To shave or not to shave?

For three tumultuous decades -- 1907 to 1938 -- Fr. Basil Kerbawy was the dean of St. Nicholas Syrian Orthodox Cathedral in Brooklyn. Apparently, in 1911, he was having some issues related to his beard, and things got so bad that he wrote to William Gaynor, the mayor of New York....

Passing Judgment on the Past

This week, I've written about two topics that can be somewhat divisive: clergy dress, and pews. From the feedback I've been getting, it seems that some people want me to come down on one side or the other. Should priests wear cassocks everywhere? Should they wear collars? Should our churches...

Pews (or lack thereof) in early Orthodox churches

Yesterday, I introduced one of my ongoing research projects, a study of the origins of pews in American Orthodox churches. Oh, I'm famililar with the old story -- that early Orthodox parishes bought old Protestant churches and retained the inherited pews -- but whenever I hear that story, it seems...

Built or Bought? Greek church buildings in the 1910s

Pews are a common sight in American Orthodox churches, especially those in the Greek and Antiochian Archdioceses. I remember, as an adolescent in an Antiochian parish, learning that my fellow Orthodox in Greece or Russia or Lebanon don't have pews in their churches. When I asked why we had pews...

Cassocks or Collars?

It's a common debate within American Orthodoxy: should our priests wear cassocks, or should they wear suits and collars like their Roman Catholic and Protestant counterparts? One side rightly argues that cassocks are the traditional and virtually universal style of dress for Orthodox clergy. The other side just as correctly points out that...

Reconstructing the life of St. Andrew

This has nothing to do with American Orthodox history, but given what I know of our readership here, I think many of you will greatly enjoy this article. It's an interview with Greek author George Alexandrou, published in the journal Road to Emmaus. Alexandrou wrote a thousand-page book on St....

The tombstone of Fr. Kallinikos Kanellas

After I published a piece on Fr. Kallinikos Kanellas earlier this week, I spoke with Fr. Nicholas Verdaris, the pastor of Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in Little Rock, Arkansas. As it turns out, the Annunciation community continues to maintain Kanellas' gravesite, and Fr. Nicholas was kind enough to send me...

Bashir, the Federation, and SCOBA

On today's episode of the American Orthodox History podcast, I interviewed SOCHA executive director Fr. Oliver Herbel on the subject of the "Federated Orthodox Greek Catholic Primary Jurisdictions," a 1943 attempt to create a national, pan-Orthodox organization. The Federation is to SCOBA what the League of Nations was to the...

Federated Orthodox Greek Catholic Primary Jurisdictions in America

In conjunction with the recent podcast concerning the Federated Orthodox Greek Catholic Primary Jurisdictions in America, I thought I would publish a special, extra entry for Frontier Orthodoxy. I still plan on writing two additional columns this month. For this entry, however, I wish to provide a basic timeline of...

Fr. Kallinikos Kanellas: the first Greek priest in America?

According to some sources, Archimandrite Kallinikos Kanellas was the first ethnic Greek priest to serve in America. And those sources may be right, depending on your definition of "Greek." The only other candidates would be from the Greek church in New Orleans. Fr. Stephen Andreades was the priest in the...