Tag: England


Embassy, Emigrants, and Englishmen: A Review


Review of Christopher Birchall. Embassy, Emigrants, and Englishmen: The Three Hundred Year History of a Russian Orthodox Church in London. Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Publications, 2014. In Embassy, Emigrants, and Englishmen, Christopher Birchall has produced the definitive history of Russian Orthodox presence in London. The book is unlikely to be...

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...

A Virginian Apostle: The First Orthodox Catechism in the Americas?


Editor's note: We're extremely pleased to present another article by Nicholas Chapman, who continues to excavate the very earliest origins of Orthodoxy in America. To read more about Nicholas and his exciting research, check out the upcoming edition of the journal Road to Emmaus, which features a lengthy interview with...

The Case Against Agapius Honcharenko


Editor's note: Over the past several weeks, we have been publishing some historical documents which Nicholas Chapman recently discovered in London. Here are the relevant links: Nicholas’ introduction to the documents A letter by St. Philaret of Moscow on Orthodoxy in America in 1865 A letter by Agapius Honcharenko in...

Agapius Honcharenko in defense of himself


Editor's note: Today, we present the second of three historical documents recently discovered by Nicholas Chapman. On August 24, we published Nicholas' introduction to the documents, and last week, we published a letter by St. Philaret of Moscow on the subject of Orthodoxy in America in 1865. Today's document is...

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...

The Failed Mission of Fr. Stephen Hatherly


Yesterday, May 19, was the 126th anniversary of the arrival in America of Protopresbyter Stephen Hatherly, a convert priest from England. Hatherly served under the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and spent several months in the US, attempting to establish an Orthodox parish in New York. Last July, I wrote an article on...

Orthodoxy in Colonial Virginia (Part 2)


On the latest episode of our American Orthodox History podcast, Nicholas Chapman recounts the almost incredible story of Orthodox Christianity in colonial Virginia. Last month, we published Nicholas' first article on the subject. Below, he continues his series. On July 4, 1789, after nearly five years of service, Thomas Jefferson was...

Orthodoxy in Colonial Virginia


A note from Matthew Namee: What follows is a first glimpse of what is, I am confident, the most exciting research currently being done on the subject of American Orthodox history. As I've been telling others, my own research is pretty interesting stuff, but Nicholas Chapman's work blows mine out...