www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Parish Life & Evangelization Native Orthodox Christians in Alaska (help...)

I'm reading the history of some alaskan orthodox parishes of the OCA and I'm glad to see that the history of eatern christianity has strong tides with our native americans (at least in Alaska) and the liturgy has been translated to aleut, inuit and other languages.

I've tried to contact the alaskan parishes but I haven't find their electronic adresses and if you're alaskan or know the e-mail of a priest (orthodox or byzantine catholic) from Alaska, please make me know it.

Tmak you.

Dear Remie,
St. John the Evangelist Orthodox Cathedral is located in Eagle River, AK (just outside Anchorage). Their web page is at http://home.gci.net/~truelson/. The priest's e-mail is on their web page. St. Nicholas is the Byzantine Catholic parish in Anchorage; I don't know their web page or e-mail, but some info is probably in byzcath.org's directory. Good luck in your research!

Agape

The best place to start other than a search engine would be the jurisdiction that most of the Russian Orthodox Aleut, Tlingit and some Eskimo congregations belong to, the OCA: www.oca.org. [oca.org.] Check the church directory for Alaska.

Many of the Orthodox Aleuts are Russian-Aleut creoles with Russian last names (spelt phonetically in the Latin alphabet: Baranov is Baranof). Basically the same ethnic group/mixture as across the Bering Strait in Siberia. I don't know how well known the Russian language is; from what I've read, an elder or two still knows it. I wonder if these congregations worship mainly in Aleut or Tlingit (what the Russian missionaries endeavored to do) or English now.

http://oldworldrus.com

[Linked Image]

i would be interested in hearing a liturgy in an eskimo/aleut language. anyone have one that they could copy onto a cassette?

In Christ,

anastasios

Slava Isusu Christu!

Regarding contact info on OCA parishes in Alaska as mentioned above you would go to the Orthodox Church in America website. I was Chrismated in Ketchikan, Alaska by OCA priest Nicholas Bullock. I came into Orthodoxy from the Byzantine Catholic Church, but as many Slavs do they go back and forth depending on where they move et al or what mood they are in I am attending the Roman Catholic Church here, because the OCA mission, in Ketchikan, is currently inactive. The OCA Churches in Alaska have just received a new Bishop, his Grace Nikolai, so maybe His Grace will be able to renew the life of the Alaskan Church.

I probably would not contact the Antiochian Diocese in Alaska,which is made of mostly former Evangelicals; they tend to have a very distorted view of Orthodoxy or lets just put it this way - they are still learning to be Orthodox. Many of them still think like and talk like Protestants. I was not impressed when I visited their Cathedral in Eagle River, those that I talked to seemed to have an Orthodox ghetto mentality; St. Nicholas of Myra, the Byzantine Rite Catholic Church in Anchorage, seemed more Orthodox then they were; not to be uncharitable, but Slavs speak their mind The problems in the OCA Diocese of Alaska are many, but we will have to see what the new Hierarch does, hopefully he will get things going again at the Seminary and revive the Diocese.

Sincerely in Christ,


Chief Sinner, Robert or Alexis if I wanted to use the name I took at my Chrismation in the OCA

>I would be interested in hearing a liturgy in an >eskimo/aleut language. anyone have one that they >could copy onto a cassette?

There are tapes available with Hymns and part of the Divine Liturgy in the native eskimo languages.
Contac either St Vladimir's or St Tikhon's bookstores. Both are on the internet or have toll free numbers.

OrthoMan

Thak you for your answers.
The OCA has a lot of problems, a lot of missions are being closed because they don't have money and enough clergy. That's very sad.
Regarding the Antiochian church, in my country the antiochian orthodox I know, are Arabs, but in the USA, every antiochian orthodox I know is a former episcopalian or protestant. I don't understand why.

Dear Remie,

Glory to Jesus Christ! The reason that you will find so many former protestants and Episcopalians in the Antiochian Orthodox Church has several reasons:
1) the acceptance of the Evangelical Orthodox Church ( a non-canonical orthodox movement of former Campus Crusaders) into the Antiochian Orthodox Church with full congregations entering the church and helped to feel welcomed paved the way for other protestants to enter the Antiochian Church as compared to other Orthodox jurisdictions.
2) The extensive use of English in the services has assisted in making Eastern Orthodoxy more open for Protestants seeking to enter an historic, apostolic lineage church.
3) the inability of many protestants to accept Roman Catholic/Byzantine Catholic beliefs about papal primacy and infallibility.
4)Metropolitan Phillip and the other Antiochian Bishops are encouraging active evangelization and the telling of the story of "Orthodoxy as the best kept secret in America".
5)The emphasis in many parishes of the importance of establishing a strong spiritual life based upon eastern spirituality and the Church Fathers as well as the ideals of a personal relationship with Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ has brought many protestants out of Modernist Churches into the Antiochian Orthodox Church.
6) And of course the spiritual emptiness that many Protestants/Episcopalians are experiencing as their church leaders embrance modernist, unorthodox teachings that oppose the teachings of the Holy, Catholic, and Orthodox Church.

In my experience and those of other converts, the Antiochian Orthodox Church is actually the most American of all the Orthodox Churches. Its use of English with limited use of other languages has created a home for Americans seeking a home in Eastern Christianity. Metroplolitan Phillip's allowance of Eveneing Liturgies on major feasts allow more believers to celebrate the Feast, even on Weekdays. Of the various Orthodox Churches that I have attended, it is has the lowest level of ethnic social club feeling and actually seems to actively welcome and incorporate the American Protestsant Convert into the Church rather rapidly.

It should also be noted that with the allowance of a Western Rite Vicarate, they have provided a home for those protestants who do not feel at home with Rome but are not desirous to abandon their Western Christian traditions and culture for full Eastern Orthodoxy. Thus for many Anglicans and High Church Episcopalians there is now a home for them to worship in their own tradition and culture.(*see my note in the Forum on this ).

I hope that this assists you.

Your brother in Christ,
Thomas

[The OCA has a lot of problems, a lot of missions are being closed because they don't have money and enough clergy. That's very sad.]

It is true that the OCA, like every other Christian denomination, is suffering from a clergy
shortage. However, your comment regarding the closing of so many mission parishes in not accurate. A mission parish is just that. When a mission parish is started in any jurisdiction there is no guarantee it will grow and prosper. Some do, some don't. Those that succeed go on to full parish status; those that don't close. It's as simple as that. If you read the OCA newspaper regarding the statistics & clergy changes you will note that a mission may close in one area while two new missions have started up in two other areas.
You state 'in your ountry' which indicates you do not live in the U.S. Where are you from?

OrthoMan

The OCA has a Mexican Exarchate and I was interested in the former Russian missions among indigenous population in Alaska because there's a similar programme among our people here.

The most interesting thing for me is this: how did the russian convert the Alaskans withouth falling in the error of sincretism, that the Spanish fathers had?

The Mexican Exarchate has nine missions and parishes and the Ascension Monatery has eleven priests but there's a lack of Mexican clergy. Currently we have two students in the seminary in he USA and one in Greece.

[The most interesting thing for me is this: how did the russian convert the Alaskans withouth falling in the error of sincretism, that the Spanish fathers had?]

You might want to pick up a book put out by St Vladimir's Press called - Orthodox Alaska - A Theology of Mission by Michael Oleksa (a native Alaskan priest). You can obtain it from St Vlad's bookstore.

OrthoMan

The Antiochians are successful; however--

Metr. Philip's decision to allow evening Divine Liturgies on the night before the feast is something I dislike. The celebration of Vespers for feasts is knocked out. People will lose the tradition of festal vespers. I prefer going to Vespers on a feast day anyway because that is the service where so much theology is expressed.

The OCA parish here does vigil (vespers and matins) on the eve of a feast and then does divine liturgy at 6:00 am on the feast day. That way anyone who wants to can go to the liturgy before work. I prefer standing for 1.5 hours in the morning much better than AFTER a long day of work.

One more thing--the Antiochian obsession with English only in many parishes pushes Arabs right out of the church. Witness 25% of the local Maronite Catholic mission (some 10-15 families) being Antiochian Orthodox....

In Christ,

anastasios

This in no way is meant to impugn the Eagle River church, St John's, as I don't know them personally, but the duplication and overlapping of jurisdictions in Alaska especially bothers me since it is a historic Russian Orthodox (Aleut Orthodox and Tlingit Orthodox) homeland that now is under the OCA. I understand the OCA said no in the 1980s to the Protestant self-started Evangelical Orthodox Church that St John's was part of, so in a way the presence of Antioch in Alaska is understandable since of their charity Patriarch Ignatius IV and Metropolitan Philip received this group into the Church. But still, this separation bugs me. Almost as if it is a community deliberately set off from the indigenous Orthodox church there (combined with the criticism posted here earlier), altar against altar or like a rival evangelical Protestant group. There is nothing wrong per se with a naturally formed all-convert or all-ethnic anything congregation, including all-ex-WASP, but at least be in the same local church, under the same apostle, the same bishop, as the Orthodox already there. (Then again, who am I? I'm not in the OCA.) Oh, well. At least the OCA and Antioch are in communion so in a sense Eagle River is part of the local church.

http://oldworldrus.com

Dear Serge,
I'm sure you have addressed this question before, but could you explain a little further how Orthodox jurisdiction is determined for a given area? How do converts decide which local church to join when there are more than one Orthodox Bishop over their city? Is it based on individual preference, or are there other factors considered, especially when the convert is not an ethnic Greek, Russian, etc.? If a new parish in Alaska should have been OCA, wouldn't it have been the responsibility of the Antiochian Bishop to steer them that way? It seems a little unfair to fault the community itself for their being Antiochian (unless, of course, there was some sort of deception involved). Being Catholic, I don't claim to understand how Orthodox jurisdictions work, so I will appreciate your insights. Thanks!

Agape

[ 11-19-2001: Message edited by: agape ]

Agape,

Glory be to Jesus Christ. I've written about this in a letter that appeared earlier this year in New Oxford Review and also on the Catholic-Orthodox Q&A page on my site (http://oldworldrus.com -> Orthodoxy -> Q&A).

The short answer to your question is, in new territories, whichever national Orthodox Church gets there first claims jurisdiction over the new Church set up there until that daughter Church becomes independent (autocephalous, Greek for "self-headed', as in, has its own patriarch).

Before 1917 all Orthodox in America, of whatever ethnicity, were part of the Russian Church because the Russians were the first Orthodox here, in Alaska since 1794 (it was a Russian colony until the US bought it in the mid-1800s). Then after the Russian Revolution, the Church there couldn't look after America anymore so the other ethnic groups brought in their own bishops, hence the overlapping jurisdictions divided along ethnic lines today. (About the Antiochians, an Arab Church — the first Arab bishop in America was the sainted Raphael [Hawaweeny], who was in fact a member of the Russian Church here.)

So, yes, a convert choosing a Church would base his or her choice pretty much on individual preference. Do I want to acculturate and learn some Russian, or Greek, or whatever, or do I want everything in English? Do I want to learn my faith by being among ethnic lifelong Orthodox — not unlike the way children gradually learn — or do I want to be with other converts, still learning everything, reading scholarly books voraciously and as jazzed about the Church as I am? Do I like the priest? Is the congregation friendly? Are there attractive, marriageable members of the opposite sex? Is there a Sunday school for our children? Etc. It lacks the objectivity of the Roman Catholic parish system, unchanged since medieval times — you live on the X block of Y Street, therefore you belong to St Z's, which ostensibly offers the same sound content as St A's and St B's in town (of course, in practice that isn't always so, and even the small-o orthodox Romans jump borders and parish-hop) — but it has the personal touch I understand some evangelical Protestant churches do that the unattached and unchurched find fulfilling. "Community'? Yes!

[ 11-19-2001: Message edited by: Serge ]