125
edits
Changes
no edit summary
website=[http://www.oca.org/ Orthodox Church in America]
}}
The '''Orthodox Church in America''' (OCA) is an [[autocephaly|autocephalous]] Church with parishes mainly in the United States and Canada (though with a few parishes also in Mexico, and until 2011 in Australia as well). The OCA traces its history to the Russian Orthodox missionary efforts in Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, which began in 1794. Originally an Alaskan diocese of the [[Church of Russia|Russian Orthodox Church]], it expanded to the contiguous United States (the "lower 48") from 1860 onwards. By the early 20th century, it had parishes throughout the United States (and some in Canada), mostly serving immigrant communities from Orthodox countries and Native Alaskan (Yupik and Aleut) villages.
Orthodox life in America was severely disrupted by the Russian Revolution of 1917, leading the Russian Orthodox diocese to splinter into a number of separate jurisdictions organized mostly on ethnic grounds. The remaining core of the old diocese organized itself into a ''de facto'' self-governing Church in 1924, following the instructions of Patriarch [[Tikhon of Moscow]] who had directed all Russian Orthodox churches outside of Russia to govern themselves autonomously until regular communication could be resumed. This ''de facto'' self-governing Church in North America officially called itself the '''Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church in America''', and was informally known as the '''Metropolia'''.
