This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Jan. 7, 2009 - Karen Butchko says it is "no big deal" that every Sunday she drives about 25 minutes from her home in the Oakville area of south St. Louis County to Madison, Ill., and her parish church. She prays, sings and leads the choir with lifelong parishioners at the Nativity of the Virgin Mary Church. She's made the Sunday morning round trip all her life.
"Well maybe not the first six months," she teased.
Butchko's roots are deep, the third of four generations of her family who have attended the church. Her parents, Ann and George Butchko, met and married at the church. Her brother married a young woman he grew up with in the parish, one of her own best childhood friends. Butchko has witnessed their children receiving the sacraments at the Nativity of the Virgin Mary Church.
Her Russian Orthodox parish traces its roots to an 1899 mission to Ukrainian and other Eastern European laborers in the Granite City steel mills.
Today, many descendants of those immigrants make long trips to their spiritual home each week at half a dozen Christian Orthodox churches in southern Illinois - several within blocks of each other in Madison and Granite City. Most are small, under 100 members with 40 or so in the pews on Sunday and another dozen in the choirs.
"We are the only Orthodox church for two hours in all directions," said the Rev. Nicholas Finley, pastor of the 95-year-old The Holy Protection of the Virgin Mary Orthodox Church in Royalton, Ill. "They are used to long drives."
The churches were founded between 1900 and 1920 when Illinois experienced an influx of East European immigrants. Farm workers and miners from Eastern Europe's Carpathian mountains sought peace, freedom and work opportunity in Illinois. Most came from Slavic-speaking countries of Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedonia, Ukraine and from Greece. These Orthodox Christians brought their faith and their love of their rites, holy days and music.
Immigrant bachelors did hard labor in the steel mills, mines, foundries and railroads. From their meager earnings, laborers sent dollars to Eastern Europe to bring their wives, fiances or younger brothers and sisters to Illinois. And they saved money to build small churches to worship as Orthodox Christians.
Eventually, after placing their beloved icons in crowded dorms and in drab makeshift worship spaces, they sacrificed to build their Byzantine-style churches. Today those churches' interiors are jewel-box aglow with golden icons, carved screens, mosaics, murals and stained glass.
Welcome Mats Were Often Missing
A small Slavic community worked the lead mines in Desloge, Mo. Violent nativists in southern Missouri loathed the idea of immigrant miners and took up arms.
"When the Ku Klux Klan came, (the immigrants) hid in root cellars. Some families then moved to St. Louis and others went across the river south to Royalton and began a church here," said the Rev. Finley, of The Holy Protection of the Virgin Mary Orthodox Church, now a parish of 80 members.
Even today when parishes hold outdoor processions, they carry a U.S. flag to show neighbors that they are Americans.
These churches' tradition of struggle gives optimism to survive and to support their parish. Members talk about the sacrifices of grandparents, which makes it easier to skip a new gizmo at an electronics stores to donate to the church.
In 1914, when Holy Protection's founding families were worshipping in each other homes they each pledged to donate $25 to begin work on a $2,500 church building. They also pledged to give another $25 when the church was complete. At that time, $25 was often more than a week's salary. By the time the church was complete, Holy Protection was debt free, Finley said.
Internal Divisions
Churches have endured splits on the international and national level, as communication between the U.S. and mother churches in Russia, Bulgaria and Greece was impossible during wars. It was especially difficult for those under Soviet domination until 1988.
Parishioners have endured painful parish "wars," too. Holy Trinity Bulgarian Orthodox Church (To see a video tour of the church, click here .) in Madison, the oldest Bulgarian Orthodox Church in America marks it 100th anniversary this year. The parish worships in a modern church on Grand Avenue. But not far away is Sts. Cyril & Methody Bulgarian Orthodox Church, which was founded after a divide among Holy Trinity parishioners. Both survive and draw members from across the region.
During World War II and when many of various parish's ancestral homelands were under Soviet rule, getting replacement priests who knew the Russian, Byzantine and Greek rites was often difficult. For years, lay people ran priest-less parishes. Some had circuit-riding priest offer the Divine Liturgy a few times a year. Even so, when the parish council found a priest with proper seminary credentials to lead a parish, some members were distraught because he did not have a Slavic name.
In 1979 when the Rev. F. Thomas Succarotte became rector of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary Church in Madison, he rang a new church bell. Members living nearby phoned wondering what was wrong. In the parish's early days the church rang bells when there was bad news or war news or, a few times, when peace was declared.
Today, few of the immigrants' grandchildren and great-grandchildren work in dangerous circumstances, unless they are in the Armed Forces.
They cherish the faith of their grandparents and great-grandfathers, respect the hard work that brought them to Illinois. They have assimilated into the America's broader culture and work while celebrating the icons, deep spiritual practices, musical and cultural traditions of their ancestors' faith.
Funerals bring them home and sometimes get mourners back to regular Sunday worship, priests said. At the Nativity of the Virgin Mary Church, many parishioners are buried in the church's 11-acre cemetery. "It's most important for people to see how we treat the departed, not so much that we swing the (incense smoking) censor or the vestments we wear but when they see the true love for those who die, not everyone is buried that way," Succarotte said.
For most third- and fourth-generation American parishioners, the Old Slavonic, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Greek or Russian language of their ancestors is incomprehensible. Today most of the services are in English. Bits of the Old Slavonic language remain - mostly in hymns and easily understood, repetitive greetings and praise words.
Still, it is challenge to raise funds to support these churches, even though the donors are far more affluent even in hard times than their ancestors were.
"Some who have the least give the most," said Succarotte. Volunteer hours, as well as financial support, are key to parish survival.
Among Orthodox in Madison County and elsewhere, there is very little intermingling between parishes, even though international leaders gather at Pan-Orthodox events. Some parishes bow to American Orthodox episcopal leaders, others to patriarchs overseas. There is no central authority across rites. Sometimes these divisions cause friction among members in the same region as they conform to various disciple of the Byzantine and Greek, Rumanian, Russian, Serbian and Arabic rites. Today Orthodox Christians are more outgoing than they once were; and all churches are open to Christians of various ethnic backgrounds. A handful of Protestants who are not married to Orthodox Christians have joined some Illinois orthodox parishes.
"Father Tom (Succarotte) tells us about the big Ts and the little ts," Karen Butchko said.
By "Big Ts," the priest means the weighty religious traditions, spiritual exercises, theology and rites. By the "little ts," he means cultural traditions of various ethnic groups within Orthodox Christians.
Ukrainians, Greeks, Russians, Serbians, Romanians, Bulgarian, Ukrainians, all can tell members the "right way" to observe - in a cultural way - holy days, weddings or other rites. Sometimes that leads to arguments.
When Butchko was a teen, her Russian Orthodox parish's young adults' group had a balalaika band. She knew that had little to do with her faith. All her life she has sung in the church choir, which for the past 20 years she has directed. The solemn, uplifting Russian chants, so key to the evocative Russian Orthodox rites, are big Ts.
Her church's Eastern European cultural heritage shines each November at the parish's Ladies Bazaar when the women use family recipes to make the very popular peroghi: dumplings filled with potato, cheese and sauerkraut. On St. Andrew's Day, Nov. 30, Bulgarian-Americans at Sts. Cyril and Methody and at Holy Trinity in Granite City talk about the tradition of cooking lentils, wheat and beans to keep bears away. Only a few still make the dish. While this may be seen as a superstitious custom in cities devoid of bears, the food reminds Bulgarian parishioners that "small t" traditions were hitched to saints' days in eras when people could not read calendars. Instead, they marked the year by the church's feast days.
"We all have our different ethnic tinges to what we do, but the bottom line is that what you are is Orthodox with a common belief, a common church, a common faith," Butchko said.
Christmas might be Jan. 7
Today Jan. 7, members of the Holy Trinity Serbian Eastern Orthodox Church wish each other "A Blessed Christmas" as they celebrate Christmas Day at the 10 a.m. Holy Liturgy. According to the old Julian calendar, named for Julius Caesar, today is Dec. 25.
Centuries after most of the world began using the Gregorian calendar, a small percentage of Orthodox Christians in America still organize religious holy days according to the Julian. The Serbian Orthodox Christians who worship at the South St. Louis church on Serbian Drive are among the few remaining in this area who use the Julian calendar for Christmas.
Karen Butchko won't be doing that at her parish, the Nativity of the Virgin Mary Church, a Russian Orthodox Church in Madison. That parish stopped using the Julian in 1983 except for Easter. Her boomer generation can remember years in grade school when they celebrated two Christmas Days - nine days apart. The tree, Santa and colorfully wrapped gifts arrived on Dec. 25 like her South County neighbors. Nine days later, her Russian Orthodox family celebrated Jesus' birth, according to the older Julian calendar.
"Kids were a little jealous that we got presents on two days," she said.
The Gregorian Calendar - devised under the leadership of Pope Gregory - has been used in parts of Western Europe since 1585. England and Colonial America didn't adapt it until 1753. Some Russians changed to the Gregorian during the revolution in 1918, while others did not switch until 1923. Students of that period of Russia must use two dates for some events.
In 1923, a meeting of the Pan-Orthodox leaders in Constantinople led by the Patriarch Meletios IV decided to use the newer calendars jumping March 10, 1924, to March 23 of that year. The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and all of the Greek church worldwide adapted the calendar that March day, said the archdiocese spokesman Stavros H. Papagermanos. Meletios did give synods a right to continue to use the Julian calendar as some Serbian and Russians connected direction to Moscow have.
In the 1940s, scores of Russian Orthodox parishes in America requested that their families not confuse life with two dates for Christmas, said Alexis Liberovsky, archives director at the Orthodox Church in America. In 1981, the OCA bishops decided that, effective Sept. 1 of that year, member churches would put aside the Julian calendar for the Gregorian. If a diocese or parish had a "credible" reason not to change they could make the requests, he said.
Liberovsky like many Orthodox Christians prefer to call the Gregorian calendar, the New Julian, not out of respect for Caesar but because the Gregorian is named for a Catholic pope.
While at most Orthodox churches in America all the holy days are now celebrated in sync with the secular calendars, except for those around the moveable feast of Pascha - the Orthodox word for Easter Sunday. Virtually all Orthodox churches worldwide use the Julian calendar to determine the dates of Easter and the holy days - from Great Lent to Pentecost - that flow from that day, the holiest feast in the Christian Church.
Patricia Rice has long covered religion in the St. Louis area and nationally.