The past and the future converge at Eklutna

It is morning in the Alaska village of Eklutna.

The sun has yet to peak over the top of the Chugach Mountains, but there is a pinkish glow in the sky. There is snow on the ground, and the brightly colored Athabascan spirit houses sparkle with frost. Everything is still and silent … until the bells ring.

Inside St. Nicholas Orthodox church, the singing begins. A priest, clothed in intricately embroidered robes of gold and purple, emerges from behind the altar doors. The deacon, dressed almost as splendidly as the priest, begins to sense the people who stand inside the crowded little church. The tone is hushed and solemn, and even the little children stand still as they watch the pair move around the room, a small plume of smoke following them.

The date? It could be 1840, or 1940 or 2004. The Orthodox Liturgy has been celebrated in exactly the same manner in churches around the world for the last 1,000 years. And in this village, for the last 200 years, in Russian, Athabascan and most recently, English. The details may vary, but the tradition is unchanging. It is Alaska history come to life.

"Orthodoxy is indeed an Alaskan religion -- we were the first Christians to reach this great land, and we feel it is our responsibility before God to continue bringing that faith to all the people of Alaska," said the Right Reverend Nikolai, the bishop of Sitka, Anchorage and Alaska and head of the Russian Orthodox Diocese of Alaska.

The Russian Orthodox Church has been in Alaska since the 1700s, when missionary monks such as St. Juvenaly and St. Herman came from Russia in tiny boats, traveling overland on foot and sometimes, by dogsled. They landed at Kodiak, and made their way across Alaska.

"The history of our Orthodox Church here in Alaska tells us that in his many missionary journeys prior to his martyrdom, St. Juvenaly might have traveled as far as the area of what is today Anchorage," Bishop Nikolai said. (see sidebar on St. Juvenaly for more information.)

Their legacy can be seen throughout Alaska. Even in many of the most remote villages, the cupolas -- also known as onion domes -- of Orthodox churches still rise above the roofs of modern houses. And here, too, at Eklutna, the old and the new exist side by side, both in architecture and tradition.

Story of a village church

At Eklutna, there are literally two chapels, old and new. The old chapel was originally built in the 1830s by the people of the village (it was reconstructed in the 1970s), said Fr. Michael Oleksa, rector of St. Alexis Mission in Anchorage and Alaska historian. The new chapel, where the faithful still gather to meet, was built in the 1960s by the people of the village. Or more specifically, their chief.

"By the 1960s, the old church had seriously deteriorated," Fr. Michael said. "Then Metropolitan Leonty was in Alaska on a pilgrimage. He stopped at Eklutna and found Chief Mike Alex sick. Really sick," he said. "The Metropolitan prayed over Chief Alex, and then he told him, 'When you get better -- when, not if -- you need to build a new church.'"

Chief Alex did recover, Fr. Michael said, and built a new church right next to the old one. "He pretty much built that whole church himself," he added. "But that's how they ended up with two churches right there."

For years, the chapel at Eklutna served the Native Athabascans of the village. Over time, however, the village population dwindled, as people moved to Anchorage and the Mat-Su Valley to find jobs.

"Most of the people from the village live in Anchorage now," Fr. Michael said. "Very few people live there year-round."

Services at the little church were still held once a month, but after a time even the new chapel fell somewhat into a state of disrepair. Then, a year and a half ago, a group of Orthodox people from the Mat-Su Valley asked Bishop Nicolai for a mission in Wasilla. There had been a mission there years before, however it was inactivated after the priest died and families dispersed.

"The Bishop said 'sure we'd be glad to have a mission in Wasilla,'" Fr. Michael said. "But we have this empty church in Eklutna." So, at least temporarily, the parish without a church found the church without a parish.

Now, the majority who attend the church drive in from the Valley. And while some are Alaska Natives who have been Orthodox from birth, a good portion of the congregation consists of converts.

One such convert is Tabitha Hooker of Wasilla, who used to attend a "Calvary Chapel type church" several years ago.

"I knew there had to be more to Christianity than just this Sunday stuff," she said. "I saw that people would go to church on Sunday, but then live a normal life the rest of the week."

Hooker and her family spent the next eight years living in several "plain people" communities -- the Amish, Mennonites and the like. However, she said something still was lacking. "The Amish had the externals," she said. "The modest dress, the ordinary kind of community. But what about the internals?" she said.

Then, she came across some old friends from Idaho, who were about to be baptized into the Orthodox faith. They attended a church service with their friends, and noticed something different -- about the service, the church, and even the priest. "There was something real going on there," she said. "And the priest seemed so gentle, so … full of something we wanted."

What also appealed to Hooker and her family, she said, was the unbroken tradition the Orthodox had held since the time of Christ.

"When we were with the plain people," she said. "there were 23,000 versions of what people believed. How do you know who is right?" "With Orthodoxy, the early church fathers -- the apostles -- in their wisdom decided things already. The early Church has already figured it out. Why keep debating about it?"

Faith in a fishbowl

These days, most churches are trying to bring people in, not keep them out.

But at Eklutna, it's a different story -- St. Nicholas Orthodox Church is not just a church. It's a major tourist attraction. And they come in busloads, from the cruise ships, with tour packages, and in cars. Mostly in summer, but even in winter the tourists come, armed with flash cameras and ready to walk right in to the grounds to view the old church and brightly colored spirit houses, even when signs ask people please not to come onto the grounds during services.

"It's kind of funny," said one parishioner. "We can see them out the window. They look at the sign on the gate, and sometimes they look around to see if anyone's watching. Then they walk right in anyway. Some people even jump the fence."

The church's deacon put the sign there in the first place because people have been known to walk right over graves or to stand right outside the window and take pictures of parishioners during services.

"Once," said a parishioner," I walked out the door in the middle of a Vespers service and 20 Australians converged on me, taking my picture and asking questions. It was a little unnerving -- I felt kind of like an animal in the zoo or something!"

For the most part, though, the parishioners take it all in stride. They are used to being different.

Watching a group of young children playing outside the church, one can forgive the tourists for wanting to snap a photo or two. The people of this church are to some degree as picturesque as the old church and colorful cemetery.

Brought back to life

As the people from the Valley made the chapel at Eklutna their home, they found a lot of work that needed doing. So few people had been attending the little church that it had begun to deteriorate as well. In the mean time, millions of tourists had trampled the cemetery and grounds, Fr. Michael said. No one had maintained the spirit houses, and the paint had begun to wear off the wood.

Slowly, the members of the parish helped restore the new chapel. A new coat of paint, a new floor. New wood paneling. A new porch. Then, last summer, a group of Orthodox youth from the Lower 48 came and spent a week re-painting and restoring the spirit houses.

But the people hadn't forgotten their wish for a Russian Orthodox church in the Valley. And the bishop had not forgotten the mission that had once served families there. It was named after Saint Lazarus -- the man Jesus raised from the dead after four days.

The bishop chose Father Christopher Stanton, who was then serving at a Russian Orthodox church in Colorado, to serve the parish. Stanton and his family moved to Alaska in December. Shortly after that, the Bishop re-activated the mission -- St. Lazarus risen again.

Fr. Christopher is also a convert, who said he felt the call to be a priest while in high school in California, long before he became Orthodox. "I was a Methodist," he said. He was looking for a job to support himself while he took religion classes in college, but hadn't had much luck. "I called all the churches, but there weren't any openings," he said.

Then he happened to call a local bookstore -- the Valaam Society of America bookstore, named, by chance, after the monastery from which the Alaska missionary monks had originated. They had no paying jobs, "but they said they'd be happy to take me as a volunteer.

"So there I was photocopying these pamphlets," he said. "And this Orthodox music is playing in the background, and there's icons on the wall. I began asking questions -- what are all these 'pictures'? Why do you cross yourself?"

And he began to learn about the historic Orthodox Church.

"I had read the book of Acts [in the Bible]," he said. "And I thought, that's the kind of relationship I want. A tangible relationship. The New Testament Church, it was real, it produced things. I began to see that in this Orthodox Church."

Again and again, the converts say that in large part, the fact that the Orthodox Church is the actual church of the New Testament is what draws them.

"You know, for the first thousand years of Christianity, there was only one church," Fr. Christopher said. Whether you were a Christian in England, Africa or Japan, there was only one church," Fr. Christopher said.

The lineage of faith

It was not until the year 1054 that the Roman Catholic Church, or Western Church, broke away from what became known as the Eastern Orthodox Church. While the Anglican and Protestant churches broke away from the Roman Catholic Church, and those churches splintered into other denominations, the Eastern Orthodox Church remained undivided.

Many people assume that there are several Orthodox religions, however. Stanton said, "It's a very common misconception, because we know of the Russian Orthodox Church or the Greek Orthodox Church or of places like Eklutna. We associate the ethnicity with the faith."

He added that when the Russian missionaries came to Alaska, as with other countries, they did not try to change the customs and ethnic attributes of the people here.

"Missionaries would come into an area, and learn the language and customs. Then they could translate the Gospel into the language of the people and begin doing services for them. If there was no written alphabet, they would create one … which is where we get the Aleut written language," he said.

Rather than demand that Native people change their ways, Stanton said, "the missionaries always built on Native cultures. We see that today in starring, for example. That was a Native custom, not Christian."

It was the same with the spirit houses at Eklutna, he said. The brightly painted houses are not an Orthodox custom, but an Athabascan one.

"The missionaries didn't want to make them Russian," Stanton said. "They wanted to make them Orthodox."

The Russians are coming!

For now, the people of St. Lazarus Orthodox Mission continue to meet and worship at St. Nicholas Church at Eklutna. In the meantime, they are searching for land on which to build their new temple.

Fr. Christopher joked that when he first came to Wasilla, he saw that there was a street people referred to as KGB road. "I thought, there you go," he said. "Imagine that, a Russian Orthodox Church on KGB Road!" He laughed.

"But this is only one area of many that lend itself to being a home for the Orthodox Church, and there is a need for there to be several Orthodox churches serving this community," he said.

"The Mat-Su Valley is one of the fastest growing areas in the United States," Bishop Nikolai said. "The church needs to reach out to the new people coming, and the people already long established in the Valley."

In the Alaska village of Eklutna, the Liturgy comes to a close. People file out of the church -- little girls with head coverings in soft colors that match their dresses walk carefully down the stairs, whispering secrets. Two boys come crashing out, ducking under elbows as they head directly for the snowbank and begin pelting each other with snowballs. A woman in a kuspuk holds the arm of a much older Native woman, guiding her carefully down the stairs and across the snowy path past the spirit houses to her car.

A couple in a rented car slows down and stops in front of the church parking lot. The window rolls down and a camera briefly flashes before the car slowly moves off again. The car leaves behind a trail of steam that hangs in the air above the road. Through it, across the street, the frame of Chief Mike Alex's old wood cabin can be seen through the trees.