Tag: Russian

The first convert priests… or… the first American apostates

On today's American Orthodox History podcast, I discuss the first two convert American Orthodox priests, James Chrystal and Nicholas Bjerring. You can listen to the podcast for the whole story, but I thought I'd give a brief summary here. Chrystal and Bjerring were exact contemporaries, both born in 1831. Chrystal...

The tragic story of Fr. Vladimir Alexandrov

Fr. Vladimir Alexandrov was a priest in the Russian Mission in the late 19th and early 20th century. He began his career in 1896, as the choir director of the multiethnic St. Spiridon Church in Seattle, Washington. After his ordination in 1898 (or '99), he remained in Seattle as the...

Irvine’s responds to Hapgood’s “Musical heresy”

Last week, I posted Isabel Hapgood's 1915 article in which she begged Archbishop Evdokim, "Please let us have a splendid choir!" She said, in part, "The Cathedral Choir, propertly constituted large enough, is immensely more important to your Church and Mission in this country than twenty little new parishes." The...

Robert Josias Morgan visits Russia, 1904

It's been a while since we talked about Robert Josias Morgan, the black Episcopal deacon who became an Orthodox priest in 1907, taking the name "Fr. Raphael." In the past, I've mentioned that, prior to his conversion to Orthodoxy, Morgan visited Russia in 1904. Upon his departure, he wrote a...

The New Orleans Gospel Book

In 1927, Fr. Boris Burden wrote the following: The Church of the Holy Trinity in New Orleans, La., claims to have been the first Greek church in the United States. On the occasion of its dedication in 1860 Alexander II, Czar of Russia, sent to its Greek Priest, the Reverend...

St. Innocent’s Vision

On October 18, 1867, the Russian Empire formally ceded Alaska to the United States. The next month, St. Innocent was elected Metropolitan of Moscow. Shortly after this, Innocent sent the following letter to the Ober-Procurator (the Tsar's representative) of the Holy Synod.[*] Rumor reaching me from Moscow purports that I wrote to...

Honcharenko in San Francisco

From the Congregationalist and Boston Recorder, January 16, 1868: Many will remember that, some two years ago, a famous service was held in Trinity Chapel, New York city, in which, with a great flourish of trumpets, one "Father Agapius," who purported to be a Priest of the Greek church, celebrated...

Two Russian Priests in New York City, 1863

In September of 1863, in the middle of the American Civil War, a fleet of Russian ships arrived in the New York harbor. Their mission was both diplomatic and strategic, but anyway, that’s not terribly relevant here.[i] More to the point, among the crews of the ships were at least...

The First Black Orthodox Priest in America

On today's episode of the American Orthodox History podcast, we're running a lecture I gave at the Brotherhood of St Moses the Black conference in Indianapolis at the end of May. The subject is Fr Raphael Morgan, the first black Orthodox priest in America. The text of the lecture is below....

The Failed Mission of Fr Stephen Hatherly

From 1870 to 1883, Fr Nicholas Bjerring was pastor of a Russian Orthodox chapel in New York City. Bjerring was a convert from Roman Catholicism, and he basically operated an "embassy chapel." He held services for Russian and Greek officials stationed in America, he ministered to the few Orthodox Christians...