We’ve devoted a fair amount of attention here at OrthodoxHistory.org to Fr. Raphael Morgan, the first black Orthodox priest in America. Very briefly: Morgan was born in Jamaica, traveled widely, and eventually became an Episcopalian deacon in the United States. In 1907, after many years of study, he traveled to Constantinople and was received into the Orthodox Church and ordained a priest. He was commissioned to establish an Orthodox mission for black Americans in Philadelphia. We know that he remained Orthodox through at least 1916, but we’ve found no traces of him after that.

In 1909, Morgan and his wife Charlotte divorced. Fr. Raphael retained custody of their 13-year-old daughter, Roberta Viola Morgan, while their 9-year-old son Cyril Ignatius lived with his mother. Charlotte later remarried, and I think Cyril went on to become some sort of Protestant minister in New York. The April 6, 1933 issue of the Philadelphia Tribune reported that “Rev. Cyril Morgan of New York was the weekend guest of his mother, Mrs. Charlotte Baylis[s]” in Wayne, PA. This is as far as I’ve been able to trace Cyril’s whereabouts, although I have found references to a Rev. Cyril T. Morgan of New York — who may or may not be our man – into the late 1940s.

Roberta Viola Morgan has proven more difficult to find — until now. The website Ancestry.com recently opened their travel and immigration records to the public, for an extremely short period of time. I took advantage of the opportunity to search for Morgan, and I quickly struck gold. I found an Emergency Passport Application for Roberta dated April 5, 1924. It turns out that she had been living in Greece from 1912 to 1924 (so, roughly ages 15-27). Here are some highlights:

• Roberta said that her father was “Rafael Morgan,” and that he was deceased.
• There are a bunch of question marks in the fields for Fr. Raphael’s US citizenship information, suggesting that Roberta didn’t know whether her father was a US citizen.
• She said that her permanent residence was “Waine” (Wayne), PA (where her mother lived).
• Roberta left the US in 1910, lived in England for two years, and then moved to Athens for the purpose of “education.”
• The application said that Roberta “knows no American citizen in Athens.”

There’s other good stuff, too — a photo of Roberta, a rather detailed description of her physical characteristics, etc. And it looks like Roberta’s passport application was approved: I also found a passenger manifest showing that Roberta arrived in New York on May 3, 1924. She listed her US address as 241 Island Ave. in Wayne, PA, which I assume was her mother’s home.

We can glean a lot from all this information. For one, we now know that Fr. Raphael Morgan died sometime between 1916 and 1924. We know that, almost immediately after his 1909 divorce, Morgan sent his daughter to live in Europe. And it’s not like it was a brief stay — the woman spent most of her teenage and young adult life in Greece. She probably didn’t see her mother in all that time, either.

We already have a passenger manifest for Fr. Raphael from 1911: he arrived back in the US from Greece in October of that year. Now that we have Roberta’s passport application, we can say rather confidently that Fr. Raphael was returning after leaving his daughter overseas. Also, this helps clear up an ambiguity: in his 1981 article on Morgan, the Greek Orthodox historian Paul Manolis wrote that an elderly Philadelphia Greek parishioner said that Morgan’s daughter was “a graduate of Oxford.” That seems highly unlikely — she was only in her mid-teens during her stay in England — but the parishioner correctly remembered that she was educated in the UK.

What could have motivated Fr. Raphael Morgan to send his teenage daughter across an ocean, and leave her there for the rest of his life? Why not just let her live with her mother, brother, and stepfather in Pennsylvania? My guess is that it’s because Morgan’s divorce was so hostile that he simply did not want his daughter anywhere near her mother.

And what was she doing all those years in Greece? Can you imagine a black American girl living in Greece for a decade? She may very well have remained Orthodox, given where she was. This new document answers some important questions, but it raises even more.

This article was written by Matthew Namee.

Newly-discovered documents on Fr. Raphael Morgan is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

I’m taking a moment to publish this piece in the midst of a very busy time for my family, so I apologize for the delay between some of my posts.  What I wish to do is alert my readers to an article of mine that has now hit the press: “The Relationship of the African Orthodox Church to the Orthodox Churches and Its Importance for Appreciating the Brotherhood of St. Moses the Black,” Black Theology, an International Journal 8:1 (2010): 10-31.

Those desiring to read it may find the article here:

http://www.equinoxjournals.com/BT/article/view/6861/6042

This is not the most comprehensive look at any one of the people noted here (for example, I discussed Fr. Raphael Morgan to a greater extent in my dissertation, a work I am editing with the hopes of future publication).  It is, however, the first time in academic print that Fr. Raphael Morgan has been linked to the African Orthodox Church and that church to the Brotherhood of St. Moses the Black.  The former connection is historical and direct, the latter is a thematic connection.

Matthew Namee had mentioned the connection of Fr. Raphael and the AOC in a post on SOCHA’s website:

http://orthodoxhistory.org/2009/07/indirect-conversion-of-thousands-theory/

So, interested readers now have the opportunity to learn more about the connections that some of us have known about but not published about extensively.

[This article was written by Fr. Oliver Herbel and originally published on Frontier Orthodoxy.]

Fr. Raphael Morgan, the African Orthodox Church, and the Brotherhood of St. Moses the Black is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

After a week’s worth of articles on the Archbishop Arseny criminal libel case, I thought I’d break things up a bit by looking at something completely different — the story of Fr. Antony Hill, the second black Orthodox priest in America.

By now, a lot of people know that Fr. Raphael Morgan was the first black Orthodox priest in America, ordained in 1907 and based out of Philadelphia’s Greek church. But the second black priest in America, and the first under the Russian Archdiocese, is still virtually unknown. And, while Morgan’s life is full of mystery, the man who followed him — Fr. Antony Hill — is even more of an enigma.

We don’t know when Hill was born, where he was born, or how he came to join the Orthodox Church. His given name was Robert F. Hill, and the first traces I’ve found of him are from a New York Times article dated January 3, 1921. Orthodox and Episcopalian clergy had gathered together for a prayer service, asking God to restore the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople to the Orthodox. The Orthodox included Russians, Greeks, Serbs, and Syrians, and among the Russian contingent was “the Very Rev. Anthony R.F. Hill, a canon of the Russian Cathedral.” Also in the group was another recent American convert, Fr. Stephen (Geoffrey) Lang.

Several months later, in September 1921, Hill and Fr. Patrick Mythen attended the First General Synod of the brand-new “African Orthodox Church.” As we’ve discussed before, this noncanonical body was headed by “Patriarch” George Alexander McGuire, who had been consecrated by the vagante Old Catholic bishop Joseph Rene Vilatte. McGuire was an associate of Marcus Garvey, and he most likely had known Fr. Raphael Morgan.

In the 1956 book The History of the African Orthodox Church, A.C. Terry-Thompson writes extensively about the AOC’s initial General Synod. From Terry-Thompson, we know that Fr. Patrick Mythen gave a rousing speech on the Synod’s first day, comparing the AOC’s organizers to Christ’s apostles in the upper room on Pentecost, and expressing the hope that all of Orthodoxy would accept the AOC as a legitimate Church. Hill then offered a few words, “recording his earnest desire to see us launch out successfully.”

Shortly after this, Hill decided to leave the Russian Archdiocese and throw his lot in with the African Orthodox Church. He became rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd, which had been McGuire’s parish before he became a bishop. It was Hill who, on September 15, seconded the motion that the new ecclesiastical body be known as the “African Orthodox Church.”  The next day, he was appointed dean of the AOC’s seminary. In other words, he was a major player in the new organization.

In his book Words Like Freedom: Essays on African American Culture and History (1996), Richard Newman writes that Hill “was released by the Russians to work with McGuire and the fledgling AOC.” Further on, though, Newman says that Hill “was excommunicated by the Russians.” I find it hard to believe that the Russian Archdiocese would actually release Hill to a noncanonical body. However, in 1921, Archbishop Alexander Nemolovsky was primate of the Russian Archdiocese. He was a highly ineffective hierarch, and he delegated an unusual amount of authority to Fr. Patrick Mythen. Given Mythen’s own affinity for the AOC, it’s very possible that Mythen himself granted Hill a “release,” but that later Russian leaders recognized this as irregular and went on to defrock Hill.

Hill lasted about 13 years in the AOC. According to Terry-Thompson, “Due to some difference of policy Father Anthony resigned his post late in 1934.” It’s worth noting that 1934 is the same year that Patriarch McGuire died, and it’s possible that Hill’s resignation was part of the fallout from McGuire’s death. Richard Newman writes, “When he left the AOC he founded an independent church in Harlem.” Newman adds, “This story needs to be told.” Alas, Newman died in 2003, so we can’t ask him for more information.

Hill’s career in the Russian Archdiocese must have been extremely brief. He most likely joined the Russians in mid-to-late 1920, when Fr. Patrick Mythen’s short-lived, English-speaking Church of the Transfiguration was in operation in New York City. We know that he left Orthodoxy in September 1921, when he joined the AOC. But beyond the scant details I’ve presented in this article, we know next to nothing else about Fr. Antony Hill.

[This article was written by Matthew Namee.]

Fr. Antony Hill: the second black Orthodox priest in America is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

Marcus Garvey

Marcus Garvey was a widely influential black nationalist from Jamaica. He promoted black pride and championed the “back to Africa” movement. In 1916, when he was just 29 years old and at the outset of his public career, he visited the United States and embarked on a 38-state speaking tour. Not all of the black Americans who attended his lectures liked what they heard. Among those unhappy with Garvey was Fr. Raphael Morgan, the first black Orthodox priest in America. As we’ve discussed in the past, Morgan was born in Jamaica, and in 1916, he was living in Philadelphia, affiliated with the city’s Greek Orthodox church. In response to Garvey’s speeches, Morgan and some associates addressed the following letter to the editors of the Jamaican newspapers:   

Philadelphia, U.S.A.   

September 19, 1916   

The Editor, Dear Sir, –   

We the undersigned Jamaicans, residents of the United States for several years beg your permission to call to your attention and the public of Jamaica a matter affecting the welfare of Jamaicans at home and abroad.   

Under the caption of Journalist and President of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, Jamaica, W.I., one Marcus Garvey, Jr., is giving an extended series of lectures in this Country, pertaining to the social and economic conditions of Jamaica.   

We, having attended his lectures, found them to be pernicious, misleading, and derogatory to the prestige of the Government and the people.   

Among the many assertions of the speaker are the following: –   

1. Governmental misrule, causing economic depression, poverty, and misery with their detrimental consequences.   

2. The falsity and hypocrisy of the existing social condition between the white and black races – to wit:   

Absorption by inter-marriage of the intellectually superior and advanced blacks with whites, with the view of estranging and nullifying their usefulness to their race.   

Result – Acquiescence, arrogance, and unapproachableness, on the part of these blacks who inter-marry. The white wife tires. There is an ultimate separation. Wife returns to her native land. Husband in Jamaica contributes to her support abroad.   

3. The Governmental and Commercial interests connive to keep the scale of wage so low that the labouring classes are unable to meet the necessary demands to sustain their needsand wants. The girls of Jamaica are resorting to vice and immorality through lack of industrial opportunities and poor economic conditions. Praedial larceny is rampant and the jails are filled[.] Education is restricted and limited to the children of the poorer classes causing intellectual deficiency to the masses.   

4. He drew a deplorable picture of the prejudice of the Englishman in Jamaica against the blacks, portraying hypocrisy and deceit of his attitude towards the blacks, and stated his preference for the prejudice of the American to that of the Englishman.   

Mr. Editor, the above are only a few of the damaging statements being disseminated by the aforesaid Marcus Garvey, Jr., among the American public.   

Further details would be a repetition of the demoralising utterances of the speaker.   

The bad effects of these lectures on the minds of the American public are deplorable and are causing great indignation among Jamaicans here, who feel greatly humiliated.   

Thanking you for space and hoping through this medium Jamaicans will be enlightened on the seriousness of this matter. We are,   

Father Raphael, O.C.G., Priest-Apostolic, the Greek Orthodox Catholic Church, Dr. Uriah Smith, Ernest P. Duncan, Ernest K. Jones, H.S. Boulin, Phillip Hemmings, Joseph Vassal, Henry H. Harper, S.C. Box, Aldred Campbell, Hubert Barclay, John Moore, Victor Monroe, Henry Booth and many others.   

Fr. Raphael Morgan

This letter was published in the Kingston Gleaner (10/4/1916) and the Jamaica Times (10/7/1916). A month later, Marcus Garvey issued a reply. According to the Gleaner (11/14/1916), “Mr. Garvey said that the letter which is a concoction and a gross fabrication, was written by his enemies in Jamaica and sent to Philadelphia to be transmitted to the Gleaner, for the purpose of prejudicing him in the eyes of the Government and those who have always wished him well in his efforts in Jamaica, as well as with the intention of interfering with his success in America.”   

The original letter, by Morgan and friends, raises all sorts of questions. Take, for instance, the letters after Morgan’s name — “O.C.G.” From other sources, we know that this stands for “Order of the Cross of Golgotha,” a body of which Morgan was the “founder and superior.” But what, exactly, was the Order of the Cross of Golgotha? Roman Catholicism has all sorts of religious “orders,” but the concept is exceedingly rare among the Orthodox. I suspect, but cannot prove, that Morgan may have created the Order for black Americans. Were the other 13 signers of the Garvey letters members of this Order? Was its membership restricted to Orthodox Christians, or did Morgan welcome non-Orthodox to join? Was its establishment blessed by the Church of Greece — of which Morgan was a priest — or was Morgan operating independently? The whole Order is almost a complete mystery.   

Could Morgan’s fellow signers provide clues, both about the Order and about Morgan’s whereabouts after 1916? Many of the signers seem to have been working-class people. Here are a few of them, with ages and occupations from the 1910 or 1920 Censuses:   

• Ernest K. Jones, 37, construction worker
• Philip Hemmings, 43, sailor
• Henry H. Harper, 29, waiter
• John Moore, 51, contractor
• Henry Booth, 32, laborer

I found another signer, Hubert Barclay, on an Ellis Island passenger manifest dated March 31, 1915 (i.e., about 18 months prior to the Garvey letter). Barclay, a 42-year-old coachman, was coming to the US from Jamaica. He was born in Chapelton, Clarendon, Jamaica — the same town as Fr. Raphael Morgan. The two men probably grew up together.  

H.S. Boulin was the owner of a black doll company in Harlem. And while he signed the 1916 letter against Garvey, he eventually became one of Garvey’s closest confidants. Unbeknownst to Garvey, though, Boulin was also Agent P-138 — a spy for J. Edgar Hoover’s new Federal Bureau of Investigation. Here’s some background on Boulin, from Robert A. Hill’s multivolume collection of Garvey documents:  

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1873, Herbert Simeon Boulin served in the British army from 1902 until 1907. After spending most of his term of service in Africa, he returned to Jamaica in 1907. In 1908 he visited Philadelphia, where he decided to make his home. He opened up a school for teaching shorthand, but it soon failed. Afterward, he worked as a laborer at a local shipyard and then as an employee of the Pinkerton Detective Agency between 1915 and 1920. In January 1920 Boulin became a U.S. citizen. In July 1920 he was hired by the Bureau of Investigation to investigate the Garvey movement. After J. Edgar Hoover sent him a letter terminating his services in August 1921, Boulin opened his own detective agency, promoting his services by advertising his status as a former employee of the Department of Justice.  

Boulin infiltrated Garvey’s organization, funneling information back to FBI headquarters. I’d guess that Boulin met Morgan in 1908, upon his arrival in Philadelphia. It’s entirely possible that there is information on Morgan — by way of Boulin — in the FBI archives. 

Philip Hemmings also became close with Garvey, although in his case, he was no secret agent. In 1920, he was one of the signers of Garvey’s famous “Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World.” Another signer of the 1920 Declaration was a man named George Alexander McGuire. Of course, we’ve talked about McGuire before — he was a black Episcopal priest from the West Indies, and he almost certainly knew Fr. Raphael Morgan. Later, in 1921, he established a noncanonical body called the “African Orthodox Church.” McGuire and Marcus Garvey eventually had a falling-out, but the African Orthodox Church spread to Africa itself, and the group in Africa ultimately joined the canonical Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria.   

The 1916 letter against Marcus Garvey is the last thing I’ve found on Fr. Raphael Morgan. After that, Morgan vanishes from the historical record. His end is one of the great mysteries of American Orthodox history.

Fr. Raphael Morgan against Marcus Garvey is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

The translation was done using Google Translate with a little cleaning afterward. A few pf the phrases made sense neither to Google nor to me, but I tried my best with my rudimentary French. Corrections are welcome. This article was originally spotted by Matthew Namee.

A CONQUEST OF THE ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE

The Church of Constantinople recorded last summer a resounding conquest, which has made local headlines for days in the newspapers and halls of the capital. An American clergyman, a native of the English Antilles [the West Indies], a negro of the finest black, the Reverend Robert Morgan, after a few weeks of living on the shores of the Golden Horn, has had the singular grace of seeing the light of Tabor and being admitted into Orthodoxy. His [prior] baptism worthless, like all unbelievers who live outside the Orthodox Church, the said negro, a robust fellow of about thirty-five years, was plunged three times from head to toe in the font of purification, and came out white, one of the flock of the great Church of Christ. After which, the neophyte, wishing to obtain the sacred order of priesthood that he was only supposed to have before, was ordained priest by Mgr. Joachim Phouropolos, a Metropolitan expelled from Monastir [present day Bitola, FYROM - edited thanks to comment!], who recited the prayers of the Pontifical in English. Since then, the ex-Reverend Morgan, now become Father Josias Morgan, said Mass in the Byzantine rite in the English language [emphasis in original].

This is how this this actually happened. It is understandable that this is of public interest in Constantinople, which really lacks entertainment.

I saw Father Josias, and one summer morning I mounted with him the green and sunny shores of the Bosphorus. At the pier of the Chirket, with the wide sleeves of his rasso, in his kamilafki all brand new, and with his booming voice, he attracted the attention of all, to the delight of the Greeks, proud of their booty, and to the great amusement of young Ottoman officers accustomed to seeing people of color in the company of Turkish women. Having gone to see an Englishman of my acquaintance, I told him of my meeting. I now literally transcribe the brief dialogue that ensued between us:

- “M. G…, I saw this morning, one of your compatriots.”

- “Where was this?”

- “On the boat Chirket.”

- “Where is he from?”

- “I think he is from Jamaica.”

- “Introduce him to me, so I may make his acquaintance,” said my friend who has long lived in this island.

- “I will do so, but I must warn you that he is a negro.”

- “Oh! Well, don’t introduce me.”

- “I should add he became a Greek priest.”

- “A Greek priest! You are confused and this must be a sorcerer.”

- “I’ve never seen a negro sorcerer, but I know enough of the dress of Orthodox priests such that there is no error on my part.”

- “You’re right, after all; this does not surprise me.”

- “What! I am surprised by this very much.”

- “The negroes are very religious.”

- “Really?”

- “Indeed, yes, they have so much religion that they change it every week.”

My friend was wrong. Many weeks have passed since our conversation, and Father Josias remained faithful to the Orthodox Church. He left Constantinople for Philadelphia in the United States in the first days of November, carrying 28 Turkish lira (a lira is worth about 23 francs) which was given by the holy synod for his travel expenses.

What will he do in his country? Certainly, [he will] found an Orthodox church of negroes. But what else? That’s what we know, and in fact, the first goal was good enough [et d'ailleurs le premier but suffit - edited thanks to Facebook comment!]. It seems, however, that the Reverend Morgan had intended, embracing Orthodoxy, to be consecrated bishop. The Holy Synod declined, and I think it was wrong. The ordination of a bishop of color would have rendered invaluable services.

Firstly, being an American and a member of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, said Morgan would have exercised jurisdiction over all the Greeks settled in America. Hence a great advantage would be obtained by the Phanar over the Church of Athens. At the same time, the latter took their revenge. Indeed, if the Greeks of America continue to ask for a bishop, they will want a white [one], of course. They are a people of such a taste and wit as never to accept a negro bishop, even were he the eunuch of Queen Candace [of Ethiopia]. From the day they would have imposed Morgan as Bishop on them, they would have returned to the motherland; which contrasts with Athens on the question of emigration, which furnished to Cabinet Theotokis ten thousand conscripts who lack the necessary annual [pay] [et fournissait au Cabinet Theotokis les dix mille conscrits nécessaires qui lui manquent annuellement].

It is really unfortunate that the Church of Constantinople had not thought of all these advantages and has left the negro Morgan unconsecrated as bishop.

Update: It should be noted that the posting of this historical article should in no way be construed as an endorsement of the opinions expressed therein.

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It’s been a while since we talked about Robert Josias Morgan, the black Episcopal deacon who became an Orthodox priest in 1907, taking the name “Fr. Raphael.” In the past, I’ve mentioned that, prior to his conversion to Orthodoxy, Morgan visited Russia in 1904. Upon his departure, he wrote a letter, which was reprinted in the October/November 1904 English supplement to the Vestnik (Russian Orthodox American Messenger), the official publication of the Russian Archdiocese in America. Here is the text of that letter:

I, Robert Josias Morgan, a legally consecrated cleric of the American Episcopal Church, find it necessary to make it publicly known, that I am not a Bishop, as it was announced in some magazines and daily papers…

… I am not a Bishop, but a legally consecrated deacon.  I came to Russia in no way to represent anything, and I was not sent by anybody.  I came as a simple tourist, chiefly with the object to see the churches and the monasteries of this country, to enjoy the ritual and the service of the holy Orthodox Church, about which I heard so much abroad.  And I am perfectly satisfied with everything I saw and witnessed.

The piety and the fear of God amongst the Russian clergy, both superior and lower, and of the lay people in general are too great to be spoken of.  I like Russia, and as to the people I have simply grown to love them for their gentleness, their politeness, their amiability and kindness.  It would seem as if the Christian religion penetrated the whole life of the people.  This can be observed both in the private home life and the social life.  You have but to go to Church in this country, and you immediately see, that there is nothing too valuable for the people to be offered to God.  Note how they pray, how patiently they stand through the long Church services…

Now, having spent here about a month, I leave your country with a feeling of profound gratitude and take back to North America all the good impressions I received here.  And when there I shall speak boldly and loudly about the brotherly feelings entertained here in the bosom of the holy Orthodox Church towards its Anglican sister of North America, and about the prayers which are offered here daily for the union of all the Catholic Christendom.

My constant humble prayer is for the union of all Churches, and especially the union of the Anglican faith with the Orthodox Church of Russia.  I solicited the Metropolitans and the Bishops to grant me their blessing in regard to this prayer and obtained it.  Now I pray daily and eagerly for a better mutual understanding between the character and their union.  God grant a blessing to this cause and a hearing to our prayers and supplications.  Let us solicit the prayers of the Saints.  Let us seek the intercession of the holy Mother of God.  Virgin Mary, pray for us!

In conclusion I must say, that my stay in Russia did me personally much good: I feel now firmer and stronger spiritually than I did before I came.

God bless the holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of this country!  God bless the Emperor and all the reigning family!  God grant them a long life, peace and prosperity!

            I am sincerely yours in God and in the name of Mary,

                        Robert Josias Morgan.

Years later, he told the Kingston Gleaner (7/22/1913) that he had visited Russia on two occasions, and both times was “received and entertained at the Great Monasteries of the Russian Orthodox Church in Odessa, St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Kieff. He was also present at the anniversary service of the Coronation of the present Czar [Nicholas II] and at the Requiem High Mass said for the repose of the soul of the late Emperor [Alexander III], at which time, as special guest at the Kremlin Palace, his photographs appeared in the leading journals and magazines of Russia, Europe and other countries.”

As I’ve noted elsewhere, it’s odd that Morgan didn’t join the Russian Church in America, but instead traveled all the way to Constantinople for ordination, and affiliated himself with the Greek churches. In Morgan’s day, the Greeks had no resident bishop in America, whereas the Russians had three. The Russians had a multiethnic diocese with seminary and a monastery, and very close relations with the Episcopalians. They also had just received Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine, who began promoting the use of English in church services. The Greeks, meanwhile, were much less organized, had no national structure or institutions, and were almost exclusively focused on Greek immigrants. In Philadelphia, where Morgan was based, the Russians had a parish, and one of the priests there was Fr. Sebastian Dabovich, an American-born Serb who spoke perfect English and was friends with Fr. Irvine. And yet, Morgan went with the Greeks and not the Russians.

Originally, I had thought that perhaps Morgan had developed a good relationship with the Greek priest in Philadelphia, Fr. Demetrios Petrides, who wrote a letter of recommendation to the Ecumenical Patriarchate on Morgan’s behalf in 1907. Petrides was an outstanding priest and was very involved in dialogue with the Episcopalians, which might have drawn Morgan to him. But Morgan started attending the Philadelphia Greek church before Petrides even came to America, so that can’t have been the reason.

There must have been some reason why Morgan joined the Greeks and not the Russians, but I can’t come up with it. It’s one of the many mysteries of Morgan’s life.

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Over at Orthodox Wiki, they have an entry on Fr Raphael Morgan, the first black Orthodox priest in America, whom I discussed last week. In the Orthodox Wiki entry, you may find the following:

“Indirect Conversion of Thousands” Theory

During the 16th Annual Ancient Christianity and African-American Conference, Matthew Namee presented a 23-minute lecture on the heretofore recently discovered life of Fr Raphael Morgan. He postulates that even if Fr Raphael’s missionary efforts failed outside of his immediate family, he may be indirectly responsible for the conversion of thousands.

Records for St Paul’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virgina indicate that for a short while in 1901 Robert J. Morgan was listed as the Rector. However, being only a deacon, this would mean that Robert’s position was only temporary, during an interregnum of sorts. The previous rector was one George Alexander McGuire, an Episcopal priest.

In 1920, George McGuire became an associate of Marcus Garvey and his Black Nationalist movement. In 1921, he was made a bishop of the American Catholic Church by Joseph René Vilatte, and soon after founded the African Orthodox Church, a non-canonical Black Nationalist church. Today, it is best known for its canonisation of Jazz legend John Coltrane.

George McGuire soon spread his African Orthodox Church throughout the United States, and soon even made a presence on the African continent in such countries as Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania. However, around the time of the Second World War, the African churches were cut off from the American and in the post-war period had drifted far enough way to request and come under the omophorion of the Church of Alexandria.

Namee questions whence the idea came for McGuire to form namely an Orthodox church. Fr Raphael Morgan and George McGuire have a few similarities: both were Black Caribbeans, served concurrently or consecutively at St Philip’s in Virginia, were ordained around the same time, and later served in Philadelphia. Namee concludes that with so many coincidences, it is impossible for these two men to not have known one another; and therefore it must be from some influence – either in conversation or evangelism, that McGuire came to know the Orthodox Church.

However, one deterrent from this theory comes in the familiarity he had with the Orthodox Church by McGuire’s consecrator, Joseph René Vilatte. At various points, Vilatte come into contact with both the Russian and Syriac Orthodox Churches in a move for Catholic-Orthodox reconciliation, having even been accepted for a while by Bishop Vladimir of Alaska in May of 1891.

I’d like to respond briefly to that last paragraph. We’ve got pretty good reason to believe that Morgan and McGuire knew each other at least by the turn of the 20th century, if not earlier. They served at the same parish and lived in the same cities. I’ve seen no evidence that McGuire and Vilatte were acquainted that early. Vilatte, while indeed familiar with Orthodoxy, was not “Eastern” himself. And while he was McGuire’s consecrator, he was a notorious episcopus vagans, and his status as consecrator doesn’t necessarily imply that he was anything more to McGuire. Even given Vilatte’s involvement, I don’t see why McGuire wouldn’t have just formed his own black Episcopalian-style church. Why bother going Eastern?

Back in the 1970s, a non-Orthodox scholar named Gavin White proposed that McGuire got the idea to become “Orthodox” directly from Morgan. From all the evidence I’ve seen, I have to agree with that theory. Was Morgan the only source for McGuire’s Orthodox idea? Perhaps not. Was he a major inspiration? Probably.

“Indirect Conversion of Thousands Theory” is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

On today’s episode of the American Orthodox History podcast, we’re running a lecture I gave at the Brotherhood of St Moses the Black conference in Indianapolis at the end of May. The subject is Fr Raphael Morgan, the first black Orthodox priest in America. The text of the lecture is below. Also, later this year, St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly will be publishing a paper I wrote on Fr Raphael.

I’m here today to speak about one of the most interesting figures in the history of American Orthodoxy. But rather than simply telling you his life story in chronological order, I thought I might first tell you how I initially encountered him.

Several years ago, I was poking around in the St. Vladimir’s Seminary library, looking for material on Fr. Ingram Irvine, an early American convert to Orthodoxy. I was paging through some old English-language sections of the Russian Orthodox American Messenger, which was the magazine of the Russian Church in America. In one of these issues – the October/November, 1904 issue, to be exact – I noticed a letter by a man named Robert Josias Morgan. This man, Morgan, was apparently an Episcopal deacon who had recently visited Russia and wrote a letter talking about how much he enjoyed his trip. I thought little of it at the time, but fortunately, I did make a photocopy, figuring that it might be useful in the future. And then I promptly forgot all about Robert Josias Morgan.

Not too long after this, I was searching an online newspaper archive, looking for digitized articles on St. Raphael of Brooklyn. I was searching for “Raphael” and “Orthodox Church,” or something like that, and I came up with a bunch of results from a Jamaican newspaper in 1913. I clicked on the first one, and on my screen appeared a remarkable sight. On the front cover of the paper was a photo of a black man, dressed in black clothing, and wearing a clerical collar and a pectoral cross. Beneath the photo, the headline read, “Priest’s Visit – Father Raphael of Greek Orthodox Church.”

Needless to say, I was shocked. Who was this priest? What was his story? And why hadn’t I ever heard about him before? It’s taken me quite some time to piece together the details of Fr. Raphael’s life, and even now, there are huge gaps. One non-Orthodox writer, commenting on Fr. Raphael in the 1970s, wrote, “The Morgan story is so utterly improbable that one tends to dismiss it as a hoax.” But I promise you, this is not a hoax.

Robert Josias Morgan was born in Jamaica in the 1860s or early 1870s; in other words, during or just after the American Civil War. I can’t pin it down any more precisely than that. He never met his father, who died when Robert was still in the womb. At an early age, Morgan embarked on an amazing and inexplicable life of travel. I have no idea how he financed all these journeys. First he went to Panama and Honduras, then to the United States. For a while he was a missionary in Germany, of all places. He made multiple visits to England. At some point, he became a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and then later joined the Church of England. He went to Sierra Leone in Africa, where he studied Greek and Latin at an Anglican school. He was made a lay reader, and he worked as a missionary in Liberia for a number of years.

Eventually, he made another visit to America and then returned to England, where he studied to become an Episcopal deacon. He then returned to America and was ordained a deacon in 1895. He served all over the place – Delaware, Charleston, Richmond, Nashville, Philadelphia.

At some point around the turn of the 20th century, Morgan began to question his Anglican faith. For three years, he studied Anglicanism, Roman Catholicism, and Orthodoxy, trying to determine which was the true Church. As one early profile puts it, “It was his final conviction that the Holy Greek Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church is the pillar and ground of truth.” But he didn’t become Orthodox right away. He went on that trip to Russia that I mentioned earlier, visiting churches and monasteries. He was present at the anniversary service for Tsar Nicholas II’s coronation, and he also attended the memorial service for Tsar Alexander III. Morgan was treated as a special guest of the Kremlin, and his picture reportedly appeared in various Russian periodicals. In his letter after the trip, he wrote, “I came as a simple tourist, chiefly with the object to see the churches and monasteries of this country, to hear the ritual and the service of the holy Orthodox Church, about which I heard so much abroad. And I am perfectly satisfied with everything I saw and witnessed.” Morgan continued his travels, visiting Turkey, Cyprus, and the Holy Land.

But he still didn’t become Orthodox. He spent another three years studying with Greek priests in America, preparing for baptism. Now, here’s an obvious question – why did Morgan join up with the Greeks, rather than the Russians? Remember, this is the very beginning of the 20th century. The Greeks in America were quite disorganized. There were no bishops, no seminaries, no real national structure of any kind. Practically speaking, most parishes functioned as little autonomous units, exclusively serving Greek immigrants. Contrast this with the Russians – they had a bishop, St. Tikhon, who was well-known among the Anglicans. Right around this time, in 1904, the Russians established their first seminary, in Minneapolis. Generally speaking, the Russians were pretty well-organized. And again, right around this time, in 1905, Ingram Irvine, the former Episcopal priest, converted to Orthodoxy in the Russian church. The obvious thing for Morgan to do would have been to join the Russians. But he didn’t, and I don’t know why. Maybe he just got to know the Greeks in Philadelphia and liked them. In any event, he was in Philadelphia, and he was affiliated with the Greek church there.

In January 1906, Morgan was present at the Christmas liturgy of the Greek church in Philadelphia. (Remember, this was before the New Calendar, so the Greeks celebrated Christmas on January 7.) Anyway, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported the next day that “Rev. R.J. Morgan of the American Catholic Church, an off-shoot of the Protestant Episcopal Church, assisted.” The following summer, in 1907, Morgan sailed to Istanbul. He was armed with two letters. One was from the Philadelphia Greek priest, Fr. Demetrios Petrides, who recommended that Morgan be baptized and then ordained an Orthodox priest. There was also a letter from the Philadelphia Greek community, which supported Morgan’s ordination and also said that if he failed to establish a black Orthodox parish, he was welcome to serve as their assistant pastor. So Morgan arrived in Istanbul, and he was interviewed by Metropolitan Joachim of Pelagoneia, one of the few bishops of the Patriarchate who knew English. Metropolitan Joachim recommended that Morgan be baptized, chrismated, ordained, and then sent back to America to “carry the light of the Orthodox faith among his racial brothers.” And so, in August, Morgan was baptized in front of three thousand people, and on the Feast of the Dormition, he was ordained a priest. He took the name “Father Raphael” in place of Robert. The Ecumenical Patriarchate sent him back to America with vestments, liturgical books, a cross, and twenty pounds sterling. He was given the right to hear confessions, but the Holy Synod denied his request for an antimension and Holy Chrism.

As soon as Fr. Raphael arrived back in America, he baptized his wife and children. Now, here’s something odd. He baptized his family right after his return, probably in the fall of 1907. But in 1911, he made a trip to Greece, and on the passenger manifest he is listed as single. Furthermore, the 1913 Jamaican newspaper article says that he “is known in the world as Robert Josias Morgan.” A couple years later, in the book Who’s Who of the Colored Race, it says that “the family name Morgan has been dropped and should never be used in addressing him.” It certainly sounds like he became a monk at some point. And here’s another thing – in numerous articles in the teens, Morgan is called the “founder and superior” of a religious fraternity known as the “Order of the Cross of Golgotha.” I have no idea what this order was. I’ve never seen it mentioned anywhere else, but in any event, you don’t usually hear married priests referred to as “superiors” of religious orders. Until recently, my suspicion was the Morgan’s wife had died. But several months ago, I discovered that Morgan’s wife had actually filed for a divorce in 1909, citing “cruelty” and “failure to support the couple’s children.” I don’t know exactly what that means. It does seem like, in the wake of this, Morgan went to Greece and was tonsured a monk. He was permitted to continue serving as a priest, and his wife remarried and retained custody of their son Cyril. The divorce documents still survive in the Delaware County, Pennsylvania court archives, and right now I’m trying to get copies of those documents, but the court is being rather difficult. Hopefully, I will eventually have copies and will be able to shed some more light on this period of Fr. Raphael’s life.

Anyway, moving on… Fr. Raphael appears to have made the Philadelphia Greek parish his base of operations. He went to Jamaica in 1913 and stayed there for several months, into 1914. He toured the island, giving lectures on his travels, the Holy Land, and so forth. The most interesting event took place in December 1913 – a Russian warship stopped in Jamaica, and Fr. Raphael served the Divine Liturgy with the Russian priest aboard the ship. A number of Syrian-Jamaicans attended, and Fr. Raphael used English for their benefit. The next day, the newspaper reported, “Father Raphael states that he is now in communication with the Syrian Orthodox Bishop of Brooklyn with regard to the Syrians here, and hopes that ‘ere long something will be done in regard to their spiritual welfare.” Of course, the Syrian Orthodox Bishop of Brooklyn was St. Raphael Hawaweeny. I don’t know if anything came of this communication. St. Raphael became ill in 1914 and died in February 1915, so it’s possible that he was never able to do anything for the Syrians in Jamaica. Eventually, many of those Syrians and their descendants became Anglicans.

Still, it’s notable that Fr. Raphael and St. Raphael were in contact with one another. Fr. Raphael was a priest of the Greek church, but he had no problem cooperating with the other Orthodox in America. In fact, there’s evidence that he had at least some sort of contact with the Russian cathedral in New York City. On that passenger manifest from 1911, when he was returning to America from Greece, Fr. Raphael listed his destination as the Russian cathedral in New York City. Again, I have no clue why he was going there or what happened, but clearly there was some kind of interaction.

The last thing I’ve been able to find about Fr. Raphael is from 1916. He was still in Philadelphia, and he and about a dozen other Jamaican-Americans wrote a letter to the editors of the leading newspapers in Jamaica. They were complaining about Marcus Garvey, who was on a lecture tour of America. This is pretty interesting. You may have heard of Marcus Garvey… He was a black nationalist and a part of the back-to-Africa movement in that period. He found the Universal Negro Improvement Association, and his lectures in America were stirring up racial tensions. Garvey was apparently portraying race relations in Jamaica in a very unfavorable light. Fr. Raphael and his friends were not happy about this. In their letter, they wrote, “We, having attended his lectures, found them to be pernicious, misleading, and derogatory to the prestige of the Government and the people [of Jamaica].” Garvey actually wrote a response, published in a Jamaican paper. He said that Fr. Raphael’s letter was “a concoction and a gross fabrication” written as part of a conspiracy against him.

And that’s it. After the exchange with Marcus Garvey, Fr. Raphael seems to have disappeared. Paul Manolis, a Greek Orthodox historian, interviewed several elderly Greeks from Philadelphia in the late 1970s. One of them said that she remembered sitting on Fr. Raphael’s knee and being fed bananas. She also said that Fr. Raphael’s daughter attended Oxford; I have no idea whether this is true. One man said that Fr. Raphael spoke “broken Greek” and used English when serving the Liturgy. Finally, a man named George Liacouras told Paul Manolis that he remembered Fr. Raphael “leaving to go to Jerusalem never again to return after serving a few years with Father Petrides.”

There are so many unanswered questions. Did Fr. Raphael die in the late teens, or did he really move to Jerusalem, or perhaps return to Jamaica or Africa? Did he remain Orthodox? And did he ever succeed in his mission to convert his fellow blacks to Orthodoxy? At first glance, his mission seems to have been a failure. Except for Fr. Raphael’s own family, there’s no evidence that he converted anyone at all.

The story would end there, but… Well, it doesn’t. Not quite. It’s possible that Fr. Raphael was indirectly responsible for the conversion of thousands of Africans to Orthodoxy. Here’s how.

The website of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia includes a list of pastors. And lo and behold, Robert Josias Morgan is listed as being the rector of the parish for a short time in 1901. But he was just a deacon – how could he have been a rector? The only explanation I can think of is that it was an interim position – the previous rector left, and Morgan filled in until a permanent priest could be found. He was probably the parish deacon already, so it would have been natural for him to fill in for a few months. The previous rector was an Episcopal priest named George Alexander McGuire. Presumably, Morgan and McGuire knew each other. They were both black men from the Caribbean, and both were ordained at about the same time. They both served in Richmond, and afterwards, both served in Philadelphia. It’s logical to think that they knew each other.

Okay, so why is this a big deal? Who was George Alexander McGuire? Well, I’ll tell you. Many years later, in 1920, George McGuire became a close associate of Marcus Garvey – the same Marcus Garvey whom Fr. Raphael had written against just a few years before. And then, in 1921, George McGuire was made a bishop by a certain Archbishop Joseph Vilatte of the American Catholic Church. You may remember that I mentioned earlier that prior to becoming Orthodox, Fr. Raphael was very briefly a member of the same American Catholic Church. Vilatte was sort of a rogue bishop. I guess you’d call him an “Old Catholic,” but he was a schismatic mishmash of Episcopalian and Roman Catholic. For several years, he was on friendly terms with the Orthodox. And as I said, Fr. Raphael was briefly in his church back in 1906. And then, in 1921, Vilatte consecrated George McGuire.

And what did George McGuire do now that he was a bishop? Why, he founded a group called the “African Orthodox Church”! It wasn’t Orthodox, really. It did adopt a lot of the trappings and language of Orthodoxy, but it wasn’t in communion with any of the world’s Orthodox Churches, and it was closely associated with the black nationalist movement. It was “Orthodox” in name only. However, the African Orthodox Church eventually spread to Africa itself. And after World War II, the branch of the African Orthodox Church in Africa joined the Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria. Much of the flowering of Orthodoxy in Africa today, in places like Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania, can be traced to that original movement.

It’s sort of a mystery why George McGuire created an African Orthodox Church. After all, he was an Episcopal priest. Why would he want to become “Orthodox”? It is very, very likely – and I’m not the first person to suggest this – but it’s very likely that McGuire got the idea to become Orthodox from Fr. Raphael Morgan. He certainly knew about Fr. Raphael, and he almost certainly knew Fr. Raphael personally. Who knows – it’s possible that Fr. Raphael even tried to evangelize McGuire, thus planting the seed for McGuire to seek Orthodoxy.

And so now we do come to the end of our story. It seems like there are nothing but questions about Fr. Raphael. How did he manage to travel around the world so many times? How did he find out about Orthodoxy? Why did he join the Greeks in America rather than the Russians? Did he ever succeed in directly converting anyone to the faith? What was his Order of the Cross of Golgotha, and what happened to his wife and kids? And what happened to him? Did he really go to Jerusalem, as that old Philadelphia Greek man suggested, or did something else happen?

I can’t answer any of these questions. If you think you can shed more light on the story of Fr. Raphael, please let me know. I’d love to learn more about this fascinating man.

Before we close, I’d like to reflect for a moment on what Fr. Raphael’s story means for us today.

The most obvious message of his life, at least in my opinion, is that the Orthodox faith is for everyone. It’s not just for “cradle” Orthodox, people who were born into the faith. It’s not even just for the people you’d obviously think of as converts. I’m sure it seemed totally unlikely that a black Jamaican man would become an Orthodox priest one hundred years ago. As far as I can tell, nobody reached out to him, tried to share the faith with him. He sought it out himself, and when he found it, he recognized it as a pearl of great price.

On the one hand, by his conversion, he continues to bear witness even today to the truth of the Orthodox faith. And on the other hand, he admonishes us to recognize that the Orthodox faith is for the whole world, not just the cradle Orthodox, not just those converts who have been fortunate enough to find Orthodoxy, and not just those friends and acquaintances of ours with whom we can conveniently share our faith. We must, as the Church, be open at all times to all people. Fr. Raphael Morgan is an exemplary reminder of this important truth.

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