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→The Orthodox American Church, Death, and Legacy
In 1959 Archbishop James dissociated himself with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia and founded the Orthodox American Church (formally, The Holy Orthodox Catholic Apostolic American Church), incorporating concepts of the Better Human Relations Movement. For the next decade Archbishop James continued his two-fold mission of bringing Americans to Orthodox Christianity and translating every text of the Church into English. He was known to be a very kind, patient, and loving pastor, and accepted the responsibility of being father confessor to a number of Orthodox bishops in New York.
One of Archbishop James's successes is the second and current primate of the OAC, Metropolitan John Schneyder, who joined the mission in 1952, was baptized and christmated in 1953, studied at [[Holy Trinity Orthodox Seminary (Jordanville, New York)|Holy Trinity Seminary]] under Archpriest [[Andrei (Rymarenko) of Rockland|Adrian Rymarenko ]] from 1953-551955, and under Archpriest Damian Krehel at [[St. Tikhon's Orthodox Theological Seminary]] from 1955-57. In November of 1961, Archbishop James ordained him a deacon, and in July of 1962 a priest. On April 25th, 1970, before his death, Archbishop James consecrated Fr. John to the episcopacy.
Once the weakness of his advanced age set in, Maryangela took care of Archbishop James until his repose on November 1, 1970. Though no representatives of ROCOR attended his funeral, Metropolitan [[Andrew (Petkov) of New York]] of the [[Bulgarian Eastern Orthodox Diocese of the USA, Canada and Australia]] did. To this day, the Orthodox American Church considers itself an autonomous mission of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia.
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