American Orthodox History

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course covers the history of Orthodox Christianity in the contiguous United States (the “lower 48”) from the American Civil War up to the present day.

The first class covers the pre-Ellis Island era, and I'll mostly be telling crazy stories about the first Orthodox Christians scattered around the United States. Then we'll talk about the great immigration at the turn of the last century, the era of St Tikhon and St Raphael and so many others. That era ended with the Bolshevik Revolution and the close of immigration. The next class will focus on the period from the 1920s to the 1960s, when so many different Orthodox jurisdictions were established, and when the Orthodox people, now rooted in the US, began to Americanize. Finally, we'll cover the period from about 1965 on -- the era of SCOBA, the establishment of the OCA, and the rise of American converts to Orthodoxy. 

SESSION 1: The Wild West: Orthodoxy in America before the Great Immigration (1860s to the early 1890s)

SESSION 2: The “Golden Age”: Ellis Island and the American Orthodox Saints (1890s to the early 1920s)

SESSION 3: Americanization and the Rise of the Jurisdictions (1920s to 1960s)

SESSION 4: The Modern Era: Converts, the New Immigration, and the Quest for Administrative Unity (1960s to today)