Saint George Greek Orthodox Church of Shreveport

History

Saint George Greek Orthodox Church of Shreveport, Louisiana was established in 1917 by immigrants from Asia Minor and Greece, many of them refugees from New Ephesus in Asia Minor, the ancient city of Ephesus referenced in the New Testament. When the church of Saint George in New Ephesus was destroyed during the Greco-Turkish struggle, the survivors who had made their way to Shreveport founded a new church and named it Saint George in memory of what they had lost, a deeply meaningful act of continuity that connected their new life in Louisiana to the destroyed world of their homeland.

The early congregation met first in an Episcopal church and later in its own building, a house on Hope Street in downtown Shreveport. In 1924 the community purchased a building on the corner of Peabody and Hope Streets, remodeling it for use as a house of worship. The present building at the corner of Creswell Avenue and Wichita Street in Shreveport's Highland neighborhood was designed by architect J.P. Annan and erected in 1934 and 1935, replacing the earlier home with a proper permanent church. The historical marker placed by the Shreveport-Bossier Convention and Tourist Bureau notes that the building was named as a memorial to the destroyed Saint George Church of New Ephesus, preserving that history in the civic record of the city. Archbishop Athenagoras of North America, who would later become the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, made an archpastoral visit to Shreveport in 1941, worshipping with the community at the newly erected church and affirming the significance of this small Greek Orthodox presence in the deep South.

The sanctuary was expanded and redecorated in 2009, with a hand-carved red oak altar screen installed and icons painted by Tom Clark enriching the interior. In 2017 the parish celebrated its centennial, with descendants of the founding families gathering to honor a hundred years of Greek Orthodox life in northwestern Louisiana. Greeks continued to arrive in Shreveport in several waves across the twentieth century, coming first from Asia Minor and later from Greece itself following World War II and the Greek Civil War, each generation deepening the community's roots in the Ark-La-Tex region.

Saint George Greek Orthodox Church at 1719 Creswell Avenue in Shreveport serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of northwestern Louisiana as a parish of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Denver within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.