Welcome

The Orthodox Church is One Church. Currently, however, Church organization in North America is divided among several different “jurisdictions,” or governing bodies of varying national origin within the One Church.

The doctrine and worship of each jurisdiction and parish is the same, though in some, languages other than English continue to be used in the services. Russian, Greek, Serbian, Antiochian – it is all in reality one and the same Orthodox Church. Our particular parish is part of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), which historically emerged from the Russian Orthodox Church in the 1960's, but is its own national church. All our services are in English.

A good short answer to this question is “Yes!” The question implies precisely a kind of polarity (i.e., “Bible versus Tradition”) which is not part of the Orthodox Christian worldview.

“Tradition,” or in Greek paradosis, is used very often in the New Testament both as a verb and a noun. (See I Corinthians 11:23, where literally translating the original Greek, Paul says “for I received of the Lord that which I also have traditioned to you …” See also I Corinthians 11:2, and II Thessalonians 2:15 and 3:6.)

The word orthodox was coined by the ancient Christian Fathers of the Church, the name traditionally given to the Christian writers in the first centuries of Christian history. Orthodox is a combination of two Greek words, orthos and doxa.

Orthos means “straight” or “correct.” Doxa means at one and the same time “glory,” “worship” and “doctrine.” So the word orthodox signifies both “proper worship” and “correct doctrine.”