The Matter of Race

Brotherhood of St. Moses the Black and the Retelling of African American History through Orthodox Christian Forms

Bibliographic Data

ID8201809
AuthorsElena V Kravchenko (Religious Studies Program, Washington University in St. Louis, CB, One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA), Елена Кравченко (Washington University in St. Louis, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume89
Issue1
Pages298-333
Publication date2021-04-23
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of the American Academy of Religion (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-7189 • E-ISSN: 1477-4585
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/jaarel/lfab025
OpenAlexW3177923132
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited23

This article looks at how contemporary African American converts to Orthodox Christianity, specifically the members of the Brotherhood of St. Moses the Black,1 use religion to understand and remember the struggle of Black people against racial discrimination in the United States. As I examine how practitioners interpreted and preserved African American history—the attempts to abolish slavery, the fight to end lynching, and the Civil Rights movement—through Orthodox forms of materiality, I demonstrate that African Americans drew on an established tradition to authorize new ways of practicing Orthodoxy and being Orthodox. I argue that by using icons of the Theotokos to tell stories about her intervention during a lynching, memorializing lives of Black American martyrs in cemetery stones, and engaging with relics of African American saints, these practitioners followed in the footsteps of other Orthodox people—who creatively adopted the ritual life of the Church to their own needs while making an effort to adhere to its traditional dogmatism—and therefore should be considered as a paradigmatic and not an exceptional example of Orthodox Christians

Aesthetics · African american · Archaeology · Art · Christianity · Materiality (auditing) · Orthodoxy · Race (biology) · Sociology · Anthropology · Biblical Studies and Interpretation · Gender Studies · History · Pentecostalism and Christianity Studies · Philosophy · Religious studies · Theological Perspectives and Practices