Across the Great Divide

by NICK TABOR

it seems safe to say our country is nearing peak polarization. Of course, we ought to be careful about making these kinds of judgments, because it seemed we were near the peak a year ago—and then we found out it could get much worse. The pandemic forced most of us to stay inside our homes throughout the spring and part of the summer, and during those months, most of our contact with other people was mediated by screens and by social-media algorithms designed to make us angry. At this point, most every subject, no matter how banal it once seemed, is now charged with political tension, including health data, the postal service, and school calendars. For a time this was even true about the act of grocery shopping.

Nowhere is the polarization more intense than on the subject of race. Polling data now tells us that June’s Black Lives Matter protests constituted the largest wave of demonstrations in American history, with somewhere between 15 million and 26 million participants (the previous record, set by the Women’s March of 2017, was 5.2 million people, by the highest estimates). As we watched the protests build—whether on TV, online, or in person—we all assessed them through the lens of our own experiences with race, whatever those may be. Some have seen them as inspiring displays of solidarity and righteous anger; and in fact, many Orthodox Christians, including Archbishop Elpidophoros of the Greek Orthodox Church in America, joined the marches. For others, the demonstrations provoked an angry backlash. Historians will have to sort out whether, in the end, 2020 has brought us closer to a vision of racial harmony or pushed us farther away.

For now, this special issue of Jacob’s Well is meant to be an intervention, at least for our corner of the Orthodox world. Over the summer, seven Black parishioners in our Diocese joined us for wideranging conversations. Besides discussing the protests, they spoke broadly about their experiences with race, both inside and outside the Orthodox Church. They offered opinions about what African Americans can bring to our parishes and why we’ve failed to attract them in large numbers so far. Their responses were diverse and illuminating.

In general, if we are to treat people like they’re made in the image and likeness of God, it’s necessary to listen to them genuinely, setting aside whatever preconceived notions we might bring. Again, this seems especially critical when it comes to race. At the same time, because so many of us are unused to talking about race, few subjects tend to be more fraught with tension. The conversations in these pages are clearly no substitute for person-to-person dialogue within our parishes, but they might be a helpful contribution. Here I’ll add a personal note. In January, I moved to Mobile, Alabama—temporarily leaving my home in New York City—to work on a nonfiction book, dealing with a historic African American community here on the Gulf Coast. As a white journalist interviewing Black people every day, I’ve become, if anything, less colorblind this year. The question of race never goes away, no matter how much time these Alabamians and I spend together—but it does get easier to talk about. They have been gracious, and it seems a bit of humility and self-awareness on my part has helped.

This issue of Jacob’s Well draws inspiration from Dr. Albert Raboteau, a brilliant scholar of African American religious history who teaches at Princeton University and belongs to our Diocese. In his memoir, A Sorrowful Joy, Dr. Raboteau describes a long struggle to integrate the disparate parts of his life: being, for instance, a Black man from coastal Mississippi on one hand, and a convert to Orthodox Christianity on the other. For him, the struggle has led to a profound revelation: that despite the cultural differences, there is a deep consonance between Black Christianity and the Orthodox faith. “Christianity is a religion of suffering,” he writes. “As the old slaves knew, suffering can’t be evaded, it is a mark of the authenticity of the faith. The primary example of suffering Christianity in this country was the experience of African American slaves.”

Dr. Raboteau’s story can speak to us on multiple levels. Living in a culture where our particular faith tradition is all but unknown, it can be hard to think about race relations, or politics, or our jobs, or popular media through the lens of Orthodox theology. We tend to compartmentalize what we do on Sundays and in our icon corners from the rest of our lives. But in the Christian life, challenges usually present opportunities. Perhaps we can use this frantic, polemicized moment to follow Raboteau’s lead and strive for unity, starting in our own lives.