Tag: 1905

The Eve of the Battle of Pacific Street

Last week, we left the two New York Syrian camps -- Orthodox and Maronite -- on the brink of war. Each side's partisan newspaper attacked the other, and the Maronites took particular aim at St. Raphael, the Orthodox bishop of Brooklyn, accusing him of all sorts of outlandish offenses. Various...

Trouble in Syrian New York

Way back in January, I began what I intended to be a series on the 1905 arrest and trial of St. Raphael Hawaweeny. I wrote only one article on the subject, though, and even that article was more of a collection of quotations from contemporary newspapers than an actual piece...

Guns on Pascha, 1905

I was browsing my newspaper archives recently, and came across an article about a Greek Pascha celebration in New York, exactly 105 years ago today (April 30, 1905). Here's the whole article, from the New York Times: While more than a thousand persons were in front of the Holy Trinity...

Old Calendar Christmas

Today, of course, is Christmas for those Orthodox Christians on the Old (Julian) Calendar. Until the 1920s, all of Orthodoxy used the Old Calendar, and of course that included all the Orthodox in America. As we've discussed, the American media thought that this was thoroughly fascinating, and newspapers often ran...

The Trial of St. Raphael, Part 1

It's a funny thing -- slander, that is. Once it's out there, you can't take it back. Good men -- saints -- have been accused of the most heinous crimes imaginable, and been completely innocent. At the same time, bad men have been accused of the same crimes, and been...

Irvine’s ordination: another Episcopalian perspective

Very soon after his 1905 conversion to Orthodoxy, Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine wrote a letter to his archbishop, St. Tikhon, on "the Anglican Church's claims." It was, for Tikhon, a valuable document: a view of Anglicanism from one of its own, who had himself converted to Orthodoxy. Irvine, who retained...

1905: The busiest year in American Orthodox history

2009 has been an eventful year for American Orthodoxy -- perhaps the most eventful in our history. But it's got competition. The year 1905 may well have been even crazier. Here is a list of the major happenings of 1905, in no particular order: The headquarters of the Russian Mission...

St. Tikhon’s Vision, 1905

In 1905, the Holy Synod of Russia was preparing for an All-Russian Council. In advance of this, the Synod asked all the diocesan hierarchs of the Russian Church to send in their opinions on various church reform issues. St. Tikhon was among the respondents, and a portion of his reply...

The Russian Diocese in 1905

In 1905, the Roman Catholic religious writer Andrew Shipman wrote an article on the Russian Church in America. It's an enlightening piece, a snapshot of the Russian Mission taken by an intelligent outsider. Given that the Russian Mission is the subject of my latest podcast on Ancient Faith Radio, I...

“The Archbishop has made a big, bad blunder…”

On November 5, 1905, St. Tikhon ordained Ingram N.W. Irvine an Orthodox priest. It was a courageous action, and I cannot help but think that St. Tikhon's feelings on the matter were bittersweet. He knew -- he must have known -- that he was indeed ushering in a new "epoch in...