SEPARATED BY FORCE - REUNITED BY LOVE:

THE TRIUMPH OF ORTHODOX IN AMERICA

By the Very Rev. Vladimir S. Borichevsky, Archpriest

Dean of St. Tikhon's Seminary

THE ORTHODOX CATHOLIC CHURCH IN AMERICA

The history of the Orthodox Church is best told through the lives of individuals - men or women who in a unique way represent the church at a particular period in Her life. The history of the Church was first told and summed up in the life of Jesus Christ our Lord. Indeed, His life is the very heart, mind and soul of the Church, as He Himself promised, "For I am with you always, even to the end of the world." The individual follower of Christ is called to follow in His way and to do His work in the world to proclaim and spread the Good News throughout the world. The Gospel of Jesus Christ our Lord was first spread by His followers, particularly the Apostles Peter and Paul, whose story is told in the Acts of the Apostles. After the apostles, many outstanding Christians embellish the continuing story of the life of the Church: Saint Athanasius the Great, defender of the Orthodox Faith at the beginning of the period of the Ecumenical Councils; Saint John Chrystostom, Saint Gregory the Theologian and Saint Basil the Great - Fathers of the Church, great Hierarchs and Teachers of the Faith.

In the history of the Church eight centuries later, in the Slavic lands, we remember the holy brothers, Saints Methodius and Cyril, Evangelizers of the Slavic peoples, the Apostle of the Russian nation, Saint Vladimir and his two sons, Saints Boris and Gleb, the founders of monasticism in Russian, Saints Anthony and Theodosius of the Caves in Kiev, and the great Saint Sergius of Radonezh. Then, years later, closer to our own times, Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk, great hierarch and teacher, and Saint Seraphim of Sarov, the greatest spiritual teacher of his time and inspirer of the Orthodox renewal in our own time, and his contemporary, Saint Herman of Alaska, both of whom shared a common spiritual elder, Nazary of Valaam.

The young Church in America, whose entire history spans little more than two hundred years, has its unique individuals, leaders and teachers of the Faith: Juvenaly, the martyred monk-priest, companion of St. Herman of Alaska, the first to die for the Orthodox Faith in America; Peter the Aleut, who was the first native martyr for the Faith, a layman who was tortured and died in California in the early nineteenth century; Father Jacob Netsvetov, first native American to be ordained to the priesthood; Bishop Joseph (Bolotov), head of the first mission to America, consecrated in 1799 as the first bishop of Kodiak, but who perished with his companions on his return journey to head his missionary diocese; Metropolitan Innocent (Veniaminov) who gave his name to the golden age of the Alaskan mission - a great and tireless missionary priest and bishop, who was elected Metropolitan of Moscow after he had retired from missionary work.

After the purchase of Alaska by the United States in 1867, the missionary work in Alaska faltered but did not cease. The center of activity moved to the west coasts for a brief period, when San Francisco was the center. Bishop Vladimir will be remembered as the head of the mission who received into the Faith Father Alexis Toth and the parish of the Pokrova in Minneapolis on the Sunday of Orthodoxy, March 25, 1891, thus inaugurating the era of the return to Orthodoxy which continues to our own day. This period of great missionary activity among the immigrants, especially the "Russins" of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (i.e., the Carpatho-Russins, Uhro-Russins, Galicians, Lemkos, Rukovinians and others) brought to America some of its great missionary leaders. Bishop Vladimir had conducted the first English services in San Francisco on a regular basis in the 1890's. Father Sebastian Dabovich, the first American-born of Serbian extraction to be ordained to the priesthood in America, preached regularly in English and published several books for the mission in English. The mission in America before the beginning of the twentieth century was truly an American Church. It included, in addition to the very small percentage of Russins, native Aleutians, Alaskans and Eskimos, aboriginal Americans who comprised the majority of the faithful, and lesser numbers of immigrants Serbs, Syrians, Greeks, Albanians, Bulgarians, Macedonians, Romanians, Carpatho-Russins, Galicians and others. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the number of Orthodox in America had not reached 50,000, but it already had several distinguished converts to the Orthodox Faith from Protestantism and Roman Catholicism: William Hoskins, an eighty-nine-year-old Civil War veteran who was a Baptist from Los Angeles, who traveled to San Francisco to meet a living Orthodox Bishop (Tikhon) and to become acquainted with the True Faith he had discovered in books; Father Nathaniel Ingram Irvine (a convert from the Protestant Episcopal Church) and Father Nicholas Bjerring, a Roman Catholic theologian, ordained a priest in Russia (May 17, 1870), the first Orthodox priest of the first parish in New York City (1970-1883).

Several missionary schools had been established in Alaska and California. A seminary had been founded in Sitka in 1841, which lasted for seventeen years before it was transferred to Siberia, and thus, it can be said that America gave its first seminary to Siberia. Bishop Vladimir opened a seminary in San Francisco, and before the turn of the century in 1897. a missionary school was founded in Minneapolis and another in Cleveland, Ohio.

In addition to missionary work in Russia, Alaska and the United States, Orthodox missionaries began to work among not only the Bukovinians and Galicians, but also the Serbs, Greeks and Rumanians, as early as July, 1897. The first Divine Liturgy was celebrated in the home of Theodore Nemirsky, in Limest ne Lake, Alberta, on July 12, 1897, by Father Dimitri Kamnev. Within two years a church was built and the town was renamed to Vostok to commemorate the event. Here many Uniates were received into the Faith. The incomplete church was dedicated to the Holy Trinity by Father Dimitri on May 9, 1899. The First church in Canada had been begun by Bukovinians in Gardenton (Onutska), Manitoba, in 1897. It was completed in May of 1899, and that same year Father Constantine Popov began to visit the church annually from Minneapolis, Minnesota.

In 1895, the American Mission began the publication of the weekly bilingual American Orthodox Messenger, under the editorship of Father Alexander Hotovitsky. It was not, however, the first Orthodox publication to appear in English in America. The Slavonian, a newspaper, began publication in 1870 in San Francisco, and Father Nicholas Bjerring published a parish paper in New York in English in 1879. He also printed a service book in English for his parish earlier in 1876.

Under the spiritual leadership of Bishop Vladimir (Sckolovsky) 1888-1891, the work of reunion of the Uniates became increasingly important. Bishop Nicholas (Ziorov) 1891-1898, Archbishop Tikon (Belavin) 1898-1907, and Archbishop Platon (Rozhdestvensky) 1907-1914 were all deeply involved in this work, and by 1918 more than one hundred parishes were received into the Orthodox Church.

Orthodox bishops and clergy who came to America at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries were familiar with the problems of reunion. In 1889 the Orthodox Church in Russia celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the reunion of the Uniates of western Russia under the leadership of Metropolitan Joseph (Semashko), Archbishop Antony (Zubko) and bishop Vasily (Lyashevsky). The return of the Uniates in America was a continuation of a movement which had begun fifty years earlier in Europe. The medal struck on the occasion of the reunion in 1839 manifests the spirit of this movement. On the face of the medal is depicted the icon of Christ with the superscription, "Such is the High Priest that we have." (Heb. 8:1), and below it, "Separated by force - 1596; Reunited by love, 1839." On the obverse, the image of the Russian three-bar Cross, surrounded by rays of light and the inscription, "Triumph of Orthodoxy," and below the Cross, the date "25 March 1839."

Forty-two years later, on the exact same day, the movement of return began under the leadership of Father Alexis Toth in Minneapolis, Minnesota. As the movement of Uniates to America increased in momentum, so did the movement of return to Orthodoxy. Many Russins were caught up in the spirit of reunion when they found themselves outside the coercive environment of the Austro-Hungarian political state.

THE UNIATES

Two events, one in America and another in Europe conspired to initiate the great wave of Russin immigrants which began about 1878. In the late 1860's and throughout the 1870's the labor situation in the anthracite coal region deteriorated as the chaotic labor unrest caused by the changing economic and social situation led to strikes in the coalmines. The laborers, primarily Anglo-Saxons, Irish, English and Welsh, attempted to organize the unions in order to gain higher wages and better working conditions. The coal barons were not inclined to settle with the workers, and began to search for an alternative supply of raw labor. One source they discovered was in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. There, too, social and political unrest built on difficult economic conditions made many of the minority groups of the multi-ethnic empire of the Hapsburgs to search for alternatives. For the Russins of the Carpathian mountains, the Lemkos, Galicians, Bukovinians and others, the uncertain future with the increasing threat of war made them excellent recruits for the agents of the coal barons and the shipping lines, for immigration to the "promised land," America. At first, the immigration was only a trickle. Before 1880, there were 1,900 Slavs in the anthracite region. By 1890, the number had reached 40,000, and by 1900, it was 81,000. In the three-year period of 1905-1908, 200,000 poured into the anthracite region alone!

Mayfield Pennsylvania to this day remains a small borough, whose total population has never exceeded 2,500. Yet Mayfield in many ways is representative of the many towns, which sprang up in this period to absorb the great number of immigrants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. When the first immigrants arrived in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the mining towns were springing up overnight around the mines in what is now called the Midvalley of Pennsylvania, which stretches from Carbondale south to Dickson City Pa. Many of the towns that were built at that time have since vanished, and today Simpson, Carbondale, Mayfield, Jermyn, Peckville, Jessup, Olyphant, Dickson City and a few others are all that have survived the total extinction of the mining industry in the valley.

The first immigrants from Lemkivshchina in Austria-Hungary arrived in Mayfield about 1878. The Midvalley at that time was covered by almost endless forests with only an occasional homestead to house the first miners in the area. The first Russins came from the area of Gorlice and Grybow, from the villages of Belyanka, Losye, Stavisha, Brunari, Klemkovka, Snetitsya, Domnitsya, Visova, Peregrimka and others. These villages are located on the northern slopes and foothills of the Carpathian Mountains between the East and West Beskids. At present, this area is located in Poland. Most of the villages were situated in the valleys of the Bialy and Dumajts Rivers, which flow north from the Carpathian Mountains. Mayfield is located in the valley of the Lackawanna River, where it cuts through the Moosic Mountains, which rise to 2,400 feet in the area between Carbondale and Mayfield. The valley, its mountains and forests, were not too different from those of Lemkivshchina before the appearance of the terrible scars, culm banks and slag heaps around the tipples at the mineshafts. The first settlers remembered the Valley when it was still covered by forests and before the large towns filled the area.

Within a few years after the arrival of the first Russins in the anthracite region, the young men began to form brotherhoods, patterned in part in the societies of their homeland. The best known was the Society of Michael Kachkowsky. Organized in 1874 by the great spiritual leader and educator, Father John Naumovich, to increase the knowledge of the Russins of Galicia of their Orthodox Faith, their native language, and their traditions and customs. It was named for Michael Kachkowsky, a great benefactor of young writers, poets and journalists who favored the Russin ideal. When Kachkowsky died in 1872, his will stipulated that his considerable fortune of 40,000 guldens be used to further the cause of Russin literary ideals. In forty years, the Society's membership numbered some 30,000. Many young immigrants were members of the Society and received its booklets, pamphlets and other publications on history, culture and religion. Although there are no accurate statistics, one estimate states that the literacy of the immigrants from Galicia was 65.8% (cf. Reports of the U.S. Immigration Commission). This explains the rapid growth of newspapers and other literary publications among the Russins. The first brotherhoods in America were also influenced by the mutual aid insurance organizations of the Anglo-Saxon and Slavic neighbors. From them they also adopted the love for uniforms, for military parade and drill.