Month: December 2009
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American Orthodox History in 2009
It’s the end of another year, and I thought I’d do what so many others are doing, and take a look back at the year that has passed. But I won’t be revisiting all the significant events that took place in 2009; rather, I want to consider the progress of American Orthodox historical studies in…
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Protestant hymns in Orthodox churches
I’ve been looking through a borrowed copy of Fr. Michael Gelsinger’s Orthodox Hymns in English, published by the Antiochian Archdiocese in 1939. This is a significant work, and Gelsinger’s hymns are still used to this day. I’ll write more about this book in the future, but I found the following paragraph, from the Introduction, to…
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The Apostle of Organ Music
Last week, I wrote about the introduction of organs into Greek churches in America, but I didn’t really know why they were introduced. Thanks to David Mastroberte, we now have a plausible explanation: someone specifically set out to popularize organ music. That man was George Anastassiou. Courtesy of Mr. Mastroberte, here are Anastasiou’s own words,…
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The death of Fr. Misael Karydis
On December 22, I wrote about the tragic death of Fr. Misael Karydis, longtime pastor of the Greek church in New Orleans. You’ll want to read that article first, to follow what I’m talking about today. After I published that piece, I unconvered several more reports on Karydis’ death, from the New York Sun, Tribune,…
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Language in American Orthodoxy, 1916 (reposted from 8/21/09)
To our New Calendar readers: Christ is born! The following article was originally published on August 21, 2009. If you’re interested, you might check out the comments to that original posting. We’ll be back with brand-new material on Monday, December 28. As you might expect, most American Orthodox parishes in 1916 used foreign languages. From…
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St. Raphael’s Consecration (reposted from 7/10/09)
In recent weeks, traffic to our website has increased exponentially. I’m continually amazed by the numbers of people interested in American Orthodox history. Normally, we publish new material here virtually every weekday. However, today and tomorrow are busy days — Christmas Eve and Christmas Day — for those of us on the New Calendar, and…
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Organs in Greek Orthodox churches
As regular readers of this website know, I am particularly interested in the “Americanization” of Orthodoxy in the New World — things like clergy appearance (beards vs. shaved faces, cassocks vs. collars), pews, church music (organs and mixed choirs), early converts, the use of English, and so forth. Today, I’m going to talk about organ…
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Fr. Misael Karydis and his flying machine
Archimandrite Misael Karydis spent twenty years as the priest in New Orleans, from 1881 until 1901. Two decades at a single parish is a long time, especially in the early years of American Orthodox history. Before Karydis, only one priest (that I know of) had ever served such a lengthy tenure — Hieromonk Nikolai Militov,…
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Greeks in Florida, 1768
Recently, multiple people have asked me to write about the Greek colony in New Smyrna, Florida in the 1760s. Today, I’m doing just that, but I have to admit, I’ve been rather hesitant. Unlike many of the subjects I tackle here at OrthodoxHistory.org, the New Smyrna story is pretty well-known, especially among Greeks, who call…
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The First Orthodox Liturgy in Chicago
Fr. Misael Karydis served at Holy Trinity Greek Church in New Orleans from 1881 to 1901. Throughout the 1880s, he was the only Orthodox priest in between the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts, and even in the 1890s, he was basically the only Orthodox priest in the American South. As such, his duties were not limited…