St. Sava’s, Jackson, 1894

In the Gold-Country town of Jackson, California, Sebastian Dabović organized and built the church of St. Sava, consecrated in 1894 by Bishop Nicholas (Ziorov) of the Russian Mission — the first Serbian Orthodox church established in the United States and, on the standard reckoning, in the entire Western Hemisphere. Still standing and serving, it is the enduring monument of his missionary work and the reason he is called the “Father of Serbian Orthodoxy in America.”

Tradition: Serbian Orthodox / American (glorified 2015)

The Serbs of Amador County

The town of Jackson, in Amador County in the Sierra foothills, was a center of the California Gold Country, and by the later nineteenth century it had drawn a community of Serbian and other Slavic miners and tradesmen — men of the same immigrant stream that had brought the Dabović family to San Francisco a generation earlier (Hieromonk Damascene [Christensen], Archimandrite Sebastian Dabovich: Serbian Orthodox Apostle to America, St. Herman Press, on the Serbian community of Amador County; “Serbian Jackson — Amador County from Gold Rush days to modern times,” eserbia.org, used as locator). These Serbs, scattered across the mining camps and short of clergy, were exactly the kind of dispersed Orthodox flock that the Russian Mission existed to gather. When the young hieromonk Sebastian — himself a Californian and a Serb — was set to missionary work along the Pacific coast in the early 1890s, the Jackson community was a natural focus of his labor.

Founding and Consecration

Sebastian organized the Jackson parish and oversaw the building of its church in the years 1892–1894; the sources vary between dating the parish’s founding to 1892 and dating it to the completion and consecration of the church building in 1894, and the difference is one of what is being counted — the gathering of the community or the finished, consecrated temple (“Saint Sava Serbian Orthodox Church (Jackson, California),” Wikipedia and OrthodoxWiki, used as locators; Damascene, Archimandrite Sebastian Dabovich). The brick church was completed and consecrated in 1894 by Bishop Nicholas (Ziorov) of the Aleutians and Alaska — then the only Orthodox bishop in North America — with Sebastian assisting and serving thereafter as its first parish priest (OrthodoxWiki, “St. Sava Church (Jackson, California),” used as locator; Damascene, Archimandrite Sebastian Dabovich). The consecration took place on the feast of the Entrance of the Most Holy Theotokos into the Temple, a date given by the parish’s own tradition as December 4, 1894 [Disputed: the standard account and the parish give the consecration on the feast of the Entrance, December 4, 1894 (OrthodoxWiki, “St. Sava Church (Jackson, California)”); the St. Herman Press biography gives December 16, 1894 — a divergence unresolved in the sources and possibly arising from Old-Style / New-Style reckoning (Damascene, Archimandrite Sebastian Dabovich)].

That a Russian bishop consecrated a Serbian parish’s church is not incidental but essential: it is the visible sign that St. Sava’s was built within the one Russian-led American mission, by the resources and under the omophorion of the Russian archdiocese, for a Serbian congregation (Stokoe with Kishkovsky, Orthodox Christians in North America 1794–1994, on the multiethnic Russian Mission; see Tonsure and Ordination). The parish was placed under the patronage of St. Sava, the founder and first archbishop of the Serbian Church — the natural patron for the first Serbian church of the New World, binding the young Californian parish to the eight-century root of Serbian Orthodoxy (see St. Sava of Serbia).

The “First Serbian Church” Claim, Stated Precisely

St. Sava’s, Jackson, is universally described as the first Serbian Orthodox church in the United States, and, in the fuller form of the claim, the first Serbian Orthodox church in the Western Hemisphere (Wikipedia, “Saint Sava Serbian Orthodox Church (Jackson, California)”; the parish’s own history at stsavajackson.org; and the historical marker text recorded at hmdb.org, all used as locators). Per the repository methodology this superlative deserves precision rather than repetition. What is securely meant is: among Orthodox churches built by and for a Serbian congregation, this was the first in the Americas. It does not claim to be the first Orthodox church in America (that honor belongs to the Alaskan churches of the eighteenth century), nor the first in California (the San Francisco mission was earlier), but the first specifically Serbian foundation — and on that precise scope the claim is well attested and undisputed. It is also frequently and credibly described as the oldest Serbian Orthodox church building still standing and in continuous use in the hemisphere, and among the oldest Orthodox church structures of any kind in the western United States (OrthodoxWiki, “St. Sava Church (Jackson, California),” used as locator). The building survives; the parish is alive; and this continuity is a large part of why Sebastian’s memory remained vivid enough to carry him, more than a century later, to glorification.

The Meaning of Jackson

St. Sava’s, Jackson, is the single act by which Sebastian is most remembered, and it deserves its prominence — but its meaning is best seen as the first and archetypal instance of a pattern rather than an isolated triumph. Sebastian did not settle at Jackson as a parish priest and stop; he founded the church and moved on, leaving a rooted community behind him and going to gather the next. Over the following two decades he would repeat the pattern across the continent, founding or helping to establish Serbian and pan-Orthodox parishes from Alaska to Chicago to Los Angeles (see The Tireless Traveler). Jackson is thus the template of his vocation: to plant a church where the Orthodox were scattered and unshepherded, to give it a patron and a building and a life of its own, and then to move on to the next mission field. It is fitting that, of all the places he served, Jackson is the one to which his relics were brought home in 2007 (see Relics and Feast) — the mother church of Serbian America receiving back the body of its founder.

See Also

References

  • Damascene (Christensen), Hieromonk. Archimandrite Sebastian Dabovich: Serbian Orthodox Apostle to America. Platina, CA: St. Herman Press. (The Jackson community; the founding and building of St. Sava’s; the consecration by Bishop Nicholas (Ziorov); the December 16 date variant.)
  • “Saint Sava Serbian Orthodox Church (Jackson, California).” Wikipedia — used as locator for the “first Serbian church in the U.S./Western Hemisphere” claim and the 1892/1894 dating.
  • “St. Sava Church (Jackson, California).” OrthodoxWiki — used as locator for the consecration on the feast of the Entrance (December 4, 1894) and the “oldest standing” claim.
  • Saint Sava Serbian Orthodox Church, Jackson. Parish history, stsavajackson.org — used as locator.
  • “St. Sava Serbian Orthodox Church Historical Marker.” hmdb.org — used as locator for the commemorative claim.
  • Stokoe, Mark, with Leonid Kishkovsky. Orthodox Christians in North America 1794–1994. Orthodox Christian Publications Center, 1995. (The Russian-led multiethnic mission.)