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Orthodox Communities in
Austin
Austin, the capital city of Texas, has only one Old
Calendar Orthodox church, the Protection of the Holy Theotokos Russian
Orthodox Church in north Austin. See its website, russianorthodoxaustin.org,
for more information.
Holy Protection is an English-language mission
(Slavonic is used also) and is part of
the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. There was
formerly an Old-Calendarist church in south Austin, but it was closed
in 2007.
The
Austin area is home to five New Calendar Orthodox
communities, all of
which use English in services in whole or in part: Transfiguration
(Greek
Orthodox, in Westlake Hills west of Austin), St. Elias (Antiochian
Orthodox, in downtown Austin), St. John
the Forerunner (Antiochian, in Cedar Park, Texas), St. Sophia (Antiochian,
in Dripping Springs, Texas), and St.
Mary Romanian Orthodox Mission (in
north Austin).  The pastor of Transfiguration
Church serves as chaplain to Orthodox students attending the University
of Texas
at Austin.
The main calendar difference is that Old Calendar
churches keep Christmas on January
7. But all the Orthodox Churches keep Easter (Pascha) on the same
date. The next Pascha or Orthodox Easter will be April 19,
2009.
The canonical Orthodox Churches form one worldwide
communion, including four of the five ancient Apostolic Sees
(Jerusalem, Alexandria, Constantinople, and Antioch), and some 250 to
280 million communicants worldwide. Eastern Orthodoxy is the second
largest Christian church in the world, and is the oldest Christian
church in the world.
 There is
not a single administration for the Orthodox Church. Instead, just as
in the Undivided Church of the first thousand years after Christ,
Orthodoxy has separate administrations for the regional areas where
Orthodox Christians live.
In the United States, the presence of large numbers of
immigrants of varied national Orthodox allegiances has led to a system
of pastoral care where different churches, such as the Russian, Greek,
and Arab/Antiochian, are all present, caring for their ethnic groups as
well as for increasingly large numbers of American converts from the
Catholic, Anglican, or Protestant churches, or from pagan, new-age,
atheistic, or other non-Christian backgrounds.
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