Hey everyone –

I’ve been writing and talking about American Orthodox history for a long time. We started OrthodoxHistory.org way back in 2009, and earlier this year I published my first book, Lost Histories, on the early years of Orthodoxy in America. Today I’m excited to announce that I’ll be teaching a new Orthodox Studies Institute live course on American Orthodox History, which launches in January.

The course has four parts. The first class covers the pre-Ellis Island era, and I’ll mostly be telling crazy stories about the first Orthodox Christians scattered around the United States. Then we’ll talk about the great immigration at the turn of the last century, the era of St Tikhon and St Raphael and so many others. That era ended with the Bolshevik Revolution and the close of immigration. The next class will focus on the period from the 1920s to the 1960s, when so many different Orthodox jurisdictions were established, and when the Orthodox people, now rooted in the US, began to Americanize. Finally, we’ll cover the period from about 1965 on — the era of SCOBA, the establishment of the OCA, and the rise of American converts to Orthodoxy.

It’s a lot of ground to cover in four classes, and it’ll be a wild ride! I hope many of you will join me — you can learn more and register here.

Also, anyone who registers by December 1 will be entered into a drawing to win a copy of my book Lost Histories, which I’ll sign along with a fun fact about American Orthodox history that didn’t make it into the book.

I hope to see many of you in the class!

In Christ,
Matthew Namee