Orthodox Churches in Maryland

Orthodox Christianity reached Maryland through Baltimore, where Greek immigrants began settling in the 1890s. A Greek parish founded there in 1894 lasted only a few months. The Evangelismos community, established in 1906, is now the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Annunciation. Disputes over Greek politics led royalist members to form a separate congregation in the early 1920s; the community reunited in 1929. In 1937 the parish bought a Preston Street church built in 1889, which had faced demolition for a filling station, and in 1975 it became a cathedral.

Slavic immigrants followed. Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Church in Baltimore was founded in 1919 by immigrants from the Russian Empire, in what is now Ukraine and Belarus, and its first members lived in the surrounding Washington Hill neighborhood. Later arrivals from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe diversified the parish, and by 2019 as many as ten languages were spoken among its members. St. Andrew Orthodox Church in Baltimore was founded in 1940 by thirty families. Further Greek communities were established in Highlandtown (St. Nicholas, 1952) and Baltimore County (St. Demetrios, 1970).

St. Andrew Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral in Silver Spring grew from a parish founded in 1949 with 65 families in the Washington area. Its church, built on property bought in 1986, was dedicated in memory of the victims of the Chernobyl disaster and consecrated in 1988. The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America lists Saint Nektarios Monastery in Emmitsburg.