Saint Herman of Alaska Orthodox Church
A Parish Church of the
Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia
Tucson, Arizona
What is the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia?
In 1740, explorer Vitus Bering, with two ships, left the port city of Petropavlosk-Kamchatskiy in Russia and
sailed to the east. The two ships, the St. Peter and the St. Paul, were separated during the
voyage, but Bering sighted the southern coast of Alaska, and landed on Kayak Island; while Aleksei Chirikov,
captain of the St. Paul, landed on the Aleksander Archipelago off the southeast coast of Alaska.
As the numbers of fur-bearing animals in Siberia declined due to intense hunting, trappers followed Bering's route
to reach the Aleutian Islands and Alaska, eventually making their way down the Pacific Coast to Fort Ross, just
north of San Francisco. The rich fur resources there led to the colonization of the region; and the Church
responded to the spiritual needs of the colonists by sending eight monks (one of whom, St. Herman, is the saint
for whom this parish is named) from the monastery at Valaam to the new land. They arrived on Kodiak Island on
September 24, 1794. Thus it was that the Orthodox Church and faith came to North America from Russia.
Many people do not know that the "Russian Revolution" of 1917 was actually two separate revolutions. In the first,
which took place in February (according to the Russian calendar) the last Tsar, Nikolai II (now recognized as the
Tsar-Martyr, with his wife and daughters also among the Royal Martyrs), was deposed, and a "Provisional Government"
assumed authority in the Russian Empire. The Provisional Government, which was meant as a temporary step until
free elections could be held and a "Constituent Assembly" convened to adopt a constitution for the Empire,
experienced many changes, and was never effectively in control of the events and circumstances in which it found
itself. One consequence was the "October Revolution," which brought Lenin and theBolsheviks to power in the
Russian land. A civil war followed; and, when it was done, the Bolsheviks had won, and the Soviet Union came
into being.
The Patriarchate in Russia had been abolished by Peter the Great, and it was not until after the February
Revolution that the Church was free to elect a Patriarch. Met. Tikhon (now recognized as a saint among the New
Martyrs and Confessors of Russia), who had served for a time in the United States, was elected to lead the Church
as her Patriarch during the tumultuous times in Russia. In the midst of the Civil War, recognizing that many of
the faithful, with their clergy and bishops, were unable to be in communication with the office of the Patriarch,
St. Tikhon issued an order allowing the hierarchs in these outlying regions to organize themselves into temporary
"Higher Church Authorities" that would function in a conciliar way to guide the churches in their care until it
was once more possible for full communication to be restored. The death of St. Tikhon, and the inability of the
Church, blocked by the God-opposing Bolshevik state authorities, to meet to elect a new Patriarch, led to the
formation of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, in conformity with the order that St. Tikhon had issued.
As such, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (known variously as ROCOR, ROCA, and "the Synod") came into
being to care for the faithful who found themselves outside of their Russian homeland; and for the converts who
would come to find the Orthodox faith and way of life from the exiles and emigres in their midst. ROCOR is, and
has always considered herself to be, one part of the divided Russian Orthodox Church, and an inheritor and
conservator of the teachings and practices of the Russian Orthodox Church. The subjugation of the administrative
offices of the Church in Russia to the Bolshevik authorities in Russia (who later called themselves, "Communists")
prevented the re-establishment of relations between the Churches of ROCOR and in the Russian homeland; but ROCOR
never ceased to hope and pray that the Russian land would one day be set free from the Communist yoke, and that the
wounds of the civil war and Communist rule could be healed. The resurgence of Orthodoxy in Russia following the
collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the actions taken by the Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (which was
re-established by Stalin in 1943 as he sought ways to rally the Russian people to fight against the invaders from
Nazi Germany in World War II) at their assembly in the summer of 2000, opened the door to a dialogue between the
Church in Russia and ROCOR. We now await the signing of an "Act of Communion" that will restore these two parts
of the one Russian Church to the oneness of communion.
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