Meals for the Soul Orthodox Resources

Orthodox Resources

Twenty sites worth your time

The Orthodox internet is large, uneven, and full of dead links. This is the short list — checked, current, and honest about what each one is.

Every link on this page was opened and checked. Where a site has a particular perspective or an owner you should know about, it is stated underneath rather than left for you to discover later.

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Where to start

If you are new, or looking for a parish, begin here. These are the official sites of the jurisdictions most North American readers will encounter.

  • Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops

    The coordinating body of all canonical Orthodox bishops in the United States. Its parish finder covers every jurisdiction at once, which is what you want if you are simply trying to find the nearest Orthodox church rather than a particular kind of one.

    assemblyofbishops.orgFree

  • Orthodox Church in America

    The most useful single reference site in English. The Orthodox Faith is a four-volume catechism you can read free in your browser, and the Lives of the Saints archive is the one most other sites quietly copy from.

    oca.orgFree

  • Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America

    The Online Chapel gives the day's readings, the commemorated saints, and the hymns for the feast. Strong on liturgical texts and the Greek tradition specifically.

    goarch.orgFree

  • Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese

    Department pages covering everything from youth ministry to liturgics, plus the archdiocese's own service texts and parish directory. The Antiochian archdiocese has long been the most convert-heavy in North America and its material reflects that.

    antiochian.orgFree

Listen and read

Podcasts, lectures and long-running blogs. This is where most people actually spend their time once they are past the introductions.

  • Ancient Faith Ministries

    The centre of gravity for English-language Orthodox media: two radio streams, several hundred podcasts, a blog network, and a publishing house. If someone recommends you an Orthodox podcast, it is probably hosted here.

    ancientfaith.comFree, with a bookstore

  • Patristic Nectar

    Fr Josiah Trenham's lecture library — patristic texts read aloud in full, homilies, and course series on the Fathers. The catalogue is free to browse and listen to; physical and premium editions are sold separately.

    patristicnectar.orgFree, with a store

  • Glory to God for All Things

    Fr Stephen Freeman has been writing here since 2006, largely on how Orthodox theology touches ordinary life, shame, and modern anxiety. Quiet, unpolemical, and probably the most widely read Orthodox blog in English.

    glory2godforallthings.comFree

  • Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy

    Fr Andrew Stephen Damick's long-running project on what Orthodoxy actually teaches and how it differs from other Christian traditions — written for people who want the differences stated plainly rather than smoothed over.

    orthodoxyandheterodoxy.orgFree

Look things up

Reference works, encyclopedias, and the Fathers in translation.

  • OrthodoxWiki

    A community-written encyclopedia of about five thousand articles on saints, councils, liturgics and church history. Fast for orientation on an unfamiliar name.

    orthodoxwiki.orgFree

    Community-edited and unevenly maintained. Treat it as a starting point and follow its citations rather than quoting it as an authority.

  • The Church Fathers at New Advent

    The complete Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers collections, free and searchable. When a quotation is attributed to Chrysostom or Basil, this is where you check it.

    newadvent.org/fathersFree

    A Catholic site. The Fathers themselves are the shared inheritance, but the surrounding editorial notes are written from a Roman Catholic perspective.

  • Mystagogy Resource Center

    John Sanidopoulos translates and collects material — saints' lives, patristic texts, Greek church history — that is otherwise hard to find in English. An enormous archive built over fifteen years.

    mystagogyresourcecenter.comFree, with a paid newsletter

  • OrthoChristian

    The English edition of Pravoslavie.ru, run by Sretensky Monastery in Moscow. The saints' lives, patristic excerpts and spiritual writing are a genuine resource, and the volume of translated material is unmatched.

    orthochristian.comFree

    Affiliated with the Moscow Patriarchate, and its news and political coverage carries that perspective. Useful for the spiritual material; read the current-affairs pieces knowing where they come from.

The calendar and the services

What is commemorated today, what is read today, and what the choir is singing.

  • Orthocal

    The daily commemorations and Scripture readings, computed rather than hand-typed, with an open API that several parish apps are built on. The clearest tool for seeing the New Calendar and Julian reckonings side by side.

    orthocal.infoFree

  • Holy Trinity Orthodox Calendar

    A daily calendar that prints Old Style and New Style dates together, with the readings, the fasting rule for the day, and the saints of both reckonings.

    holytrinityorthodox.comFree

  • Digital Chant Stand

    Complete service texts, generated for the actual date, in Greek and English side by side — Vespers, Orthros, Liturgy, and the hymns proper to the day. Built for chanters, but useful to anyone who wants to follow along.

    dcs.goarch.orgFree

  • The Divine Music Project

    St Anthony's Monastery in Arizona hosts the largest free archive of Byzantine chant in English notation anywhere — thousands of scores, downloadable, for every service of the year.

    stanthonysmonastery.orgFree

Books, and works of mercy

Where to buy the books worth owning, and where the Church's money does something.

  • St Vladimir's Seminary Press

    The largest English-language Orthodox publisher. The Popular Patristics series — small, affordable, properly translated volumes of the Fathers — is the single best way into patristic reading.

    svspress.comPaid

  • Holy Trinity Publications

    The press of Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville: prayer books, the Russian spiritual classics, liturgical texts, and service books built to be used rather than displayed.

    holytrinitypublications.comPaid

  • International Orthodox Christian Charities

    The humanitarian relief arm of the Assembly of Bishops, working in more than a dozen countries. The place to send money when something terrible happens somewhere and you want it handled by people already on the ground.

    iocc.orgFree to read; a charity

  • Orthodox Christian Mission Center

    The pan-Orthodox missions agency for North America — supporting clergy, translation and church-building in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and sending short-term teams.

    ocmc.orgFree to read; a charity

How this list is made. Nothing here is a paid placement and nobody has been asked for anything in return. These are the sites actually worth your time, listed because they are useful. Where a site carries a particular perspective, it says so — you should know whose voice you are reading before you trust it.

Found a dead link, or something missing?

Sites move and vanish — one of the addresses originally on this list had already been abandoned and taken over by an unrelated business by the time it was checked. If you find something broken, or know a resource that belongs here, tell me and it will be fixed.