| Запечатление избранных. Миниатюра из Толкования на Апокалипсис Беата Лиебанского. Сер. X в. (NY Morgan. M. 644. Fol. 201v) Запечатление избранных. Миниатюра из Толкования на Апокалипсис Беата Лиебанского. Сер. X в. (NY Morgan. M. 644. Fol. 201v) Но наиболее весомое свидетельство о родстве И. Б. O. с ветхозаветной пророческой лит-рой - наличие в книге мн. аллюзий, большинство к-рых относится к пророческим книгам ( Deiana. 1982; Beale. 1984; Idem. 1998; Fekkes. 1994; Moyise. 1995; Pisano. 2002; Mathewson. 2003; Jauhiainen. 2005). Особая близость очевидна между И. Б. O. и Иезекииля пророка книгой. И. Б. О. содержит не просто отдельные аллюзии на ее текст, но в нем отражены целые разделы и образные сферы Книги прор. Иезекииля, так что можно говорить об определенном структурном параллелизме обоих книг ( Vanhoye. 1962; Lust. 1980; Ruiz. 1989; Kowalski. 2004; Das Ezechielbuch in der Johannesoffenbarung. Neukirchen-Vluyn, 2004; Boxall. 2007; Buitenwerf. 2007). Примерами таких перекличек могут служить следующие тематические блоки: призвание к пророческому служению (Иез 1. 1 - 3. 21; Откр 1. 9-20; 4-5; 10), запечатление избранных (Иез 9. 1-11; Откр 7. 1-8 и др. места), измерение храма (Иез 40-43; Откр 11. 1-2), воскресение (Иез 37. 1-14; Откр 11. 3-14; 20. 4-6), Гог и Магог (Иез 38-39; Откр 20. 7-10; ср.: 16. 13-16; 19. 19-21;), заключительные видения Нового Иерусалима (Иез 40-48; Откр 21. 1 - 22. 5). Подобное сочетание в И. Б. O. элементов апокалиптического и пророческого жанра органично ввиду происхождения апокалиптики из ветхозаветного пророчества. Но этим жанровая сложность И. Б. O. не исчерпывается. Книга содержит и элементы эпистолярного жанра - она обрамлена начальным и заключительным пожеланиями благодати (Откр 1. 4-5; 22. 21), в 1-м указаны отправитель и адресат, а главы 2-3 содержат послания каждой из 7 асийских Церквей - общему адресату И. Б. O. Значение эпистолярной составляющей книги для ее экзегезы исключительно велико ( Karrer. 1986). Будучи обращенным к определенным читателям, И. Б. О. в своем богословии исходит из конкретных обстоятельств, призывает к принятию верных решений в их ситуациях. Учет исторической, культурной и социально-политической обстановки, в к-рой находятся общины запада М. Азии, их внутренних проблем и проблем взаимоотношений с окружающим нехрист. миром - необходимое условие правильного истолкования И. Б. O. |
| After spending a little over a year in Jamaica, he returned to America, though an article claimed Morgan intended to return to Jamaica to «start mission work under his Faith.» 217 Morgan had, by this time, been active among a group of Syrian Orthodox Christians in Jamaica. Morgan had even informed the Gleaner that he was in contact with «the Syrian Orthodox Bishop of Brooklyn,» which would have been Bishop Raphael (Hawaweeny), who held the post from 1904 until his death in 1915. 218 Incidentally, at one point on his Jamaican mission, he was able to rekindle his Russian connection, concelebrating a divine liturgy on board the Russian Warship Rossija, together with the ship " s chaplain, with the service «sung in Russian for the benefit... of the Russians and in English for the benefit of the Syrians.» 219 When Morgan returned to Philadelphia after lecturing and attempting to establish a more permanent mission in Jamaica, his efforts bore some fruit. In 1916, Morgan penned an open letter that directly demonstrate the extent of his efforts and provides us with an important look into how he saw the Orthodox tradition as responding to the racial concerns of his day. Morgan had chosen to argue against Marcus Garvey. 220 Garvey, who was himself from Jamaica, had founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association in 1914 in order to unite all Africans and those of African descent scattered throughout the world. He had arrived in America in March, 1916, in order to go on the lecture circuit and raise money 221 Morgan wrote his open letter almost immediately. Allowing himself but a brief introduction, Morgan launched into the central arguments. Thirteen other Jamaican-Americans co-signed Morgan " s letter to Garvey. 222 Morgan himself signed as the head of the Order of the Cross of Golgotha, making it likely that the other thirteen Jamaicans were also members. Two of Morgan’s arguments stand out in particular. First, Morgan objected that Garvey «drew a deplorable picture of the prejudice of the Englishman in Jamaica against the blacks, portraying hypocrisy and deceit of his attitude towards blacks, and stated his preference for the prejudice of the American to that of the Englishman.» 223 Morgan approached the problem of racial concerns primarily through an ecclesiastical lens. In American church life, Morgan had not found racial harmony, but rather the opportunity to forge and offer a new religious identity to African Americans, one grounded in the Orthodox tradition. Second, Morgan objected to Garvey " s rejection of racially mixed marriages. Garvey had pressed for a pan-Africanism with an anti-white tenor, but Morgan did not view race relations in this manner and given his own racially mixed background, Morgan had to have been offended by the comments Garvey made concerning mixed heritage and mixed marriages. |
| D. Oliver Herbel FR. RAPHAEL MORGAN AND EARLY AFRICAN AMERICAN ORTHODOXY ON AUGUST 15/28, 1907, THE Feast of Dormition, a black Jamaican immigrant to the United States was ordained to the Orthodox priesthood in Constantinople. 166 This marked the culmination of a journey in search of the «true church.» On that day, Robert Josias Morgan was ordained as Fr. Raphael and became the first man of African American descent born in the New World to be ordained in the Orthodox Church. One scholar found Morgan’s story so incredible that he wrote, «the Morgan story is so utterly improbable that one tends to dismiss it as a hoax.» 167 On the other hand, the journal Epiphany included a brief summary of Morgan’s story in a special volume dedicated to «African-American Orthodoxy.» 168 In the introduction, the editor noted that while sources for Morgan’s story were not extensive, they were substantial enough to prove his story was no hoax. The editor went on to speculate about possible motives for Morgan’s conversion and how Morgan may have understood his own conversion from the Protestant Episcopal Church to the Greek Orthodox Church. 169 Morgan’s ordination and subsequent ministry within the Orthodox Church was a considered response to the difficult situation black Americans faced, often being viewed as second class even within somewhat integrated churches, as was the case for his own Protestant Episcopal Church. One might expect that Morgan would have turned to one of the historically black churches in America, of which he had knowledge. One might alternatively think that if none of those were appropriate for him, he would seek to establish his own church. As this chapter shows, however, Morgan sought a different solution, one not grounded in the anti-traditional tradition but in the tradition of Orthodox Church, which he entered by the gate of restorationism. Although he initially considered an independent church, in keeping with American restorationism, and hoped for a furthering of ecumenical relations between Anglicanism and Orthodoxy, Morgan soon decided against such a move. Rather than continue the tradition of breaking from one " s previous tradition to join or start another sect in an attempt to restore the early Church, Morgan looked an outside tradition that could serve as a grounding, even critique, of that very anti-traditional tradition. The Orthodox tradition offered Morgan precisely that, for he saw it as a tradition that could stand on its own apart from the racial problems that beset Western Christianity. Indeed, he saw the Orthodox tradition as standing authoritatively prior to Western Christianity. |
| Morgan’s religious journey is an American one, though it has roots in the Caribbean. Unfortunately, we can only but sketch Morgan’s life prior to his arrival in America, though one early biography does seem based on correspondence with Morgan. 170 The date of his birth is not known, but sometime around 1869 seems likely. 171 Morgan was born in Chapelton, Clarendon, Jamaica, to Robert Josias and Mary Ann (Johnson) Morgan, though his father died when Morgan was but six months old. 172 Although he had a dark skin tone (according to both photographs and source descriptions), he was actually of mixed racial heritage. 173 According to both biographies, Morgan traveled extensively. Eventually, he ended up at Freetown, Sierra Leone, where he became a school teacher and was appointed as a lay-reader under Samuel David Ferguson, the bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Liberia. 174 He later went to England, where he possibly studied at King " s College, University of London and Saint Aidan " s Theological College, Birkenhead. 175 MORGAN IN THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN AMERICA In 1895, he came to America and was ordained a deacon in the diocese of Delaware, by Bishop Leighton Coleman, a bishop known for opposing racism. 176 He was subsequently assigned to be honorary curate at St. Matthews Protestant Episcopal Church in Wilmington, Delaware. 177 Gavin White noted that Morgan served St. Matthew " s from 1896 to 1897, subsequently serving in Charleston, West Virginia from 1897 to 1901, in Richmond, Virginia, from 1901 to 1905, in Nashville, Tennessee in 1905, and finally in Philadelphia in 1906 at the Church of the Crucifixion. 178 A close examination of his movements during this time demonstrates that Morgan moved within the same circle of black clergymen that included Rev. George Alexander McGuire (who would later go on to lead the African Orthodox Church, which shall be discussed further below). Morgan may have even known McGuire personally 179 Their points of contact and overlap provide a strong circumstantial case in favor of this. |
| Morgan was as committed to African American concerns as Garvey, but from a specifically religious context. He had placed his hope not in a return to Africa or pan-Africanism, but in Orthodox Christianity, a Christianity that not only ordained him to the priesthood but gave him the charge of reaching out to other African Americans. When he became Orthodox, he forged a new identity and did so with the intention of spreading the Orthodox faith amongst fellow African Americans, going so far as to recommend A. C. V Cartier as a candidate for the Orthodox priesthood. There was no need to unite around Africa, for the answer was theological. The answer was a tradition that could be seen as untainted, as even prior, to the racially segregated Christianity of the West. For as Morgan told his biographer Mather, his initial doubts led him to pursue three years of historical and theological searching, from which he concluded that the «pillar and ground of truth» was the Orthodox Church. 224 That was not something American restorationism, with its independently formed churches, could normally bring, but American restorationism had, in fact, led Morgan to believe that a grounding in an ongoing tradition was precisely what was needed. This would be the last time the public would hear from Morgan. The last year he appeared in the city directory of Philadelphia was 1916. 225 The 1921–1922 Negro Year Book contains a paragraph dedicated to Morgan, but it reads identically to the 1912 version and therefore does not necessarily indicate that Morgan was still alive. Morgan cannot be found in the U.S. census for 1920, so if he was still living in 1921–1922, he was most likely in Jamaica. Still, there is no further mention made of him in the Kingston Gleaner, suggesting that Morgan died in 1916–1917. THE LEGACY OF THE ORTHODOX TRADITION AMONG AFRICAN AMERICANS Morgan’s immediate and direct efforts to bring the Orthodox tradition as a solution to black Christians in North America yielded little fruit other than baptizing his own family and establishing a small lay fraternity known as the Cross of Golgotha (about which we know nothing other than that it consisted of a handful of Jamaican immigrants such as himself). Despite this, he had trail-blazed a path that was soon to become popular. In 1921, George Alexander McGuire established the African Orthodox Church, designating himself Patriarch Alexander when he was formally elected to lead the new religious body. Moreover, McGuire would establish the African Orthodox Church, through his consecration at the hands of the wandering bishop noted above, Joseph Rene Vilatte. |
| In June 1907, the Holy Synod of Constantinople received a letter from Petrides recommending Morgan for ordination and the minutes of the July 1907 meeting contain a discussion of Morgan’s case. 202 Documents pertaining to Morgan’s ordination provide a general outline of the events. 203 In July, the synod approved Morgan " s request to be baptized and subsequently ordained to the diaconate and priesthood. 204 Morgan’s case caused a stir in the local Greek population, as over 3,000 people attended his baptism. 205 The synod provided for Morgan’s travel, vestments, liturgical books, a cross, and also granted him the right to hear confessions. 206 Despite this, Morgan " s request for an antimension (i.e., an altar cloth with a bishop " s signature) and holy chrism, for annointing the newly baptized, were denied. 207 These were denied because the synod wished for Morgan to serve under Petrides until he was, in fact, ready to open and serve in a separate parish. Although his request was denied, Morgan " s request for these items suggests that Morgan had a larger goal for his own conversion. Becoming Orthodox was not merely a matter of a personal religious journey. His outlook was evangelistic. The goal was to take the Orthodox tradition, which was «apostolic» and yet neither a restorationism such as Vilatte " s church, 208 nor even Western, nor chained down by a legacy of racial segregation, and bring it to blacks in North America. In fact, an evangelistic fervor characterized his initial actions upon returning to Philadelphia. According to the minutes from February 1908, Morgan returned and baptized his wife and children, though Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church of Philadelphia contains no records of this. 209 Then, in November of 1908, Morgan recommended his old friend Rev. A. C. V. Cartier for ordination into the Orthodox Church, but the request seems to have produced no attempts to pursue Cartier as a candidate for the Orthodox priesthood. 210 Most likely, the request was misplaced or forgotten because it was made just when the jurisdiction of the Greeks in America had been transferred from Constantinople to the Church of Greece. |
| McGuire had been Morgan " s predecessor in Richmond, having served until November of 1900. They both served at the Church of the Crucifixion in Philadelphia. McGuire served there in the 1890s, under Rev. Henry L. Phillips while Morgan served the Church of the Crucifixion several years later in 1906. 180 From 1902–1905, McGuire served as rector at St. Thomas " s Protestant Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. 181 A.C.V. Cartier, a personal friend of Morgan, served as rector of St. Thomas Protestant Episcopal Church after McGuire left. Morgan and McGuire also had an important mutual acquaintance in Rev. George F. Bragg. Bragg included Morgan in his work on African American church leaders. In a letter to the editor of the Living Church, Bragg both referred to himself as a «friend and admirer» of McGuire and raised Morgan as another example of an African American who left the Protestant Episcopal Church in search of Orthodox holy orders. 182 All of these men were serving within African American parishes of the Protestant Episcopal Church. It was while moving within this very circle that Morgan would have first encountered the idea of turning to Orthodox Christianity. Serving within the Episcopal Church at the time was a difficult undertaking for African Americans inasmuch as ordination to the priesthood was often slow in coming and when it did, they were always under white bishops, even if such bishops were the likes of Leighton Cole-man. In conjunction with the racist context in which he lived, however, Morgan also had some unanswered theological questions. He shared with one of his early biographers that he had doubts concerning his service to the Protestant Episcopal Church (indeed, to the larger Anglican Communion), but doubts that were not (interestingly) primarily racial, but theological: For many years he maintained serious doubts concerning the teachings of the whole Anglican Communion; the change that came over him resulted in more than three years of special study of Anglicanism;...It was his final conviction that the Holy Greek Church is the pillar and ground of truth. |
| More than the religious debate, it was his interest in evolution that led him to follow Richard Dawkins. Upon finding the author’s actual website, Morgan was excited to communicate with scientists and philosophers who could offer more insight into evolution. But rather than discussing the nature of evolution in the “oasis of clear thinking,” Morgan was horrified to discover in his first forum that more than half of the people devoted their time saying rude things about believers using extremely foul language. “I don’t know if you’ve seen ‘The Social Network’ but there’s one point where a girl says to the main character ‘Just stay in your dark room and make snide remarks because that’s what the angry do these days.’” After witnessing the discussions firsthand, the newly minted evolutionist agreed that the Internet was more a place where people could hide behind their anonymity and say rude things as a kind of therapy. Still searching for answers however, Morgan continued to be a part of the community, drawn particularly to a discussion on David Robertson’s open letter replying to Dawkins’ first chapter of The God Delusion . Prompted to write a response to each of Dawkins’ chapters in the book, the Scottish pastor eventually compiled all the letters into a book called The Dawkins Letters . Criticizing the book in the forums, members began to attack the letters until one day Robertson himself appeared in the discussions and began defending the points he made. “I don’t know how many hours he must have spent just replying very calmly and politely to people who were sending out the most vilest insults and criticisms,” Morgan recalled. “He just kept coming back and occasionally with a few words of Scripture thrown into his general discourse.” Unable to understand what was wrong with Robertson, Morgan himself posed a question on the discussion boards asking members why the pastor kept coming back and what result he expected. One of the seasoned and experienced posters on the forum commented, “It’s just another Christian attention seeker.” |
| Raphael Morgan’s life and work provide us insight into just how multivalent the Orthodox tradition could become within the American context. Not only could the Orthodox tradition be the «true» tradition of one " s ancestors, as in the case with the Carpatho-Rusyn converts beginning at the turn of the twentieth century, but so could the Orthodox tradition offer a tradition unencumbered by the heinous racial segregation of Western Christianity, as found in North America. Indeed, the Orthodox tradition, for Morgan, was prior to that racially segregated tradition, for Orthodoxy offered the «pillar and ground of truth.» The American freedom for forging a religious identity spurred Morgan not to remain content to participate within the American anti-traditional tradition, as represented by Vilatte, nor to do so by creating his own church, but to turn to an established tradition completely outside of that model. Morgan turned to a tradition that could stand in critique of that very anti-traditional tradition model itself, for that model (at least to Morgan) remained largely bound to a highly segregated racist vision. Theologically, as well, the anti-traditional tradition did not seem to satisfy Morgan. Morgan utilized the American restorationist tradition to look to a church that was still in existence but with the ability to claim apostolic heritage. His would not be the last attempt to bring the Orthodox tradition to African Americans, however. In the next chapter, we turn to a contemporary, Moses Berry, and his efforts to do just that through the Brotherhood of St. Moses the Black. As we shall see, Berry " s efforts derive from a different context, answering different questions, but restorationism has a role to play in his conversion as well. 167 Gavin White, «Patriarch McGuire and the Episcopal Church, »Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 38:2 (1969), 126. Exactly why this seems «improbable» is hard to say, leaving the reader to wonder which aspect(s) made the story all the more improbable. |
| It is clear that when Morgan left Russia with his personal mission of spreading the good news of the love of Orthodoxy for Anglican Christians, he left with some knowledge of Orthodox Christianity and already demonstrated evidence of one who was likely soon to convert. Concerning a possible Anglican-Orthodox union, Morgan asked his reader to «solicit the prayers of the Saints» and the «intercession of the holy Mother of God» and went so far as to write, «Virgin Mary, pray for us!» 200 This does not sound like a typical Protestant. He also asked that God grant Emperor Nicholas II and his family «a long life, peace and prosperity.» 201 This phrase comes from the beginning of intoning «God grant you many years,» a traditional Orthodox hymn. Although one should not make too much of this, it suggests that Morgan had begun to develop an intimate knowledge of Orthodox traditions and worship. CONVERSION AND THE ORDER OF THE CROSS OF GOLGOTHA Following his return from Russia, Morgan began developing a close relationship with the local Greek Orthodox clergy in Philadelphia. The priest mentioned in the 1906 newspaper article noted above was Rev. Theodore Prussianos, who was a missionary priest traveling from parish to parish. His tenure in Philadelphia was short-lived. The subsequent priest, Rev. Demetrios Petrides, developed a relationship with Morgan and went so far as to advocate on Morgan’s behalf before the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople. Morgan " s approach to his situation had shifted. No longer was he presenting himself as one interested in unity between Anglicanism and Orthodoxy. He was looking to become Orthodox and, as we shall see, to bring Orthodox Christianity to those of African descent in America, be they from the Caribbean or America proper. The Orthodox tradition was about to provide him with the opportunity for religious identity creation par excellence. By looking to the Orthodox tradition, he was breaking out of the anti-traditional tradition exemplified in Vilatte’s movement and finding a platform from which he could stand over and against the entirety of Western Christianity, whether the Anglo-Catholic tradition or the American anti-traditional tradition, which characterized the likes of both Vilatte and even black Protestant denominations. |
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