Rev. Samuel Davis There is a disconnect between how we say the Orthodox Church has strong African roots and how we demonstrate that.
Rev. Samuel Davis is the rector of St. Simon the
So your family is originally from Panama? What is
Cyrene Orthodox Mission in New Brunswick, N.J.
that story?
Could you say a little about your background and
My great-grandparents were originally from Colombia and then later moved to Panama — although Panama was part of Colombia until 1903. My parents later moved from Panama to the U.S. Through a little research on ancestry.com, I learned that one of my great-grandparents was a Sephardic Jew. I grew up hearing my parents speak Spanish. Both my wife and I speak Spanish, but we don’t speak it much in the home.
your family?
My wife, Julitssa, and I have four children — two boys and two girls. My oldest is 16; my youngest is 4. Julitssa is a manager of a medical spa in New York City. My parents, who are from Panama, immigrated to the United States before I was born. I attended the University of Valley Forge in Pennsylvania. After college, I worked in corporate America for a few years before I decided to join the military. My father is a veteran of the U.S. Army and I am a veteran of the Air Force. Where did you serve?
I served on a Naval base in Iceland. I was part of the military police on the base — in the Air Force, they’re called security police. I learned about Orthodoxy for the first time when I was in the military. jacob's well
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Do you consider yourself Black, given that your family came from Latin America?
Technically, I consider myself Afro-Latino, but let’s be honest, that’s still Black. I’m Black, but I’m not technically Black American. My wife is also AfroLatino, and her family is from Panama, too. There are certain things in common across various kinds of Black people, but there are still a lot of differences, and it is hard to generalize. Because of my background, it
