Category: Orthodoxy in the Americas

P.T. Barnum’s widow married in NY Greek church

P.T. Barnum was the greatest showman of the 19th century. Today, he's most closely associated with the circus that bears his name, but in his own day, he was much more than a circus organizer. In an era before blockbuster movies, Barnum was the closest you could get to a...

Fr. Kyrill Johnson: The Prestige of the Oecumenical Patriarchate

Editor's note: On Monday, we introduced Fr. Kyrill Johnson, who converted to Orthodoxy in the 1920s and spent most of his career in the Antiochian Archdiocese. Then, on Tuesday, we presented an article by Johnson reviewing a Protestant translation of the Divine Liturgy. Below, we've published another article by Johnson,...

Fr. Kyrill Johnson, 1897-1947

For a while now, I've been meaning to introduce Fr. Kyrill Johnson, another of the many fascinating early American converts to Orthodoxy. He was born Arthur Warren Johnson in Roxbury, Massachsetts in 1897. I don't know what happened to his parents, but Johnson was adopted by an unmarried aunt, who...

A visit to the New Orleans Greek church in 1885

Editor's note: The following excerpt appeared in the Historical Sketch Book and Guide to New Orleans and Environs, published by Will H. Coleman in 1885. It is a rare firsthand account of Holy Trinity church in New Orleans in the 19th century. The priest at the time was Fr. Misael...

From Harvard MD to Orthodox priest: the Fr. Pythagoras Caravellas story

Editor's note: The following article was written by relatives of Fr. Pythagoras Caravellas, and originally appeared in the 60th anniversary commemorative album for Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral in San Francisco, published in 1996. The article has been reprinted at Annunciation Cathedral's website, and we present it here courtesy of the...

Orthodoxy and Theosophy: the Vera Johnston story

In the early 1900s, a woman named Vera Johnston was involved with the Russian cathedral in New York and the seminary in Tenafly, New Jersey. With a name like Johnston, you might think that she was a convert, which is exactly what I thought when I first ran across her name. But Vera...

Prayers for the President: an addendum

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article detailing some of the history of prayers for the US President in American Orthodox churches. After I published it, a reader named Andy Romanofsky sent along this excerpt from Chapter 1 of Archbishop Gregory Afonsky's A History of the Orthodox Church in America: 1917-1939: The...

Guest article by Bishop Maxim on the Episcopal Assembly

Recently a historic event took place in New York: A pan-Orthodox Assembly of the Fullness of God’s Church on the North American continent, represented by the Hierarchs of the local Orthodox dioceses. The most important goal of this body is to witness Orthodox unity in a “new world,” and to...