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When Archbishop Iakovos stood alongside Martin Luther King Jr. in
Selma in 1965, he was maligned by many Greek Americans who took offense
that their Archbishop would “fraternize with Civil Rights agitators.”
Fifty-five years later, opinion has shifted dramatically. Iakovos’
march alongside MLK is widely regarded as one of the iconic moments of
Orthodox Christianity in the United States, if not globally. Today, we
either ignore or apologize for that generation of Orthodox who did not
understand the moral necessity of the Civil Rights movement.
We now find ourselves at a similar moment. Will our grandchildren
have to apologize for us because we stood on the wrong side of history,
or will we accept the spirit of the Black Lives Matter critique because
it is morally and theologically convicting?
The slogan “Black Lives Matter” emerged after multiple killings of
unarmed black men by police officers. Its initial purpose was to expose
the systemic racism that exists within the institutional infrastructures
that constitute our society: police, government, economy, and the
churches, to name a few. It is an extension of the Civil Rights
movement’s demand that, in the words of MLK, the United States be “true
to what it said on paper.” Racism, however, has a different shade than
it did in the 1960s: it is no longer manifestly evident on the buses, on
storefront signs, in hotels and restaurants, in factories, in
corporations, in public education, in universities, in the military, and
in government; but it still exists in those areas systemically, which
means it is woven within the very infrastructure of all these
institutions—but it is much more subtle, hidden, and unconscious. Anyone
who denies this systemic racism has to provide answers for the
existence of income inequality between blacks and whites, for
exponentially higher incarceration rates among black men and women,
for the absence of blacks in university professorships and in
university classrooms, for the racial profiling that occurs for simply
walking on the street, for the disproportionate lack of access to
healthcare or affordable housing, and, recently, the experiencing of
higher infection rates of COVID-19—the list can go on and on.
Among Orthodox Christians, as elsewhere, we often hear the counter:
“All Lives Matter.” We do not deny that, and a core Christian axiom is
that all are irreducibly unique in God’s eyes; but, if a parent has two
children and one was bullying the other, the parent would surely rush to
defend the victim even while still loving the bully. That’s why God’s
love does not contradict God’s preferential option for the oppressed.
We also hear “Blue Lives Matter.” Again, we do not deny that, and we,
personally, have friends and family in the police force. Fighting
against systemic racism is not meant as an attack against police. That
is a false binary. Attention, however, needs to be drawn to the fact
that the problem is not a few bad apples in the police force; the
problem is that racism is systemically woven into the fabric of
policing: the training, the strategy, and the implementation. Racial
profiling and statistic-based policing are two prime examples.
Finally, we hear people object to any association with BLM because
that would imply support for issues that are contrary to Church
teaching. This fails to recognize the diversity of those who support
BLM, and it projects the possibility of a pure politics that is
impossible. Those who support the pro-life movement are often walking
with others who share beliefs contrary to the teaching of the Church.
More than this, the Orthodox Church should really do more on social
issues than simply participate in March for Life. The Fathers of the
Church were constantly fighting against poverty and oppression, and the
single-issue politics of many Orthodox Churches is embarrassing.
For Orthodox Christians, the most meaningful takeaway from BLM is
that is it forces a reconfiguration of racial imagination, where whites
of all ethnicities are challenged to imagine what it is like to live in a
black body, what it feels like in that body to live in a country with
our slave history, to live in a body that is more likely to be profiled,
to live in a body that is less likely to get a job, to live in a body
that has limited or no access to healthcare, to live in a body that
needs affordable housing, to live in a body that fears being killed
innocently by the police, to live in a body that has to walk in the
middle of the street as a necessary strategy for surviving a drive-by
shooting. That kind of imagination is our Christian calling; as Orthodox
Christians, it is our spiritual challenge, our theotic destiny.
As Greek Americans, we like to remind everyone of how our ancestors
suffered after World War II and worked hard in this country, and often
suffered discrimination, to make things better for the next generation.
No one is denying this history, and we should always honor it; but it
fails to recognize that one of the reasons they were allowed to advance
in this country is that, in addition to hard work, they were white (one
of the reasons—not the only one). And most came to this country in the
1950s and ‘60s, when racism was out in the open. If we were to be honest
with ourselves, many Greek Orthodox were racist at the time; hence, the
outcry when Archbishop Iakovos walked in Selma. It also forgets that
this country’s original sin is slavery; that it was built on slavery and
that African Americans have always had to negotiate living in a space
they were forced to inhabit and in which they never felt welcomed—even
to this day.
Archbishop Elpidophoros of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese understands
all this and that is why he has been compelled to stand against racial
injustice. He does not want to be one of those pastors to whom MLK wrote
his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, who scolded King for
causing trouble and for his impatience. As a Christian raised in Turkey,
Elpidophoros has experienced structural oppression in ways that most
Americans can only imagine.
The problem is that too many Americans—too many Orthodox Americans—do
not want to imagine it. We would rather deflect, deny, and ignore
because we fear that genuine equality for black men and women would only
come at our expense.
Archbishop Elpidophoros understands the urgency of the present
moment. History has shown that Iakovos was right to have marched at
Selma. It will also prove Archbishop Elpidophoros right for walking in
Brooklyn.
Fifty years from now, how will our grandchildren view the way we acted in this moment?
George Demacopoulos is the Fr. John Meyendorff and Patterson Family Chair of Orthodox Christian Studies and Co-Director of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University.
Aristotle Papanikolaou is the Archbishop Demetrios Chair in Orthodox Theology and Culture and the Co-Director of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center of Fordham University.
Public Orthodoxy seeks to promote conversation by providing a forum for diverse perspectives on contemporary issues related to Orthodox Christianity. The positions expressed in this essay are solely the author’s and do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Orthodox Christian Studies Center.
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