Orthodox Churches in Rhode Island

Greek immigrants arrived in Newport by 1896: four men from the island of Skiathos, drawn by Newport's fishing industry. Pawtucket's Greek community began near the same year with roughly six to ten young men. Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church, now in Cranston, keeps archives from 1905, when the parish met at an inn in the state capital. Assumption of the Virgin Mary Greek Orthodox Church in Pawtucket received a state charter in 1912, and St. Spyridon Greek Orthodox Church in Newport was chartered in 1915 under the Church of Greece.

The history of St. Mary Antiochian Orthodox Church in Pawtucket dates the beginning of Middle Eastern migration to Rhode Island, particularly from Syria and Lebanon, to 1895. In Woonsocket, leaders of a growing Romanian community called a meeting for November 17, 1912, to discuss building a church where the Liturgy could be heard in their own language; Bishop Valerian Trifa of the Romanian Orthodox Episcopate of America consecrated St. John the Baptist Romanian Orthodox Church in 1953. St. Michael's Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Woonsocket laid its cornerstone in October 1941.

After the Archdiocese of North and South America formed in 1922, St. Spyridon became, by its own account, the first of the state's Greek communities recognized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate's Holy Synod. Urban renewal later displaced Assumption Church from its George Street building. Today Pawtucket has Greek and Antiochian parishes, Woonsocket has Romanian and Ukrainian ones, Cranston and Newport have Greek Orthodox churches, and Cumberland has Dormition of the Virgin Mary Orthodox Church.