Environment, Culture, Ethnicity and Health - Essay Example

At that time, the community was organized and incorporated and its first priest was Fr. Michael Sarris. In 1916, a home had been purchased and converted into the first Greek Orthodox Church of Jacksonville. The "godfather", so to speak, of the church was Rev. Parthenios Kolonis from Patmos, Greece, and had been granted the name of St. John the Divine of the parish.(Originally named The Church of the Revelation of St. John the Divine (Theodoratus, 1971). On April 17, 1919, the community purchased a larger church facility in the downtown area from the Christian Science Congregation.

This building, for the next 39 years would see innumerable weddings, baptisms, funerals, and visits, by many high ranking clergymen. As far as can be determined, the consecration of this church was in the early to mid-1920s by the late Archbishop Alexander (Theodoratus, 1971). In many ways, the history of this parish reflects a process-- a process of the establishment and assimilation of Greek Orthodoxy within the American context. From the 1920s until today, through the struggles to build, to finance, and to educate, the parish finds itself at a new point of impact.

Though the foundations are now firm, their greatest mission, that of preserving and furthering the Orthodox faith and their heritage as good Americans lies in the future (Theodoratus, 1971). They are now upgrading with emphasis on the importance of the Greek Orthodox religion by promoting educational, cultural, social and athletic activities. In large part, this decrease has resulted from the desire of parents to provide adequately for their children and to have them educated so they can achieve professional status.

The method of limiting pregnancies has changed from control of gestation to control of conception (Papadopoulos, 1998). In Greece, abortions were not legal but were commonly performed by physicians. In the United States, a wide variety of birth