On April 14, 1970, Metropolitan Ireney of New York received a telegram from Patriarch Alexis of Moscow (who died a few days later) stating that the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church in America, with about 850,000 members and 175 years of history, had been granted autocephaly (independence) under the title of "Orth­odox Church in America," with exclusive ecclesiastical jurisdiction in North America, including Hawaii.

The universal Orthodox Church, today with an estimated 126 mil­lion faithful, consists of fifteen autocephalous churches: the patriar­chates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Moscow, Georgia, Serbia, Romania, and Bulgaria; the archbishoprics of Cy­prus, Greece and Albania; and the metropolitanates of Poland, Czech­oslovakia, and now of North America.

In all, there are about two million Orthodox faithful in North America (although larger, but less realistic figures are sometimes cir­culated).

The newly created Orthodox Church in America is dedicated ex­clusively to the growth and development of Orthodoxy in America. Having received an official release from its Mother Church, it will strive to build Orthodox unity in America with full respect for, but in full independence from ethnic or political interests of the various immigrant groups.

The Orthodox faith first came to the North American continent in 1794 via a church mission from Russia to the Alaskan territory which was then governed by the Russo-American Trade Company[1]. The Aleutian Islands and Alaska had been discovered by Bering and Chirikov, captains of the Russian Imperial Navy, in 1741. They were followed by Russian merchants interested in the skins of the young ursine seals. In 1784 Gregory Shelehov, a merchant trader who laid the foundations of the famous Russo-American Company, landed on Kodiak Island. Besides pursuing his fur-seal business, he became deeply devoted to the task of bringing Christianity to the natives of the newly acquired lands. He built a church on Kodiak, founded a school, and personally baptized many Aleuts. Later, together with his partner, Ivan Golikov, he petitioned the Empress Catherine II and the Holy Synod to send missionaries. The petition was granted and a mission of eight monks, under the leadership of Archimandrite Joasaph Bolotov, reached Kodiak Island on September 24, 1794.

The mission was composed of volunteers from the monks of two well-known monasteries situated in the Northwest of Russia, where geographic conditions somewhat resembled those in Alaska.

During the first two years the missionaries baptized 12,000 natives and built several chapels. But this initial success of the mission was marked by the martyrdom of one of its priests: Father Juvenaly was killed by the natives on the Alaska mainland in 1795. He had urged the people of a village there to send their children to the mission school on Kodiak Island. They agreed, and Father Juvenaly led a group of children to the seashore. On the way he was overtaken and killed by villagers who had changed their mind.

The missionary work was carried on by the remaining monks: Hieromonk Athanasy, Hierodeacon Nektary, and the monk Herman. The last on the list, Saint Herman, the blessed Elder of Alaska (1756-1837), is an image of holiness and spirituality shining through 175 years of Orthodox growth and development in this part of the world.

Like St. Seraphim of Sarov, to whom he is very closely akin, St. Herman was born in a modest merchant family of a little town near Moscow. From his youth he aspired to the service of God. At the age of sixteen he entered one of the daughter houses of the famous Holy Trinity monastery founded by St. Sergius of Radonezh. The commun­ity was situated near the gulf of Finland. Seeking a quieter and even more secluded place of monastic life, he entered the Valaam mon­astery and then, some years later, joined the Alaskan mission of Arch­imandrite Joasaph. An extremely simple man, who nevertheless was well read and eloquent, he emanated love and understanding. For the natives, Father Herman was the very symbol of Christianity.

We owe much to a certain administrator of the Russian colonies in North America, Simeon Yanovsky, a well-educated man and a rank­ing naval officer, for our information about Father Herman. Pleading for the natives who were exploited mercilessly by the Trade Com­pany, Father Herman wrote to Yanovsky: "I, the lowest servant of these poor people, with tears in my eyes ask this favor: be our father and protector. I have no fine speeches to make, but from the bottom of my heart I pray you to wipe the tears from the eyes of the de­fenseless orphans, relieve the suffering of the oppressed people, and show them what it means to be merciful."

Not all administrators and merchants in the Russian colonies here were as noble and pious as Yanovsky and Shelehov. Yanovsky's suc­cessor, Baranov, and his lieutenants did not care for the missionary work. In fact, they were much annoyed by the interference of the missionaries and especially of Father Herman in their cruel use of the natives' labor. But Father Herman taught the natives at the mission­ary school, organized an orphanage, nursed the sick, fed the hungry and was the administrator of the mission for a while. In his humility he always refused to be ordained a priest. Having outlived all other members of the first missionary team, he finished his life in 1837 in semiseclusion on a small island off Kodiak, "Elovy," or Spruce Island, which he called, "New Valaam."

In its first important historical act the newly created Orthodox Church in America canonized its first saint and heavenly patron, the Blessed Elder Herman, in solemn services presided over by Metro­politan Irenei in Kodiak, on August 8-9, 1970. The Archbishop of Karelia and all Finland, Paul—himself a former monk at Valaam— was the guest of honor and co-celebrant.

New impetus was given to the missionary work by the arrival of a young priest, John Veniaminov, to Unalaska Island in 1824. He re­mained there for ten years, living among the Aleuts and studying their language and customs. He wrote the first grammar of the Aleut language and translated the Divine Liturgy, a catechism, and the Gospel according to St. Matthew into that language. His linguistic work has been recognized by Russian and foreign scholars[2]. He also built a church with his own hands and baptized practically the whole population of the island. After ten years of tedious missionary work at Unalaska and nearby islands, Father Veniaminov went to Sitka, where he continued his missionary activities among the local Indians, the Kaloshi. In 1839, he left for St. Petersburg to arrange for the pub­lication of his works in the Aleut language.

Father Veniaminov's missionary work was well appreciated in Rus­sia, and as a result he was appointed and consecrated Bishop of the missionary diocese of Kamchatka, Alaska, and the Kurile Islands. His monastic name was Innocent, after the eighteenth-century apostle of Siberia. Bishop Innocent returned to Sitka and continued his mis­sionary activities both on the Asiatic and North American continents. He founded a seminary in Sitka, as well as various schools and or­phanages. In 1848 St. Michael's Cathedral was erected there; it is being rebuilt now after having been devastated in a fire several years ago. After 1852 Bishop Innocent divided his time between Alaska and the Asiatic mainland because of the expansion of missionary work among natives of the Russian Far East. In 1868 Bishop Innocent was elevated to the highest office in the Russian Orthodox Church, that of Metropolitan of Moscow. Much of his time and energy in this office he devoted to the expansion of the work of the Russian Imperial Mis­sionary Society, of which he became the president. He died in 1879[3].

In 1867, the Russian government sold Alaska to the United States. Provisions were made that the United States would recognize the property and the rights of the Russian Orthodox Church[4].

On the suggestion of Metropolitan Innocent, a separate diocese was created in 1870 by the Holy Synod in the American part of the former Kamchatka diocese. Bishop John was appointed Bishop of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands.

Thus ends the early history of the Orthodox Church in America. Actually, the first Russian missionary endeavors among the natives of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands represent only the most eastern penetration of the vast missionary work of the Russian Church among various tribes in the underdeveloped regions of Siberia and the Far East. However, an organized and separate Orthodox ecclesiastical structure was brought to the threshold of the New World as soon as Alaska was politically separated from the Russian Empire.

The first three Orthodox parishes in the United States proper (the Greek parish in New Orleans and the Russian parishes in San Fran­cisco and New York) came into being almost simultaneously and independently of each other in the late 1860s. Actually, these parishes were "international." The church committee of the Greek parish in New Orleans included Slavs and Syrians. The Russian parishes in San Francisco and New York, supported by the Russian consulates, included many Serbians and Greeks.

These churches tended to the spiritual needs of various Orthodox nationals who happened to have come to the New World. There were members of the diplomatic corps and runaway sailors, solid Mediter­ranean merchants and penniless adventurers. For them the church was not just a house of prayer but also a place where they could meet their own people, have a chat about the old country, or inquire about a job.

The Orthodox churches, especially the one in New York, attracted much attention on the part of the American press and society. Orthodoxy was most often seen as a curiosity, something oriental and ex­otic. In spite of the efforts of the rector of the New York parish, Father Nicholas Biering, the religious life of the parish was rather limited. From 1870 to 1880 there were only fifty-five baptisms of children, twelve weddings, fourteen funerals, and four conversions, two of these being the wife and daughter of Father Riering[5]. The Orthodox Church was not yet ready to meet the challenge of the West, espe­cially in the setting of the New World.

In 1872 Bishop John unofficially moved the episcopal see from Sitka, Alaska, to San Francisco, making his cathedral the parish church which had existed there since 1868. During the time of his suc­cessor, Bishop Nestor (1879-1882), the Russian Church authorities officially sanctioned the transfer of the episcopal see to San Francisco and thus recognized the potentialities of Orthodoxy in the United States.

The real growth of the diocese in the United States began with a mass return of Uniates to Orthodoxy and the increase of Greek, Syrian and Slavic immigration.

Since the end of the nineteenth century there also had been an increasing flow of immigrants from Imperial Russia. These were of three kinds: peasants from the poorer western regions of Russia who had the dream of making money in America and then returning to buy a farm in their native country, conscripts who illegally left Russia to avoid military service, and people who were involved, directly or indirectly, in the revolutionary movement in Russia and escaped to avoid the consequences. The last category of immigrants increased after the political disturbances of 1905 in Russia.

The Greek immigration to this country also increased considerably in the eighties and nineties of the last century.

From 1898 to 1907 the head of the American diocese was Arch­bishop Tikhon, who became later Patriarch of Moscow, Primate of all the Russian Orthodox Church. During his administration in 1900, the Diocese of the Aleutian Islands and Alaska was renamed the Diocese of the Aleutian Islands and North America. The decree of the Holy Synod making this change thus acknowledged the continent-wide ex­pansion of Orthodoxy.

Archbishop Tikhon stressed the necessity of finding means for fi­nancial independence of the diocese as a step towards strengthening and spreading the work of the Church on this continent[6]. That was a hint of impending autonomy for the local church.

Also in Archbishop Tikhon's time the diocesan see was transferred from San Francisco to New York (1903), where a new cathedral church was built at 15 East 97th Street. The first theological seminary to train Orthodox priests for America was opened at Minneapolis in 1905. It was transferred to Tenafly, N. J., in 1912 and closed for lack of funds in 1923[7].

Thus the Church of Russia, which first introduced Orthodoxy to North America and created the Diocese of the Aleutian Islands and North America, exercised symbolical, if not always practical, juris­diction there among Orthodox immigrants of various national and ethnic backgrounds. Orthodox bishops in North America were appointed or confirmed only by the Holy Synod in St. Petersburg. Moreover, the diocesan administration received annual financial support from the Russian government.

After World War I and the Russian Revolution, the life of the Orth­odox Church in America changed radically. Various non-Russian national churches sent their bishops there and established their own jurisdictions in North America in complete independence of each other. Greek, Syrian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Romanian, Al­banian and other national churches made their appearance. The ma­jority of the Russian and Carpatho-Russian parishes, however, re­mained loyal to their diocesan administration which had been com­pletely cut off from the Mother Church as the result of political events in Russia.

In 1921 Archbishop Meletios, who had just consolidated various Greek factions in America into one diocese, was elected to the dignity of Ecumenical Patriarch as Meletios IV. In his new position Patriarch Meletios placed all Greek churches abroad under the control of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. According to the definition of the Patriarch, all Orthodox churches in the United States were to be united into an "Orthodox Archdiocese in America."[8]

Much can be said against the ecclesiastical policies of Patriarch Meletios Metaxakis, but he had an inspiring and broad vision of Or­thodoxy. In his enthronement address in Constantinople, he said in reference to America:

I saw the largest and best part of the Orthodox Church in the Dia­spora, and I understood how exalted the name of Orthodoxy could be, especially in the great country of the United States, if more than two million Orthodox people there were united into one church organiza­tion, an American Orthodox Church[9].

These words must ring in all Orthodox ears. Unfortunately, most of the Church leaders, Greek and Russian alike, had not grown be­yond their narrow provincial prejudices; and the patriarchal project of one church in America did not succeed.

As a result of the Bolshevik Revolution the Russian-American dio­cese was plunged into years of troubles, which explains the de facto recognition of emerging parallel jurisdictions. The Diocese was torn apart by internal strife, financial difficulties and claims by the schis­matic group established in Soviet Russia and known as the "Living Church" or "Renovated Church," which had some followers in Amer­ica. This group succeeded in taking over the diocesan cathedral of St. Nicholas in New York and threatened other church properties.

The grave situation was alleviated by the return in 1921 to America of one of the highest hierarchs of the Russian Church, Metropolitan Platon (Rozhdestvensky). Born in 1866, former rector of the Kiev graduate school of theology, consecrated bishop in 1902, former ex­arch of Georgia, then Metropolitan of Kherson and Odessa, a member of the Duma, he had ruled the American diocese from 1907 to 1914, and consequently was well known to his people. He succeeded in re­storing peace and order in the diocese, and prominent churchmen urgently petitioned Patriarch Tikhon to reappoint him formally as head of the American Church. Communications with the Patriarch at that time were extremely difficult. They could be carried through indirect, illegal channels only. Communication thus received from the Patriarch indicated his willingness to relieve Metropolitan Platon of his see of Kherson and Odessa and to confirm him as the ruling bishop of America.

Meanwhile, Patriarch Tikhon made the appointment of Metro­politan Platon orally through a Mr. Colton, a representative of the Y.M.C.A., who was in Moscow. After his release from prison, Patri­arch Tikhon confirmed this oral appointment by the decree dated September 29, 1923. The authenticity of this decree has been questioned.

The normalization and further development of life in the Russian-American Diocese was based on decisions taken at the Ail-American Sobor in Detroit in 1924 where the American Diocese of the Russian Church was reorganized as a temporarily autonomous Metropolitan District (Metropolia) and incorporated as the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church in America. At its head there was to be an elected Archbishop-Metropolitan, a Council of Bishops, and a Coun­cil made up of representatives from the clergy and laity, as well as periodic Аll-American Sobors[10]. This reorganization, as we can see now, actually paved the way for the Autocephalous Orthodox Church in America, to be established forty-six years later.

During these years of natural growth and development, the Amer­ican-Russian Metropolitanate acquired the prerequisites of an auto­cephalous church: maturity, its own territory, a sufficient number of parishes and parishioners, a hierarchy canonically capable of making subsequent appointments of new bishops, and the means by which to train new clergymen[11].

In regard to the Russian Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union headed by the patriarch, the Metropolitanate never questioned its canonical authenticity of spiritual authority; but it always insisted on its own administrative self-government and independence as the only reasonable and ecclesiastically correct arrangement in view of the political situation.

However, not all Russian Orthodox people in America shared these feelings and convictions. A substantial number of Russian immi­grants who came to America after the Russian Revolution or follow­ing the Second World War joined the jurisdiction of the "Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia," which has about one hundred parishes in North and South America, with a total membership of approximately 70,000. The higher church administration of this group was organized in Constantinople in 1920 by a group of emigre bishops headed by Metropolitan Anthony of Kiev and Galicia, who left southern Russia at the end of the Civil War with the remnants of the White Russian Army. Soon they had to move from Constantinople, the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch, to Yugoslavia, where they set­tled in Sremski-Karlovtsy, proclaiming themselves to be the supreme ecclesiastical authority for all Russian churches outside Russia.

This ecclesiastical group adhered to a political program which was extremely conservative. Among the resolutions of its first convention held in Yugoslavia in November, 1921, are found the following: "And may the Lord God return to the all-Russian throne His Anointed, strong in the love of the nation, the lawful Orthodox tsar of the House of Romanov."[12] This resolution aggravated the extremely diffi­cult situation of the Church in Russia and of the patriarch. On May 3, 1922, Patriarch Tikhon officially ruled that refugee hierarchs had no right to speak on behalf of the Russian Orthodox Church; their pro­nouncement did not "represent the official voice of the Russian Ortho­dox Church and, in view of their political character, did not possess ecclesiocanonical character."[13] Furthermore, in the same ruling, he formally dissolved the church administration which had been set up in Karlovtsy and transferred the administration of all Russian Ortho­dox churches in Western Europe to Metropolitan Eulogius, who had his headquarters in Paris. Under the auspices of the Metropolitan, the Karlovtsy group was then renamed "Synod of Bishops."[14]

On his way to America, Metropolitan Platon himself participated in the organization of the Church center in Karlovtsy for the Russian refugees, considering it, of course, to be only a temporary institution for the masses of refugees who needed church guidance. The Synod in Karlovtsy did not, however, consider itself a temporary administration, or a communication center, but assumed all prerogatives of an autocephalous Orthodox church. Metropolitans Platon and Eulogius could not agree on such broad authorities of the Synod; as a consequence, many rifts arose between them and the Synod, and finally a complete break occurred between the two metropolitans Platon and Eulogius, who had been appointed to their sees directly by Patriarch Tikhon, and the Synod of Karlovtsy. In March of 1927, the Synod suspended Metropolitan Platon and appointed Bishop Apollinarius in his place, thus establishing another parallel church in America. Although in the beginning very few parishes joined Archbishop Apollinarius, the number increased with the coming to Amer­ica of displaced persons after World War II.

In the early twenties the Karlovtsy group assembled people who had just left their motherland. Hatred of the Communists, despair of defeat, hopes for eventual revenge were their dominant feelings. In the Church they sought strength and inspiration, a symbol of unity, and a victorious banner for the fulfillment of their patriotic task.

Bishops who had abandoned their dioceses in Russia found them­selves amidst great political and historical upheaval, surrounded by the White Russian generals, former imperial ministers and politicians, and princes of the royal house of Russia. They wholeheartedly plunged into emigre politics and aspirations. From that time on the church organization of the Bishops' Synod Abroad was strongly patriotic and nationalistic. Its main concern was to preserve Russian Orthodoxy and Russian nationality in the non-Orthodox, non-Russian world, until the day when "the rule of the Antichrist" will end in Russia. Even now, it regards the present official Orthodox Church in Russia as a sacriligious institution which serves Satan and his power.

A temporary accord between the American Metropolitanate and the Russian Synod of Bishops Abroad was terminated at the end of World War II.

In the 1930s another Church group, the Russian Patriarchal Ex­archate (a diocese headed by a bishop appointed by the Moscow patriarchal authorities), was established in North America. In 1933, a former military ordinary of the White Russian Army and one of the founders of the Russian Synod of Bishops Abroad, Archbishop Benja­min Fedchenkoff, arrived in New York from Paris. His express pur­pose for coming to this country was a lecture tour, and he was re­ceived by Metropolitan Platon and other church officials with due respect and sincerity. However, it soon became known that he was assigned by the acting locum tenens of the Moscow patriarchal throne, Metropolitan Sergei, to demand from Metropolitan Platon and his clergy a written pledge of loyalty to the Soviet power[15].

Metropolitan Platon categorically refused to give any pledge of loyalty to the Soviet State. Furthermore, in his epistle to the faithful of America, June 3,1933, he emphasized that this branch of the Rus­sian Church had the intention of remembering its Russian religious heritage, but no intention of remaining politically connected with Russia, still less with the Soviet regime, "which is saturated with communistic and atheistic principles."

Metropolitan Platon died in 1934. The same year, the fifth All-American Church Sobor of the Russian Orthodox Church in North America was held in Cleveland, Ohio. The Sobor elected Bishop Theophilus (Pashkovsky) of San Francisco as successor to Metropol­itan Platon with the title "Archbishop of San Francisco and Metro­politan of All America and Canada." The Sobor upheld the autonomous path chosen by the late Metropolitan Platon and defined its re­lation to the Church in the Soviet Union accordingly. The Sobor reaffirmed the spiritual bond with the Mother Church, but emphatically refuted any possibility of administrative connection[16].

The war between Germany and the Soviet Union made a great impact on church life in America. The majority of Russian Orthodox people were deeply touched by the tragic events in the land of their fathers. Their feelings were expressed in the words of the epistle is­sued by the Sobor of Bishops of the Metropolitanate on October 9, 1941:

Having been separated from our motherland by a great distance, but being always close to it spiritually, we cannot be silent witnesses and passive spectators of the bloody Golgotha of our much suffering people. As our flesh and blood, we have to carry them in our hearts, suffer with their sufferings, weep with their bloody tears and use all our efforts and means to save them[17]…

From that time on national and political considerations constituted the predominant factor in all subsequent church events. Three dis­tinctively different approaches to the monumental crisis in Eastern Europe manifested themselves:

1.  A burning desire to see communism in Russia destroyed by all means and at any cost and a dream of the restoration of old imperial Orthodox Russia.

2.  Indiscriminate patriotism which drove many Russian Orthodox people into the pro-Soviet camp.

3.  Careful differentiation between the struggle of Russian people for national and spiritual freedom on the one hand and the Soviet communist aims on the other, without swaying either towards the Axis powers or towards Moscow.

The election of the patriarch in 1943 and a new seemingly favorable Soviet policy towards the Church made a great impression not only in Russian circles, but in the whole free world.

The election of the patriarch was acclaimed in the British Commonwealth and the United States as a dramatic turning point in Soviet policies, internal and external, and the manifestation of religious freedom in Russia. A majority of Russian Orthodox people in America also wholeheartedly accepted the election of the patriarch. This event, which received so much publicity, only strengthened the pa­triotic feelings kindled by the heroic struggle of the Russian people against the Nazis. Most of them were not political immigrants, and they did not experience that innate deep revulsion at everything "Soviet." But there were also those who started to raise their voices in favor of bringing the local church under patriarchal authority.

Another group of Russians did not recognize the Patriarch of Moscow, or any other member of the official hierarchy in the U.S.S.R., and regarded them simply as communist agents dressed in clerical garb.

Such was the psychological situation in which Metropolitan Theo-philus and his administration had to lead one of the largest groups of Eastern Orthodoxy in this country.

Efforts to come to an understanding between the North American Orthodox Church and the Patriarchate of Moscow were made but failed, and in December 1947 a patriarchal decree reached America which put Metropolitan Theophilus and the bishops in his jurisdic­tion under interdict.

In 1961 representatives of the Mother Church and the Metropoli-tanate unofficially reestablished communications at the General As­sembly of the World Council of Churches in New Delhi, India. In 1963, a delegation of Christian churches from the Soviet Union, led by Metropolitan Nikodim, head of the Department of External Af­fairs of the Russian Orthodox Church, came to the United States at the invitation of the National Council of Churches. The Metropolitan visited Metropolitan Leonty, head of the Metropolia, and conversed with other officials of the local church. The illness and death of Metro­politan Leonty interrupted further attempts to improve relations be­tween the two churches. In 1967, during a visit of Metropolitan Niko­dim to the United States, and in 1968, during the General Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Uppsala, Sweden, unofficial meetings produced a platform and a procedure for negotiations. It was agreed that the Moscow Patriarchate would exercise its canonical right to grant autocephaly to the American Church on the grounds that the Russian Church first planted Orthodoxy in North America and established an Orthodox diocese here.

Another unofficial meeting of representatives of the Metropolitan-ate with Metropolitan Nikodim occurred in January 1969 in New York. Official meetings were convened in Geneva, Switzerland, in August, and in Toyko, Japan, in November. At these metings, a final draft of agreement between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Ameri­can Church was prepared. It was ratified by the American bishops at their meeting in December and signed by both Metropolitan Ireney and Metropolitan Nikodim in March 1970 in New York. The Patri­archal and Synodal Tomos granting autocephaly to the Russian Orth­odox Greek Catholic Church in America was signed by Patriarch Alexis of Moscow on April 10 of that year, a few days before his death. On May 18, 1970, it was solemnly handed to the delegation of the Orthodox Church in America, led by Bishop Theodosius of Alaska, by the locum tenens, Metropolitan Pimen, at his headquarters in Mos­cow. The ceremony was attended by the U.S. Ambassador to the U.S.S.R., Jacob D. Beam.

According to the terms of agreement and of the Patriarchal Tomos, the former Metropolia was declared to be the "Autocephalous Ortho­dox Church in America," absolutely independent and self-governing with an exclusive ecclesiastical jurisdiction in North America, including the State of Hawaii[18].

As a result of the agreement, the patriarchate has agreed to dissolve its exarchate in North America and to recall the patriarchal exarch from the territory of the American Church. The parishes of the ex­archate have been advised by the patriarchal authorities to join the newly created autocephalous church. Those who refuse for the time being to join the new church will be administered by one of the vicar bishops of the Patriarch of Moscow. The Moscow Patriarchate will continue to be represented in America by a delegate of the priestly rank, residing at St. Nicholas Cathedral in New York.

Conscious of being a local American church, the Metropolitanate has often and publicly stated its belief that Orthodoxy cannot develop in America except in unity, and independence, in conformity with the project of Patriarch Tikhon.

"There should not be any illusions that this event will, ipso facto, resolve all difficulties in moving toward inclusive administrative unity," said an editorical in The Logos. What is important, however, "is the fact that with the explicit or implicit approval of the other jurisdictions, the foundation for total jurisdictional unity has been laid."[19]