Source: Public Orthodoxy Katherine Kelaidis National Hellenic Museum (Chicago) While it is fashionable of late to talk about the influx of racist actors into the Orthodox Church via conversion, we should probably admit that Orthodoxy in America has always had a race problem. Early 20th-century urban immigrants from the Eastern Mediterranean and Eastern Europe were not exactly famous for their enlightened attitudes about race. Some of America’s worst racial tensions have been between Black Americans and the very sorts of immigrants who form the core of Orthodox Christian America. Of course, whenever this comes up, people like to deflect by…
