Wilkes-Barre and the Parishes

St. Alexis Toth’s transfer to Wilkes-Barre in the heart of the Pennsylvania Rusyn colony, and the parish-by-parish movement of Greek Catholic immigrants back to Orthodoxy that he led for the rest of his life. The totals — the seventeen parishes commonly credited to his direct labor, and the tens of thousands returned by the wider movement — are given here as sourced ranges.

Tradition: Carpatho-Rusyn / American Orthodox

To Wilkes-Barre

After the Minneapolis reception, Toth was moved to the industrial East, where the great mass of the Rusyn immigrants lived. He was transferred to the parish at Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania — the site of one of the largest Rusyn colonies in the country — which became his home and base for the remaining years of his life (OCA, “Repose of Saint Alexis Toth,” oca.org; Encyclopedia.com, “Toth, Alexis,” calling Wilkes-Barre “the site of the largest Ruthenian colony in the country”).

[Disputed: the year of the Wilkes-Barre transfer. The OCA life and several reference works give 1893 (OCA, “Repose of Saint Alexis Toth”; Encyclopedia.com, “Toth, Alexis”); other accounts place his move, or at least the beginning of his evangelizing work there, in December 1892 (Canadian Orthodox History Project, “Saint Alexis Toth,” orthodoxcanada.ca, “In December, 1892, he evangelised the immigrants in Wilkes-Barre”). The collection reports the range 1892–1893 and does not fix a single year.]

Wilkes-Barre was the right base for the work to come. From the anthracite fields of northeastern Pennsylvania through the steel and coke towns of the western part of the state and into the industrial Midwest lay the dense archipelago of Rusyn and Galician immigrant parishes — precisely the population primed, by the same Latin-hierarchy pressures Toth had felt in Minneapolis, to consider the return he had modeled. For the rest of his life Toth would travel among them as the movement’s chief missionary and advocate (OCA, “Saint Alexis Toth and the Return to Orthodoxy of the Uniates”; Herbel, Turning to Tradition, 2014, ch. on Toth).

The Missionary Labor

Toth’s method was pastoral, catechetical, and tireless. Bishops of the Russian mission “frequently sent him to teach and preach to Slavic communities across the eastern United States and even into Canada,” where he explained to Rusyn audiences the differences among Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, and the Unia, and made the case for return (ACROD, “St. Alexis Toth,” acrod.org; OCA, “Saint Alexis Toth”). He backed the spoken word with the written: the pamphlet Where to Seek the Truth? and other catechetical writings, composed in plain Rusyn with proverbs and humor, circulated through the colonies as portable arguments for the movement (see Where to Seek the Truth). And he had the material backing of the Church of Russia, whose funds helped returned parishes — which typically forfeited their buildings to the Greek Catholic or Latin side in the ensuing disputes — to rebuild and survive (Encyclopedia.com, “Toth, Alexis”; Stokoe and Kishkovsky, Orthodox Christians in North America 1794–1994, 1995, ch. 2).

The unit of the movement was the parish. A disaffected Greek Catholic congregation, often led by its own priest and lay brotherhood, would resolve to return; Toth would counsel and catechize it; and an Orthodox bishop would receive it — the St. Mary’s pattern of 1891 repeated across the map (Herbel, ch. on Toth; see St. Mary’s 1891).

The Numbers, as Sourced Ranges

How large was the movement, and how much of it was Toth’s direct work? The sources give figures that must be read as ranges and carefully distinguished — the number of parishes he personally brought in, the number of people he directly returned, and the size of the broader phenomenon he set in motion.

Parishes directly credited to Toth: the standard figure is seventeen. The OCA and ACROD lives state that “seventeen parishes were received into Orthodoxy through the efforts of Father Toth,” and Herbel likewise credits his personal efforts with establishing seventeen parishes (OCA, “Repose of Saint Alexis Toth”; ACROD, “St. Alexis Toth”; Herbel, Turning to Tradition, ch. on Toth). Some accounts phrase it as “over seventeen” (OCA, “Saint Alexis Toth and the Return to Orthodoxy of the Uniates,” “over 17 parishes”).

People directly returned through Toth: here the sources give a range. The lives commonly credit his labors, together with the work of others, with “more than 20,000” Carpatho-Rusyn and Galician Uniates re-united with the Orthodox Church; the OCA elsewhere gives “approximately 25,000” through the seventeen parishes; the Canadian Orthodox History Project states he had “reunited 15,000 people” directly by his death (ACROD, “St. Alexis Toth”; OCA, “Saint Alexis Toth”; orthodoxcanada.ca, “Saint Alexis Toth”).

[Disputed: the number of people directly returned to Orthodoxy through Toth’s own labors. Figures given in the diocesan and reference literature range from ~15,000 (orthodoxcanada.ca) through “more than 20,000” (acrod.org; oca.org) to “approximately 25,000” (oca.org), the higher figures typically crediting “the work of others” alongside Toth. The collection reports the ~15,000–25,000 range and attributes the seventeen-parish figure to his direct efforts.]

The broader movement: beyond what any single figure could accomplish, the return became a mass phenomenon. Herbel traces the American Orthodox population growing from roughly 440 adherents in 1900 to over 118,000 by 1930, much of it drawn from the returned Uniates; contemporary church claims spoke of 163 former Eastern-rite parishes with over 100,000 faithful transferred by 1916; and the maximal secular framing has counted the movement, over the following decades, in the low hundreds of thousands (Herbel, Turning to Tradition, ch. on Toth, for the 1900–1930 figures; en.wikipedia.org, “Alexis Toth,” for the 1916 claim of 163 parishes / 100,000+; Encyclopedia.com, “Toth, Alexis,” attributing to Toth’s activity the eventual movement of “nearly a quarter-million Slavic Catholics”). These larger totals belong to the movement Toth inspired over a generation, not to his personal labor, and the sources that give them say so; the historiography section weighs the whole numerical picture and the question of agency (see The Numbers and the Agency Question).

What the Numbers Meant

Whatever the exact figures, the demographic effect is not in doubt. The returned Uniates became the largest single component of the pre-1917 American Orthodox diocese, supplied much of its parish base in the industrial Northeast, and were a principal reason the diocesan see migrated eastward from San Francisco to New York under St. Tikhon (Erickson, Orthodox Christians in America, 1999, ch. 2–3; see The Immigrant Era). The mother parish of St. Mary’s had multiplied into a network that reshaped the ethnic and numerical profile of Orthodoxy in America — the achievement for which Toth is remembered as the “Father of Orthodoxy in America,” an epithet the collection weighs in Section 09 (see Father of Orthodoxy in America). But the growth did not come without a fight, and the next file turns to the opposition and the courts.

See Also

References

  • Orthodox Church in America. “Repose of Saint Alexis Toth”; “Saint Alexis Toth and the Return to Orthodoxy of the Uniates in North America.” oca.org — used as locators.
  • American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese. “St. Alexis Toth.” acrod.org — used as locator (seventeen parishes; “more than 20,000”).
  • Canadian Orthodox History Project. “Saint Alexis Toth.” orthodoxcanada.ca — used as locator (December 1892; ~15,000 reunited).
  • Herbel, D. Oliver. Turning to Tradition: Converts and the Making of an American Orthodox Church. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. (Seventeen parishes; the 440-to-118,000 growth 1900–1930.)
  • “Alexis Toth.” Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org) — used as locator (the 1916 claim of 163 parishes and 100,000+ faithful).
  • “Toth, Alexis.” Encyclopedia.com — used as locator (Wilkes-Barre as largest colony; Russian support; the “quarter-million” maximal figure).
  • Stokoe, Mark, and Leonid Kishkovsky. Orthodox Christians in North America 1794–1994. Orthodox Christian Publications Center, 1995.
  • Erickson, John H. Orthodox Christians in America: A Short History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.