02 — America and St. Vladimir’s
The American career: the 1951 crossing to New York, the faculty and then from 1962 the deanship of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, the partnership with Fr. John Meyendorff, the thirty years of weekly Russian-language broadcasts over Radio Liberty, and the death of 13 December 1983.
Tradition: Russian Orthodox (emigration) / Orthodox Church in America
Schmemann arrived in New York in 1951 to teach at a small and precarious seminary; by his death it was the most internationally influential Orthodox theological institution in the English-speaking world, and its press the preeminent English-language publisher of Orthodox theology (Michael Plekon, “The Liturgy of Life: Alexander Schmemann,” Religions 7, no. 11 [2016]: 127, p. 3). The transformation was not his alone — the partnership with John Meyendorff was decisive — but the vision and the public voice were his.
The second file treats what is, in sheer numbers, the largest audience he ever had. From 1953 until his death he broadcast weekly talks into the Soviet Union over Radio Liberty, introduced only as “Father Alexander,” and for many listeners inside Russia — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn among them — his was the only sustained Christian teaching they encountered.
Contents
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Move to America and the Deanship | The 1951 crossing, the deanship from 1962, Meyendorff, and the death of 1983 |
| Radio Liberty and Solzhenitsyn | The broadcasts, their reach, and the full arc of the Solzhenitsyn relationship |
See Also
- St. Sergius and the Paris School — the formation he brought with him
- The Road to Autocephaly — the ecclesial project of the American years
- The Journals — the deanship seen from the inside
- Fr. John Meyendorff — the colleague and co-architect
- Influence and a Sober Assessment — what the American career finally amounted to