Свято-Владимирская Православная Богословская Семинария (Крествуд)

In the fall of 1794, eight Russian monks arrived in Alaska and sowed the seeds of Orthodox Christianity on what would eventually become U.S. soil. Immediately sensing the need for a center of theological and pastoral training, they quickly moved to establish a school on Kodiak Island. A few decades later a seminary was founded in Sitka by the His Grace, Archimandrite Innocent (Veniaminov), then bishop in Alaska, later Metropolitan of Moscow, who in 1978 was officially listed among the saints of the Orthodox Church as the «Apostle to America.» These pioneering attempts, however, were short lived.

Throughout the nineteenth century, while the number of Orthodox Christians in America steadily grew, the Orthodox Church remained fundamentally an immigrant community served by bishops and priests sent from abroad, primarily from Russia. It was only in 1905 that Archbishop Tikhon, later Patriarch of Moscow (+1925), recognized the need for American-born-and-raised clergy and decided to establish a permanent seminary. Opened in 1905 in Minneapolis, it was transferred in 1913 to Tenafly, New Jersey and renamed St. Platon’s Orthodox Theological Seminary. During the eighteen years of its existence, it produced two generations of priests who, at a difficult moment in the life of the Church, assured the continuity of Orthodox Christianity in America and its progressive integration into American life.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 inaugurated a deep crisis for Orthodox Christians in America. Deprived of material support from Russia and isolated from the Mother Church, as well as suffering from internal divisions, the Church here could no longer financially support the seminary, and the seminary had to close its doors in 1923. Only fifteen years later, after a long period of recovery and reorganization in the Church, could the question of theological education be raised.

In October 1937, at the “Sixth All-American Church Sobor” of what was then known as the “Russian Metropolia”—the daughter church of the Russian Orthodox Church headed by the Patriarch of Moscow—such an opportunity arose. At that meeting of clergy and laymen in New York, Dr. Basil M. Bensen, one of the first instructors at the Minneapolis school, proposed reopening the seminary. He forcefully insisted that Orthodox priests in this country needed to receive a liberal arts college education—the normal preparation for clergy of other religious groups—as the foundation for their theological training. Dr. Bensen’s plan was approved, and the projected seminary was given the name of “St. Vladimir”—after the prince who in AD 988 introduced Orthodox Christianity to the Kievan Rus’. On October 3, 1938, Metropolitan Theophilus (+1950), primate of the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church, conducted the opening service at Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn, New York, and the next day classes began in the parish house of the Church of Christ the Savior, on East 121st Street in Manhattan.

The first decade of the new seminary’s existence, however, proved very difficult for the faculty and administration. With no permanent quarters, no funds, and helped only by a small group of friends, the seminary struggled to keep itself alive and true to its purpose. A working agreement was established with Columbia College, and in 1939 a temporary home for the school was found on the campus of General Theological Seminary.

St Vladimir’s Seminary is located at
575 Scarsdale Road, Yonkers, NY 10707.
Main phone number +1.914.961.8313
Main fax number +1.914.961.4507

Источник: www.svots.edu