Eastern Orthodox in Wisconsin | Wisconsin Historical Society

Historical Essay

Eastern Orthodox in Wisconsin

Eastern Orthodox in Wisconsin | Wisconsin Historical Society
Dictionary of Wisconsin History.

 

Greeks, Syrians, Serbs, and Russians were some of the last Europeans to arrive in Wisconsin but each made contributions to the religious landscape. Russians began immigrating to Wisconsin in the late 1890s.  Those that settled in the rural northwestern section of the state were generally "Uniates," people with Eastern Orthodox rites who still recognized the supremacy of the pope and were thus still part of the Roman Catholic Church. Uniates tended to be ignored by other Catholics so in 1909, these Russians abandoned their ties with the Roman Catholic Church and established Holy Trinity Orthodox Church, the first Russian Orthodox church in northern Wisconsin.

In 1910, an Orthodox Christian Church was established that included Czechs, Slavs, Croatians, Galicians, Moravians, and Russians. Poles, Slovaks, and Ukrainians organized an Orthodox congregation in 1908 at Lublin in Taylor County.  All of the Russian Orthodox in the north became members of the Russian Orthodox Church in America. The Serbians and Syrians, like another wave of Russians, favored the industrial opportunities along the lakeshore in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and they began organizing orthodox churches there. Greek immigrants also favored the eastern lakeshore and Milwaukee Greek Orthodox churches became the social and spiritual centers of the Greek community.  World War I divided what had been a fairly homogenous Greek community into two rival parishes: those who supported neutrality and those who supported the Allies.

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