Category: Historiography

Guest article on St. Peter the Aleut

  Editor's note: The following guest article was written by Christopher Orr. Here are a few thoughts on the discussion about the historicity of the martyrdom account of St. Peter the Aleut kicked off by Fr. Oliver Herbel and continued by Matthew Namee on the Society for Orthodox Christian History...

Is the St. Peter the Aleut story true?

Well, this has been interesting. Last week, I posted a link to an article Fr. Oliver Herbel wrote, entitled, "St. Peter the Aleut Did Not Exist." As you can imagine, this sparked a very strong response from many readers, who challenged Fr. Oliver on several points. Some took issue with...

Fr. Oliver Herbel on St. Peter the Aleut

This morning on his Frontier Orthodoxy blog, Fr. Oliver Herbel offered a post with the provocative title, "St. Peter the Aleut Did Not Exist." Fr. Oliver says that he intentionally did not publish the article here at OH.org so as to spare us the inevitable debate; however, I do think it's...

Editorial: The New Americanism, Orthodox History and Unity in America

In the closing years of the 19th century, a number of Roman Catholic leaders in America were accused of a heresy called Americanism, and Pope Leo XIII wrote an apostolic letter specifically denouncing elements of this teaching, Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae. Americanism was essentially the emphasis on American political values over...

Rethinking the Myth of Unity

One year ago, I delivered a paper at St. Vladimir's Seminary entitled, "The Myth of Unity and the Origins of Jurisdictional Pluralism in American Orthodoxy." (Click here for the audio.) My thesis was that, contrary to a widely-held belief, American Orthodoxy was not administratively united prior to the Bolshevik Revolution of...

A Primer on American Orthodox Christian History

Our readers may be interested in a recent article by Fr. Oliver Herbel on his Frontier Orthodoxy blog. He reviews an historical narrative of American Orthodoxy offered on the website Catholic.org, and offers some necessary corrections. At the end, Fr. Oliver writes, Indeed, I think we need to develop a...

The Fate of Father Juvenaly: A story from Yup’ik history

Editor's note: The following article was written by Fr. Michael Oleksa, the foremost historian of Orthodoxy in Alaska, retired dean of St. Herman's Seminary, and member of SOCHA's advisory board. The article originally appeared as a chapter in Fr. Michael's fascinating book, Another Culture / Another World (Association of Alaska...

A few good links

On his Frontier Orthodoxy website last week, Fr. Oliver Herbel posted an essay outlining his position on Archbishop Arseny's canonization. In a follow-up post, Fr. Oliver responded to the charge that he was employing a "hermeneutic of suspicion." Finally, on his own blog, Gabriel Sanchez used Fr. Oliver's comments a...

Antiochian.org interview

I was recently interviwed by Virginia Nieuwsma of Antiochian.org, the official website of the Antiochian Archdiocese. They ran the interview today, and you can read it by clicking here.