St. Peter and St. Paul Russian Orthodox Church, Bramble

Active only from 1918 until 1932, St. Peter and St. Paul Russian Orthodox Church in Bramble served a small number of farming families who had ventured north from Chisholm to claim homesteads. The church received a new lease on life in 1968 when it was “discovered” by Paul Berg, an Episcopal priest from Grand Rapids. Berg’s restoration efforts led to a renewed interest in the church, which has continued to inspire the religious and artistic imagination of the region.

In the late nineteenth century, eastern European immigrants flooded into the United States to work in mines and factories. Immigrants from the northeastern corner of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, often referred to as Ruthenians or Rusyns, filled the steel mills and coal mines of Pennsylvania as well as the iron mines of Minnesota. In the early 1900s, some of these miners claimed homesteads north of Chisholm, in southeastern Koochiching County—a community they called Bramble.

Farmers in the Bramble area began organizing their own congregation in 1910, after William (Wasyl) Lucachick (Lukaczyk) donated two acres of land for a church building. Because of the need to gather building materials, construction did not begin until 1915 and was not completed until 1918. A few years later, the neighboring Sorokie family donated land nearby for a cemetery.

The church’s architecture is common to many buildings built by Rusyn immigrants in the United States, and mirrors the construction of the St. Nicholas Orthodox Church in Chisholm. The narthex (nave entrance) features a belltower with a double onion dome made of bent sheet metal, topped by a Slavic three-barred cross. According to Russian tradition, the nave is free of pews, with only benches along the walls. Alex Terebenetz added the iconostasis in 1926. The sanctuary/altar area is also crowned by a Slavic cross on the exterior.

There is no record of consecration for the church, meaning that it never had a priest assigned to it. It was served instead by a priest from Chisholm who made the trek north once a month when weather permitted. Due to the severity of the winters and the fact that many of the homesteaders worked in the mines near Chisholm, the church was seldom used during the cold months. By 1932, due to the Great Depression and the difficulty of farming in northern Minnesota, most of the families had given up and moved back to Chisholm. In that year, the church closed, and its semi-regular services ceased.

An Episcopal priest from Grand Rapids named Paul Berg visited St. Peter and St. Paul Church in 1967. When he arrived, the caretakers of the church (the Diachok family) were discussing plans with the Koochiching County Historical Society to turn it into a museum. Berg recoiled at the idea, which reminded him of the conversion of Orthodox churches into museums in the USSR. He eventually suggested restoring the church and reviving occasional services instead, and his proposal won out.

The restoration effort garnered interest throughout the state and beyond. Berg points out that it was an “ecumenical” effort, drawing on the art department of Augsburg College and the icon-writing expertise of  iconographer Sister Mary Charles McGough from St. Scholastica Priory. In this spirit, Sister Mary Charles was commissioned to write a Marian icon called “Our Lady of Unity” for the church. An original troparion (hymn) was also composed that tied “the Bramble church” to the bramble bushes mentioned in the Bible.

When the church celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 1968, Archbishop John of the Russian Metropolia (soon to be the Orthodox Church of America) brought the famous Tikhvin icon, which he had taken out of the Soviet Union, to St. Peter and St. Paul Church. For several years into the mid-1970s, “Tikhvin Festivals” were held annually at the church, drawing interest from miles away and raising money for upkeep.

In the more than fifty years since Fr. Berg’s efforts, the church has seen two major restoration efforts—in 2010/2011 and in 2018 for its centennial celebration. The same Lucachick family that donated the land for the church in 1910 nominated it for the National Registry of Historic Places in 1982 and became its primary caretaker. In the early 2000s, it began hosting the annual retreat of St. Basil of Ostrog Serbian Orthodox Church, the only active Orthodox church remaining in Chisholm.