The African-American community is being drawn to Orthodox Christianity, inspired by its roots in Africa, claims to authenticity, and reverence to black saints.
Karl Berry is one of a few black Americans to be ordained an Orthodox priest. He grew up in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
He said he’s “always had a love for Jesus,” but he wasn’t sold on the Christianity he was being exposed to.
In 1983 Berry walked into an Orthodox Church for the first time and was surprised by what he saw: icons of black saints.
“My first thought was that these were just some very liberal white people who were doing some outreach and trying to appeal to black people,” Berry, now known as Father Moses, told The Daily Beast.
The priest told him that they were actually replicas of third century icons, linking back to a Christianity that originated hundreds of years ago.
“And that was my first introduction to the universal church, not just in theory or in words but in actual depictions of saints from different countries who were always part of the development of Christendom,” he said.
Last year, the Pew Research Center found that an increase in racial diversity also applies in the Church. The number of people of color ascribing to Orthodox Christianity went up by 6 percent between 2007 and 2014.
“I think that the generation of younger people are looking for something more substantial. They don’t want necessarily a feel-good religion,” Berry said. “They want something they know will have to be a little difficult in order to be transformative.”
Mother Katherine Weston, an Orthodox nun, told The Daily Beast that outreach to African-American communities began in the early 1990s with a series conferences on the ancient church and the African-American experience which continue to this day.
Eventually, Berry and some other conference attendees founded the Brotherhood of Moses the Black in 1997 when he lived in St. Louis. The city was seeing an influx of Orthodox refugees from Africa who lacked support networks, and the Brotherhood sought to provide them with aid and community.
“Our tradition does not begin with slavery. It’s a part of it, and it’s a major part of our tradition in this country. But it also began with our church in Africa. And people need to know that,” he said. “If you don’t know anything about your heritage, you run the risk of not being too stable.”
Several hundred people attended the latest Moses the Black conference in October, Berry said, which was held to inform people and to connect those who might sometimes feel isolated within the church.
But they weren’t all black. In fact, the attendees were about evenly split, and many of them were young.
“They really don’t suffer the same way that my generation did with race,” Berry said.
The Greek Orthodox church is for everybody not only the so called white Greeks ,we have many African saints I’m surprised that their are not even more African Americans following this beautiful and ancient religion Jesus loves everybody and all colors.
They are finding us. We are working on it!