The Pan-Orthodox Council of 1998

Beginning in the post-Communist era in the early 1990s, a faction of schismatics emerged in Bulgaria, breaking away from the canonical Bulgarian Orthodox Church. These schismatics -- known as the "Alternative Synod" -- elected their own Patriarch in 1996, with the backing of the Bulgarian government. Under immense pressure, the...

The Legacy of Father Nicola Yanney

What follows is the text I used for a talk on Fr. Nicola Yanney on October 28, 2018, at a pilgrimage in Kearney, Nebraska, commemorating the 100th anniversary of his repose. Audio and video recordings were made of the talk, and those should be available at some point. I think...

Patriarch Athenagoras Clearly States How Autocephaly Must Be Granted

Editor's note: On Friday, Orthodox History published a 1970 letter by Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras in response to the Moscow Patriarchate's decision to grant autocephaly to the "Orthodox Church in America." After posting the letter, we received the following article by “Petrus Antiochenus.”   Today, the Ecumenical Patriarchate is on the...

1970 Letter from Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras on Autocephaly

Editor's note: In 1970, the Patriarchate of Moscow issued a Tomos of Autocephaly to its former archdiocese in North America, which was commonly known as the "Russian Metropolia" and is now the "Orthodox Church in America." Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras protested against this act in multiple letters to the leaders of the...

Who was “Agapius Honcharenko”?

Note: Last week, we met Fr. Agapius Honcharenko, who served the first known Orthodox liturgies in New York (or, for that matter, the United States of America -- remember, this is when Alaska was still part of the Russian Empire). (Click here to read that article.) Today, we continue the...

The First New York Liturgies, 1865

Note: This article is the beginning of a series of articles walking through the early history of Orthodoxy in the United States. Not the EARLIEST history (Philip Ludwell III and his circle) -- that's the territory of Nicholas Chapman and his associates (see www.ludwell.org to learn all about that). And not...

St Nikolai Velimirovich on Orthodoxy in America & Its Future

Editor's note: The following homily was delivered by St. Nikolai Velimirovich in America, sometime between his (second) arrival in America in 1946 and his death in 1956. It was published in the journal Orthodox America, volume 19, number 5. Years ago, I received permission from Orthodox America to publish the text of...

Plans for an English-speaking seminary & an Orthodox census in 1943

Back in the early 1940s, several of the Orthodox jurisdictions briefly came together to form an organization with the unwieldy name, "The Federated Orthodox Greek Catholic Primary Jurisdictions in America." That's ridiculous, so we'll just call it "the Federation." Anyway, the Federation was a precursor to SCOBA, which morphed into...

The Early History of Orthodoxy in Chicago

In 2011, I gave a talk at Holy Apostles Greek Orthodox Church in Westchester, Illinois, on the early history of Orthodoxy in Chicago. Here's the text of that lecture, basically unedited since I wrote it 7+ years ago. ******* The story of Orthodoxy in Chicago really begins in the 1880s....