The Orthodox Expression of Christianity

The Orthodox Church represents one of the most beautiful, and rich expressions of Christianity. Though there are many variations in style depending on the country of origin (Greek, Russian, Serbian, Ethiopian, etc), members are fully united in faith and
in practice are slight, and in general, an Orthodox Christian can travel the globe and feel familiar with the services even if he is unfamiliar with the language spoken at a particular church.
Historically, the Roman Emperor Constantine was the first to sanction tolerance of Christians, in the year 330AD. He moved his capital to the Greek city of Byzantium and re-named itConstantine’s City, or Constantinople, and convened the first Ecumenical Council to establish what constituted the right (or orthodox) Faith and what was heresy. The Western and Eastern Church remained in communion until 1054, known as the Great Schism. The Orthodox Church has not deviated from the original Faith since the time of the Apostles, keeping the tradition alive through those times until today. Today, there are nearly 300 million Orthodox faithful.

In the 18^th Century,  Russian Orthodoxy came to North America, where a Russian church was built on Kodiak Island in Alaska, (Alaska being part of Russia until the United States bought the land), with a small group of missionaries landing on Kodiak Island, Alaska in 1794, bringing to the New World the Orthodox Faith of the Apostles. Over the next two hundred years, with the help of immigration from Europe and the Middle East, the Apostolic Faith spread throughout the North American continent.

The establishment of the Greek Orthodox Church in the Western Hemisphere came with the first Greek colonists landing in St. Augustine, Florida, the oldest city in America. The first Greek Orthodox Church was eventually built in 1864
in New Orleans, Louisiana by a small group of Greek merchants!