The History of Orthodox People website has been active and growing for the last several months. Its mission is to enlighten not just the Western, primarily English-speaking world, but men and women of goodwill of all backgrounds and everywhere with the theological thought and spiritual heritage of Christian Orthodoxy.

West-centric surveys of history and religion all too frequently neglect to mention Orthodoxy, the Christian Church whose teaching and practice go back, directly and uninterruptedly, two thousand years, to the Source. Orthodox believers glory in the fact that their faith is not subject to change and fully corresponds to famous definitions of the True Church by St. Athanasios “the faith which the Lord gave, was preached by the Apostles, and was preserved by the Fathers. On this was the Church founded” and St. Vincent of Lerin’s  “that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all“.

As part of our mission, we seek to present the basic tenets of Orthodoxy, offer information about the history of the various churches that make up the Orthodox communion, and portray the martyrdom of various Orthodox communities in modern times.

Volunteers

In order to successfully accomplish the second of our tasks we need the assistance of as many of you who are Orthodox and are willing to contribute your knowledge and sacrifice your time by joining our HOP project on a volunteer basis. We need you to work with us to enrich our website’s Orthodox Churches section [http://orthodoxhistory.info/orthodox-churches/] with quality information about your particular Orthodox church, its history and spirituality for the benefit of non-Orthodox readers of this site.

You do not have to be a theologian or specialist. We will be glad to take you on-board if you are an active, practicing Orthodox, whatever your particular jurisdiction may be, if you have a deep personal interest in the establishment and growth of the Orthodox faith in the country or region of your origin, have a reasonable command of the English language, and are willing to share your knowledge with us and other readers of the HOP site.

Financial support

In order to improve HOP and make it grow, we also need donors who would be willing to pledge a monthly contribution for the support of our website, to help cover production and management costs. We are happy to accept gifts of any size from Orthodox people who wish to help, but regular small monthly donations at a level that you would be comfortable with would be of great benefit. We therefore encourage our readers to consider becoming HOP donors, thus helping to promote Orthodoxy and bring it to the attention of those who have not yet discovered its spiritual treasure.

If you can contribute in either of these ways to make HOP even better and more informative for spiritual seekers who visit this page, welcome aboard and God bless you!

Please note: the current list of Orthodox churches listed on our website is NOT exclusive and we would welcome research about other Orthodox churches provided that they are truly such, both dogmatically and canonically.  So if you church is not listed and you want to offer publications about it, please email us.

One more thing: if you can, please forward this appeal to any of your friends or relatives who might be interested and also post it on various social media platforms!

We are eager to hear from you at:

historyorthodox@gmail.com

The HOP Team