The Orthodox Church in America traces its origins to the arrival in Kodiak, Alaska of eight Orthodox missionaries from the Valaamo Monastery in the northern Karelia region of Russia in 1794. The missionaries made a great impact on the native Alaskan population and were responsible for bringing many to the Orthodox Christian faith.

Today, the Orthodox Church in America numbers some 700 parishes, missions, communities, monasteries, and institutions throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

In the 1820s, Father John Veniaminov arrived in Alaska and also conducted missionary work. Among his many accomplishments was the translation of Scripture and the liturgical services into the native dialects, for which he also devised a grammar and alphabet

While the Church continued to grow in Alaska, immigrants began arriving in what we today call the lower 48. In the 1860s a parish was established in San Francisco by Serbians, Russians and Greeks. [Today this parish is the OCA’s Holy Trinity Cathedral.] Gradually other similar parishes were established across the territory of the United States and, with the great waves of immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Southern Europe at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the headquarters of the North American Orthodox Diocese was moved to San Francisco and later to New York. By the early 1900s almost all Orthodox communities, regardless of ethnic background, were united in a single diocese, or jurisdiction, which was under the Russian Orthodox Church.

In 1917 the Russian Revolution broke out. As a result communications between the North American Diocese and the Church in Russia were greatly hindered. In the early 1920s the Patriarch of Moscow, Saint Tikhon, who for ten years had served as Bishop of the North American Diocese, issued a decree calling on dioceses outside the borders of Russia to organize themselves autonomously until such time as normal communications and relations with the Church in Russia could resume. Shortly thereafter, it was decided that the Church in North America could no longer maintain strict administrative ties with the Church in Russia, especially since Patriarch Tikhon had been arrested. [He subsequently died in 1925, and glorified as a Saint in 1989.]

Concurrently, various ethnic groups which had been an integral part of the single diocese organized separate dioceses, or jurisdictions, and placed themselves under their respective Mother Churches. This gave rise to the present situation of Orthodoxy in North America, namely the existence of multiple, overlapping jurisdictions based on ethnic background, rather than following the canonical principle of a single Church entity in a given territory.

The Orthodox Church in America is a full member of the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of the United States of America, together with the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, and the other member jurisdictions. Hierarchs and clergy of the OCA regularly concelebrate with clergy of other Assembly jurisdictions. This is especially evident on the annual celebration of the Triumph of Orthodoxy on the first Sunday of Great Lent.

The Orthodox Church in America is fully committed to the unity of Orthodoxy in North America according to the canonical principle of a single, united Church in a given geographic territory. To this end, it fully supports and participates in the work of numerous pan-Orthodox agencies and initiatives, including International Orthodox Christian Charities, the Orthodox Christian Mission Center, the Orthodox Christian Fellowship, the Orthodox Christian Education Commission, and numerous Orthodox media and communications outlets.