Orthodoxy in America: History

The historical arc of North American Orthodoxy: the 1794 Alaska mission, the native church, the immigrant era, post-1917 fragmentation, the 1970 autocephaly, and the conciliarity efforts since.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (North American context)

Section Contents

• alaska-mission-1794.md — The Valaam mission to Kodiak under Archimandrite Joasaph; Hieromonk Juvenaly’s death; the Russian-American Company conflict
• st-innocent-and-native-church.md — St. Innocent (Veniaminov), St. Jacob (Netsvetov), native languages and clergy
• immigrant-era.md — The see’s moves (Sitka → San Francisco → New York), St. Alexis Toth, St. Raphael of Brooklyn, St. Tikhon’s American years
• twentieth-century-fragmentation.md — One diocese becomes many jurisdictions after 1917
• tomos-of-autocephaly-1970.md — The OCA’s autocephaly and the recognition dispute
• ligonier-1994.md — SCOBA, Ligonier 1994, Chambésy, and the Assembly of Bishops

Read in order for the continuous narrative. The fragmentation file is the hinge between the single-diocese era and the jurisdictional present.

See Also

• Section README
• Jurisdictions — profiles of the bodies this history produced
• ROCOR history — the parallel Russian Church Abroad arc

References

• See the section README for the principal sources used throughout this section; each content file carries its own full reference list.