Tag: Greek
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When to sit and when to stand
Last week, I spent about 2,000 words discussing the question of pews in early Greek churches in America. Based on my findings to date, it seems that pews became popular in Greek churches sometime…
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Pews (or lack thereof) in early Orthodox churches
Yesterday, I introduced one of my ongoing research projects, a study of the origins of pews in American Orthodox churches. Oh, I’m famililar with the old story — that early Orthodox parishes bought old…
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Built or Bought? Greek church buildings in the 1910s
Pews are a common sight in American Orthodox churches, especially those in the Greek and Antiochian Archdioceses. I remember, as an adolescent in an Antiochian parish, learning that my fellow Orthodox in Greece or…
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Cassocks or Collars?
It’s a common debate within American Orthodoxy: should our priests wear cassocks, or should they wear suits and collars like their Roman Catholic and Protestant counterparts? One side rightly argues that cassocks are the traditional and…
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The tombstone of Fr. Kallinikos Kanellas
After I published a piece on Fr. Kallinikos Kanellas earlier this week, I spoke with Fr. Nicholas Verdaris, the pastor of Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in Little Rock, Arkansas. As it turns out, the…
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Kenneth Conant: architectural historian & Orthodox convert
In the Resources section of our website, we have links to the histories of a lot of parishes. (I’ve honestly lost count; it must be around 150 now, or perhaps more.) One of those…
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Calendar issues in early American Orthodoxy
One of the most obvious practical issues facing early Orthodox Christians in America was the difference between the Church calendar — the “Julian” calendar — and the civil (“Gregorian”) calendar. In the 19th century,…
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Early Orthodoxy in Portland, Oregon
Orthodoxy has been in Portland, Oregon for well over a century, and its history is of particular interest to me, as my in-laws live in the city, and I have visited there many times. Today,…
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“Thank you; we have the original.”
Most of the time, on this website, we talk about the history of Orthodoxy in the Americas. But it’s important to remember that, especially in the 19th century, American Protestant missionaries were traveling in…