Posted by Leo
on 7/16/2009, 10:08 pm, in reply to "Re: Russian Orthodox Museum in Alaska to Close in August, 2009"
(This isn't directed at you Tom!)
Ah yes, from the Coast-to-Coast AM file, Coptic Rite Micmac Orthodox of the 5th century! or Carthaginian Latin Rite Passamaquoddy, one or the other, or even both, why not?! 
Early Byzantine-Rite inroads into Africa? (They weren't always Byzantine, you know.) How did they know about North America, from my foster-kinsman St. Brendan the Navigator?
This is in the spirit of that West Virginia cave with supposed Ancient Irish inscriptions lit up a special way at sunrise Christmas Morning, eventually debunked (supposedly). The Irish, though, say it was finally proved right when they unearthed the monk's pile of Guinness empties!!!
As an Orthodox, a history buff, a Native American, and one who appreciates alternative propositions, I appreciate this one too ... with a grain of salt big enough for all the deer in the Connecticut forests! (Take a look at where the piece came from.)
Ancient visitors here are highly likely AFAIK, though I'm concerned about the implication Native Americans were too dumb or lazy to come up with their greatness themselves, even our own paganisms. But that's an awful lot of major stone carving, for what purpose, baptizing thousands of Indians? And no other ancient Christian material culture has turned up credibly before now, or credible cultural influences? I'll play the scientific skeptic on this one.
It's great fun though! Imagine those monks after their stay, leaving behind a by-necessity-autocephalous Orthodox Church in the Eastern Woodlands, Natively inculturated, The Truth incarnated among the trees and wigwams, a Ruling Hierarch for each regional Council Fire (very synodal!!), a Primate for each language-region, a Patriarch of All Algonquiana, another for Na-Dene, another for Uto-Aztecan, another for Siouan-Catawban, and probably smaller Autocephalies involving other parts of North America. A distinct Ecumene! Though in Communion, with intervisitation to EurAfrAsia.... Various culturally-appropriate Rites, all o/Orthodox.... Then again, Rome might've claimed it as part of "All the West" -- Yikes! And Charlemagne and the Moors would've come looking for "the gold" and dhimmis and making trouble... We probably would've had our own problems with heresies and schisms, uppity Patriarchs like Cahokia or Tenochtitlan(!)... But the Alaska Natives could've been evangelized by the Dogrib or Haida 500 years earlier than by Russia; the Pacific Islands too....
Then again, there were the Chinese families the Jesuits found in the 1600s making the Sign of the Cross over their meals without remembering why ... descendants of the 600s Assyrian Mission and Church (if not earlier Christian Chinese contacts), so who knows?!
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