Orthodoxy is less known in the South because Orthodox immigrants didn’t settle here in large numbers. They went where the jobs were.
Between 1890 and the 1920s, millions of Orthodox Christians came to America from Greece, Russia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. They worked in steel mills, coal mines, garment factories, and ports. Those industries clustered in the Northeast and Great Lakes region. Pittsburgh, Chicago, New York, Boston. That’s where the parishes formed. That’s where Orthodoxy put down roots in America.
The South’s economy looked different. Agriculture, not factories. Fewer industrial jobs meant fewer Orthodox immigrants. And immigration patterns reinforced themselves. Once your cousin’s parish was established in Allentown or Cleveland, that’s where you headed when you got off the boat. Chain migration created Orthodox enclaves in the North and Midwest, not in Alabama or Louisiana or East Texas.
The South’s religious landscape didn’t help either. Baptist churches anchored nearly every small town. Methodists and Presbyterians filled in the gaps. Everyone knew what a Baptist was. Nobody knew what a Greek Orthodox was, much less why they kissed icons and crossed themselves backwards.
So for most of the twentieth century, if you lived in Beaumont or Birmingham, you probably never met an Orthodox Christian. We just weren’t here.
Things Have Changed
But the South isn’t what it used to be, and neither is Orthodoxy.
Starting in the 1970s and accelerating since, Orthodox parishes have been planted across the South. Some of this is simple demographics. Americans move South now for jobs, retirement, lower cost of living. Orthodox families relocate from Michigan to North Carolina and need a parish. New immigrants from Orthodox countries settle in Atlanta or Houston instead of repeating the old patterns.
More significantly, converts have changed the equation. The Antiochian Archdiocese in particular has been active in evangelism and church planting, often in places with no ethnic Orthodox population at all. Parishes conduct services in English. They welcome inquirers from Baptist and Bible church backgrounds. They don’t assume you grew up knowing what Pascha means or how to venerate an icon.
This matters in the South because most inquirers here come from Protestant backgrounds. They’re often people who’ve read their way into questions their non-denominational church can’t answer. Where did the Bible come from? What did Christians believe before the Reformation? Why do the earliest sources talk about the Eucharist in ways that sound Catholic or Orthodox, not memorialist?
Fr. Peter Gillquist’s book Becoming Orthodox tells the story of a group of evangelical campus ministers who asked those questions in the 1970s and 1980s. They ended up Antiochian Orthodox. That story has repeated itself hundreds of times since, often in Southern cities and suburbs where Orthodoxy was unknown a generation ago.
We’re Still the Minority
Don’t misunderstand. We’re still rare here. Your coworkers at the refinery probably haven’t heard of us. When you tell your Baptist grandmother you’re becoming Orthodox, she’ll likely think you mean Greek and assume it’s basically Catholic. The South remains deeply Protestant in culture and assumption, and that’s not changing anytime soon.
But Orthodoxy isn’t invisible anymore. Most mid-sized Southern cities have at least one Orthodox parish now, sometimes several. We’re part of the religious landscape, even if we’re a small part.
The history explains why we weren’t here before. The present explains why we are now. And if you’re reading this in Southeast Texas, you’re part of that present. Orthodoxy came South later than it came to other regions, but it’s here. It’s been here long enough now that we’re not just transplants anymore. We’re planting churches, raising children in the faith, and welcoming inquirers who’ve never met an Orthodox Christian before but sense they’ve found something they didn’t know they were looking for.
That’s how the Church has always grown. Not all at once, and not everywhere at the same time. But it grows.
