The fire began in the early hours of January 2, 1966, and spread through the business district of Sitka, Alaska, toward the historic Russian Orthodox Cathedral of St. Michael.
“Everyone in the city ran to the church and started handing things out, hand to hand, in long chains of people,” said Father Herman Belt, current dean of the cathedral. “They even took the chandelier, since you could lower it back then. All the chandeliers were gone. They took the crosses. We lost an icon.”
The treasures rescued included the bishop’s throne carved by St. Innocent Veniaminov, the Siberian priest and missionary who in 1840 was sent to serve as bishop of “New Archangel,” the island village that would become Sitka. The bishop translated the gospels and Orthodox texts into several Alaskan languages and dialects and later served as metropolitan of Moscow.
The bishop’s staff is found in the reconstructed sanctuary, resting next to the central doors in front of the altar. The cathedral, designed by St. Innocent, contains other links to six saints whose lives touched Sitka.
The original cathedral was completed in 1848, built of logs and clapboard siding, with interior walls covered with canvas. After the 1966 fire, St. Michael’s was rebuilt with concrete, steel and other fire-resistant materials, using 1961 drawings from the Historic American Buildings Survey as reference.
Today, however, the joints of the church’s domes leak and the wooden floors creak from water damage. Russian churches can withstand winter, but snow is not the problem here near the Gulf of Alaska. Bedrock below Sitka ends a block from St. Michael’s.
“We’re in the mush underneath that, then we have the ocean, so all the rain and melt runs into our basement,” Belt explained. “If it snows here, it’s not so bad. But it rains a lot and the wind comes from the water.”
Sitka averages 90 inches of rain a year. Seattle gets 40.
Saving this National Historic Landmark will be complicated, including removing copper from the domes to repair faulty flashings. The cathedral cooperates with the network of Russian Orthodox Holy Sites in Alaska and the United States National Park Service. The project could cost a million dollars.
Many of the members of the small, stable congregation are Tlingit, a tribe that has lived in the region since the last Ice Age. Worshipers also include members of other tribes, Orthodox believers who have moved from other states and people who “walk through the doors after reading about Orthodoxy online,” Belt said.
The historical setting is both symbolic and complex.
In the 18th century, Orthodox leaders sent missionaries to the area in response to brutal and lurid reports of Russian traders, including convicts from Siberia, sent to search for “soft gold,” the thick, waterproof fur of sea otters. Saint Herman and the first monks gradually became allies of the native peoples in their struggles against the powerful Russian-American Company. When the United States purchased Alaska in 1867, the Orthodox began petitioning Washington, D.C., on behalf of local tribes.
In his 1993 book “Orthodox Alaska,” the late Father Michael Oleksa noted that monks learned that Native spirituality included a Creator God and a glorious but flawed natural world.
Orthodox rites blessing rivers, lakes and oceans pleased local tribes. So did John 3:16, the Bible verse that proclaims, “For God so loved the world that he gave to his only Son.” That rang true for indigenous people who believed salmon, whales, deer and other animals were gifts from the Creator, creatures who willingly gave up their lives to provide sustenance.
Oleksa wrote: “It is this essentially cosmic, biblically based, patristically affirmed and liturgically celebrated spirituality in the Orthodox tradition” that is threatened by secularizing tendencies in modern institutions, materialism and media. His big question: “What does the Alaskan Orthodox experience have to contribute to Eastern Orthodox theology in the modern world?”
Today, Belt noted, the St. Michael flock continues to sing hymns in the Tlingit language, while striving to preserve many traditions of the early monks and their converts.
“People everywhere have their own traditions and customs,” he said. “Here in Alaska, things are really different and not in a bad way. There is the native piety and the Russian piety and they have endured for many, many years… It’s wonderful. It’s pure of heart. It’s warm and tender. . .. That’s something you can treasure.”
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