One thing I can say about being a black Orthodox Christian and among the leadership in the Brotherhood of St. Moses the Black, is that there is always a reason to go forward beyond worldly standards. That my aim, our aim as Christians, is to live as citizens of the eternal kingdom while in the midst of this earthly one.

With the recent racial incidents in Charlottesville and other issues, it is so easy to be distracted with wanting to embrace earthly protest and forget that we don’t battle against flesh and blood (as said by the Apostle Paul). Much like Dr. Martin Luther King, we must embrace love even for those who oppose us.  If we adopt a tone of animosity and hostility, we make the Gospel invalid and little more than a worldly tool to achieve a temporal victory.  As African-Americans, we have a tradition of forgiving those…