Orthodox Christian dating in Oregon

Orthodox Christians in Oregon

Portland first, because the story starts there. The Orthodox Church in America's Diocese of the West keeps its Pacific Northwest Deanery in the state, and St Nicholas is its old parish: the community that renewed itself in a house church in North Portland in 1927, bought a church on NE Mallory Avenue from the German Brethren, had it consecrated on 10 June 1928 by Bishop Alexei with the blessing of Metropolitan Platon, stayed fifty years and sixteen pastors on Mallory Avenue through the transition to the new calendar and back to English, and in 1978 moved to the south-west, where Bishop Dmitri broke ground on Dolph Court on 10 December 1978, the parish hall went up in 1981 and the church, designed by Fr Alex Vinogradov and painted by a resident iconographer, was begun in Holy Week 1995. The Greeks who had formed their own community kept the old chapel's name and have Holy Trinity Cathedral on NE Glisan Street, in the Metropolis of San Francisco, and St John the Baptist on SW Walker Road in Beaverton; the deanery's Annunciation is on SE Rusk Road in Milwaukie; the Romanian Episcopate of the same Church has the Dormition on SE Stark Street and the Descent of the Holy Spirit on Highway 213 in Oregon City.

Then the valley and the coast. St Anne's in Corvallis tells its own beginning: Oregon, it says, is one of the most unchurched states in the country, Orthodoxy was virtually unknown outside Portland and Eugene, and in 1990 an Orthodox couple moved to the Albany area, found that driving to Portland for church limited their church life, and with Bishop Tikhon's blessing began a mission station whose first readers' service had six people at three in the afternoon in a Presbyterian church; it is now on NE Elliott Circle, and its priest helped start Bend. The Greek metropolis has Holy Resurrection on Market Street NE in Salem and St George on Hillview Lane in Eugene; on the coast the deanery has St Brendan the Navigator on Alameda Avenue in Astoria and St Patrick on NE 12th Street in Newport, missions named for Irish saints of the sea.

Over the Cascades and to the south. St Jacob of Alaska in Bend was established as a mission in the summer of 2003 with help from Fr Stephen Soot in Corvallis, took its patron in 2009, and from September 2016 under Fr Damian Kuolt grew weekly services, catechesis and inquirers' classes and bought its own building on Powell Butte Highway; the Greek metropolis has a mission of Central Oregon in Bend as well. Holy Cross in Roseburg is a Greek mission on SE Cass Avenue. Archangel Gabriel in Phoenix, by Ashland, began in the late seventies when a handful of believers with no place to worship met for readers' services on the great feasts, ran advertisements in the local paper, and on 2 November 1985 had their first Liturgy from a visiting priest, Fr Alexander Golitzin, with seven adults and one child present.

The people filling the missions 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.

Oregon was not named among the twenty, but the person the survey counted is the one St Anne's, St Jacob's and Archangel Gabriel were founded for: raised in nothing in particular, in one of the most unchurched states in the country by a parish's own account, received as an adult, English-speaking, not yet married. Missions that began with six people in a borrowed Presbyterian church or seven adults and a child at a visiting priest's Liturgy know what to do with a newcomer.

Two jurisdictions cover the state on this page, and one of them twice. The Orthodox Church in America's Diocese of the West has St Nicholas in Portland, the Annunciation in Milwaukie, St Anne in Corvallis, St Jacob of Alaska in Bend, Archangel Gabriel in Phoenix and the missions in Astoria and Newport; its Romanian Episcopate has the Dormition in Portland and the Descent of the Holy Spirit in Oregon City. The Greek Orthodox Metropolis of San Francisco has Holy Trinity Cathedral in Portland, St John the Baptist in Beaverton, St George in Eugene and missions in Salem, Roseburg and Bend. The Antiochian archdiocese's directory could not be read for this page, and the Serbian and Russian Church Abroad parishes of Oregon were not looked for; none of them is listed below.

Where the community gathers

Oregon's Orthodox gather in Portland and its suburbs, down the Willamette Valley, on the coast, and in Bend and the south.

Distances that decide everything

The Orthodox year in Oregon

Dating across jurisdictions, and with converts

Twelve kilometres separate the cathedral of the Greeks from the parish that descends from the chapel of 1890; an hour of I-5, Portland from Salem; three hours, all of it from Bend or Ashland. The cana.love form was written with those distances in mind, and here is what happened when a member from the valley used it.

Meeting safely

• Money goes to no one you have not met face to face; on cana.love asking for it is grounds for a report, and the one who asked is removed for good.
• A first meeting is in a public place, a friend knows where you are, and the conversation stays on the site until you, not the other person, decide to move it.

Reviews, reports and appeals are set out on the guidelines page.

Common questions