Category: Historiography
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What is an Armenian parish?
Matthew Namee’s somewhat recent post concerning what constitutes a parish caught me by surprise, as I was preparing a very similar article of my own to illustrate a problem I’ve been having in continuing to tell the story of the Armenian Orthodox Church for SOCHA. When I agreed to assist SOCHA in covering Armenian topics,…
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What is a parish?
In my recent lecture on Orthodoxy in Chicago, given at Holy Apostles Greek Orthodox Church in Westchester, Illinois, I cautiously addressed the still-controversial issue of the 1897 split in Chicago’s Greek Orthodox community. Let me go over the basic details very briefly, before moving onto the broader question of what constitutes a parish. In 1892,…
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On blogging history: a response to some critics
On March 15, I published a short article entitled, “Bishop Joseph Zuk: A brief biographical overview.” I opened the article with this paragraph: Joseph A. Zuk was the first Ukrainian Orthodox bishop in America, but little has been written about his life. I don’t know a lot, but from the sources I’ve collected, we can piece…
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Guest article on St. Peter the Aleut
Editor’s note: The following guest article was written by Christopher Orr. Here are a few thoughts on the discussion about the historicity of the martyrdom account of St. Peter the Aleut kicked off by Fr. Oliver Herbel and continued by Matthew Namee on the Society for Orthodox Christian History in the Americas’s OrthodoxHistory.org blog.…
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Is the St. Peter the Aleut story true?
Well, this has been interesting. Last week, I posted a link to an article Fr. Oliver Herbel wrote, entitled, “St. Peter the Aleut Did Not Exist.” As you can imagine, this sparked a very strong response from many readers, who challenged Fr. Oliver on several points. Some took issue with his historical arguments, while others…
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Fr. Oliver Herbel on St. Peter the Aleut
This morning on his Frontier Orthodoxy blog, Fr. Oliver Herbel offered a post with the provocative title, “St. Peter the Aleut Did Not Exist.” Fr. Oliver says that he intentionally did not publish the article here at OH.org so as to spare us the inevitable debate; however, I do think it’s appropriate that we link to…
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Editorial: The New Americanism, Orthodox History and Unity in America
In the closing years of the 19th century, a number of Roman Catholic leaders in America were accused of a heresy called Americanism, and Pope Leo XIII wrote an apostolic letter specifically denouncing elements of this teaching, Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae. Americanism was essentially the emphasis on American political values over against the Roman Catholic political…
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Rethinking the Myth of Unity
One year ago, I delivered a paper at St. Vladimir’s Seminary entitled, “The Myth of Unity and the Origins of Jurisdictional Pluralism in American Orthodoxy.” (Click here for the audio.) My thesis was that, contrary to a widely-held belief, American Orthodoxy was not administratively united prior to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Rather, from a very…
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A Primer on American Orthodox Christian History
Our readers may be interested in a recent article by Fr. Oliver Herbel on his Frontier Orthodoxy blog. He reviews an historical narrative of American Orthodoxy offered on the website Catholic.org, and offers some necessary corrections. At the end, Fr. Oliver writes, Indeed, I think we need to develop a new way of telling the…
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The Fate of Father Juvenaly: A story from Yup’ik history
Editor’s note: The following article was written by Fr. Michael Oleksa, the foremost historian of Orthodoxy in Alaska, retired dean of St. Herman’s Seminary, and member of SOCHA’s advisory board. The article originally appeared as a chapter in Fr. Michael’s fascinating book, Another Culture / Another World (Association of Alaska School Boards, 2005). Fr. Michael…