Orthodox History

When a god visited Congress

In 1934, St John Maximovitch was ordained ROCOR bishop of Shanghai and sent to shepherd the Russian exiles in China. Even before his episcopal ordination, when St John was teaching at the Bitol seminary in Serbia, the great Serbian bishop Nicholai Velimirovich famously said, “If you desire to see a...

Non-Fasting Between Pascha and Ascension

In all but one of the world's Orthodox Churches today, after a fast-free Bright Week, the Wednesday and Friday fasts resume. This happens even though we continue to exclaim "Christ is risen!" until Ascension, and we don't kneel until Pentecost. The bizarre result of this is that the non-fasting period...

New Translation: St Raphael Against the Papacy

The pontificate of Leo XIII (1878-1903) was marked by a flurry of encyclicals addressing the Christian East, which naturally received a great variety of Orthodox responses. Here on Orthodox History we have already published a response to Urbanitatis Veteris published by the official journal of the Russian Orthodox in America...

Chinese Orthodox Martyrs: A Firsthand Account of the Boxer Rebellion

The Boxer Rebellion was an anti-foreign, anti-Christian uprising in China at the turn of the twentieth century. Its victims included a group of Chinese Orthodox Christians, who were brutally martyred on June 11-12, 1900. The following April, the Russian Orthodox American Messenger -- the official magazine of the Russian Church in...

St Tikhon to Antioch: Set Up Shop in America!

Editor's note: Last year, Scott Kenworthy (whose landmark biography of St Tikhon comes out in November and is available now for preorder) sent me a remarkable email. He had discovered a letter written by Patriarch Tikhon to Patriarch Gregory IV of Antioch in 1922, dealing with the jurisdiction of Syrians/Antiochians...

Pope Leo XIII’s Encyclical to Greece, and an Orthodox Response

The new Pope of Rome, Leo XIV, has made it clear that he chose his name in honor of his predecessor Leo XIII. This is especially interesting to me as an Orthodox historian, since Leo XIII took a particular interest in Orthodoxy, and at the turn of the last century,...

St Raphael Hawaweeny vs Pope Leo XIII

In 1894, Pope Leo XIII issued a papal encyclical on the "Eastern Rites" -- that is, the Uniates, those groups who use traditional Orthodox liturgical rites but submit themselves to the Pope of Rome. In 1898, St Raphael Hawaweeny, then an archimandrite in New York, published a response to the...

Stalin’s Revival of the Moscow Patriarchate

“When Hitler invaded the USSR in June 1941,” writes historian Jordan Hupka, “Stalin again changed the Soviet position on religion. All anti-religious publications ceased and some churches in major urban centres were allowed to open.”[1] Stalin was a shrewd man; as Steven Miner writes in Stalin’s Holy War, “Very early...

Book Review: Sylvester of Antioch by Mihai Țipău

The Patriarch Sylvester, who shepherded the Patriarchate of Antioch in the decades following the schism of 1724, is a complex and often-misunderstood figure who was nevertheless pivotal in ensuring the Orthodox Church’s survival during a turbulent period of its history. A recently-published book, Sylvester of Antioch: Life and Achievements of...

A Plea for English in Greek Orthodox Services in 1963

The US Congress imposed immigration quotas in 1924, ending the Ellis Island era of immigration. With no more newcomers, Orthodoxy in America began to assimilate more rapidly into American society, as the children and grandchildren of the original immigrants came to see themselves as Americans, even if they held onto...