History

Greek immigrants had been making their way to Montgomery, Alabama for roughly seventy years before their community finally built a church of its own. Those early arrivals, who came to the Capital of the Confederacy and later the Cradle of the Civil Rights Movement seeking opportunity, opened restaurants, candy shops, and small businesses that made them visible and valued members of Montgomery life. For all those decades without a church, the small Greek community sustained its faith as best it could, relying on visiting clergy and gathering in homes and borrowed spaces for prayer and the celebration of the great feasts.

The Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church was formally established in 1943, the fulfillment of a dream long deferred by years of depression and war. The church building was constructed in 1947 and 1948 through the scrimping, bake sales, penny jars, and collective sacrifice of the earliest fifteen families, who raised what they could and built something lasting. The church they built at 1721 Mount Meigs Road has provided the glue for the founding families and for the dozens who joined them after the Second World War, sustaining Greek Orthodox community life in Montgomery across the generations.

The parish's annual Greek Fest, held each Labor Day weekend, has grown into one of the most beloved Hellenic cultural celebrations in central Alabama, described by those who attend as the granddaddy of all barbecues and bake sales, with proceeds benefiting local charities and the broader Montgomery community.

The Annunciation of the Theotokos Greek Orthodox Church at 1721 Mount Meigs Road in Montgomery serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of central Alabama as a parish of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Atlanta within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, an outpost of Orthodoxy in mid-Alabama for more than eighty years.