Brandon Dawson

Brandon Dawson is a parishioner at Ss. Peter & Paul Orthodox Church in Jersey City, N.J.

So what’s your story?

I grew up near Los Angeles, primarily in South Pasadena in Hollywood Hills. I didn't come to the East Coast until 1989. My parents were separated, so I lived with my mother and stepfather in California. When I was 17, I came to New Jersey—to South Orange—to live with my father, so I could get to know him and be closer. I grew up in an upper middle-class family. Both my stepfather and father are doctors, and my mother is a nurse.

I have a degree in Biblical theology from Moody Bible Institute. Now I work at Audible, the audiobook company. Before 2017, I worked for 20 years in an acute-care psychiatric unit.

Both of your parents are Black?

Yes. My father is from St. Thomas, in the Virgin Islands. My mother, memory eternal, passed away in 2019. She grew up in North Carolina. When we were growing up, we went to a Baptist church. That’s where I was formally baptized—I would say probably in the sixth grade.

If you chose to attend a Bible school for college, you must have taken your faith pretty seriously as a teenager.

No, actually, I didn’t. I was pretty introverted; I was part of the nerdy group. It’s not like I was living a wild, hedonistic, adolescent life. I went to church every week. But I wasn’t living by the faith I professed. I grew up in a very difficult home—my stepfather and mother fought a lot—and I think that really led to my thinking about deeper things. It was a combination of watching a Jimmy Swaggart 1 sermon on television and reading C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity that really reignited my faith in my later teens. The grace of God led me to go to Bible college. It was one of my classes at Moody that introduced me to Orthodoxy—that, and a friend I had there.

1. Swaggart was part of the generation of televangelists inspired by Billy Graham, which also included Pat Robertson, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, and Jerry Falwell. In the 1980s, before he became embroiled in prostitution scandals, his weekly show was broadcast on 3,000 channels around the world.

How did that happen? Moody is part of a very different Christian tradition. 2

Well, in my fourth year, I had a class called Current Trends in Theology. We read The Orthodox Way by Kallistos Ware, as an introduction to Orthodoxy. At the same time—you could say, coincidentally, or providentially—my friend was a catechumen in the Orthodox Church. He shared with me Frank Schaeffer’s book, Dancing Alone. 3

I had read all the books by his father, Francis Schaeffer. In fact, it was Francis Schaeffer’s books that kind of saved my faith, because I was going through a crisis of faith during my senior year. The crisis was brought on by some of the things I was being introduced to. The professors at Moody, though they were evangelical, challenged a lot of what I had taken for granted. I really was aware of the chaos of what it meant to be Protestant. Also, in my own personal spiritual experience, I was seeking more accountability. So all these things, combined, led to my journey toward Orthodoxy.

2. Moody Bible Institute, a nondenominational Protestant college, was founded by the 19thcentury evangelist and businessman Dwight Moody. Its official literature describes its teachings as “generally Calvinistic.”

3. Francis Schaeffer, an American pastor who founded a Christian community in Switzerland, was one of the most influential evangelical theologians of the twentieth century. His son, Frank Schaeffer, converted to the Orthodox faith in 1990, though he has since described himself as a “Christian atheist.” Dancing Alone is his 1994 memoir of his conversion.

Was your first Orthodox experience at the OCA cathedral there?

Yeah, but it was not where it is now—it was on the south side of Chicago. It wasn’t until two years later that it moved to where it is now, across the street from Moody.

I doubt there weren’t many Black parishioners there. Was that an obstacle for you?

Not really. I grew up in a primarily white neighborhood in California, and there were a lot of Asians and Mexicans in the area, too. So I didn’t feel out of place in a primarily Caucasian community. I do sometimes wonder if I have a unique perspective or experience. If I had grown up in a Black community, it might be different.

Do you have any thoughts about what Orthodox people could do to make our parishes more welcoming to Black inquirers?

Well, one of God's mercies to me is that going to Ss. Peter and Paul in Jersey City, where Father Joseph Lickwar is my spiritual father. He has adopted grandchildren who are Black. And just everyone there just accepted me right away. I've never had a sense that I was different; it has always been very warm and accepting. I know the difference, because for a while, I went to a Greek church, and this may have been because the whole Liturgy was in Greek, but it was a very different experience.

But in terms of attracting other Black Americans, I think the core thing is really communicating the history of the Orthodox faith in Ethiopia, in North Africa, and in the Middle East. That would help dismantle the straw man arguments against Christianity as “the white man’s religion.” If Black people come to understand the broader context of what the Church has believed, and who has made up the Church, I think that will make the difference.

At the same time, my community here in America will have to be lovingly, gently challenged: Are you seeking the truth of God, or do you want the truth of God only in an environment that is comfortable to you? Do you want truth, or do you just want something that closely fits, and that you're comfortable with? But that challenge becomes easier after you’ve knocked down all those faulty arguments against the faith.

That’s an interesting point. The Nation of Islam used to appeal to a lot of Black people, with the argument that Christianity was the white man’s religion and that becoming Muslim could be a way of reconnecting with African roots. You see this in The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Seems like you’re saying Orthodoxy could have a similar appeal.

I don't have any hope for changing the system. But I do believe the Lord, within His Church, can bring different cultures together.

Yeah. A lot of the Church Fathers may not have been as dark-skinned as I am, but we know that some of them, like St. Cyril and St. Anthony, must have had a dark complexion, just in light of where they lived. So once those straw men are broken down, then you can start to speak to truth. If we can walk people through that journey, I believe the Lord will draw them into His Church.

Have you experienced palpable racism in your life?

Racism has been more subtle throughout my life. When I was younger, there were girls I wanted to date but they wouldn't date a Black man, because that’s how they were taught. In elementary school and junior high, I was sometimes called a n—er by kids who wanted to pick fights. And then, whenever I traveled, I always had an awareness and an anxiety about racism and experiencing prejudice—whether it was traveling to other parts of L.A. County or to another part of the state. I would sometimes look for Black people. I’d feel like I'm going to be OK here because I see there are other Black people in the area.

And then at Moody, I remember that some of my classmates were encountering Black people for the first time. They were very ignorant. I’ll give you an example: A student asked one of my Black classmates, very innocently, if she could see her tail. And this was in the early ‘90s—

Hold on. Just to clarify, you mean this student thought Black people had actual tails attached to their back sides?

Yeah. Yeah. That's just one example of some of the experiences I was aware others were having. And then in my senior year of college, the woman I was dating was white. I was always very aware of the challenges we would face if we got closer, given that she was white, and I was Black.

Could you spell those out?

People’s perceptions. The way we’d be looked at when we walked down the street. The way her family would react. Things of that nature.

What has been your reaction to the protests since the death of George Floyd?

Well, I don't think this is necessarily cynicism, but I think that realistically, at least apart from the grace of God, people will not change. And so, although I think it's important to work toward certain political and cultural goals, I have a certain acceptance of the way things are. Maybe it's a form of shell shock. But having grown up in L.A., this seems no different to me than when Rodney King 4 was beaten, you know?

So for me, this is a reality that has always been there. It is painful to the point where I haven't even watched any of the videos posted about George Floyd. Ultimately, I believe prayer is what makes the difference. I'm not too spiritually minded to be of any earthly good, but I do believe prayer is the thing that will make the difference with people I meet.

One thing I will say, before I forget, is that one of my greatest concerns, especially in the early weeks after George Floyd’s death, was making sure I walked very carefully — even in my own community, where I’ve lived since 1999. Sometimes I felt more anxiety about the police presence than I did about COVID.

4. King was beaten severely by officers of the Los Angeles Police Department after he was caught driving drunk in 1991. A video of the incident was played for weeks in TV broadcasts, spurring historic riots throughout the city.

You say you’re not necessarily cynical, but it’s easy to hear it that way. Do you find any hope for racial relations in America?

No, not for changing the system. But what I do believe is that the Lord, within His Church, can bring different cultures together. That comes partly from my experience at Ss. Peter and Paul. I think that’s the only way change is going to come. Even outside the Church, as we live consistently with whom the Lord wants us to be and we communicate our faith to others, then we can evoke positive change.

At an interpersonal level?

Yeah, and then even on a community-wide level.

OK, sure. And then maybe institutions can be changed farther down the line.

Yes, slowly. And I will say, I probably am cynical, but the grace of God and the spirit of God challenge me to have faith and to work towards justice. I believe the Lord holds me responsible to act and speak and not allow my cynicism to control my choices.

There’s an old political mantra that goes “Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.”

And I want to say that Cornel West 5 makes that distinction. He says, “Black people are not optimistic, but we're a people who have faith and hope.” And there's a difference there. So my faith and hope shape the work I do.

5. West is a philosophy professor at Harvard and a political activist. He has written or co-written more than a dozen books dealing with the Black Church, intellectual history, democracy, and American race relations.

Interview by Nick Tabor

The Wales Window (1965) artist: John Petts

location: 16th Street Baptist Church, Birmingham, Alabama

On Sunday, September 15, 1963, Thomas Blanton, Bobby Frank Cherry, and Robert Edward Chambliss, members of the Ku Klux Klan, planted 19 sticks of dynamite outside the basement of Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church. At 10:22 a.m., the bomb exploded, killing four young girls: Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley (all aged 14) and Denise McNair (aged 11). Twenty-two others were injured. Four thousand miles away, in Llanseffan, Wales, stainedglass artist John Petts heard about the tragedy. Collaborating with a newspaper editor, he started raising funds for a new window to replace one destroyed in the bombing. They accepted no large donations; it was to be a gift of the people of Wales. The new window depicted the Crucifixion, and the figure of Jesus was Black.

When interviewed by The Guardian's Gary Younge in 2011, Rev. Arthur Price, Jr., the church's current pastor explained: “I think the major message we try to take out of the window is not so much identifying Christ’s color but knowing that Christ identifies with us. To the white community this means that the Jesus you love identifies himself with the African American community, so you are really crucifying him again when you persecute someone who does not look like you.”