Eastern Orthodox

Heritage

Orthodoxy reached North America through Russian monks at Kodiak, Alaska in 1794, then arrived en masse with Greek, Russian, Antiochian, Serbian, Romanian and Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants between 1880 and 1924. Each community organized under its mother church, which is why American Orthodoxy remains a family of overlapping ethnic jurisdictions — one communion, many administrations, a structure every Orthodox body itself calls anomalous and none has yet managed to unify.

Theological family

The theology of the seven ecumenical councils held without the later Western developments: the Trinity confessed in the unaltered Nicene Creed, salvation as theosis — real participation in the life of God — honored icons, the Theotokos, and a sacramental universe. Orthodoxy regards itself as the continuous ancient church; it says so gently or firmly depending on whom you ask.

Who decides what

Episcopal and conciliar: bishops in synods, no single earthly head — the Ecumenical Patriarch holds honor, not jurisdiction over all. In the US, each jurisdiction (Greek Archdiocese, OCA, Antiochian, Serbian, ROCOR, and more) has its own bishops; the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops coordinates what unity there is. Parish councils of laypeople manage temporal affairs.

What a first-time visitor would find

The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, sung — almost nothing is merely spoken — amid icons, incense, and processions, most of it unchanged for over a millennium. Communion is for prepared Orthodox faithful; everyone receives blessed bread after. Expect to stand a lot, expect beauty on purpose, and expect Pascha (Easter), not Christmas, as the summit of the year.

What it has always cared about

Continuity as a living argument; fasting seasons the whole parish keeps; monasticism as the church's beating heart; iconography as theology in color; and in America, the slow work of becoming one local church out of a dozen inherited jurisdictions — with converts now a large and growing share of many parishes.

Its gift to the wider church

The wider church's living memory. When Protestants and Catholics want to know what Christians did before their own divisions, they visit Orthodoxy — its liturgy, icons and spiritual disciplines now feed devotional life across every Western tradition, and the Jesus Prayer is prayed by Baptists.

Commonly confused with

With Eastern Catholic churches constantly — Byzantine worship, but in communion with Rome, a distinction our own data source mangles more than any other; with Oriental Orthodox (Coptic, Ethiopian, Armenian…), separated since 451 and not in communion with this family; and "Orthodox Presbyterian" is a Presbyterian body, orthodox with a small o.

Range of views inside it

Jurisdictional cultures differ (Greek, Slavic, Arab, convert-heavy OCA parishes); calendars differ (Old and New); languages differ Sunday to Sunday; and attitudes toward ecumenical engagement range from warm to wary. The faith confessed is strikingly uniform; the accent varies.

Where Eastern Orthodox churches are on the map

2,336 Eastern Orthodox congregations appear on The Church Map, across 52 states.

• New York — 232
• Pennsylvania — 217
• California — 201
• Illinois — 127
• Ohio — 122
• Florida — 121
• New Jersey — 109
• Texas — 106
• Michigan — 94
• Massachusetts — 91

Bodies and networks in this family

• Orthodox Church in America — hierarchical — 560 US congregations (RCMS 2020 (ARDA national table), 2020)
• Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America — hierarchical — 533 US congregations (RCMS 2020 (ARDA national table), 2020)
• Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America — hierarchical — 255 US congregations (RCMS 2020 (ARDA national table), 2020)
• Russian Orthodox jurisdictions in the US — hierarchical — 229 US congregations (RCMS 2020 (sum of 2 rows — our arithmetic, not an RCMS-published total), 2020)
• Serbian Orthodox Church in North America — hierarchical — 121 US congregations (RCMS 2020 (ARDA national table), 2020)
• Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA — hierarchical — 89 US congregations (RCMS 2020 (ARDA national table), 2020)
• Romanian Orthodox Episcopate / Archdiocese in America — hierarchical — 31 US congregations (RCMS 2020 (ARDA national table), 2020)
• Bulgarian Eastern Orthodox Diocese of the USA — hierarchical — 24 US congregations (RCMS 2020 (ARDA national table), 2020)
• Macedonian Orthodox Church in the US — hierarchical — 20 US congregations (RCMS 2020 (ARDA national table), 2020)
• Belarusian Autocephalous Orthodox Church — hierarchical — 3 US congregations (RCMS 2020 (ARDA national table), 2020)
• Albanian Orthodox Diocese of America — hierarchical — 2 US congregations (RCMS 2020 (ARDA national table), 2020)
• African Orthodox Church — episcopal
• Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) — episcopal
• American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese — episcopal

Moments that formed this family

• 1794 — Orthodoxy arrives in Alaska

  Eight Russian Orthodox monks landed on Kodiak Island in 1794, beginning the first Orthodox mission in North America. Monks like St. Herman defended the Alaska Native peoples against exploitation by the fur companies, and Orthodoxy took lasting root among them — the seed of what became the Orthodox Church in America.

• 1880–1924 — Orthodoxy crosses with the immigrants

  Greek, Russian, Antiochian, Serbian, Romanian and Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants planted Orthodox parishes across industrial America between 1880 and 1924, each community organizing under its mother church — which is why American Orthodoxy is arranged in overlapping ethnic jurisdictions to this day. The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese was chartered in 1921.

• 1946 — Church World Service and the relief table

  Seventeen denominations pooled their postwar relief work into Church World Service in 1946 — "help where help is needed, without regard to creed" — and the CROP hunger walks that followed put Methodists, Presbyterians, Catholics and Mennonites on the same country roads carrying the same signs.

• 1950 — The National Council of Churches

  Twenty-nine denominations — mainline Protestant, Orthodox, and the historic Black churches — merged the Federal Council and seven other cooperative agencies into the National Council of Churches at Cleveland in 1950. Its education division produced the Revised Standard Version and later the NRSV, the Bibles of half of American Protestantism.

• 1962–1965 — Vatican II opens the ecumenical era

  The Second Vatican Council transformed Catholic relations with other Christians: its Decree on Ecumenism spoke of other believers as separated brothers and sisters, commended shared prayer, and launched formal dialogues with Lutherans, Anglicans, Orthodox, Methodists and Reformed churches that continue today. In America, Catholics and Protestants began praying, studying and serving together in ways illegal to imagine a generation earlier.

  The largest church in the country turned toward the others and called them family. Almost every unity story after 1965 runs partly through this door.