Orthodox Churches in California

Orthodoxy came to California with Russian settlers who built Fort Ross and its church; the fort was sold to John Sutter in 1841. California's first permanent Orthodox parish was formed in San Francisco on Easter night, 1864, with Serbs, Russians and Greeks among its sixteen founders. Sebastian Dabovich, ordained in 1892 as the first American-born Orthodox priest, founded the state's second Orthodox congregation, a Serbian church, in 1894.

A Greek parish formed in San Francisco in 1921 later became Annunciation Cathedral, the cathedral church of the Metropolis of San Francisco. A San Francisco parish of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) was founded in 1927. St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco arrived in 1962 to complete construction of its present Holy Virgin Cathedral, whose exterior was finished in 1965; his relics rest there. The Evangelical Orthodox Church, whose leaders were former Campus Crusade for Christ staff and whose bishops met in Santa Barbara, was received into the Antiochian Archdiocese in 1987 with seventeen parishes and about 2,000 people.

Greek, Antiochian, Orthodox Church in America, Serbian, Romanian, ROCOR and Ukrainian parishes cluster around San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego and Sacramento. St. Herman of Alaska Monastery at Platina, founded by Seraphim Rose and Herman Podmoshensky, is known for its English-language publications and frequented by pilgrims.