The Society for Orthodox Christian History in the Americas
Posts tagged New York
New York OCA Cathedral’s fight for religious freedom
1 year ago
by Matthew Namee
in Uncategorized
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.
Atlas Excerpt #3: The First Two Convert Priests
1 year ago
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.
Atlas Excerpt #2: Agapius Honcharenko
1 year ago
by Matthew Namee
in Firsts
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.
NY Times article on Moscow-Metropolia Supreme Court case
1 year ago
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.
Moscow v. the Metropolia, part 4: initial impressions
1 year ago
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.
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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.
