Category: Orthodoxy in the Americas

The first convert priests… or… the first American apostates

Editor's note: Last year, on September 30, I aired a podcast on James Chrystal and Nicholas Bjerring, the first two convert priests in American Orthodox history. On the same day, I published an article on the two men, reflecting on their relevance to us today. Given that many of our...

Bishop Basil on the Episcopal Assembly

Editor's note: On June 12, Ancient Faith Radio aired an interview I did with Bishop Basil of Wichita, the Secretary of our Episcopal Assembly. Recently, I learned that AFR produced a transcript of that interview. For our readers who might prefer text to audio, I'm reprinting that transcript here in...

The Russian Diocese in the <i>San Francisco Call</i>, 1900

Editor's note: On April 22, 1900, the San Francisco Call published a full-page spread on Orthodoxy in America. The author, Sarah Comstock, visited San Francisco's Holy Trinity Cathedral and interviewed the cathedral dean, Fr. Sebastian Dabovich. The resulting article (below) was accompanied by several photos, some of which I have reproduced...

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...

Protestant brides and Greek grooms in DC, 1906

Regular readers of this website have no doubt noticed that I am really interested in early American converts to Orthodoxy. There weren't too many, but the handfuls of people who did join the Church in the late 19th and early 20th century almost always present fascinating stories. The most notable...

Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine on ecumenism in 1907

Recently, I happened to revisit an essay by Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine, published in St. Raphael's Al Kalimat (The Word) magazine. I don't have the precise date, but I think it was written in 1907. The whole article is on the subject of "Church Unity" -- what, today, we would call "ecumenism."...

Ingram N.W. (Fr. Nathaniel) Irvine and Bishop Alexander Burgess

At Frontier Orthodoxy, Fr. Oliver has published another article on Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine's career as an Episcopal priest. This time, he addresses a controversy involving Irvine, his Episcopalian bishop, and allegations of sexual misconduct. Irvine was tried by an ecclesiastical court, which found him not guilty of the charges. To...

Isabel Hapgood: Syro-Arabians in the United States (1899)

Editor's note: Regular readers of this website are no doubt familiar with Isabel Hapgood, the Episcopalian translator of the Orthodox service book from Slavonic into English. (For more on Hapgood and her role in early American Orthodox history, check out my recent podcast.) Today, we're reprinting an article Hapgood wrote...

Valerian Gribayedoff, the pioneer of pictorial journalism

As his name suggests, Valerian Gribayedoff was from Russia. He was born in Kronstadt in 1858, the son of a colonel in the Tsarist army. He studied in St. Petersburg and then went to England, where he appears to have been acquainted with the exiled French Emperor Napoleon III (aka...