The Very Rev. Vasily Lickwar shows off Dormition Orthodox Church, which is about to celebrate its 100th anniversary.

The providence journal / Andrew Dickerman

CUMBERLAND — It’s one of the oldest Orthodox churches in Rhode Island, built by the hands of Russian immigrants who yearned to have a church of their own.

It is also a church situated in a spot that is arguably suited for what it wants to do.

In how many other houses of worship can parishioners ring their church bells until 4 in the morning as members of the Church of the Holy Dormition (or “falling asleep”) of the Virgin Mary have done every Easter Sunday to proclaim “Jesus Christ is Risen, He is Risen Indeed”?

The 150 members of Dormition can do that, given their church’s relatively isolated location atop a hill overlooking Manville Hill Road that many town folk know as “the Russian Hill.”

Dormition’s parishioners, half of them of Russian ancestry, have much to celebrate this year, given that it was 100 years ago that a small community of Russian immigrants – 18 families and 30 individuals undaunted by a fire that swept through the living quarters and chapel of their newly arrived Russian priest – started building a new church by themselves using bricks they got from the old Manville-Jenks Mill.

It was the culmination of a dream that, some would say, really started with the Russian Empress Catherine the Great, who in 1794 established a North American Ecclesiastical Mission as a way of ministering to workers of the Russian-American Fur Trading Company in Alaska. The church’s pastor, the Very Rev. Vasily Lickwar, says credit also belongs to the Rev. Alexander Hotovitsky, a missionary priest who had been sent to America in the late 1800s to help the Orthodox Church establish new churches among the enclaves of Russian immigrants who had settled in New England and other parts of the Eastern seaboard.

Though Rhode Island historians generally have given scant attention to the small groups of immigrants from such Russian provinces as Galicia and Volynia who came to work in the state’s textile industry, their presence was not lost on Father Hotovitsky, who dispatched a priest from Salem, Mass., to meet them in Cumberland.

Hotovitsky’s involvement might well be seen as only a footnote but takes significance from what would happen later. Not long after Father Hotovitsky’s return to his homeland to become pastor of Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow, Czar Nicholas II was murdered and Patriarch Tikhon, leader of the Church in Russia, was placed under house arrest and eventually executed. Father Hotovitsky was ultimately exiled to a camp above the Arctic Circle and died a martyr’s death. He was canonized a saint of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1994.

Father Vasily says not many parishes anywhere can lay claim to having a saint as one of its founders..

Parishioners began building their new church in March 1908 and completed before Labor Day, when the church was consecrated.

On one level things were going well, as the parish centered on the things that parishes do: serving as a conduit between heaven and earth, offering Divine Liturgies on Sundays and feast days and serving the faithful with baptisms, weddings and funerals.

Retired high school teacher Eugene Conway, a Roman Catholic, says so many of his classmates were Russian that on Russian Orthodox holy days teachers dared not introduce any new lessons because so many students were absent from school. The parish was also known for its Memorial Day, July 4th and Labor Day “Russian picnics” featuring country music and ethnic food.

But with the bloodbaths taking place in Russia, the joy of being part of 1,000-year tradition of Orthodox spirituality, iconography and sacred music became mixed with pain.

By 1950, the pride that many parish members had in being Russian had given way to an attitude of ambivalence, with many opting to “hide” their ancestry so as not to give others a reason to view them as the enemy. By the late 1960s, the parish nearly had to close its doors because so many people had come to view the church’s rituals, most of it still in Russian, as not culturally compatible with their lives as everyday Americans.

Father Vasily, a grandson of Russian immigrants and who has degrees from Indiana University and St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in New York, traces the parish’s revival to when the Reverends Dragan Filipovic and Stephan Meholick began celebrating liturgies in English, fostering a Eucharistic renewal.

“The church did lose some people because of it,” says the pastor. “Some wanted that Russian identity.”

But for all those who left, there were others for whom the changes represented an opportunity to connect with the church in a new way. It was no longer a “Russian” church but an Orthodox Church in the fullest sense, open to people of all nationalities.

Father Vasily says that of those belonging to the parish today, only about half can claim Russian ancestry. The other half is made up of people who joined either because of intermarriage or because they have converted to the Orthodox faith.

“The church has really become what the early missionaries had envisioned,” says the priest. “What they had wanted all along was an indigenous Orthodox church in North America, with many nationalities. And that’s what we have today.”

The priest says one encouraging sign is that the new wave of Russian immigrants who came in after the fall of communism hold to the same attitude.

“The new immigrants are not interested in maintaining a Russian subculture. They have professional jobs, speak English and are productive members of the community. Yes, Russia is their heritage, but they are far more interested in what we have to say about the Christian faith.”

All of which suggests to Father Vasily that the parish has a bright future.

“Our ultimate purpose is what it has always been, to lead people into the Kingdom of God and to prepare people for the Second Coming of Christ. To do that, we have to be in touch with the world as it changes, so we can present the Gospel in a way the world can understand without compromising the message.”

The church’s centennial festivities will begin at 7:30 p.m. Friday when St. James Episcopal Church, 24 Hamlet Ave., Woonsocket, hosts a concert of sacred hymns of the Russian Orthodox Church sung in English by the New York-based Spirit of Orthodoxy Choir under the direction of Aleksei Shipovalnikov. Tickets are $10 for adults; $7 for seniors and students; children under 10 free.

Next Saturday at 9 a.m., His Grace Nikon, the Orthodox Bishop of Boston and New England, joined by clergy and faithful from neighboring Orthodox parishes will celebrate a Hierarchical Divine Liturgy at Church of the Holy Dormition, 71 Manville Hill Rd. It will be followed by a luncheon at Lake Pearl Luciano’s in Wrentham, Mass., at 12:30 p.m. For concert tickets call (401) 762-2222. For the luncheon call (401) 658-0874.

rdujardi@projo.com