Collection of documents illustrating the spirituality of the Alaskan orthodox missionaries. Includes letters of St. Herman, writings of St. Innocent, reports from lesser known parish clergy, and diary excerpts. Introduced by an informative historical essay.

Christian mission involves God, the missionary, and the other, the recipient of mission. This book argues for the centrality of this other in the practice of mission. The other as child of God is presented, not as an empty vessel waiting to be filled, but as the one who draws near to the missionary. Both are sent by God, and together they enter into the journey towards God. Drawing on Scripture, contemporary missiology, and phenomenology, the book argues for the importance of this often neglected other and demonstrates through historical case studies involving Saint Ignatius of Loyola, William Carey, and Saint Innocent of Alaska that the recognition of the gift of the other has always been present in Christian mission and can continue to inspire.

This definitive work, the crown jewel in the distinguished career of Russian America scholar Lydia T. Black, presents a comprehensive overview of the Russian presence in Alaska. Drawing on extensive archival research and employing documents only recently made available to scholars, Black shows how Russian expansion was the culmination of centuries of social and economic change. Black s work challenges the standard perspective on the Russian period in Alaska as a time of unbridled exploitation of Native inhabitants and natural resources. Without glossing over the harsher aspects of the period, Black acknowledges the complexity of relations between Russians and Native peoples. She chronicles the lives of ordinary men and women the merchants and naval officers, laborers and clergy who established Russian outposts in Alaska. These early colonists carried with them the Orthodox faith and the Russian language; their legacy endures in architecture and place names from Baranof Island to the Pribilofs. This deluxe volume features fold-out maps and color illustrations of rare paintings and sketches from Russian, American, Japanese, and European sources many have never before been published. An invaluable source for historians and anthropologists, this accessible volume brings to life a dynamic period in Russian and Alaskan history. A tribute to Black s life as a scholar and educator, "Russians in Alaska" will become a classic in the field."

This is an engagingly personal account of the hardships, challenges, and rewards of a life lived wholly in the presence of God and at the service of the Alaskan people. In September 1935, Segundo Llorente, a wide-eyed twenty-eight-year-old Jesuit priest from Spain set foot in Alaska for the the first time. His memoirs are filled with all that he saw, endured, and enjoyed for forty years in Uncle Sam's "icebox," whether by dogsled in the 1930s or by plane and snowmobile in the 1970s. He prayed, worked, scolded, helped, and laughed with a practical wisdom that recalls the Ignatian spirituality in everyday life that also marks Father Walter Cisek's Russian journal, He Leadeth Me.

As a native speaker of Russian with eighteen years of fieldwork experience among the Tlingit, Kan is uniquely qualified to relate little-known material from the archives of the Russian church in Alaska to Tlingit oral history and his own observations.

The unforgiving descent of Alaskan winter has Jayce Kincaid and Jacob Barringer struggling for survival after their ship is trapped in the ice floes of the Arctic. Back at Last Chance Creek, Leah and Helaina endure the long separation--Leah wondering if her children will ever know their father and Helaina longing for the chance to express her love to Jacob. When unexpected loss invades their world and tragedy looms once again, will they find the strength to trust in God's faithfulness?

This book is the first to investigate the role of religious conversion in the long history of Russian state building, with geographic coverage from Poland and European Russia to the Caucasus, Central Asia, Siberia, and Alaska.

From its formative years to the present, advocates of various persuasions have written and spoken about the country's need for moral and civic education. Responding in part to challenges posed by B. Edward McClellan, this book offers research findings on the ideas, people, and contexts that have influenced the acquisition of moral and civic learning in the America.