Religious revival: Alaska sees renewal of faith in Russian Orthodox church

news.bbc.co.uk ^ | Sunday, 12 September, 2004, 12:13 GMT 13:13 UK | Martha Dixon

[Destro]

Last Updated: Sunday, 12 September, 2004, 12:13 GMT 13:13 UK

Religious revival
Alaska sees renewal of faith in Russian Orthodox church

Religious legacy lives on in Alaska

By Martha Dixon

BBC, Alaska

The Russian Orthodox church in Alaska is claiming a resurgence in a faith that most people predicted would die out. When Russia sold Alaska to America for $7.2m in 1867 it left little trace on the state - except its religion.

Orthodox Church is a durable legacy of Alaska's Russian past

A new cathedral is being built in Anchorage

"I have eight children and 36 grandchildren and they've all been baptised Orthodox" - Tania Chichenoff

"We are now the largest church in Alaska" - Bishop Nikolai

Speeding across calm blue waters we head with pilgrims from around the world towards one of the Russian Orthodox Church's most holy places. But this is not Russia - it's Alaska.

Spruce Island, off Alaska's south coast, was made famous by St Herman, America's first Orthodox saint.

He and other monks brought orthodoxy to Alaska in 1794, several decades after the Russians conquered this land. We land on the shingled beach and look up to an old Orthodox church nestled in thick green forest.

"For me it's a wonderful place to be. After Perestroika there is a resurrection of religion in Russia and every church and every chapel there has an icon of St Herman of Alaska," says Alexander Vankov, a Russian pilgrim from St Petersburg.

Nuns and monks here follow the traditions of St Herman - living a life of prayer in this remote outpost with no electricity or running water.

From their nearby island monastery nuns kayak in to Spruce Island to celebrate the pilgrimage.

Strong faith

It was in this region where the Russians laid down their roots in Alaska. Russia was the dominant power in the North Pacific for more than 100 years - from 1741 to 1867.

The Tsarist empire oversaw the near-extinction of sea otters for their valuable pelts. But after Alaska was sold, most Russians left.

Now, with Alaska very much a part of the American psyche, the Orthodox Church has turned out to be the most durable legacy of the Russian past.

And it's in the native Alaskan villages where that faith is still strongest. Travel half an hour by boat down the coast and you get to Ouzinkie - you can only reach it by sea.

Here more than two centuries ago locals embraced a church which protected them against the tyranny of the Russian fur traders.

"We were born not knowing that there was any other. We live in a remote, remote village and the only thing was Orthodox... and we've kept it," says 67-year-old Tania Chichenoff.

"I have eight children and 36 grandchildren and they've all been baptised Orthodox."

Tania, like many native Alaskans from this area, has a Russian surname. Many of the Russians intermarried with natives.

"Very few Russian women came to Alaska. Russians had no prejudices against peoples with Asiatic appearances, so marriage with a native woman - that was nothing out of the ordinary," says local historian Dr Lydia Black.

Despite the arrival of Protestant missionaries after Alaska became American, the onion domes of Orthodox churches can still be seen across most Alaskan towns.

In Alaska's main city, Anchorage, the finishing touches are being put on a new cathedral. The church says it needs more space because of growing congregations.

"At the sale of Alaska, everyone thought that orthodoxy would disappear because all the Russians left. Actually quite the contrary has happened - we are now the largest church in Alaska," says Bishop Nikolai, the Russian Orthodox bishop of Alaska.

The Russian Orthodox church now says it has 49 parishes in Alaska and up to 50,000 followers here. Despite the radical changes wrought by Americans, the deep impression of Russian Orthodoxy remains to this day in Alaska.

[Tax-chick]

Wonderful story!

[The_Reader_David]

Thanks for posting this. My old priest, Fr. Chad Hatfield, is now the Academic Dean of St. Herman's Seminary. (They tapped him at least in because he had experience with bush missionary work in Africa before he converted to Holy Orthodoxy--the same reason he'd been on the OCMC board for years.)

[stripes1776]

we are now the largest church in Alaska," says Bishop Nikolai, the Russian Orthodox bishop of Alaska.

The Right Reverend Nikolai is a bishop of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), not the Russian Orthodox Church. It would be nice if journalists would get their facts straight before publishing a story.

[FormerLib]

An Orthodox ping.

[MarMema]

Thanks Des. We see Bishop Nikolai and others from Alaska fairly often down at our place. God bless Alaska, and her overflow to us. We have some three missions here now, and so do the Greeks.

[aposiopetic]

Thanks for the post and the ping.

I suppose the BBC must find Orthodoxy's vitality quite curious if not indeed perplexing.

[Agrarian]

We have native Alaskans in our Orthodox parish. They refer to themselves as Russian Orthodox. Also, just take a look at the Diocese of Alaska's website and how they identify themselves, and you will perhaps be less critical of the journalist who wrote this story. His ability to get the facts straight may be at least as good as yours!

http://www.alaskanchurch.org/

To make things even more complicated for the non-Orthodox journalist trying to figure things out, Bp. Nikolai is Serbian and was for a long time a priest under the Serbian Archdiocese -- he grew up in Butte, Montana.

[stripes1776]

We have native Alaskans in our Orthodox parish. They refer to themselves as Russian Orthodox. Also, just take a look at the Diocese of Alaska's website and how they identify themselves, and you will perhaps be less critical of the journalist who wrote this story. His ability to get the facts straight may be at least as good as yours!

The parish I attend still uses Chuch Slavonic in part of the liturgy. The Gospel is still intoned in Russian. But it is not the Russian Orthodox Chuch. It is the Orthodox Church in America. If your parishioners still call themselves Russian Orthodox, they are free to do so. But the bishop the author of th article referred to is not a bishop of the Russian Orthodox Chruch.

[Agrarian]

I agree that the Diocese of Alaska is not a part of the Russian Orthodox Church and that Bp. Nikolai is not a bishop in the Russian Orthodox Church as an organizational structure. His diocese is Russian Orthodox, though, in terms of traditions.

My point was that referring to him as such was probably not the result of journalistic carelessness given what he probably encountered in talking to people in the Diocese and in looking at the information put out by the Diocese, which specifically calls itself the "Russian Orthodox Diocese of Alaska."

When non-Orthodox refer to someone as "Greek Orthodox" or "Russian Orthodox", they are not thinking in terms of jurisdictions, but rather in terms of describing what they see.

I also attend and am deeply involved in an OCA parish, and while this particular parish is a notable exception, it has been my observation, having been a member of OCA, Greek, Serbian, and other jurisdictions' parishes (and visited and read the publications of lots more) over the last decade and a half, that for some reason it is in the OCA that I find more touchiness about jurisdictional labels than anywhere else. I don't find this particularly attractive or useful.

When someone asks me if my parish is Greek Orthodox, I say "yup." When someone asks me if we are Russian Orthodox, I say "yup." When someone asks me if we are Serbian Orthodox, I say "yup." In each case I then say, "Greek, Russian, Serbian, Aleutian... it's all the same."

To expect non-Orthodox journalists to have parsed out the fact that someone would actually care that a (very favorable) article didn't correctly identify the organizational hierarchy of the diocese is really asking too much, and it reflects an unhealthy preoccupation with jurisdictional labels, which, as we all know, are mere (uncanonical, in every single case in the US and Canada) organizational structures.