The American Orthodox Churches and Clergy in the 21st Century

Abstract

In 1794, the foundation of a mission on Kodiak Island in Alaska by the Orthodox monks from Russia marked the entrance of Orthodox Church in America. Two centuries later, the presence of over one million faithful gathered into more than 2,400 local parishes bears witness to the firm establishment of Eastern Christianity in the US. The notion of "one state - one Church" was historically very characteristic of Orthodox Christianity. When the Orthodox Church is mentioned, one tends to think of its ethnic aspect, and when Orthodox Christians are asked about their religious affiliation, they almost always add an cthnic qualificr: Grcck Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, etc. Consequently, many Orthodox Churches — Byzantine and Oriental alike — that have faithful in the United States have organized their own jurisdictions in North America: the individual "ethnically based" parishes were later united into centrally administrated dioceses subordinated to the "Mother Churches" in the Old World. The original goal of American Orthodox jurisdictions was clear: to minister to the religious needs of the diverse immigrant ethnic communities: the Greeks, Russians, Serbians, Romanians, Armenians, Copts, etc. There is no doubt that for the first generation of immigrants these ethnically based Orthodox jurisdictions brought a big measure of order and unity to ethnic groups that otherwise would have remained fragmented and enfeebled in an "American melting pot".