MAN & MYSTERY | Blessed Raphael Morgan

damn he might be having connection issues too what'd you do with nick i did a little voodoo no wi-fi voodoo it was okay i mean it had some um past or pastoral issues to deal with um that were a bit annoying um so i mean other than that things have been good my um my kids are spending the night with my sister-in-law so i'm trying to get the house in order so that my wife comes home she's happy and i understand so the proper results can happen praise the lord yes but that's it that's it all

right so hey i was thinking that i talked to nick about this of course nick you know you kind of got us a drake you want us to go but that longer kind of podcast he put together covered a lot of that music conversation we had last week but i thought it may be good if you told the story of blessed raphael like you told me a couple of weeks ago who he is and why he's important and you know what the hope is for him for well blessed raphael morgan or blessed are commander raphael morgan is the first um we can't say black american he's the first black man to serve uh as a priest here in the americas uh robert josiah morgan uh before he came into the church was born in jamaica and spent a good time of his youth traveling uh it's obvious that his family had some type of money coming in to see where he's constantly uh traveling he's a well-traveled young man by the time he's 18 years old you know living in jamaica living in i believe three or four different countries in central america he actually spent some time in my father's hometown in panama so he begins to serve as a missionary in the continent of africa and that's where he meets his wife uh charlotte morgan and it's during that time you know we have to understand this is not only um the height of racism in the west but he's also in apartheid south africa while this is going on so you know being a local girl she sees you know raphael is educated he's handsome he's you know he's holding down um the community there where he was serving and they get married and of course like many couples uh during that time because the lack of advanced medicine i believe they lose at least one or two children uh before they have their daughter uh and their son who survived uh afterwards raphael moved to jamaica in transit to coming to the states and while he's here in america he begins to question the validity of apostolic succession in the various protestant denominations that he belonged to during his vocation as a missionary before i continue with a story one thing i want to make a point of is that this experience of this time during america just like the late 1800s going into the early 1900s um the reality of being a black man and being a part of these protestant confessions is the real issue of his vocation and what's making them question uh their claim to apostolic succession because although he's a well-educated minister uh missionary and also a clergy and he's given confessions he's not given a position of leadership so he's a pastor and a missionary but he can't lead in the churches that he's serving in because he's a black man so he's usually in the position of an assistant pastor or maybe the third guy out and serving um in these churches i think for um for example there is the methodist church that he served and is still standing in uh north carolina if i'm not mistaken i actually planned on making a trip there to see if there's any items that he might have used during his service or any records or anything

anything but he begins to question the validity of their apostolic succession and he takes a sabbatical of about three years and he begins to really immerse himself in church history and tradition and trying to find where is the true church and after his sabbatical of three years he makes the statement in his journal that the greek church meaning the orthodox church is the one true faith and um i don't know exactly how he was able to pull this off but he made a pilgrimage over to moscow and while there he quickly became the talk of the town he was even invited to celebrate the memorial of the former czar uh so he was invited to this dinner as a guest of honor and upon him leaving moscow he asked the metropolitan for a blessing of two different things one was to begin the intercessions uh to the theotokos and the second was to pray for church unity at that time he was serving in the anglican church and was hoping because of the closeness in the uh the anglican church at that time and how it was trying to keep somewhat of an ancient tradition that they would unite and come into communion with the orthodox church of course father jason i know uh that didn't exactly happen the anglican church of where time became a lot more uh liberal i even saw today that there was an article where the bishop of canterbury shares that i believe it was the bishop of kenya or nigeria is being too hard on um the church's members that are from the lgbtq community and they should all be commune so that's the difference of what we see uh in that confession within a hundred years so morgan goes home he does further uh more of a further search and locally he links up with a local uh greek priest in philadelphia who later on becomes the sponsor and writes to the ecumenical patriarchy a major patriarch excuse me about ordaining him to the priest and having him serve in the church um once the process of those things happen and the paperwork is gone forth and forward and it's been blessed then robert josiah morgan is invited to constantinople and of course he's reviewed by the holy senate and they all agree to move forward to baptize him and form him for the priesthood so what their intention was is to give morgan the full faculties and means and blessings to then go ahead and uh missionarize his people meaning uh africans in the diaspora in the west so it was during the feast of dormition that he was baptized uh into the church i believe it was on the pre-face of the feast then ordained the accurate and then on the feast day of their mission he was ordained to the priesthood at the monastery of the well i'm gonna say this probably know the life-giving spring in constantinople so this is a um monastery that is dedicated to the mother of god and you see this consistent relationship that he has early on in his conversion to the theotokos i believe in my heart that prayerfully that's what gave him the determination uh continue in his faith with all of the issues that he had to uh later on face so the church gave him the honorific of priest apostolic over all affairs or mission work that would go on in the uh in the diaspora so let's say if anyone was to come into the church or anyone that was baptized or those communities he was brought there or was to be there in a position of leadership in that capacity um upon him returning to the states he baptizes his wife and his children he begins serving with the priest that was his sponsor uh in this greek orthodox church in philadelphia and from there they began to do the work together uh to try to missionarize uh black americans west indian americans and caribbeans uh here in the northeast in the greater uh philadelphia area

one the one of the major things that matthew namey misters out on when he's speaking on the life of our commander raphael and also father oliver herbal is they don't take in consideration what was it like for a black man or black family to live during jim crow america and that's what the thing that's missing um in the book turning to tradition by father oliver herbal and is what's missing on the various articles that matthew mimi has wrote on raphael's life if i'm not mistaken uh one of matthew namey's contemporaries uh shares an article that the life of our commander raphael morgan should not be taken uh so seriously because of his constant movement from different uh protestant confessions and then into orthodoxy and the writer does not understand that he's making these constant moves because of the reality of where he is in society you know this is jim crow semi's uh semi-slavery and segregation here in america so we're what a hundred years now removed from them and we're still dealing with certain issues on race prejudice and discrimination imagine what was it like for you to live while this was going on it was a complete mess so blessed raphael continues to serve the church uh sadly later on because of the pressures uh of the ministry finances his wife divorces him um another key thing that matthew namely misses out on is that he tries to pinpoint uh his divorce as a point of discrepancy on his life uh from 1900 to 1938 in the united states of america in order for a woman to file for divorce and to be awarded a divorce she had to make the claim and prove the claim that her husband was being physically abusive and economically inept to take care of uh hurried as children that was the law on top of that again it's jim crow america i do not expect under any circumstances whether in the northeast or in the south for a black man to be spoken well of in a court system i think what needs to happen is that observers and faithful need to look closer at his personal life and see what happened after his divorce to determine what was his life was like um especially after it's his brother priest in the church that is consistently trying to support uh morgan and even testifies in his behalf during the court case so if we're going to take uh blessed raphael's life as a discrepancy we also have to take the life of his friend father thomas daniels into discrepancy as well and father thomas is a well-known uh greek american priest in the greek orthodox church historically with the um the efforts that he was able to spearhead and found during his vocation

so this whole stance that matthew amy has taken has just been for lack of better words of personal um grievance that he might have in the sharing of morgan's life today so after his divorce morgan returns back to the mother church he goes to cyprus to uh i guess look for further instruction on what should he do with his vocation because obviously he's divorced and needs to take care of his daughter who is he awarded custody of and in doing so he's concerned our commander so nick i don't know if you're familiar uh with that position but our command right is the highest place um a priest can go in his location within the priesthood yeah so it's a the honorific that's given uh to a monastery so seeing that morgan maintains his relationship in the church he does not leave the church he maintains his vocation remains faithful uh to christ in his church these are the key things that observers have to look into when he turns back home uh from cyprus he actually establishes a massive order which is called the order of golgotha father jason you had a question i was going to say i think that's important to note that what you're saying is he was elevated to the rank of archimandrite after the divorce right and the church would not have done that yeah if he was actually abusing his wife and that's i mean i hate to say it but matthew namey at best is a yellow journalist when you look at his work on i believe it's called orthodox america on your website he likes to pull up negative information on historic figures within the church i remember reading a article on um archbishop and athena goris and he writes how he had a relationship with the cia i mean why would you as an orthodox christian why would you write such an article it's not just going to give um a foul image on his eminence uh athena girls it's gonna make the church look bad so as a faithful orthodox christian how are you going to draw people to the church uh making an appoint to exploit these men and their memories there's no uh award or goal in pointing out people's faults especially as an orthodox christian that's one thing that we're taught in the gospels not to do you don't point out that someone sinned uh especially something that you can't prove yeah and usually with yellow journalists make you'll see this as you get older as you're spending time in social media developing these things the person that i don't want to use the word wins but the person that faithfully shares information throughout history or even things that are happening contemporarily is the person that shares them without a bias if you're trying to push a negative end or a positive end on an individual and it's not founded eventually it's going to catch up to you and you know between um father oliver herbal and matthew namey ten years ago all they could do is speak positively about archimandrite raphael morgan the moment that i found his body now two and a half years ago they said everything negative about the man yeah so what like what is the real issue is the issue that you're no longer going to get credit because the reality is that where people are going to weigh out what's the importance excuse me of an article or actually finding the man's body um as i shared nick i shared this with father jason i believe two weeks ago in conversation um i recently was able to find out uh our commander at raphael's birthday which is very important when it comes to praying memorial services for a past faithful orthodox christian so you know naomi and herbal don't spend any time trying to do these things the hot topic at the time was oh i discovered the first black priest in america not the impact of this person's life or how does this life invocation impact black america today or in the west indies in the caribbean in central and south america that's the most important thing especially when it comes to the development of urban missions and when you're trying to missionarize and evangelize um a group of people regardless of where their social status is or where they live in the country this community is going to need a patronal figure in history to look to and say this is the man or this is a woman that we can look to and say they laid the foundation for all of us to come into the church and through prayer and meditation i shared this with father jason nick i'm at the point where i see blessed are commands like raphael morgan as the enlightener of the diaspora of africa yeah period he lays the apostolic foundation of what it looks like and what it means to be black and to be orthodox yeah in the west i mean this guy suffers repeatedly throughout his vocation for christ in his church and there's not a time where he stops serving her yeah like you're at the height of jim crow america you're you just lost your wife you no longer have custody of your son uh he has custody of his daughter and there's not a time when the church turns his back on him uh later on in his life you find out that it was the greek crown that protected his daughter and spent the money invested in her life to get her educated at oxford university these are not things that the church and the greek crown are going to do for someone that's not living a holy life yeah raphael had to live a life that was so determined and filled by christ that even the head of the church the economical patriarch and also the king of greece would have to say we're going to support this man and invest in his life yeah that's just the reality um the sad thing is that godfather

take know we let we left off a little bit before we uh before i posed a couple questions he's in cyprus right so what happens after he he's in cyprus when he returns back to philadelphia he goes back um he goes back philadelphia and he establishes that monastic order called the order of golgotha and it's so funny like even within our government anytime there's been a black male that has been concerned with restoring positive images to black males or within the black community the government's always watching him i'm one of the 12 gentlemen that he brought into his monastic order would you believe that one of them was a cia agent absolutely not even the united states government at the time saw the impact of what how different our nation would look like if african americans became eastern orthodox christians yeah because our faith does not allow you even an oppression to think less of yourself yeah the first thing that you learn as a catechumen is that you were created in the image of christ to what to become christ yeah so even though if this nation says i'm three-fifths of a man i'm a i'm not uh worthy of personhood christ in his church says that you're worthy of personhood that changes entire communities that changes entire families yeah and this is why the the impact of his life is so important because now today for myself from my wife and my children nick for your family you can look and you can look at his life and say you know what i can deal with this i can go like let's say you're not with father jason anymore you go somewhere else in the south and you happen to step into the wrong church and they're saying you know what we don't want black americans in our parish god forbid you know because it's an ethnic church maybe they're not racist but they're an ethnic church that's not going to stop you in your determination of serving christ because you can look at this figure of a man and as a priest and say you know what if he went through it i can go through it uh although he's not a saint i can call upon his intercessions and ask him to help me in this point of suffering yeah and it's

like it's those two key figures his relationship with the mother of god and even in his cross bearing he bears the witness of the cross going through this oppression and suffering and this is my personal bias but this is why i think he named his monastic order the order of golgotha i believe that our commander raphael was able to see the correlation between black suffering and the suffering of the cross and nick this is the most important thing that you have to do in your vocation and serving the church is that you have to share with other young black men with black families that while we're suffering as a people in america christ is right there with us and he's always been with us yeah i mean imagine the reality of black slaves having to sneak away here in north america in the caribbean in the west indies in central and south america just to worship yeah did our lord not protect them did his mother not protect them so that they would able to have this experi a tangible experience with christ yes it wasn't in the church i still believe that because of the sincerity of the people because they wanted christ that he was there with them yeah that's you're with them that's an amazing story from before hearing the context and his story i can't remember i saw just the image just seeing the picture of his uh him wearing his cross and just looking at it i think for me is i didn't need too much to see that that's difficult i think just seeing is this one black man and two a black man in orthodox christianity before uh progression you know like just looking at it there is difficult and now hearing the story it's um yeah i can't i do have conversations with uh with people that i grew up with and just family here and i try to point out i'm like man you know one of the first things they you know you put a black man on a tree but who else went on the tree and it's just not yet it hasn't necessarily clicked yet but it's for me coming into it i think that was something that i was able to notice it's like just uh yeah just that that's yeah good call father the story is also it's okay nick i'm so glad that you mentioned that because i don't agree

agree with james cones his uh theology on how he tries to use liberation theology and couple that with traditional christianity but i do believe he has a point on what you just shared um and it wasn't just any old black man that was lynched 98 of the black men that were lynched were all business owners they were community leaders oh goodness okay so the purpose of lynching them was to show the rest of the community if you think you're going to strive or progress as a male as a family or in leading your family this is what your destiny's going to be so you're right in the same manner that christ was hung up on a tree we see throughout history that the african-american was hung up on a tree and i believe as orthodox christians it doesn't matter that you're not a priest or that you're not or you're not in holy orders we need to make that point the consistence of suffering is consistent with the suffering of christ on his cross so no matter who the person is around the world christ is there with you in the time of suffering yeah he's always there with you and as you're suffering you're bearing witness of who he is so it's not a time for you to say oh man i can't believe i'm going through this or woe is me and there and in reality there is an aspect of that we have to address you're right but at the same time after we've had this experience of suffering and oppression we have to dig deep in our hearts and find christ there

suffering and oppression has to lead to a prayerful life it has to lead us to actually meeting christ and our suffering and i think that's the thing that we've missed especially that the african-american community and movements have always been rooted in political movements whether they were startup political movements or movements that were already established you know between garvey to the black panther movement that wasn't necessarily a black mood because it was power to all the people but it you know it started because of black oppression then it united other oppressed people you know and then today with black lives matter again not truly a black organization it's more so over lgbtq uh organization but we need to address this matter so people can see christ yeah you know it's not for us to argue with these groups and say oh you're not doing this right or this is not the means to do things the argument has to be as saint paul says i'm going to preach christ and him crucify yeah you're talking about oppression even to the lgbtq community i want you to see the truest image or witness of suffering in the name of love or in the person of love jesus christ do you know how many people from that community we can reach or how many young black men and black black men and women in colleges and universities have been manipulated to join black lives matter because of the fact that you know they just need direction and they want to see change and yes change is needed in our on our country but that's not the way that you do it

you don't allow yourself or your people to be manipulated for liberal extremist liberal political means and then at the end of the day if you've done all this campaigning and raising money your interest can't be held it was in the news yesterday michael brown's dad just put publicly that he wants uh 20 million dollars from black lives matter to address black issues they raised 90 million no one knows where the money went to the biting campaign that's the reality and black interest became lgbtq interest so this is not something for us to take lightly you know yes i mean i i'm not sure that i found this body for me to have the purple you know the personal accolades and somebody clap for me i share it so as a community in the church white and black for those of us that are concerned with true racial reconciliation we hang him up and we say this is our god say moses strong is an incredible sin he's the paternal saint of of all thugs and gangsters i'm not a thug i'm not a gangster i've never been one you know i was born in the hood i spent the first four years of my life in the hood my parents moved my sister and i to the suburbs i don't have that lifestyle so if i'm looking to reach black people of all ethnic groups i am looking for someone who has a universal appeal but also represents the heart and mind of the church that he reaches all people and that's what i see in blessed raphael's um life before we continue kind of we're gonna keep going the even into the end of his life we see true suffering he dies alone yeah you guys alone the uniaa movement that was led by marcus garvey and also this gizmat well not schizomatic the vagante african orthodox church were the reasons why

why raphael did not get the footing that he wanted to in the metro north for example the african orthodox church although the god between harlem usa and baltimore maryland had 50 000 members and this is without technologies just with shortwave radio and privately public on excuse me privately published articles by george alexander mcguire who was its leader so think about that you're canonical or not nobody's following you they're going to follow the guy with all the numbers and that has the founder of pan-africanism you know at its right side people forget uh marcus garvey in his heart wanted to become an orthodox christian the problem was is that at that time we're dealing with you know greeks and russians and arabs you know coming into the country and they're fleeing asylum in war so the reality is they're not looking to missionarize another people we need to take care of our own so we can get on our own feet but the african orthodox church but gone here or not it filled that hole today i mean 100 years ago had 50 000 members today they have stephanie

so what happened to uh blessed raphael's children well his daughter stays in greece until after the royalist conflict is done and after her father's death so whatever reason i don't know if it's because of the government watching him she might have not felt that it was safe or maybe the greek crown told her it wasn't safe um but she returns back to the states after her father's death uh his son of course under his mother's um care and his stepfather he ends up going into the ministry also but as a protestant uh pastor the last record that i found of him because you found that in the newspapers back at that time that he's mentioned in the local newspaper i believe in either brooklyn or queens new york and it says you know pastor cyril morgan is celebrating his birthday with his mother today that came to visit him from connecticut his daughter uh does get married but has no children and she died in 1985 she has steps on the thing i'm trying to do now is to find out if that stepson had any children and if maybe um his children might have shared his uh grandfather's story with them that's what my goal is at this point yeah nothing has turned up so far well nick like i told you i got to step out the call yeah you and the father to discuss things further but father samuel again unbelievably enlightening yeah there's so much you're saying that i'd like to pursue a little bit more at some point but i think one thing you said about um the suffering of the african-american black man in america is a better way to put it right um you know when you look at the greeks that came over as yours like the russians that come over the syrians that come over they identify with that suffering as well because majority of them are coming over for not the same reasons but like reasons the fact that you know they're they're on the cross too in their homelands and i think that is probably one reason why uh even with uh dr martin luther king there is that you know uh affinity between uh the greek words of dog's church and others with the cause um because they could identify with it that's right even here i came in the greek church i was four and a half years uh before i went to saint vladimir's

they would tell stories here of you know when your name is you know athanasios demetrius you know all you know papa dimitrio you know that doesn't sound like an angelo name no uh you know when you're when your accent is different when uh your religion is different you know they said we found ourselves on the back of the bus as well and they were you know so they were called awesome yeah and just like you're saying that what it did though and uh we had talked about this i can't remember it was you and i discussing it or i was telling father fox to telling father nick telling nick or if we were just one of our dogs maybe one day you have these groups like the roman catholics have hospitals they have orphanages they have you know hospice carers they have all these wonderful things that do all kind of ministry to the people a lot of those people that came over from europe uh say you know the uk britain france um italy they had no really desire to return back where they came from a lot of greeks and russians and others that came more from the eastern european bloc they knew they were going to be here that long they thought they would probably would go back home one day so yeah they they grew together with their language with their faith and they were trying to survive as a people as well not really with any type of mindset of bringing their faith to someone else and they got here before the bishops did so yeah you know they're just they're tribal you know in their gatherings and being together and um of course it's not like that anymore but we're way behind on where we probably would be in a normal situation regardless of missions and evangelism and we're even further behind as i think we may have been if things have been done a little bit differently in regards to the black community but you know that was then this is now right we have work to do but again when we talk i learned something every conversation thank you i'll leave you and nick to discuss things further maybe lay out some things that y'all think we could talk about going forward but i'm happy just to sit here and be quiet and listen uh but uh thank you father well if i listen we're gonna follow up to uh nick i didn't tell you this but brad and i were talking about uh at some point maybe in the summer when it's a good time for father samuel as well that we're trying to get down here yeah we've seen if we can't send you up there to be with him maybe for a weekend and go around and video what he's doing his mission and that would help us as well in our efforts here so yeah anyway it's a long distance partnership but we're gonna work on it we're going to make it work okay all right thanks again nick i'll talk to you soon of course as well have the conversation all right see you all right sounds good see you later thanks now i don't know how much time we got i hope i don't i hope it will kick us off but it might kick us off because i don't have the the pro plan or something like that but