David's Daily Diversions

Well, except those churches are OCA... including the Cathedral pictured and of course Bishop Nikolai is the *American* ORthodox Bishop of Alaska...

The OCA call it the "Russian Orthodox Diocese of Alaska", as you can see from the link on the BBC site. I'm sure that's why the BBC referred to him as the Russian Orthodox bishop.

That's fascinating. I'm OCA, and I've never heard it called that. The site, however, is very clearly the official site of the diocese. The OCA.org site lists it as the Diocese of Alaska, and it links to the same web page, AlaskanChurch.org.

You are quite right. I retract my complaint. The BBC is another victim of Orthodoxy's American Problem.

How very odd - and sad. And just under that Huge "Russian Orthodox" banner it says "Diocese of the Orthodox Church in America".

Huw, it is probably political, in the sense that a very powerful, yet very sensitive bloc of faithful have a strong connection to the idea of Russian Orthodoxy. We have some the same issues up here in the "northeast corridor" as OCA clergy like to call it. Second, third, and fourth generation Americans still considering themselves Russian when they know little of the culture and less of the language.

Until the OCA is subsumed into a unified Orthodox Church in America, it is still the Russian Orthodox Church in America. Or, with respect to the views of ROCOR, the OCA at least claims to be the legitimate Russian Orthodox Church in America. (Why the Moscow Patriarchate now also has North American parishes, I don't know - like we needed more confusion and multiplicity of jurisdictions!)

Thus I think the OCA is making a statement that it is the legitimate Russian Orthodox Church in Alaska.

I don't think the OCA can afford to fully de-Russify until a) ROCOR return to the Moscow Patriarchate or assimilate into the OCA (the first of which should lead to the second anyway) and b) all of SCOBA become autocephalous (not just autonomous, though that is a giant step in the right direction) as one American Church.

About 18 months ago I read a great article about an Orthodox church-in-a-box being sent to Alaska. How much kewler does it get than a folding DIY Orthodox church?