Aram Sarkisian, Author at Orthodox History

When Do “Firsts” Really Matter? Thoughts on Orthodox History in the Americas

Working on the history of Orthodox Christianity in North America means toiling in a vineyard mostly unplanted. Unlike other significant denominations on this continent, scholars of American religions have paid very little attention to Orthodoxy. As a result, there’s a lot of work to be done, and thankfully, a growing...

Wondering about “OCA Wonder:” Intellectual Life in the Russian Metropolia

Several weeks ago, I saw a small news item on my Facebook timeline advertising the latest issue of Wonder, the Orthodox Church in America’s youth-oriented newsletter. I was slightly bemused that the item's thumbnail picture was photograph I used as a centerpiece of a SOCHA piece I wrote last year...

Herman, A Wilderness Saint: From Sarov, Russia to Kodiak, Alaska

The following is a book review from our friend and colleague Nicholas Chapman: Herman, A Wilderness Saint: From Sarov, Russia to Kodiak, Alaska is a new book that I think will be of interest to many readers of this web site. It has been translated from Russian and contains material not...

Thanksgiving at St. Nicholas Cathedral, 1921

Thanksgiving Day as it is constituted as a civil holiday in the United States (and Canada) is not specifically found on the Orthodox liturgical calendar, but that doesn't mean that Orthodox Christians in North America have ignored it. Here's a notice from the New York Tribune for a Thanksgiving Divine...

Fr. Alexander Schmemann in Detroit, 1962

Recently, I was alerted to several photographs of a visit Fr. Alexander Schmemann made to Detroit in the winter of 1962. Today would have been Fr. Alexander's ninety-first birthday, so I thought this to be as good an opportunity as any to share these pictures with our readers. 1962 was...

Met. Leonty: A Life in Moments

As Matthew pointed out in his post yesterday, this week marks the 47th anniversary of the death of one of the truly great Orthodox churchmen of the 20th century, Metropolitan Leonty Turkevich. With an ecclesiastical career in the United States spanning from 1906 to 1965, there are few figures in the...

The 1940 Census Release: American History Moves Up a Decade

For those of us historians who work in the early twentieth century, one of the major sources of our work (and indeed a lot of what we've done here at SOCHA) are public records. We heavily depend on things like marriage and death certificates, government documents, voter registration lists, and,...

Discovering Fr. Job Salloom

One of my favorite blogs is the photography blog Shorpy, which specializes in posting glorious, high-resolution photographs largely from the Civil War through World War II, many of which come from the Library of Congress’ online databases of stock photos, government photographs, and newswire shots. They really do fantastic work,...

St. Patrick’s Day with Fr. Patrick Mythen

We here at SOCHA would like to wish you and yours, Irish or not, a happy St. Patrick's Day! And who better to portray those wishes than a figure we have written quite extensively about, Fr. Patrick Mythen. A proud descendent of the Irish political figure Henry Grattan, Mythen spent a good...

Fr. Ilia Zotikov: A Hieromartyr in a File Drawer

One of the little mysteries I’ve been meaning to research for some time has a bit of a family connection. This past week, I finally had the opportunity to delve into it, and the results were far different than I ever anticipated. My great-grandparents were married on May 2/15, 1908...