The Greek Orthodox Christian Church in the United States is under the spiritual and administrative jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate with headquarters in old Byzantion, Constantinople, present-day Istanbul, Turkey. The term “Greek,” used to describe the church, is applied in a cultural and historical sense. Even though early Christianity was born in Hellenistic Judaism, it was nurtured by and blossomed through the Greek language, the thought-world and missionary activity of the Greek-speaking people under Roman rule for at least the first four centuries of our era. Today Greek Orthodox is synonymous with Eastern Orthodox, and is used by several churches of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

Doctrinally the Greek Orthodox Church subscribes to the faith of early Christianity as it developed on the basis of the holy scriptures, and the understanding and interpretation by important church elders, local councils and ecumenical synods, and the living experience of the church in history. Maintaining continuity with the past, without remaining static in its interpretation, is a major concern of the Greek Orthodox Church.

The earliest Greek Orthodox community in the United States was founded in 1864 in New Orleans, LA. It served the needs of Orthodox Christians of various ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Between 1864 and 1900, there were but a few thousand Greek Orthodox Christians. By 1922 there were 139 Greek Orthodox communities throughout the United States, but there was no administrative unity—no coordinating head—and they resembled Greek city-states in the American continent.

The real history of the Greek Orthodox Church in the United States starts in 1922 when the Greek Orthodox archdiocese was chartered and began to bring under its aegis all Greek Orthodox communities in the Americas. There are no official statistics about the number of active members in the church. At the end of 1997, there were 525 organized church communities served by 586 pastors, 35 priests with lay professions and several retired clergymen. The archdiocese is under one archbishop, five metropolitans and three auxiliary bishops.

Most of the church’s members between the early 1900s and 1945 were immigrants who came either from Greece or as refugees from Asia Minor, present-day Turkey Egypt and other Near-Eastern countries and Eastern Europe. A new wave of Greek immigrants in the 1960s contributed to the establishment of new communities and educational institutions. At present, the archdiocese supports a liberal arts college, a theological school, an institution for the training of Greek language teachers and church workers, several homes for the aged, a mission center, several day and many afternoon Greek language and culture schools.

The Greek Orthodox Church in the United States is presently going through a transition. While for many years the leadership of the church was in the hands of immigrant parents and grandparents, today it has passed to second- and third-generation Greek Americans. Furthermore, Greek, as the official liturgical language of the church, is slowly but steadily yielding to the use of English, especially in communities of Midwestern and Pacific states. The transition has not been conducted without some tension between the founders and the inheritors of the churches. But no schisms or conflicts have impeded the growth and influence of the church, whose membership today includes many who have joined it either through intermarriage or through personal spiritual quest.

The Greek Orthodox Church in the United States views their faith (doctrine, ethos and liturgical life) as old wine put into new wineskins (cf. Matthew 9.17).