Turkish Orthodox Church in the United States

The Turkish Orthodox Church in America was an independent Eastern Orthodox church active in the 1970s.

It claimed to pay allegiance to the Autocephalous Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate, an unrecognised Orthodox church based in Istanbul.

In the United States, some 20 churches organised the Turkish Orthodox Church in America in 1966, under Archbishop Civet Kristof, an African American physician originally named Christopher M. Cragg, who had been consecrated in the American Orthodox Catholic Church in 1965. In 1969, the church reported 14 churches and 6 mission parishes. In 1971, the church claimed a membership of 14,800 believers served by 26 clergymen. Kristof carried the title of metropolitan archbishop of New York and primate of the Turkish Orthodox Church in America.

The Turkish Orthodox Church continued to exist throughout the 1970s, but during the early 1980s, Archbishop Cragg moved to Chicago and opened a health clinic. His stationery carried the title, American Orthodox Church, Diocese of Chicago and North America.^[1]

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