the situation described in the article below is one of the reasons I OPPOSE a self governing American ORthodox Church. as for canonical problems, the Roman Empire had more than one Metropolitan or Patriarch in its borders and the rule was one bishop per city not per region. I think the USA can manage the same way."
This is what I sent to the Orthodox Christian Laity group that sent me an email
seems their 11th get together called for a united Orthodox Church in America.
the history of this sort of thing is complicated, and generally such scream about canonical impropriety of the setup now, ignoring more important canonical improprieties that go on all the time regarding morals, finances, etc. some jurisdictions are better than others.
The Russians were the first in North America as per Orthodox Christianity. Alaska, the Pacific Northwest, and part of San Francisco, Ft. Ross (the Bear in the California flag refers to the Russian part of California history, limited in scope and eclipsed by the Spanish.) When the Arab Christians and the Greeks arrived, the Russians provided clergy then they got their own from their home patriarchates.
The Orthodox Church in America, heavily Slavic in origin with connections to the dubious segment of the Russian expatriate community, two or three times declared themselves THE Orthodox Church in America, the last time getting a tomos of autocephaly from the Russian ORthodox Church in Moscow, the so called living church, which Stalin had reestablished as a patriarchate. The ROC had been disestablished as a patriarchate and made a department of the government by Tsar Peter the Great. reestablishing the patriarchate had been discussed during the interim between the Tsar Nicholas II's abdication and the Bolshevik revolution itself, but the church was put on the run with the rest of the "white Russians."
Meanwhile as per canon 28 of the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon of AD 451 at a city in Asia Minor aka Anatolia now called Turkey, the Ecumenical Patriarchate or Greek Orthodox Church headquartered in a backwater of Constantinople now called Istanbul claims authority over all the barbarians including us, that didn't already have a Patriarch at the time. (since then various nations acquired their own patriarchate status so there are now 15 autocephalous churches which are canonical and in communion with each other, except for the spat between the Antiochian Patriarchate, which has operated out of Damascus for the past 500 or 600 years I forget why and the Jerusalem Patriarchate over Qatar's ORthodox Christians.)
