episcopacy. It’s also possible that the newspaper reporter misunderstood something.

Anyway, within a few more days, the New York Sun had run a piece on all this. I don’t have the original Sun account, but it was picked up by various papers, including the Cleveland Herald (7/30/1870), the Chicago Tribune (8/1), and Flake’s Bulletin of Galveston, Texas (8/20). This is from the Cleveland Herald‘s version:

The Russian Government has decided to establish a Bishopric of the Greek Church in New York. The fact was made known to a number of Episcopal clergymen by Count Catacazy, the Russian Minister, and the Count recently offered the position of Prelate of the proposed See to the Rev. Samos [the other versions say "James"] Christal, an Episcopal minister, who is understood to have favored the plan of Dr. (now Bishop) Young of uniting the Episcopal and Greek churches. Mr. Christal has, however, declined to accept the office, on the ground that he could not subscribe to the articles of the Seventh Synod of the Greek church, relating to the images and creature worship, and the new Bishopric has not yet been filled.

Two other Bishoprics are to be established by the Russian Government, one in San Francisco and the other in New Orleans, but the candidates have not yet been named.

On August 27, Christian Union (which had already published a report on July 23 — see above) ran a similar story, but cited Pittsburgh’s Presbyterian Banner.

Finally, in October, a correction of sorts began to appear. From the Christian Advocate (10/10/1870; the same appeared in the San Francisco Bulletin on October 29):

The Russian Government does not contemplate sending Bishops of the Greek Church to form dioceses in this country. Greek Church communicants are too few to require them, and these few, it seems, do not desire foreign Bishops.

That is the last thing I’ve found on the plan.

All of these reports were coming during a time of transition for American Orthodoxy. During the same summer of 1870, Bishop John Mitropolsky was assigned to replace Bishop Paul Popov as the Russian hierarch in North America. The diocese itself was restructured, and the new Diocese of the Aleutian Islands and Alaska was created. (Previously, Bishop Paul had been merely a vicar in the Diocese of Kamchatka.) Bishop John moved the hierarchical residence from Sitka (or New Archangel) to San Francisco. This move wouldn’t be officially recognized until 1872, but for all practical purposes, it took place with the change in bishops in 1870.

Also, in May of 1870, Nicholas Bjerring went to Russia and was ordained a priest. He returned to the US that summer, and news began to circulate that the Russian Church planned to establish a chapel in New York City.

Is it possible that the Russian Church (and the Russian government) was making initial efforts to implement St. Innocent’s recommendation from a few years earlier? Late in 1867, Innocent recommended, among other things, that

• The diocesan seat be moved from Sitka (New Archangel) to San Francisco,
• The American part of the Diocese of Kamchatka be separated from the Diocese (Innocent recommended that it be formed into a vicariate under St. Petersburg, so creating a separate diocese would have been an even bolder step),
• The former bishop be recalled to Russia, and a new bishop be appointed who is familiar with English, and
• The new bishop be allowed to ordain American converts to the priesthood for service in America.

It’s also interesting to note the apparent resistence of the few Orthodox living in America. The San Francisco community was probably not the source of the problem, since they were the one city that did receive a Russian bishop in 1870. The New Orleans parish may have taken issue with this proposal, though, since they were a mostly independent group connected with the Greek consulate and nominally affiliated with the Church of Greece. But, details being so scarce, it’s hard to know just what the real story is.

There are a couple of avenues one might pursue to get to the bottom of all this. Obviously, the Russian Orthodox Church may have records of this plan (and I would expect them to be in St. Petersburg). There also might be something in the records of the Russian embassy, since the Russian ambassador was the one who approached Chrystal about the proposal. It can’t have just been the imaginings of American newspapermen, and I for one would love to know rationale behind the plan — and the reasons why it was abandoned.

This article was written by Matthew Namee and was originally published on October 30, 2009.

Tags: 1870, America, Innocent Veniaminov, James Chrystal, John Mitropolsky, New Orleans, New York, newspapers, Nicholas Bjerring, primary sources, Russian, San Francisco

Irvine and his wife Emmalena (far left) with what appear to be Syrian Orthodox Sunday School students (Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 11/28/1915)

Editor’s note: The following article originally appeared in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on November 28, 1915:

The Holy Orthodox Russo-Greek Catholic Church has established a college for young women at the corner of Pennsylvania and Glenmore avenues, in the East New York section. About nine years ago Archbishop Platon and the priests of the Russo-Greek Church decided in their Convention that it would be advisable to found a college for young women of their own faith. This was thought especially desirable for the reason that many of the daughters of the clergy as well as of the laity could not gain as much attention in the secular institutions of this country in the branches of learning most needful to the Slavic population as in an institution of their own denomination. In time they were to take their places as polished and educated young Slavic-American citizens of the country; and, while devoted to their Church, still equally so to this republic as Americans. They would have to become factors in its life and progress. Russians move slowly but surely. Their Church in this country and in Canada has made very great strides. Their objects have been especially to gather in their own people who, for a time, from necessity, have been left here and there without a shepherd; to so work as to conform rigorously to the established laws of the United States without in any way grasping political power or drawing upon public State funds to help their Church institutions, but depend upon the pockets of their own children, however poor, to share for the common good of all; and, finally, to establish monasteries, nunneries, schools, orphan asylums, seminaries for theological students and colleges for the higher education of their young women.

The first of these latter institutions, the one in East New York, was founded by the Most Rev. Evdokim, the present Archbishop of North America, on the 14th of last September, which date, according to the Russian Julian Calendar, was September 1. The building was formerly the Russian Orphan Asylum, but on that institution having been demoved to the State of Massachusetts, it opened up the way for the far-seeing Archbishop to occupy the premises for the new venture.

Pupils from several States of America and the Balkans are already in attendance. They are a very bright and intelligent set of young women, ranging in age from 16 to 25 years. They are a serious and determined number of students, who realize much the object of their presence in their Church’s college. Indeed, from among their number many will become the wives of future priests of the Orthodox Church, fully equipped, both educationally, socially and religiously, as helpmates to their husbands.

The Russian priesthood is a Class in Society and their wives are expected to be refined and educated to fit into their lives and church interests. Of course, it is voluntary on the part of the Greek Orthodox Catholic clergy to marry or not, but they must marry, if at all, before they enter the priesthood, according to the ancient rule of the General Councils. And if, after marriage, a priest’s wife dies, he cannot remarry. The bishops are always selected from among the unmarried monastic, or “Black Clergy,” as they are called in contradistinction to the “White Clergy,” or secular priests, that is, the married, parochial clergy.

The general supervision of the college is under His Grace, Archbishop Evdokim, who, himself, visits regularly and acts as a professor in one of the branches. Besides the Archbishop there are nine other professors, five of whom are women, viz., Mrs. A.S. Meschersky, Miss Chervobawa, Mrs. Turkevitch and Mrs. Kohanik. The men professors are Very Rev. L. Turkevitch, Dean of St. Nicholas Cathedral; the Rev. Peter Kohanik, secetary of the North American Ecclesiastical Consistory; G. Cherepin and the Rev. Dr. Ingram N.W. Irvine. Mrs. E.A. Krilova is the house superintendent and Mrs. Meschersky is her local assistant.

The college is divided into two departments, namely, the Russian and English. The English department is under the Rev. Dr. Irvine, who, for a time, was a professor in the Russian Orthodox Theological Seminary in Minneapolis, Minn., and has been used as a utility priest in all departments of the Holy Orthodox Greek Catholic Church. In the theological seminary he was the lecturer for six chairs of instruction. He has been used in a versatile way in his Church and has ever been a great favorite with all the young of the different nationalities who are represented in the Russo-Greek and, in fact, the whole Holy Orthodox Church of America.

For some years Dr. Irvine was associated with the late Bishop Raphael of Brooklyn, head of the Syrian-Orthodox Greek Catholic Church of America. The doctor was his theologian and he always consulted him on matters of importance. They were old and fast friends till the bishop’s seemingly untimely death. Dr. Irvine on the death of his personal friend was retransferred to St. Nicholas Russian Cathedral, Manhattan, at the request of the Russian clergy, with whom he is quite a favorite. On the opening of the college in Brooklyn by the present Archbishop he was placed in charge as rector of the English department and the preacher at the chapel as well as associate at the Liturgical Service.

Few men of any nation have had a more varied experience than Dr. Irvine. He is acquainted with many characteristics of the Slovanic, Grecian and Oriental races, which make up the membership of the Holy Eastern or, as it is technically known, the Greek-Orthodox Catholic Church. The doctor is an Irishman by birth, but came to America as a youth, studied in the United States and graduated in the great Episcopal General Theological Seminary, West Twentieth street, New York City. A class of men now fast passing away were his associates. The present Episcopal Bishop Burgess of Long Island and Dr. Irvine were seminary rectors. In fact, Dr. Irvine in his early ministry was rector of St. James Church, Smithtown, Long Island, and through his influence Mrs. Stewart gave the money to build Garden City Cathedral Church.

The Rev. Dr. Irvine’s wife has been in his long ministry his fellow worker and is equally loved with him by all who know her. It is a pathetic sight to see the Syrian children, whose spiritual welfare was looked after for years in Brooklyn by the doctor, gather around him and Mrs. Irvine when they enter the section of Brooklyn or Manhattan where the Syrians reside, and embrace them. It matters not how the little faces look, clean or unclean, they are filled with pleasure.

Into St. Mary’s Russian College he takes the same love for and interest in the young priests who were his students in the West and who are now scattered through the States and Canada, holding his name as a household word. Another institution of learning has been added to Brooklyn’s long list and the Russian Church has selected a Long Island man to head her English department, especially a priest who thoroughly understands American life and the peculiarities of many denominations.

Tags: 1915, Antiochian, converts, education, Evdokim Meschersky, language, Nathaniel Irvine, New York, newspapers, primary sources, Raphael Hawaweeny, Russian

Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine

Last week, we reprinted Isabel Hapgood’s account of St. Raphael’s funeral. The Hapgood article appeared in the New York Tribune on March 8, 1915. Two days later, the paper published the following letter to the editor from Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine:

To the Editor of The Tribune.

Sir: An unfortunate mistake was made in an article written by Miss Isabel Hapgood which would make it seem to appear that the Russian Bishop and his Russian clergy did not pay the proper repsect to the office of the Syrian Bishop at the funeral. The words to which exception is taken are as follows: “The Syrian priests, in passing, kissed the dead Bishop’s hand after kissing the cross. The Russian Bishop and priests passed without saluting cross and hand.”

Indeed, the respect and episcopal honor paid to Bishop Raphael’s office and person by Bishop Alexander was the most remarkable expression of love that has ever been known in the United States to the body of a dead prelate. From the moment Bishop Alexander was notified of his brother Bishop’s death until the day after his burial in the crypt of the cathedral (which, by the bye was not built by Bishop Raphael, as Miss Hapgood, through misapprehension, also states) he and his clergy were present and gave the same attention as if the deceased Bishop was of their own nationality. The usual custom of kissing the cross and the hand of the dead Bishop was also observed.

If, from matter of respect to the Syrian clergy, who had come from great distance to the funeral, Bishop Alexander and his clergy gave way for a moment, it was altogether because of the tenderness toward thirty priests of the Syrian Bishop who crowded around the casket brokenhearted and bereaved. However, from the first visitation to the dead body until the casket lid was locked down, Bishop Alexander and his clergy paid every required honor — indeed, to such an extent that it might have appeared to outsiders that he was their own Bishop and not that of the Syrian flock.

INGRAM N.W. IRVINE.

St. Nicholas Cathedral, March 9, 1915

As regular readers of this website know, Irvine was a prominent Episcopal priest who converted to Orthodoxy and was ordained by St. Tikhon in 1905. Irvine worked closely with St. Raphael and his Syrian Mission from the beginning, and around 1909, he was actually transferred to St. Raphael’s own jurisdiction. Irvine remained there until St. Raphael’s death, after which he returned to the main Russian Mission. Irvine was a tireless promoter of the use of English in American Orthodoxy, the education of Orthodox children, and the unity of all Orthodox ethnic groups under the Russian Archdiocese.

As we have seen before (and will see again), Irvine had an antagonistic relationship with Isabel Hapgood, the Episcopalian writer and linguist who translated the Service Book into English in 1906. While the pair shared an interest in spreading the use of English in American Orthodox parishes, they differed on virtually everything else. Hapgood’s views of Irvine aren’t well recorded (or, if they are, they haven’t been discovered yet), but Irvine is on record many times as an outspoken opponent of Hapgood and nearly all that she stood for. It is therefore unsurprising that Irvine would publicly call out Hapgood on such a seemingly insignificant error in an otherwise accurate article on St. Raphael’s funeral.

Then again, perhaps it wasn’t so insignificant. It’s established that, as early as St. Raphael’s funeral itself, the Syrian priests were divided over whether they should be under Russia or Antioch (see, for instance, the 1924 court case Hanna v. Malick). We also know, from other documents, that Irvine strongly supported the unity of American Orthodoxy under Russian jurisdiction. I’m just speculating here, but it is entirely possible that Irvine read Hapgood’s error in the context of the jurisdictional uncertainty and division that was beginning to overtake the Syrian Mission in the days and weeks after St. Raphael’s death. Viewed in this light, Irvine may have felt it necessary to emphasize, very publicly, the unity between the Russians and the Syrians. The fact that it also accorded him the opportunity to criticize his longtime foe, Hapgood, would have been icing on the cake.

[This article was written by Matthew Namee.]

Tags: 1915, Alexander Nemolovsky, Antiochian, converts, early unity, Isabel Hapgood, Nathaniel Irvine, New York, newspapers, primary sources, Raphael Hawaweeny, Russian, Saints

Clergy surrounding the body of St. Raphael. This photo is mentioned by Isabel Hapgood in her March 8, 1915 article.

Editor’s note: The following article was written by Isabel Hapgood and appeared in the New York Tribune on March 8, 1915. It is the most complete surviving description of the funeral of St. Raphael, who died on February 27, 1915. Hapgood herself had known St. Raphael for nearly two decades, from the time that he first arrived in America.

The first Syro-Arabian Bishop in America was buried yesterday in a tomb beneath the Syro-Arabian Cathedral of St. Nicholas in Brooklyn, which forms his monument.

Bishop Raphael Hawaweeny was born in Damascus, a pure Arab. [In fact, St. Raphael's family was from Damascus, but he was born in Beirut. - Ed.] From the Patriarchal Theological School, at Khalki, he went to Russia and became so identified with the spirit of the country that he was wont to say, “In soul I am a Russian.” He went in a monastery at Kiev for six years, and then was professor of Arabic at the University of Kazan. A desire for active work brought him to America.

In Russia he was ordained, and it was under the auspices of the Holy Synod that he labored here. On several occasions the Patriarch of Antioch offered him the rank of Metropolitan in his native Syria. It is probable that had he returned he would have become Patriarch, but he felt that his work was among the 25,000 Syro-Arabians here, whom he had organized into thirty parishes.

He came to this country in 1895. His first church was on the second floor of a house in Washington Street, Manhattan. How the floor bore up under the masses of worshippers, especially when the Russian Bishop held services there on his infrequent visits from San Francisco (then the seat of the Russian diocese), I never understood. Another dispensation of Providence was required to avert a catastrophe when we adjourned to the floor above and enjoyed a genuine Arab feast, ending with Arab coffee flavored with rosewater from Syria. All the partitions and supports below had been removed to make space in the church.

Bishop Nicholas, now Archbishop of Warsaw, remarked to me on one occasion: “I know now exactly how Louis XIV felt when he had to eat in public!”

After the feast a couple of handsome young fellows (ladies’ tailors by their American profession) in Albanian costume performed the famous sword play over the oilclothed floor, upon which dressy lengths of ingrain carpet had been loosely laid, with such vigor that they literally cut the gas jets, partly smashed the fixtures and had to be separated by the umpire, who interposed with a dagger — more Providence!

One day a pistol flew from one of the swordsmen’s sashes across the room and landed at my feet — that illustrates the vigor of the proceedings. I captured it and refused to return it until the end of the session — and thereafter, instead of sitting at the side of the room, I took a safe seat by the side of the Russian Bishop.

A few years passed and Father Raphael was able to move his church to a building on Pacific Street, near Hoyt Street, which later on became a cathedral. That was in 1904. Early that year he was raised to the rank of Archimandrite, and in May of that year he was consecrated Bishop, and became the second Vicar of the Russian Archbishop.

Ordinarily three bishops are required for consecration. In this case, owing to its exigencies, only two officiated, the Most Revered Tikhon, Archbishop of Aleutia and North America, now Archbishop of Vilna, and the Right Rev. Innokentz, first Vicar, later Bishop of Yakutsk and Viluisk, and now Archbishop of Tashkent, in Turkestan. That is, I am sure, the only ocasion [sic] when a Bishop of the Orthodox Eastern Church has been consecrated in America, and a wonderful service it was.

The Russian Ambassador, not being able to come, sent his representative, who sat at the right hand of the new Bishop at the banquet which followed. As the only representative of America and the Episcopal Church, I was placed at his left hand, opposite the consecrating prelates, and was called on for a speech after the Ambassador’s representative had conveyed his formal message.

In course of time Bishop Raphael came to know many of the Episcopal clergy, and was highly respected by them. His later alienation from them is regarded as having arisen under misapprehension. By his own people he was cherished as the man to whom they owed their beneficent organizations. The Young Turk element quarrelled with him for reciting the formal prayer for the Sultan, as the ruler of Syria, in the services, and several attempts were made on his life. At times he was obliged to go about with a guard, and I met him in the Syrian restaurants dining with a guard on duty. But he lived down their enmity.

Bishop Raphael died, after an illness of three weeks, from dropsy, kidney trouble and heart disease, worn and gray as a man of seventy with his toils and sufferings.

For a week he lay in state in his cathedral, and morning and evening requiem services were held by the Right Rev. Alexander, Bishop of Alaska, assisted by Russian and Syrian clergy. A wonderful service, picturesque in setting.

Across the foot of the open coffin was draped the purple episcopal mantle, with its crimson velvet “tables of the law.” Over the face lay a sacramental veil of white and silver brocade, embroidered with a gold cross. At the head of the coffin stood pontifical candles, but no longer lighted, as during pontifical service. They were tied with black ribbons, so that their tips spread abroad, reversed and unlighted. Between them, leaning against the head of the catafalque and the coffin rose the crozier. Behind, on a folding lectern, lay a purple velvet cushion, on which were placed the orders and decorations which the Bishop had received, many from Russia. The holy doors in the centre of the ikonostasis, with its many ikoni, were closed and draped in black and gold, purple and silver. All about the walls were more ikoni, and huge floral pieces surrounded the coffin. One of the set pieces was an armchair, of white artificial flowers, with sprays of lavender flowers and surmounted by a canopy or arched gateway of palms, violet tulle and white flowers.

At the evening requiems the church was always filled. Many women waited for hours to secure front seats in the little gallery. More women thronged every step of the stairs. The Syrian priests, in passing, kissed the dead Bishop’s hand, after kissing the cross. The Russian Bishop and priests passed without saluting cross and hand.

The gospels were read night and day, instead of Psalms, as with a layman, by relays of clergy. The Syrians relieved one another at frequent intervals, and showed the finest, most varied forms of intoning.

Bishop Alexander who, by command of the Holy Synod, has charge of the vast Russian Diocese of North America until the newly appointed Archbishop shall arrive, stood at the services motionless (“like a candle” is the Russian term.)

Thursday evening, at the close of the services, a picture was taken of the dead Bishop and the circle of celebrating clergy. After the clergy had retired, representatives of all the Syrian societies, including women, made addresses from the chancel platform about the great work which Bishop Raphael had accomplished for his people in America.

Saturday morning, after the liturgy had been celebrated in Old Church Slavonic and Greek by Bishop Alexander and his clergy, and in Syrian by the Syrians, while the choir of the Russian Theological Seminary from Tenafly, N.J., sang their part in Slavonic, two requiem services were held, the first by the Metropolitan Hermanos Shehadah, of Selveskia Mount Lebanon [should be Baalbek - ed.], Syria (his black, waist-long hair concealed beneath his black cassock and cloth of silver pall) and the Syrian clergy; and the second by Bishop Alexander and a few Russian priests, the seminary choir singing. The Syrian clergy no longer kissed the dead Bishop’s right hand. That lay at rest forevermore. The raised left hand supported a large cross, and this alone was saluted.

Yesterday morning, at 10 o’clock, the liturgy was celebrated by Bishop Alexander, standing at the right of Metropolitan Hermanos, on their eagle rugs upon the dais at the head of Bishop Raphael’s coffin. As was customary, Bishop Alexander was vested on the dais in magnificent vestments of silver brocade. Metropolitan Hermanos wore gold brocade and the tall Metropolitan’s mitre of crimson velvet and gold, from whose crest rose a diamond cross. The choir of the Russian St. Nicholas Cathedral sang, except during the brief intervals when the Syrians chanted.

At a layman’s funeral the clergy wear black velvet and silver; at the funeral of a priest or bishop, no mourning is worn and the flowerlike vestments of the priests, mingling with the magnificent floral pieces, produce a very brilliant effect. The Syrian deacon wore pink brocade with a stole of blue and gold. As only 500 people were allowed by the authorities inside the cathedral, there was space for the ceremony of processions to and from the altar. At 12 o’clock the liturgy ended. At 1:30 the funeral began.

The singing was now done for the Syrians by the boys’ and girls’ choir of the Sunday school, wearing white vestments with lavender crosses, the girls, with mortarboard caps, occasionally assisting the clergy. The Russian singing was done by the clergy, assisted by the adult members of the choir. In all there were about forty priests, Russian and Syrian, who chanted, the Russians led by Archdeacon Vsevolod, of the Russian Cathedral, with his magnificent voice.

Among the hymns, which show the spirit of the service, were:

“Give rest, O Lord, to the soul of thy servant and establish him in Paradise. Where the choirs of the saints, O Lord, and of the just, shine like the stars of heaven, give rest to thy servant, who hath fallen asleep, regarding not all his transgressions.”

“Forasmuch as we all are constrained to that same dread abode, and shall hide ourselves beneath a gravestone like to this, and shall ourselves shortly turn to dust, let us implore of Christ rest for him who hath been translated hence.”

In the Eastern Church there are several orders of burial. One is for a child under seven years old, in which no mention is made of sin, because a child’s soul “is not grown,” as the Russians say, until he is seven. Another is for adult laymen; a third, for those who die in Easter week, in which there are almost no songs of mourning, but all are songs of the joy of the Resurrection; the fourth, for dead priests, has five epistles and five gospels. These were read by the Syrians and the Russians alternately, as were the many hymns, most of which were written by St. John of Damascus.

Then at last the clergy made addresses, Father Basil Kerbawy, dean of the cathedral, Father Sergius Snegyeroff and others, in praise of the Bishop. Father Kerbawy reduced the congregations to tears. Bishop Alexander made the last speech, directly addressing the dead as he stood by the coffin.

After “Memory Eternal” had been proclaimed in Syrian and in Old Church Slavonic, with the addition of the Bishop’s title and name, the procession formed. It is customary to carry the body of a Bishop around the outside of the church and to hold a brief service on each of the four sides before going to the graveyard. This constituted the funeral procession in the present case, as its route was along Pacific Street to Henry Street, thence to State Street, then to Nevins Street and back along Pacific Street to the cathedral.

The procession formed in the following order: Cronin, political leader of the district; squad of mounted police; twenty to thirty small boys in white tunics, with lilac crosses and flowers; the Cathedral committee (honorary pall-bearers); girls, singing hymns; Syrian Ladies’ Aid Society; the Homsian Fraternity; the Syro-American Political Club; members of the various Syrian diocesan parishes; the United Syrian Societies; cathedral Sunday school pupils, carrying crosses, candles and church banners; coaches with floral offerings; Archimandrite [Aftimios] Aphaish of Montreal, carrying the cushion with the late Bishop’s orders; finally, St. Joseph’s Society of Boston.

The dead prelate was borne in an open coffin by the priests, the snowflakes drifting down upon his splendid mantle of purple, crimson and white, his golden mitre, and the white brocade sacramental veil which covered his face. The body was followed by the Orthodox clergy, both Syrian and Russian; last came Bishop Alexander of Alaska. The family of the deceased, parishioners and friends followed, women joining, although it is not the custom to do so abroad.

Directly beneath the altar the Bishop had built for himself a vault. On the return of the procession masses of the flowers were carried into the crypt, and the clergy surrounded the bronze coffin into which the mahogany casket was lowered. The Metropolitan Hermanos made the final address before the coffin was closed, and a most distressing scene of grief ensued. Not only the clergy, but many parishioners, cast earth upon the body of their beloved Bishop.

Tags: 1915, Aftimios Ofiesh, Alexander Nemolovsky, Antiochian, Basil Kerbawy, early unity, Episcopalians, Germanos Shehadi, Isabel Hapgood, New York, newspapers, Nicholas Ziorov, primary sources, Raphael Hawaweeny, Russian, Saints

Fr. Nicholas Bjerring in his New York chapel, Thanksgiving 1871. Grand Duke Alexis of Russia is standing behind the chair to the right.

From the New York Times, December 1, 1871:

Thanksgiving Day was observed by the Grand Duke Alexis yesterday in a very quiet manner. In the morning he went to the Greek Chapel at No. 951 Second-avenue, accompanied by Minister Catacazy, Admiral Poisset, the Secretary of Legation and Consul-General Bodisco. By 9 o’clock the privileged few who had tickets of admission to the chapel began to assemble. A serving-man was at the outer door, and he assisted each gentleman to lay aside his overcoat and hat, and showed all into the front parlor or auditorium of the chapel.

There were not more than twenty persons in all. The ladies stood on the left side of the room looking toward the chancel or back parlor, the gentlemen on the right. Prince Gallitzin, the Russian impressario, was among the earliest arrivals. The few present were, with perhaps one or two exceptions, members of the Greek Church. The chapel was lighted up before 10 o’clock, and Father Bjerring, his assistant and the chaplain of the Svetlana, stood robed at the door through which His Imperial Highness must enter, awaiting him. Father Bjerring held a massive gold crucifix, and his assistant a holy water font and “aspersion whisk.” At about 10:40, some commotion was heard at the hall door, and immediately after the Grand Duke appeared at the chapel door, kissed the crucifix presented, crossed himself and received the holy water. The whole party entered and stood in front of the chancel. Father Bjerring then chanted a “Te Deum” in English, comprising also the prayers for the Emperor of Russia and the President of the United States. His assistant repeated the same in Slavic, and the services concluded. They did not last longer than twenty-five minutes, after which the Imperial party saluted the chaplain of the Svetlana and retired.

Tags: 1871, Grand Duke Alexis, New York, Nicholas Bjerring, primary sources, Russian

Tsar Alexander III of Russia died on November 1, 1894. A week later (and 116 years ago today), on November 8, two memorial services for the Tsar were held in America. Both were of note, for various reasons.

New York had no Russian church in 1894, so the Russian consul and numerous other dignitaries converged on the Greek church of Holy Trinity, on West 53rd Street. Here is how the New York Times described the event the next day:

The church was draped in black and white, and the walls were covered with a background of white, relieved at intervals with white crosses. Flags of Russia, Greece, and the United States hung in the forward part of the church, and in front of the altar was a canopy of black crepe, with a wreath of violets on one side, and another of white roses on the other side.

Father Matrofani, a Russian monk, conducted the services, partly in Greek and partly in Russian, and Father Agathadora, the pastor of the church, assisted him. An introductory prayer in Russian opened the service, and then Father Matrofani appeared before the altar clad in full golden sacerdotal robes, accompanied by Father Agathadora, who wore a black surplice.

Both priests carried lighted candles, and Father Matrofani led the chant choir, which consisted of Mme. Eugenie Lineff, Mlle. Chacquin, and Peter Popoff. Two Greek gentlemen who stood to the left of the altar responded to some of the Greek chants.

A portion of the service which seemed queer to the Americans present was the eating of a portion of rice and a raisin by Father Matrofani at the conclusion of the singing. This is an old custom in the Greek Church, commemorative of the early Christianity, when the priests were fed by their congregations.

Following the Russian custom, the women were separated from their escorts upon entering the church, and were conducted to their seats in the aisle to the left of the altar by Consul General A.E. Alarovesky of the Russian Consulate.

The Times went on to list the many notable people who attended the service, including Russian officials, representatives of numerous countries, the granddaughter of the last Tsar of Georgia, and future St. Nicholas Cathedral founder Barbara MacGahan. The article concluded, “Father Matrofani, who is on his way from San Francisco to Russia, sailed on the Columbia  yesterday. Before going he expressed the hope that a Bishop of the Greek Church, now on his way to this country, would establish a Russian congregation here.”

The Times was slightly misinformed, as the bishop in question, Nicholas Ziorov, was already in America and had, in fact, conducted a memorial for the Tsar in Washington, DC on the very same day. This service is especially notable because it was attended by the President of the United States, Grover Cleveland. The following account is reprinted from the Daily New Mexican of Santa Fe (11/9/1894):

Profoundly impressive ceremonies were held at the Russian legation to day in memory of the late czar, Alexander II [sic]. President Cleveland and his entire cabinet, except Postmaster General Bissell, attended, accompanied by Mrs. Cleveland and the cabinet ladies. Foreign ambassadors and ministers, with their extensive suites, wearing their rich official and court costumes, were present in a body, lending a brilliant color to the solemn occasion. Ambassador Bayard and ex-Secretary of State Foster were also there. The service began at 9 o’clock with mass celebrated by Bishop Nicholas, of the Russian Greek church, assisted by a Greek monk and two attendants. These services lasted until 10 o’clock and were held in private, being attended only by Prince Count Cresene, Russian minister, his daughter and the officials of the Russian legation. At 10 o’clock, chants and prayers for the repose of the czar’s soul began in the presence of the president, the members of the cabinet and the diplomatic corps. Each participant held a wax candle throughout the service.

I’m not certain, but this may be the first Orthodox church service ever attended by a US President. When the previous Tsar, Alexander II, died in 1881, Fr. Nicholas Bjerring held a memorial in Washington, but President Garfield was unable to attend (Washington Post, 3/16/1881).

[This article was written by Matthew Namee.]

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Tags: 1894, civil authorities, Greek, New York, newspapers, Nicholas Ziorov, primary sources, Russian, Washington DC

Editor’s note: The following article appeared in the New York Times on August 4, 1873. That’s nearly two decades before Greek immigrants began to flood into America. According to the book Race, Ethnicity, and Place in a Changing America, only 217 immigrants came from Greece to the US in the entire period from 1824 to 1872. Another source (Ethnic Chicago: A Multicultural Portrait) has similar numbers, reporting 188 immigrants in the 1821-1870 period. Yet another book, Greeks in America (1913), reports just 77 Greek immigrants via New York from 1847-1864, and 77 more from 1869-1873.

To be honest, I’m a tad skeptical of these statistics. The article below talks about 20 Greek custom houses in the US in 1873 (including 12 in New York alone), plus two Orthodox communities with large Greek contingents in New Orleans and San Francisco. From the article, it sounds like Greeks sailed to America pretty regularly, looking for temporary work before returning home. Add it all up, and I would guess that there were maybe a couple thousand Greeks in America in 1873, rather than only a few hundred. Either way, though, the numbers were quite small, and this article presents a rare snapshot of Greek life in America long before the Ellis Island era.

Comparatively little is known about the Greeks in America. Reference is made occasionally in the daily Press to the Greek merchants of this City, whose enormous transactions in cotton and grain form an important item in the exports of the country; but beyond that we seldom see a Greek name coming before the public in the daily incidents of this cosmopolitan City.

Greece is so thinly populated that she can hardly spare any hands to emigrate to foreign countries, and we seldom see any Greeks among the nationalities mentioned in the regular reports of our Commissioners of Emigration. Yet a great many Greeks arive daily on our shores, but they come under the quality of sailors, working their passage on board sailing ships of various nationalities. As soon as they land here they apply to their Consul in this City, Mr. D.N. Botassi, for work, when with few variations, the following dialogue takes place:

“When did you arrive”

“This day.”

“Any particular profession?”

“None.”

“What do you expect to do?”

“Anything, your Excellency.”

“Have you got any money?”

“Not a cent, your Excellency.”

“Where are your lodgings?”

“Our traps are at the door; we shall go anywhere your Excellency will send us.”

“Can you speak English?”

“Nothing but Greek, your Excellency.”

There are two sailors’ boarding-houses in this City doing a thriving business. The Consul invariably sends them there, and it seldom occurs that they do not find work in a short time. They begin by doing rough work in loading and unloading merchandise at our piers, and, being generally very temperate, they soon accumulate some savings.

Their first care is to send the little which they can spare to their families in Greece. The family ties are so strong among all her classes, particularly the lower ones, that even years of absence in foreign lands cannot diminish their love for their native land and the dear ones they have left behind. The love of their country is one of the strong characteristics of the Greeks; they emigrate under compulsion to better their condition, but the hope to return one day to their country under more comfortable circumstances is always strong and paramount.

Few of the Greeks who arrive at this port go West to become agriculturalists. This means to become in time owners of land whereon to build their new home. But, as we said before, the Greek has always the hope to return one day to his country. They mostly go to Chicago, where they easily find work in loading vessels and navigating the lakes. On the water they find themselves happy, being in their element. As soon as the lakes are frozen in the Winter time they go down the Mississippi River, and many of them are working on the steam-boats plying between St. Louis, Cincinnati, Louisville, Cairo, and New-Orleans. Over 200 of them are to be found in the Crescent City, where they seem to be thriving under the more genial climate, not dissimilar to that of their own country. They have all sorts of professions; many are fruit dealers, keep little restaurants and coffee houses, where the American bar is combined with little tables a l’orientale, round which are seated Greeks talking all at the same time generally, all the idioms of the Grecian Archipelago, drinking coffee, and smoking paper cigarettes. Many of them are oyster dealers and oyster fishers, owning generally their little craft, which they navigate themselves, and trade all along the coast from New-Orleans to Indianola and Matamoras, or on the other side through the lakes to Mobile and Pensacola. The writer tasted, some years ago, an excellent glass of sherry cobbler made by a Greek barkeeper on one of the steam-boats on the Alabama River. In New-Orleans the Greek colony is important enough to maintain a church of their own religion, built some five years ago by subscription, and divine service is celebrated every Sunday in the Greek language by a priest educated in the National University of Athens.

The Greek colony in San Francisco numbers about 300 members, and is the best organized of all the Greek colonies in the States of the Union. They maintain a little chapel of their own, and have established a benevolent society. This latter was rendered necessary from the quantity of new-comers of their countrymen to the Golden State, with the hope of finding gold in abundance. It is strange with what great expectations these children of Hellas go to California, and their disappointment in not finding gold in the streets of San Francisco can be better imagined than described. They seem utterly astonished when they are told that they must work in San Francisco, as everywhere else, to gain their living, and the idea of gold is so deeply rooted in them, that many go to the mines of California and Oregon with the hope of enriching themselves one day by some sudden smile of fortune.

Even in those distant localities they do not forget their native land. They write to their families in Greece from time to time, and are subscribers to a Greek newspaper, to learn the news. To the positive knowledge of the writer eight copies of a Greek newspaper are sent to Greek miners in Placer County, California, and a Greek roaster of pea-nuts in Galveston, Texas, is a subscriber to one of the best Greek newspapers. The only subscribers in America to an Ecclesiastical Review, published in Athens, are an American Episcopalian clergyman in New-York and a Greek boarding-house keeper in Chicago, Ill.

There are no students from Greece in this country, with the exception of one, who is studying agriculture at the expense of the Greek Government, in the Illinois Industrial University, in Champaign, Ill., on the scanty allowance of $40 per month.

The average salary of sailors, on board Greek vessels, is about $10 per month; it is no wonder, therefore, that those who come to this country are reluctant to go back, getting, as they do, from $30 to $40 per month. But they get even more on land. Last year a Greek vessel arrived at this port from Sicily with a cargo of brimstone. The crew, consisting of twelve men, refused to go to Havana, where the vessel was bound, and remained in New-York. They soon found their way to Athens, below Albany, where they engaged to work at the railroad depot. They ahve worked there for one year, saved $300 each, which they sent to Greece through their Consul, and worked their passage home recently on board an American vessel. Their abstinence from drinking and their hard work were much remarked by the employees of the railroad.

But the most remarkable incident of the strength of family ties among the Greeks which came to our knowledge is that of a Greek boy who came to this country thirty years ago. He was educated for the ministry and pursued his avocation. A year ago he made inquiries about his relatives in Greece, and finding that a sister of his, a widow, was still living, but very poor, he opened a correspondence with her. They have never seen each other, but the expatriated Greek felt an inherent duty to assist her. He sends her now very regularly a yearly pension, with which she lives at present comfortably in Athens.

We mentioned above a Greek vessel which arrived at this port last year. The father of her Captain has a rather curious history. He was the owner of a small vessel employed in the grain trade during the Crimean war. A tthe time he was in the City of Kertch, in the Crimea. The Russian ports were blockaded by the allies. A Russian regiment was ready in Arrapa, on the Black Sea, to come to the Crimea. But how? The Greek Captain made an arrangement with the Russian General to run the blockade, and bring the regiment where it was needed. He ran the blockade successfully, took the regiment on board, and was nearing the coast of the Crimea, when he was discovered by the English cruisers, who began to fire on him. He succeeded in landing the Russians safely, but his vessel was captured. The Russian General was delighted. Acting on superior orders, he paid to the Greek 5,000 silver roubles, and added a Russian schooner in the bargain. But the port was shortly bombarded by the allies, and his schooner was destroyed. Nothing daunted by this reverse, the Greek started for St. Petersburg, and, laying his case before the Emperor Nicholas, he had the satisfaction to receive 10,000 silver roubles as an additional compensation for his services to the Russian cause, besides a medal of honor.

There are twelve commercial Greek houses in this city, dealing largely in cotton, grain, and East India produce; four more are in New-Orleans, similarly engaged; one in Mobile, one in Memphis, Tenn., and two in Boston, Mass. These latter deal principally in Mediterranean produce, mostly dried fruit from Constantinople and Smyrna, exporting thither New England rum, machinery, and Yankee notions.

Tags: 1873, Greek, New Orleans, New York, newspapers, primary sources, San Francisco