This week in American Orthodox history (Nov. 5-11)

November 8, 1894: Memorial services for Tsar Alexander III of Russia were held in New York and Washington, DC. The New York memorial was held in Holy Trinity Greek church, because there was no Russian church in the city. In Washington, President Grover Cleveland attended the service, which was led...

Photo of the week: the monument to Fr. Methodios Kourkoulis

In its early years, Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church (later Cathedral) went through priests like a newborn goes through diapers. In the dozen years from its founding in 1892 until 1904, the parish welcomed, and said goodbye to, no fewer than eight pastors. These included some (relatively) big names: Fr....

An Antiochian wedding at the St. Louis World’s Fair

(An earlier version of this post was published in 2010.) 108 years ago this week, in 1904, St. Raphael Hawaweeny, the Syro-Arab Bishop of Brooklyn, officiated at a wedding in St. Louis. The English bride and Arab groom had a rather romantic backstory, and the wedding took place at the imitation...

This week in American Orthodox history (Sept. 17-23)

September 18, 1905: On the very same day, two big events took place: St. Tikhon Bellavin, the Russian Archbishop of North America, elevated Fr. Sebastian Dabovich to the rank of archimandrite. Dabovich was the leader of the Serbian Orthodox in America, and Tikhon planned to make him a bishop, although...

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...

This week in American Orthodox history (Sept. 10-16)

September 11, 1893: The World's Parliament of Religions opened in Chicago. I've written quite a bit about the Parliament in past articles, and you can read all of them by clicking here. The super-short version: In conjunction with the Chicago World's Fair, representatives from every major world religion convened in...

St Raphael Hawaweeny & Spanish language Orthodoxy in the Americas

St Raphael Hawaweeny was a native of Lebanon, who in 1904 became the first Orthodox bishop ordained in the new world. As Bishop of Brooklyn he had oversight over the Syro-Lebanese communities that were beginning to appear in the Americas in the early twentieth century and he worked tirelessly for...

May 1964: A Radical Change in the History of the Russian Church Abroad

The 1964 Council of the Bishops of the Russian Church Abroad (ROCOR) marked a new milestone in its history: on May 27, 1964 Metropolitan Anastasii (Gribanovskii) retired. Bishop Anastasii’s episcopal consecration took place in Moscow in 1906. In 1913 he was appointed to devise rites for the glorification of St....

Nicholas Chapman podcast on early 18th century Orthodox catechism in English

As you may (or may not) know, regular OrthodoxHistory.org author Nicholas Chapman -- the man who has single-handedly rewritten our understanding of early Orthodoxy in America -- hosts a podcast on Ancient Faith Radio, called Speaking of Books. For his most recent episode, Nicholas reviewed an intriguing volume: The Russian...

A 5th century Greek church in Connecticut? Nope.

Recently, an article has been circulating among some Orthodox folks on the Internet on a purported Greek Orthodox church in Connecticut, dating to the 5th century. If the article is accurate, it's an absolute bombshell -- it claims that Orthodox monks from North Africa fled persecution in the late 400s...