Orthodox Churches in Alaska

Orthodoxy reached Alaska through Russian America, where explorers had introduced the faith to some Alaska Natives. The Orthodox Church in America traces its origins to the 1794 arrival in Kodiak of eight Orthodox missionaries from Valaam Monastery. Holy Resurrection, the first Russian church, was built in Kodiak in 1795. Ioann Veniaminov led the Unalaska parish from 1824, developed a Cyrillic alphabet for Unangan (Aleut), and became the first bishop of Alaska; from 1840 to 1872 Sitka was the seat of a diocese governing all of North America. In the 1867 treaty ceding Alaska to the United States, Article II provided that churches built in the ceded territory by the Russian government would remain the property of members of the Greek Oriental Church resident there who chose to worship in them.

The Diocese of Sitka and Alaska calls itself the mother diocese of the Orthodox Church in America. Diocesan services continue in Indigenous languages, with texts in Yup'ik, Tlingit, and Alutiiq. St. Michael the Archangel Orthodox Cathedral in Sitka was built between 1844 and 1848 to Veniaminov's design, burned in January 1966, and was reconstructed. Holy Ascension of Our Lord Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Unalaska, a National Historic Landmark, was built between 1894 and 1896. Kodiak's Holy Resurrection Orthodox Cathedral bears the dedication of the 1795 church.

An Old Rite community began in 1968, when four Old Believer families bought land on the Kenai Peninsula and named the village Nikolaevsk after Saint Nicholas; more Old Believers from Oregon followed.