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Expansion Without Western Mission and Constructing Confessional Identities: the African Orthodox Church Between the United State

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Expansion Without Western Mission and Constructing Confessional Identities: the African Orthodox Church Between the United State Expansion Without Western Missionary Agency and Constructing Confessional Identities: The African Orthodox Church Between the United States, South Africa, and East Africa (1921–1940) CIPRIAN BURLACIOIU LUDWIG-MAXIMILIANS-UNIVERSITÄT MÜNCHEN ABSTRACT: The African Orthodox Church (AOC) is a prime example of religious glo- balization beyond Western missionary communication networks. This black indepen- dent church was founded in New York in 1921 and spread rapidly as far as South Africa, East Africa, and even select areas of West Africa—though not as the result of organized mission work but, rather, through reporting in African American journal publications. Typologically, the AOC belongs to Ethiopianism. Yet this church defined itself in re- lation to the Eastern Orthodox tradition, although initially more in an imaginary way than in a real one. This contribution on the AOC illustrates several key points for the study of world Christianity: the need of a transregional perspective, the importance of non-Western agency, the role of media for transatlantic non-Western Christian net- works already back in the 1920s, the role of Eastern churches in the emerging world Christianity, the dynamic formation of denominational identities, and so on. KEYWORDS: non-Western mission, newspapers, Afro-American religion, African Christianity, Orthodoxy 1. The Formation of the African Orthodox Church in the United States as a Religious and Political Movement George Alexander McGuire1—the founder of the African Orthodox Church (AOC)—was born in 1866 in Antigua. He grew up in the Anglican Church, The Journal of World Christianity, Vol. 6, No. 1, 2016 Copyright © 2016 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA JoWC_6.1_06_Burlacioiu.indd 82 18/02/16 4:51 PM graduated in 1888 from a Moravian seminary, and served as a pastor with the Moravians in the Virgin Islands, before emigrating to the United States. In 1893 he left the West Indies for the United States, where he enrolled first with the African Methodist Episcopal Church but later pursued a career in the Episcopal Church. His work as an archdeacon among Afro-Americans in Arkansas marked him out as a capable church leader. In protest against the so-called Arkansas Plan of Bishop William Montgomery Brown, McGuire left his posi- tion in Arkansas and went to Massachusetts, where he founded a new parish in 1908 among the Afro-Caribbean community. Soon, his newly founded parish became the fastest-growing one in the diocese, but it was denied self-supporting status and consequently a deeper autonomy. Disappointed, McGuire left Massachusetts in 1911 and decided to work as a field secretary for the American Church Institute for Negroes in New York, an Anglican institution created in 1906 to contribute to improving the lives of Afro-American Episcopalians. In 1913 he went back to Antigua and worked as an Anglican pastor. Years later, McGuire reflected on his fate in the Episcopal Church in the following terms: “Our perpetual lot is to remain doorkeepers in the Holy Catholic Church with the added privilege of gathering the crumbs which fall from our masters’ table,” and spoke about “ecclesiastical slavery.”2 Soon after World War I he returned to New York having been attracted by the propaganda of Marcus Garvey. There, McGuire associated himself with the Reformed Episcopal Church, a white Protestant church founded in 1873 in New York, which was more responsive to the aspirations of black ministers. McGuire founded his own parish within this church, recruiting mainly from the Afro-Caribbean community. In New York, McGuire came into contact with Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). McGuire became a prominent spokesman of the organization and was elected as chaplain-general at its first general assembly in August 1920, assuming the symbolic title “Archbishop of Ethiopia.” He understood his appointment as a call to organize a universal church for people with African ancestry and made plans for the proclamation of a “Church Ethiopic” at the second general assembly of the UNIA.3 Such plans were finally rejected by many UNIA activists, including Garvey, who preferred to remain affiliated to their own various churches. Consequently, McGuire was forced to step down and to abandon UNIA at its convention in August 1921. In reaction to the rejection of his plans McGuire sought alternatives. He im- plemented his plan to found a universal Episcopal church beyond the bounds of the white-dominated Roman Catholic and Episcopal churches for people with African ancestry with the support of his own parish. A parish assembly declared the formation of the AOC on September 2, 1921. Lacking strong po- litical or social support, the new church sought legitimacy in the consecration The African Orthodox Church 83 JoWC_6.1_06_Burlacioiu.indd 83 18/02/16 4:51 PM of McGuire as its first bishop by the self-styled “Catholic” bishop, though in- dependent of Rome, Joseph René Vilatte, who had been formally consecrated bishop in 1892 in the Syrian Church in Colombo (Ceylon). Although Vilatte was eventually excluded from the Syrian Church at a later date, he claimed to possess apostolic succession and operated in North America and Europe as an episcopus vagans, consecrating priests and bishops and contributing to the for- mation of a self-styled “Catholic” network of churches, independent of Rome. The AOC activists were convinced that, following the consecration of McGuire by Vilatte, the new church possessed valid apostolic succession from Eastern sources and had become part of the universal Church of Jesus Christ. They were thoroughly convinced of the authenticity of the Vilatte succession: “Thus [Bishop McGuire] has come down to us in the most direct, unquestionable and provable line of Apostolic Succession to be found in any branch of the Western Church today. And thus is established the irrefutable fact that the African Orthodox Church is a true, living branch of the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church of Christ.”4 2. Expansion Without Western Missionary Agency: The Role of the Secular and Religious Press in Linking the United States and Africa A few years after its founding in New York in 1921, the AOC spread—beyond communities in the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean—to South Africa (1924), to Southern Rhodesia and Uganda (1928), and sometime later to Kenya (1935) and Ghana/Nigeria (1944). This expansion was spectacular if one bears in mind that the AOC severely lacked the money necessary for missionary activities. In fact, this spread was occasioned mainly by a secular journal: the Negro World, the press organ of UNIA, which was widely circulated in western and southern Africa. In 1923 or 1924, McGuire joined UNIA again and became a prominent mem- ber. At the convention in 1924 he led the religious opening ceremony as primate of the AOC and held a sermon in front of thousands of participants with the title “ ‘What Is That in Thine Hand?’ The Road of Political Destiny, of Indus- trial and Commercial Achievement, of Financial Acquisition and of Spiritual Freedom Is in the Negro’s Hands—The Road of the UNIA.” 5 This was published in the Negro World on August 9 and was already being read in South Africa by September. In Kimberley, a certain Daniel William Alexander,6 archdeacon of the mission-independent African Church, came across an issue of the journal. As a result of reading the article, he decided in a series of conferences with the congregations under his leadership to end the link with the African Church 84 THE JOURNAL OF WORLD CHRISTIANITY JoWC_6.1_06_Burlacioiu.indd 84 18/02/16 4:51 PM and to found the AOC in South Africa. The foundation of the AOC was decided at a meeting on October 6, 1924, when “all the congregation then declared their willingness to be under the supervision of the African Orthodox Church.”7 The first response from the AOC in the United States, however, reached South Africa only by the end of November at the very earliest, some two months after the foundation of the AOC in South Africa. At the end of 1924, McGuire wrote in an editorial in the AOC press organ in New York: “Within three years the East and the West have met each other in the African Orthodox Church. Without any missionary agency, the glad tidings have bridged the Atlantic through the press, and especially through the col- umns of The Negro World to which paper we acknowledge our thanks, and our brethren in Motherland have declared themselves freemen in the Church of the Living God.”8 In 1927, Daniel William Alexander confirmed this statement from the South African perspective: “Having read in the Negro World in 1924 of the African Orthodox Church, I was at once inspired to write to His Grace the Archbishop.”9 Because of the lack of money required for transatlantic passages, the link between the AOC in the United States and the AOC in South Africa was limited to the exchange of mail. This included not only letters but also the regular ex- change of the Negro Churchman—the AOC press organ from New York. From 1929 onward, the AOC in South Africa began to publish its own monthly paper, the African Orthodox Churchman, and send it to the United States. These addi- tional forms of communication offer an answer to the question of how the AOC organizations in South Africa and the United States emerged as a transatlantic religious community, essentially sharing the same doctrine, ecclesiastical or- der, and liturgy, without an intensive intercontinental exchange of people. The first, and for a long time the only, visit from South Africa to the United States was paid by Alexander in 1927 for his consecration as bishop. The only visit from the United States to South Africa was made by Patriarch James I, accom- panied by another American bishop, in 1960.
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