On Religion: New Threat To Alaska’s Historic Orthodox Cathedral
(ANALYSIS) The fire began in the early hours of Jan. 2, 1966, and spread through the business district of Sitka, Alaska — toward the historic St. Michael's Russian Orthodox Cathedral.
“Everyone in town ran to the church and started passing things out, hand to hand, in long chains of people,” said Father Herman Belt, the cathedral's current dean. “They even carried out the chandelier, since you could lower it back then. They ran out with all the candlestands. They carried out the crosses. We lost one icon.”
The rescued treasures included the bishop's throne carved by St. Innocent Veniaminov, the Siberian priest and missionary who in 1840 was sent to serve as bishop of “New Archangel,” the island village that would become Sitka. The bishop translated the Gospels and Orthodox texts into several Alaskan languages and dialects and, later, served as Metropolitan of Moscow.
The bishop’s staff is in the rebuilt sanctuary, leaning next to the central doors before the altar. The cathedral — designed by St. Innocent — contains other links to six saints whose lives touched Sitka.
The original cathedral was completed in 1848, built with logs and clapboard siding, with interior walls covered in sailcloth. After the 1966 fire, St. Michael's was rebuilt with concrete, steel and other fire-resistant materials, using 1961 drawings from the Historic American Buildings Survey for reference.
Today, however, there are leaks along joints in the church's domes, and the wooden floors squeak from water damage. Russian churches can handle winter, but snow isn't the problem here, near the Gulf of Alaska. Bedrock under Sitka ends a block away from St. Michael's.
“We’re in the mush below that, then we've got the ocean, so all the rain and melt running down dumps into our basement,” Belt explained. “If we get snow here, it isn't too bad. But we get lots of rain, with wind coming off the water.”
Sitka averages 90 inches of rain a year. Seattle gets 40.
Saving this National Historic Landmark will be complicated, including pulling the copper from the domes to fix faulty flashing. The cathedral is cooperating with the Russian Orthodox Sacred Sites In Alaska network and the U.S. National Park Service. The project could cost $1 million.
Many in the small, steady congregation are Tlingit, a tribe that has lived in the region since the last Ice Age. The worshippers also include members of other tribes, Orthodox believers who have moved from other states, and people who "walk through the doors after reading about Orthodoxy online," Belt said.
The historic setting is both symbolic and complex.
In the 1700s, Orthodox leaders sent missionaries to the area in response to brutal, lurid reports about Russian traders — including convicts from Siberia — sent to find “soft gold,” the thick, waterproof fur of sea otters. St. Herman and the first monks gradually became allies with the native peoples in their struggles with the powerful Russian American Company. When the United States purchased Alaska in 1867, the Orthodox began petitioning Washington, D.C., on behalf of local tribes.
In his 1993 book, “Orthodox Alaska,” the late Father Michael Oleksa noted that monks learned that native spirituality included a Creator God and a glorious, but flawed, natural world.
Orthodox rites blessing rivers, lakes and oceans pleased the local tribes. So did John 3:16, the Bible verse proclaiming, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son.” That rang true for Indigenous people who believed salmon, whales, deer and other animals were gifts from the Creator — creatures that willingly yielded their lives to provide sustenance.
Oleksa wrote: “It is this essentially cosmic spirituality, biblically based, patristically affirmed, and liturgically celebrated in the Orthodox tradition” that is threatened by secularizing trends in modern institutions, materialism and media. His big question: “What does the Alaskan Orthodox experience have to contribute to Eastern Orthodox theology in the modern world?”
Today, noted Belt, the St. Michael’s flock continues to sing hymns in the Tlingit language, while striving to preserve many traditions from early monks and their converts.
“People everywhere have their own traditions and customs,” he said. “Here in Alaska, things are really different and not in a bad way. There's the native piety and the Russian piety and they have endured for many, many years. ... It's gorgeous. It's from a pure heart. It's warm and tender. ... That's something that can be treasured.”
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Terry Mattingly leads GetReligion.org and lives in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He is a senior fellow at the Overby Center at the University of Mississippi.