Orthodox Christian dating in Connecticut

Orthodox Christians in Connecticut

Central Connecticut first, because that is where the deanery began. Holy Trinity in New Britain tells it: after John J. Hamilla arrived in 1899 a group of Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants founded the Brotherhood of Sts Cyril and Methodius, which with the blessing of Archbishop Tikhon became a parish; the church on Beatty Street was consecrated by Tikhon himself on Christmas Day 1902 and still stands, though no longer theirs; Fr Constantine Buketoff came in 1907, formed the choir and a Sunday-evening discussion group, and attendance grew to ninety and a hundred and twenty, there being no other Orthodox church in central or northern Connecticut. Sts Peter and Paul in Meriden was founded in 1911 by Fr Seraphim Oblivantzeff for Belorussian immigrants, with Greeks, Lebanese, Albanians and American converts among its members from the first. All Saints on Scarborough Street in Hartford is today the second-largest parish in the Diocese of New England, with more than a dozen young families and services at different times through the week; St George Greek Orthodox Cathedral is on Fairfield Avenue in the same city, in the Metropolis of Boston.

Then the shore and the valley. Holy Ghost in Bridgeport was founded by Slavs, Poles, Rusyns, Estonians and Macedonians who had settled in the industrial city, met Fr Alexis Toth, canonised in 1994, and passed a resolution to leave the Unia and return to Orthodoxy; St George of the Albanian Archdiocese in Trumbull grew from the Albanian immigrants of the same Bridgeport region at the turn of the century. Three Saints in Ansonia goes back to a group of 1890 from Austria-Hungary and Galicia and the Brotherhood of St Vasily, received as a congregation in 1895, building on Howard Avenue in 1899, and kept its centenary on 15 October 1995. Holy Transfiguration on Alden Avenue in New Haven was a mission made a full parish in August 1915 by Belorussian founders, now multi-ethnic and interracial by its own description; St Barbara Greek Orthodox Church stands on Racebrook Road in Orange next door. Holy Assumption in Stamford, St Mary's, began in 1913 on South Pacific Street in the South End and moved in the seventies to a tract off the Merritt Parkway on Den Road. Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church of Waterbury is on Middlebury Road in Middlebury, and Christ the Savior in Southbury began when Bishop Job blessed Fr Michael Koblosh in the spring of 1991 to explore a mission station; the first Liturgy was on 15 June 1991 in a living room.

The east is Norwich and Willimantic. St Nicholas on Convent Avenue in Norwich calls itself a small but growing parish of Russian heritage open to all, with fifty-eight faithful parishioners at the time of its entry; Holy Trinity on Valley Street in Willimantic was planted on 16 August 1916 under Fr Constantine Buketoff, the same priest who had built up New Britain, in a two-storey house at 226 Valley Street that served as church and rectory.

The people filling the parishes have been counted. The Orthodox Studies Institute surveyed twenty American parishes across six jurisdictions and reported, of the converts received since 2013, that two thirds were under forty at their reception, that people in their thirties outnumbered every other decade, and that 44 percent were single when they came in.

Connecticut was not named among the twenty, but Meriden's founders counted American converts among their members in 1911, New Haven calls itself interracial, Hartford counts its young families, and Southbury's first Liturgy was in somebody's living room; the person the survey describes, raised Catholic or Congregationalist or nothing, received as an adult, English-speaking, not yet married, has been at these coffee hours for a century.

Two jurisdictions cover the state on this page, one of them in three parts. The Orthodox Church in America's Diocese of New England has Ansonia, Bridgeport, Hartford, Meriden, New Britain, New Haven, Norwich, Stamford, Willimantic and Southbury, with Bethel, Clinton, Salisbury and Terryville besides; its Albanian Archdiocese has St George in Trumbull; its Romanian Episcopate has St Dimitrie in Easton and Holy Transfiguration in Manchester. The Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Boston has St George Cathedral in Hartford, St Barbara in Orange and Holy Trinity in Middlebury among others its list did not yield to this page. The Antiochian archdiocese's directory could not be read, and the Serbian and Russian Church Abroad parishes were not looked for; none of them is listed below.

Where the community gathers

Connecticut's Orthodox gather in Hartford and the towns south of it, in New Haven and the Naugatuck Valley, along the Fairfield County shore, and in the east.

Distances that decide everything

The Orthodox year in Connecticut

Dating across jurisdictions, and with converts

Five kilometres separate the Greek cathedral from the Orthodox Church in America's largest Connecticut parish; three, New Haven's Transfiguration from Orange's St Barbara; an hour, Hartford from Norwich; and half an hour, any neighbour from the next. The cana.love form was written with those distances in mind, and it is easiest to say what it is not.

Meeting safely

• Nobody you have not met in person gets money from you; on cana.love a request for it is a reason to report, and whoever made it is gone for good.
• First meetings happen in public, with someone you trust told where you are, and the conversation lives on the site until you yourself choose to take it elsewhere.

How reviews, reports and appeals work is on the guidelines page.

Common questions