ROCOR Studies Website in 2025
This Nativity season brought joyful news: the Board of Directors of the Fund for Assistance to the Russian Church Abroad has decided to support the work of Historical Studies of the Russian Church Abroad for another year. The Fund for Assistance was founded in 1959 as a lay initiative, blessed by the Synod of the Russian Church Abroad, and over the decades it has become a highly successful effort supporting clergy, monastics, and faithful throughout the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. I am deeply grateful that this organization continues to see value in the work of preserving and studying the history of ROCOR. Those interested in the history of the Fund for Assistance may read my account here:
The website Historical Studies of the Russian Church Abroad remains at the center of my academic work. There were nineteen newsletter updates in 2025 sent to approximately seven hundred subscribers, informing them about new and unique materials posted on the site. Among these were the foundational ROCOR decree no. 9084, issued in Constantinople in December 1920; a reconstruction of the visits of ROCOR bishops to England in 1925; and newly uncovered facts about the Brotherhood of St. Job of Pochaev in the Third Reich. These publications reflect the mission of the site: to “advance — in the words of Metropolitan Hilarion — the study of the history of the Russian Church Abroad.”
Please visit the Fund For Assistance to the Russian Church Abroad website to learn more about its many vital projects, which may well deserve your attention.
What Else I Have Been Doing in 2025
In 2025 I completed my thirteenth and final year of teaching at the Pastoral School of the Diocese of Chicago and Mid-America.
I also continued my thirtieth year of service at Holy Trinity Orthodox Seminary, where I taught two undergraduate/graduate-level courses on Church history and canon law, as well as a graduate seminar on ROCOR history. I continue to teach a correspondence course on canon law and to serve as Director of Undergraduate Studies.
My academic work also includes serving as a graduate thesis reader at the Antiochian House of Studies and helping organize the annual conferences of the Orthodox Canon Law Society of North America. I also serve as the Society’s vice president under the Very Rev. Protopresbyter Patrick Viscuso, the Society’s president.
I am continuing to turn my 2018 Ph.D. dissertation into a book and am currently working on the next chapter dedicated to the Council in Ferrara and Florence (1438-1439).
With the publication in Russia in 2025 of the seventy-fifth and final volume of the Pravoslavnaia entsiklopediia, my role as representative and contributor to this unprecedented reference work published by the Russian Orthodox Church concluded this year. For ten years I served as a liaison on behalf of the Russian Church Abroad and as an author for this unique project conducted in Moscow.
I continue to serve on the Canon Law Committee of the Inter-Council Assembly of the Russian Orthodox Church, where I participate in online discussions of the document outlining guidelines for clergy in their relations with non-Orthodox Christians. The committee is chaired by His Eminence Metropolitan Mark of Berlin and Germany of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.
Throughout the year I continued posting daily reflections on the history and theology of the Orthodox Church on my Substack project, This Day in the Life of the Church. These reflections often include a strong ROCOR dimension. I am grateful to my approximately two hundred paid and eight hundred free subscribers.
Continuing my work of explaining and contextualizing ROCOR history, I gave presentations in eighteen ROCOR communities across the United States, marking the centennial of the repose of Patriarch Tikhon and the centennial of the Russian Church Abroad.
2025 Expense Report
The maintenance expenses of ROCOR Studies in 2025 amounted to $9,990.38. These included travel and miscellaneous expenses ($3,545.17); editorial assistance ($2,643.24); internet and smartphone service ($2,234.26); and computer programs ($1,567.71). The Fund for Assistance to the Russian Church Abroad covered $7,200 of these expenses, while $2,728 was contributed by twenty donors through the GoFundMe campaign, “Please help us do what we have been doing for years!”
Plans for 2026
Since the beginning of the year I have been working on the next chapter of my book on Byzantine canon law. During the winter break I am also grading student work from Holy Trinity Seminary and preparing my courses for the spring semester, which begins on January 26.
Organizing an academic conference marking the centennial of the German Diocese of the Russian Church Abroad — to be held in Munich on May 6–8, 2026 — has been a major focus since early 2025. This work, coordinated through ROCOR Studies, includes regular Zoom meetings with the organizing committee in Germany and ongoing correspondence with participating scholars. The preliminary program in Russian and German is here:
https://rocor.de/ru/konferenz
In August 2026, I plan to present a paper, Commemoration and Dissent: Canon 15 in Byzantine History, at the 25th International Byzantine Congress in Vienna.
My great hope for 2026 is the formal launch of the ROCOR Studies non-profit institute.
As we continue to celebrate the Feast of the Nativity of Christ, I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to all who have supported this work through prayer, encouragement, and material assistance. I am especially thankful to the Fund for Assistance to the Russian Church Abroad and to each individual donor who has made this work possible. Your trust and generosity allow the study of the history of the Russian Church Abroad to continue as a living and meaningful part of the Church’s memory. You also support a ROCOR “in-house scholar” and the breadwinner for a family of five. May the newborn Christ grant you and your loved ones peace, health, and strength in the coming year.
