Source: First Things
October 12, 2024
My visit to St. Tikhon’s Orthodox Seminary in South Canaan, Pennsylvania, was a long time coming. For eighteen years I lived only thirty-five minutes from it, occasionally taking the road past its striking golden and brown domes that rose anachronistically from the dairy land of northeast Pennsylvania. I was raised Protestant and went to a Catholic school for college. My experience with Orthodox Christians was more sparse. I had a close friend in college who had helped lead the tradition’s student organization, but I could count the actual number of Orthodox services I had attended on one hand. So, while I had some free time, I thought it only fitting that I see what it was like on the ground for the Eastern Orthodox in my hometown, and the perfect opportunity presented itself: The seminary was hosting a barbeque event described as a night of appreciation for its supporters to “share all the good God is doing” at St. Tikhon’s.
St. Tikhon’s Orthodox Seminary was founded as a pastoral school in 1938. It derives its name from Tikhon of Zadonsk, an eighteenth-century Russian Orthodox bishop who was canonized by the church in 1861. The saint also inspired Dostoevsky’s Bishop Tikhon in Demons. It is one of only three seminaries in the United States operated by the Orthodox Church in America. It now runs both an academic press and bookstore dedicated to the promotion of Orthodox theology. The seminary has seen considerable growth in recent years. Last year, they ordained seventeen seminarians, the most ever.
... Read the rest at First Things.
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