George Alexander McGuire

Immigration and priesthood In 1894, McGuire immigrated to the United States. He initially joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which was the first independent black Christian denomination in the country, founded in the early nineteenth century. On 2 January 1895, McGuire formally joined the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, and two years later he was ordained as a priest. It had been started in 1794 by Absalom Jones, earlier a founder with Richard Allen of the Free African Society. This mutual aid society preceded the African Methodist Episcopal Church founded by Allen. McGuire was rector of St. Thomas from 1902–05.

From 1905 to 1909, McGuire served as Archdeacon for Colored Work in the Diocese of Arkansas. Eventually, McGuire resigned and relocated to Cambridge, Massachusetts. There he established St. Bartholomew's Church for West Indians who were living in the Boston area. While in Cambridge, McGuire also studied at Boston College of Physicians and Surgeons, receiving his M.D. degree in 1910. When his small church was not recognized by the Episcopal diocese, McGuire resigned in 1911.

Meeting with the Ecumenical Patriarch

McGuire attempted to gain recognition from the Greek Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. In December 1921, three months after his consecration, McGuire—through the intercession of Eastern Orthodox prelates—was granted an audience with Patriarch Meletios while the latter was on a visit to New York City. McGuire claimed that the patriarch accepted the African Orthodox Church as an Orthodox jurisdiction, but would not afford it communion with Eastern Orthodoxy until it demonstrated stability and growth. Nonetheless, the African Orthodox Church was essentially Anglo-Catholic, and it was Orthodox only to the extent that its leader had the title of patriarch, that the original form of the Nicene Creed had been adopted, and that its episcopal source was in an Oriental Orthodox church. as well as an Order of Deaconesses.

In 1925, McGuire founded an African Orthodox parish in West Palm Beach, Florida. making it the largest Orthodox Church in Africa.|group=note