Tag: ROCOR

Conference on St. Tikhon at Jordanville

On October 9-10, Holy Trinity Seminary in Jordanville, NY is hosting a conference on the life and times of St. Tikhon, the great Russian bishop in America and later Patriarch of Moscow. I'm one of the speakers (on St. Tikhon's interactions with the other Orthodox ethnic groups in America), but...

Jordanville to host conference on St. Sergius of Radonezh

One of our SOCHA advisory board members is Deacon Andrei Psarev, church history instructor at Holy Trinity Seminary in Jordanville, NY. He's asked us to help spread the word about a conference being held at Jordanville on October 10 and 11 to commemorate the 700th anniversary of the birth of St....

Herman, A Wilderness Saint: From Sarov, Russia to Kodiak, Alaska

The following is a book review from our friend and colleague Nicholas Chapman: Herman, A Wilderness Saint: From Sarov, Russia to Kodiak, Alaska is a new book that I think will be of interest to many readers of this web site. It has been translated from Russian and contains material not...

Freemasonry in American Orthodox history

Once upon a time, it was the norm for American men to be members of fraternal organizations. These were especially attractive to new immigrants, who wanted to be integrated into American society and make progress in business. And in that earlier era, fraternal membership was the best and quickest way to...

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....

Historical Studies of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad

One of our advisory board members, Deacon Andrei Psarev of Holy Trinity Seminary in Jordanville, NY, operates the excellent church history website ROCORStudies.org. As the name suggests, the site is devoted to studying the history of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR). Recently, we asked Deacon Andrei to...

This week in American Orthodox history (March 12-18)

This week is a busy one: March 14, 1767: Philip Ludwell III, the first Orthodox convert in American history, died in London. Decades earlier, in 1738, Ludwell had joined the Orthodox Church in London. He was just 22 at the time, and was a rising star in the Virginia aristocracy....

ROCOR to offer an annual memorial service for Philip Ludwell III

Today being a Monday, I normally would publish the next edition of my "This week in American Orthodox history" series (in which I would say, among other things, that today marks the 97th anniversary of St. Raphael Hawaweeny's repose). But that will have to wait until tomorrow, because I need...

Hierarchical, Congregational, and the problems of the “parish”

In 1993, the Appeals Court of Massachusetts rendered its decision in (brace yourself) Primate and Bishops' Synod of Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia v. Russian Orthodox Church of Holy Resurrection, Inc. We'll just call it Primate from here on out. This case involved a Massachusetts ROCOR parish that left ROCOR...