Orthodox Churches in Hawaii

Orthodox histories date Hawaii's first Orthodox church to 1815: a Russian chapel at Fort Elizabeth, the Russian-American Company's trading base on Kauai, which later fell into disrepair. Orthodoxy was re-established in 1916, when the missionary priest Jacob Korchinsky, brought by a 1915 request from the Russian Orthodox community and the Episcopal bishop of Hawaii, celebrated the Divine Liturgy in an Episcopal cathedral in Honolulu. In the early 1920s Archimandrite Innokenty Dronov was appointed priest to the islands. A 1937 magazine article describes his parish as small and largely Japanese.

Until the 1960s the Russian Orthodox Church was the only Orthodox jurisdiction in the islands. Greek Orthodoxy followed: Archbishop Iakovos celebrated the Divine Liturgy in Honolulu in 1965, Fr. Dean Gigicos arrived in 1968, and the church now known as St. Constantine & Helen Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Pacific was consecrated in 1990. In the late 1960s Russian Orthodox members left the Greek community and formed a mission that became Holy Theotokos of Iveron Orthodox Church, now in Kailua on Oahu. It houses the Hawaiian Iveron icon, reported to have begun streaming myrrh in 2007 and declared genuine by the Russian Orthodox Church in 2008.

On the Big Island, the Orthodox Church in America established a community at Kailua-Kona in 2004, and a building bought at Honomu in 2013 became Holy Ascension Orthodox Church. Na Pua Li'i Hermitage, a monastic community of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, was established at Kapaau in 2017.