Tag Archives: Racism

Orthodox America Has a Lost Cause Problem

by Aram G. Sarkisian

confederate battle flag

For more than a decade, researchers have excavated the fascinating story of Philip Ludwell III, an Anglo-American convert to Orthodox Christianity who lived in colonial Virginia during the mid- to late-eighteenth century. A friend to Benjamin Franklin, cousin to Martha Washington, and a member of one of Virginia’s most established and well-connected planter families, Ludwell was also a distant relation of Robert E. Lee. Recently, a group of Orthodox Christians from the American South have drawn on this story to establish the Philip Ludwell III Orthodox Fellowship, a group devoted to “nurturing the roots of Orthodoxy in Dixie’s land.”

What is interesting, but troubling about the rise of the Ludwell Fellowship is its appropriation of an eighteenth-century story to fit a twisted and ahistorical agenda of the twenty-first. Scholars and other observers are noting the growing links between Orthodox Christianity and the American alt-right. This includes, but is not limited to the rise of Orthodox political candidates Michael Sisco and Lauren Witzke, the rhetoric of white supremacist leader Matthew Heimbach, and the participation of OCA priest Fr. Mark Hodges in the January 6th insurrection at the United States Capitol. Normalizing a conservative strain of Orthodoxy rooted in the farthest reaches of the political right, the Ludwell Fellowship poses their namesake as a spiritual antecedent to a convert-driven Southern Orthodoxy that neatly maps onto neo-Confederate ideologies of a redeemed Dixie. In this way, the fellowship is but one aspect of a larger movement within some Orthodox communities in the United States to draw on these developments to help shift the fulcrum of Orthodox America into the heart and history of the American South, and in turn, normalize white supremacy.

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Racism and Otherness

by Nikolaos Asproulis | българскиქართულიRomână | РусскийСрпски

This essay was first published in Greek at Polymeros kai Polytropos, the blog of the Volos Academy for Theological Studies.

Artistic depiction of racism
Image: Archibald J. Motley Jr., “The First One Hundred Years: He Amongst You Who is Without Sin Shall Cast the First Stone: Forgive Them Father For They Know Not What They Do”

In our time, racism has many faces. Sometimes it manifests itself in a more visible way and other times in an invisible way. Whether it is racism of gender, race, religion or social class, of ethnic origin or sexual orientation, it is certain that the enemy is always the other. It does not matter if the other amounts to whole nations, social groups, or individuals, the other in this case becomes the “red cloth” of a blind ideology, which does not define people as unique and irreplaceable persons in the image of the Triune God, but primarily based on certain natural characteristics.

This is, one might say, the very source of racism and the rejection of otherness. Hostility towards the other, or rather hatred for the different is what defines our identity. This counterpoint is the cornerstone on which all kinds of ideological or religious justifications for discrimination between people are based. Not only each of us, but also entire nations form their collective identity in an oppositional way, in the name of a national, political, cultural, economic, but also religious superiority over others.

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Jacob Blake and My Struggle with God
Divine Love and the African American Mind

by Alfred D. Turnipseed

Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, Painter: Edward Knippers

On the morning of August 24, I was hot! I woke up as I usually do—to the morning’s light, with stares from my cat, awaiting his early meal. I turned on Morning Joe and opened up my iPhone’s newsfeed. This is what I saw:

Black man shot multiple times by Wisconsin police; video of incident sparks social media backlash, protests

Now, generally, I’m not one easily given to anger. When I get angry—that is, when I’m in the grip of the emotion—I tend to resolve it in a matter of hours, or a day, tops. My maternal grandmother (God rest her beautiful soul), who was very much a biblical woman, always used to say, “Do not let the sun set on your anger” (Ephesians 4:26, NAB), and I try my best—with God’s Grace—to live by this rule, as Grandma certainly did.

This time, I knew that I would not be successful.

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Racial Injustice and Trinitarian Suffering

by Matt Kappadakunnel | Ελληνικά

Andrei Rublev's Trinity

I discovered Andrei Rublev’s The Trinity icon ten years ago and have been using this icon for prayer ever since. I especially turn to the Trinity (both the icon and the Father, Son and Spirit) during times of crisis.

Given the COVID-19 Pandemic, coupled with the racial violence that seems to have been magnified in 2020, contemplating the Trinity has been my refuge.

When I grieve the loss of lives due to COVID-19, I contemplate The Trinity, but I see something new: the Trinity is weeping.

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