This model of monastic evangelization became the pattern for other Russian Orthodox missionaries as they trekked ever eastward, eventually establishing a network of missions across Siberia and along the entire Pacific Rim: in China (1686), Alaska (1794), Japan (1861), and Korea (1898). The eight Orthodox monks who arrived in Alaska in 1794 were simply part of this centuries-old missionary heritage of the Russian Orthodox Church.

The Beginnings of the Alaskan Mission

In 1648, the Russian explorer Simeon Dezhnev sailed from the Arctic Ocean, around the Chukotka Peninsula, and founded the post of Anadyr on the Bering Sea, facing Alaska. During the next several generations, Siberian entrepreneurs ventured across the straits to engage native Americans in commerce. Rumors of these early permanent Russian settlements on Alaskan soil during this period persist among Alaskan native peoples today. Whether permanent or occasional residents, these Russian frontiersmen brought with them not only beads, blankets, pots and pans, but their religious traditions as well. Orthodox laity brought the Orthodox faith to North America, baptized the first converts (often their own native wives and Creole offspring), and even constructed the first chapels. Clergy and official missionaries came much later.

In 1728, and again in 1741, Vitus Bering and Alexis Chirikov mapped the Alaskan coast, and in the process set off a "Fur Rush" -- creating a Russian "Wild East" much like the later "Gold Rushes" of the American "Wild West." For the next forty years, Russian traders and trappers would make annual or biannual trading expeditions to the Aleutian Archipelago in search of valuable sea otter pelts. Poorly equipped, these Siberian entrepreneurs were not seasoned military men, but frontier adventurers, much like Daniel Boone. Unlike Boone, though, these adventurers were bachelors. Inevitably they married local women who provided their Siberian husbands with the same clothing, tools, and food they would have given native Alaskan spouses. Thus, when the British Captain James Cook visited the Aleutian Islands at the end of the century (1793), he could not distinguish the Slavs from the native Alaskans. The Siberians had been completely acculturated into the material culture of the Aleuts.

This pattern of intermarriage and gradual evangelization of the indigenous people provoked some resistance. A major uprising against the Siberians -- during which some 200 Siberians and an equal number of Aleut warriors were killed -- took place around 1764. Despite occasional outbursts, the Aleut, Russian, and Creole communities gradually returned to a generally peaceful coexistence.

Gregory Shelikov

In the 1780’s a Russian trader, Gregory Shelikov, argued that sending annual trading expeditions to the New World across the Bering Strait was unnecessarily expensive and dangerous. The time had come, he argued, for the establishment of permanent trading posts in Alaska. The importation of a few hundred Russian settlers, Shelikov reasoned, could lead to the systematic exploitation of the sea otter habitats all along the Alaskan coast -- and vast profits. As the natives might not be receptive to such a colonial intrusion, Shelikov suggested that the commercial adventure assume a military dimension as well. A Russian settlement in Alaska, atop the North Pacific, would extend Russian political and military influence as far as Spanish California, British Hawaii, and the Spanish Philippines.

In the summer of 1784, Shelikov set out for Kodiak Island to establish his Alaskan base. By all accounts except his own, Shelikov’s expedition was greeted with hostility and armed resistance. Subduing the Kodiak islanders in a bloody encounter, Shelikov returned to St Petersburg to relate his conquest and present a request for a monopoly on the ensuing fur trade to the imperial court. He installed Alexander Baranov as company manager, governor, and virtual dictator of the small Russian colony. Shelikov did not live to see his Russian-American Trading Company receive its monopoly, nor did he ever return to Alaska. Baranov, however was to rule both the colony and the company with an iron fist for 27 years.

The Alaskan Mission

To convince the imperial court of the seriousness of his colonial scheme, Shelikov journeyed to Valaam and Konevitsa monasteries, located on the Russo-Finnish border, to recruit monastic volunteers for the new settlement in Alaska. One Archimandrite, three priestmonks, one deacon-monk, one lay monk, together with several staff members, left St Petersburg on December 21, 1793. They arrived in Kodiak on September 24, 1794, having travelled 7,300 miles in 293 days. Upon arrival, the monks were shocked at conditions in the colony.

It was not the poor living conditions, inhospitable weather, nor the strange customs and foods of the native peoples that so upset the monks, but the violent and exploitative behavior of their own Russian countrymen. Within a few weeks, the leader of the mission, Archimandrite Joasaph (Bolotov) was sending vivid reports of abuse back to Shelikov, believing that Shelikov would intervene. Receiving no reply, Joasaph, the priest-monk Makary, and the deacon Stephen returned to Russia in 1798 to report firsthand about Baranov’s outrageous actions. On their return to Alaska, their ship sank, and all aboard perished (1799). In retaliation for such continuing "interference," Baranov placed the remaining monks under house arrest, forbidding them any further contact with the native peoples (1800).

Saint Herman of Alaska

Despite continuing oppression by the Company, native Alaskans flocked to join the Orthodox Church. The priest-monk Juvenal reported baptizing several thousand himself. Although Juvenal would be martyred by hostile natives in 1796 [2], the more general success of the Alaskan mission can be explained only by the heroic efforts of the missionaries in defending the Alaskans from Baranov and his henchmen, as well as by the missionaries’ sensitive approach to the pre-Christian spirituality of the Aleuts. The Russian monks presented Orthodox Christianity not as the abolition, but as the fulfillment, of the Aleut’s ancient religious heritage. Most persuasively, the personal example of the monk Herman provided the natives with tangible evidence that the Gospel, when embraced with full dedication and commitment, produced God-like men.

To avoid harassment (and possible assassination at the hands of Baranov’s men), the monk Herman left Kodiak sometime between 1808-1818, and relocated to Spruce Island, three miles to the north. He named his small hermitage "New Valaam," in honor of his former monastery, from earlier generations of Orthodox monks had set out to evangelize Karelian, Lapp, and Finnish tribespeople. At New Valaam, Herman spent the rest of his life teaching the Aleuts, nursing the sick, raising orphans, praying, and working miracles. Most importantly, through his kindness, compassion and personal holiness, Herman exemplified an ideal Christian life. The last surviving member of the original mission, Herman died in 1837. His remains repose in Holy Resurrection Orthodox Church in Kodiak. The Aleuts never forgot the humble monk nor his legacy of prayer and deeds. Largely at their insistence, Herman was canonized in 1970 by the Orthodox Church in America as the first Orthodox saint America.

St Innocent

Following Baranov’s death in 1818, social and economic life in Russian Alaska stabilized. In 1824, Fr John Veniaminov, his wife, children, and mother-in-law arrived in Unalaska, opening a new chapter in the story of the Alaskan Mission. Quickly learning Unangan Aleut, the language of the Fox Islands, Veniaminov translated the Gospel of St Matthew with the assistance of local Aleut chief, Ivan Pan’kov. The two also collaborated on the translation of a catechism. Together they opened a parish school in Unalaska in 1828.

Traveling from village to village by sea kayak, for which he would later suffer constant pain and some crippling in his legs, Veniaminov impressed his parishioners with his fluency in their language, respect for their traditions, and pastoral concern. In 1836, he joined a Russian schooner traveling south to minister to those stationed at the most distant Russian outpost in America, Fort Ross, near San Francisco. While in Spanish California, Veniaminov visited the Franciscan missions along the coast, conversing with the Spanish monks in Latin. In a rare gesture of ecumenical goodwill for the time, Veniaminov even built small pipe organs for at least two of the Catholic missions.

Veniaminov returned to European Russia in 1839 to report on his missionary work. During this journey, his wife died in Siberia. After some hesitation, Veniaminov accepted monastic tonsure and ordination as the Bishop of Kamchatka, the Kurile and Aleutian Islands, in late 1840. Upon his return to Alaska, Veniaminov founded an All-Colonial School for the "training of native and Creole (mixed ancestry) clergy, seamen, navigators, physicians, accountants, cartographers, and artisans" in New Archangel (Sitka) [3]. He quickly learned the local Tlingit language. In 1844 he designed and began the construction of St Michael’s Orthodox Cathedral for the capital of Russian Alaska -- a structure which continues to dominate Sitka to this day.

In 1852, Veniaminov was raised to the rank of archbishop and transferred to Yakutsk, Siberia. There he learned yet another native language and continued his missionary work among the native peoples of Siberia. Veniaminov ended his days (+1879) as the Metropolitan of Moscow (the senior hierarch of the Russian Church), where among his other accomplishments he established the Imperial Missionary Society. At the request of the Orthodox Church in America, Veniaminov, who is buried at the Holy Trinity-St Sergius Lavra in Sergiev Posad, Russia, was canonized as "St Innocent, Enlightener of the Aleuts, Apostle to America and Siberia," by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1977.

Father Jacob Netsvetov

In 1828, Father Jacob Netsvetov, a Creole of Aleut and Russian ancestry and graduate of the Irkutsk Seminary, was ordained to assist Veniaminov (then still a priest) in the evangelization of the Aleutian Islands. Later, when Veniaminov was ordained bishop, he assigned Netsvetov to begin missionary work in the Yukon river delta. Making his headquarters at Ikogmiut, a village today called "Russian Mission," Netsvetov labored for nearly twenty years among the Yup’ik Eskimo. At the invitation of Athabascan Indian tribes upstream, he preached to, converted, and baptized hundreds in the Innoko River in 1852, thereby narrowly averting a tribal war. Netsvetov described this accomplishment in his personal diaries: "What a joy to see so many joined to the Church of Christ; former enemies, now living together in peaceful coexistence" [3]. Without the benefit of technology, without the protection or physical support of military or legal authorities, and hundreds of miles from the nearest European outpost, Father Jacob preached the Good News and brought salvation to thousands of Alaskans during his decades of service. In recognition of his outstanding work, Netsvetov was made a member of the Imperial Order of St Anna and knighted by Tsar Nicholas I. Fr Netsvetov was canonized by the Orthodox Church in America at St Innocent’s Cathedral in Anchorage on October 15-16, 1994. He is venerated as "St Jacob, Enlightener of the Peoples of Alaska."

The Meaning of the Alaskan Mission

Through St Herman, the Alaskan Mission was blessed by the traditional monastic example which SS Cyril and Methodius provided to the Slavs, centuries earlier. By SS Innocent and Jacob, the Alaskan Mission demonstrated the linguistic adaptability, cultural sensitivity, and educational outreach characteristic of Orthodox missions from Moravia to Kamchatka. Unfortunately, the heroic missionary work of the Siberian traders who married, converted, and raised their families in the Orthodox faith, and that of their children, the first Native American Orthodox evangelists, have received less attention. Nevertheless, through all their efforts the foundations of the Alaskan Mission had been firmly laid.

With the transfer to American rule in 1867, most ethnic Russians, including the vast majority of Orthodox priests, returned to Russia, leaving the 12,000 native Christians, 9 Orthodox parishes, 35 chapels, 17 schools, and 3 orphanages to fend largely for themselves. In 1872, the diocesan see was transferred from Sitka to San Francisco, and the bishop was able to supervise the mission only from afar. Over the next 100 years, the Alaskan mission received only sporadic assistance from the Orthodox community in the "lower 48."

Nevertheless, the mission continued to grow, largely through the efforts of indigenous leaders. Despite the fact that the mission never had more than 15 priests, scores of new parishes and chapels, as well as schools and orphanages, were built. Lay leaders continued to conduct services, preach, and teach even in the absence of clergy. The Orthodox Church in Alaska was able to survive because, from its very beginning, it was envisioned, in the best tradition of Orthodox missionary spirituality, as an indigenous church, not as a "diaspora." [5]

Saint Tikhon
In 1898, the Russian Orthodox Church entrusted its rapidly expanding missionary diocese in North America to one of its youngest hierarchs, the 33-year old Bishop Tikhon (Bellavin). Tikhon served as the head of the missionary diocese for nine eventful years (1898-1907), during which time the missionary diocese grew into a multi-ethnic American diocese, and ultimately, an emerging immigrant Church.

Early in his tenure in North America, Tikhon realized that the missionary diocese, as then organized, was unequal to the tasks assigned to it. The young bishop initiated a series of dramatic changes. In 1903, Tikhon consecrated an auxiliary bishop specifically for Alaska. In 1904, he consecrated a second auxiliary to administer the Arab parishes of the missionary diocese. In 1905, Tikhon moved the diocesan administration from San Francisco to New York to be closer to the centers of Uniate conversions and Orthodox immigration in the Northeast.

That same year (1905), in a report to the Holy Synod of Russia, Tikhon proposed a more fundamental reorganization of the missionary diocese. In keeping with the changes he had begun, Tikhon proposed that the Russian-supported missionary diocese evolve into a self-supporting, multi-ethnic, American diocese composed of distinct auxiliary dioceses for each Orthodox group in America. He noted that the missionary diocese

…is composed not only of different nationalities…which though one in faith, have their peculiarities in canonical order, the office ritual, and in parish life. These peculiarities are dear to each, and altogether tolerable from a general Orthodox point of view. This is why we do not consider that we have the right to interfere; on the contrary, [we should] try to preserve them, giving each a chance to be governed directly by chiefs of the same nationality. 1

In addition to the already existing “Russian” diocese of New York and “Arab” diocese of Brooklyn, Tikhon proposed adding a Serbian “diocese of Chicago” as well as a “Greek” diocese. In effect, Tikhon was the first to recognize that Orthodoxy in America had grown beyond a single missionary diocese, but was, in fact, an emerging immigrant church.

In keeping with the ancient practice of the Orthodox Church, and in the spirit of American democracy, Tikhon suggested that the emerging immigrant church be allowed to adopt a conciliar form of administration. This was a most radical proposal given the state-dominated, clerical and bureaucratic Orthodox churches of Europe and the Middle East. Tikhon hoped that by having clergy and laity work together, the thorny administrative and canonical issues involved with the trustee control of immigrant parishes would find their resolution. After a series of preparatory clergy conferences in 1905 and 1906, the missionary diocese finally held its first “All-American” council, composed of clergy and lay delegates, in February 1907, in Mayfield, Pennsylvania. Tikhon reluctantly sailed for his new appointment in Russia the following month.

After Tikhon’s departure, few of his remaining plans for the immigrant church could be implemented. His plan for ethnically administered dioceses was consistently postponed. The fundamental missionary vocation of the new multi-ethnic American diocese, however, did not change. Indeed, under Tikhon’s successors, Archbishop Platon (1907-1914) and Archbishop Evdokim (1914-1917), Uniate conversions and new Orthodox immigrant parishes continued to increase.

The Vision of Archbishop Tikhon

Tikhon publicly stated his belief that the emerging immigrant church would eventually possess the institutional and spiritual maturity to develop into a truly American body. At that future time the Orthodox in America would naturally require administrative independence (autocephaly) from the Russian Church. This vision of a future, independent, and indigenous Orthodox Church in North America, first articulated by Tikhon, was given institutional substance through his leadership.

Institutional Growth

When it moved from Sitka to San Francisco in 1870, the Russian mission operated 17 parishes schools and 4 orphanages throughout native villages in Alaska. No friend of Orthodoxy, the American territorial governor would complain twenty years later (1887) that the missionary diocese, now operating 43 parish schools, was still spending more on education of native peoples in Alaska than the United States government.

Education assumed a new importance in the era of mass immigration and mass conversion. “I have decided to found a seminary for young people born in America, who intend, as most of the priests from Russia, to stay there for good,” the bishop confided in 1904 to Basil Bensin, a future professor at the seminary. “This seminary would not be like the Russian ecclesiastical seminaries,” Tikhon continued. “We must establish a school to fit the needs of the people in America.”

To assist the American-born, the newly-converted, and future Russian missionaries to America, Bishop Tikhon created an Orthodox seminary in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1905. Unlike the first Orthodox seminary in North America, created by St. Innocent in Sitka in 1840, the new seminary conducted classes in English and Russian, as well as liturgical services in both English and Slavonic. In 1912, the seminary moved east to Tenafly, New Jersey, in order to be closer to the diocesan administration in New York. From 1912-1923, St. Platon’s Seminary enrolled 78 male students. In the same period (1916), an unaccredited “Russian Women’s College” was established in Brooklyn to offer “refined, educated ladies” vocational training as nurses and teachers in the American diocese.

Many parishes also formed schools, which typically met on Saturdays or after school on weekdays (unlike the Protestant “Sunday schools”). These humble schools, conducted by the parish priest, offered instruction in religion, language, church music, and national culture. “Each row was a different grade,” remembered one immigrant:

Each desk was about six feet long with a bench attached. It would seat three large children and four smaller ones. Heat was supplied by a potbelly stove. If you had an apple you were allowed to bake it on the stove…Classes started by singing a prayer at five o’clock and closed with a prayer at seven o’clock. Classes started two weeks before the American school opened, and lasted until two weeks after the American schools closed. These classes ran five days a week. You see, you only had an hour after the ‘regular’ school to eat supper, relax or play. There was also choir practice twice a week, which everybody attended. There were no delinquents in those days. They were too busy. Punishment was quick and often. No one complained to their parents, because if they did, they got a double dose at home. There was tuition too. It cost twenty-five cents a month, and you paid for your own books. 2

Following his re-assignment to Russia in 1907, Tikhon became in succession the Archbishop of Jaroslavl, the Archbishop of Vilnius (Lithuania), the Metropolitan of Moscow, and in the after math of the October Revolution (1917), the first Patriarch of Russia in more than 200 years. Persecuted by the Communists, Patriarch Tikhon died while under house arrest in 1925. To the joy of his former flock in America, Tikhon was canonized as a saint by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1989.

Saint Herman
of Alaska

Saint Innocent

Saint Tikhon
of Moscow

The Serbian Ethnarchy