A 19th-century church building in north Bucksport that once sat vacant has been bustling with activity through the last year as a new congregation prepares for something different than a typical Sunday service or bean supper.
Inside, members of the oldest Christian faith tradition have had the pews torn out and the sanctuary platform removed. Icon paintings meant to be “windows to Heaven” now line the pressed tin walls, and a decorated divider separates the sanctuary from members of the congregation, who stand during services that are sung a cappella.
The North Bucksport United Methodist Church congregation, which built this church and had been part of the town since 1795, voted to disband in 2022, a familiar scene across Maine as participation in organized religion declines nationwide.
But instead of sitting idle or being converted to another use, their building was purchased last year by members of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia to establish the St. Innocent of Alaska Mission.
The Orthodox church has been growing across the country in recent years, attracting new converts who are often compelled by its traditional and unchanging doctrine in a fast-moving world. While national media coverage has characterized those converts as part of a far-right political movement, leaders of two congregations in Maine said that’s not what their faith is about.
The state has long been home to the Bucksport mission’s parent church: St. Alexander Nevsky in the Sagadahoc County town of Richmond, established in the 1950s by a local Slavic community formed by people displaced by the Bolshevik revolution and World War II.
Worshippers from northern and eastern Maine traveled 100 miles or more for weekly services there, coming from as far away as Mount Desert Island.
Deacon James Parsons and his wife were two of them. In 2020, they began holding services in their Surry home for members from around Hancock, Penobscot and Waldo counties.
Several years later, members found the Methodist building for sale and purchased it last year to found a mission.
“People come here from all around this region, and when we formed the mission, that was one of the things that we were thinking about,” Parsons said. “We looked around this area for a while, but this is really perfect for us, in terms of the size and everything. It’s just right, I think.”
Their members follow original teachings and writings of early Christian faith leaders and saints before the ideological break in 1054 A.D. that led to the formation of the Roman Catholic church.
Orthodox tenets are the same as they were then and do not change, something many of its believers in Maine and nationally name as a major draw.
Parsons and Archpriest Chad Williams, the rector of the Richmond church who travels to Bucksport for services bimonthly, both left the Episcopal faith they were raised in partly because of that consistency.
For example, Williams pointed to the fact that the Episcopal church’s leadership meets to vote on its beliefs. Since he left it in the 1980s, the church has changed stances to support LGBTQ+ marriage, gender-affirming care and female clergy, along with other progressive stances that have caused division among its worldwide leadership.
Williams felt these continual votes changed the church so much from its origins that it became a museum piece.
“The meaning and interpretation of all the things in the museum had changed from the original, and so the attraction [to Orthodoxy], I think, was to that antiquity, to that foundation, to that God-made faith as opposed to a manmade faith,” he said.
On social media and in national headlines, new converts have characterized Orthodox churches as more traditional, conservative and masculine than Protestant or Catholic traditions.
The Maine church’s leaders, and others of the church abroad, disagree; some find the description disturbing.
They are conservative in the sense of being traditional and ancient, Williams said, but don’t see themselves as a political entity.
“The church is the body of Christ,” he said. “This is not about politics. Give unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar and unto God what belongs to God, and that’s the beginning and the end of it.”
Parsons added that he believes national discourse around the faith tends to focus on the discipline and tradition in the church’s structure while missing the love that he feels truly characterizes it.
Whatever their motivations, 25 people have signed up to start the process of joining the two Maine churches in the last three years. The Bucksport mission has baptized three since last summer.
Conversion is also a religious mystery, their leaders said, something their faith leans into more than Western traditions tend to. For example, they see salvation as a transformative process, in contrast to Protestant traditions that believe it follows immediately from a declaration of faith.
Along with its new converts, the Bucksport mission has members tied to its history in Maine. Paul Wlodkowski was raised in the Richmond church and has been part of the faith all his life. He and his wife, Sasha, previously traveled to St. George’s Greek Orthodox church in Bangor — Orthodox churches tied to different countries are still part of the same faith — before the mission was established.
“When we learned that there was this opportunity to establish an Orthodox church in Hancock County, Maine, right here in Bucksport…that was a real motivating factor,” he said. “This was something we really had to dedicate our efforts to, and helping build this temple.”
He spoke to a reporter on Thursday in the church’s newly renovated basement gathering space, which his wife, a Montessori teacher, helped to decorate and outfitted with a children’s education area.
Parishioners young and old were gathered there for a pizza dinner before attending a movie about their church’s presence on the other side of the country, “Sacred Alaska,” at the Alamo Theater nearby. St. Innocent, after which the mission is named, traveled to Alaska by dogsled from his home in remote Siberia as a missionary.
Wlodkowski said he feels a palpable energy around church membership, especially among young people seeking something more eternal.
“It hasn’t changed with the vicissitudes of life or politics. I mean, it is what it is,” he said. “I think people appreciate that, and I think that contributes to its vitality.”
