The Prayer of a Broken Heart: An Orthodox Christian Reflection on African American Spirituality

THE PRAYER of a

BROKEN HEART An Orthodox Christian Reflection on

African American Spirituality R ev. Paul Aber nathy

ancient faith publishing che s t er ton, ind i a n a

The Prayer of a Broken Heart: An Orthodox Christian Reflection on African American Spirituality Copyright © 2021 Paul Abernathy All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the Publisher. p u b l i s h e d b y: Ancient Faith Publishing A Division of Ancient Faith Ministries P.O. Box 748 Chesterton, IN 46304 All Old Testament quotations, unless otherwise identified, are from the Orthodox Study Bible, © 2008 by St. Athanasius Academy of Orthodox Theology (published by Thomas Nelson, Inc., Nashville, Tennessee) and are used by permission. New Testament quotations are from the New King James Version of the Bible, © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc., and are used by permission.

ISBN: 978-1-955890-06-9 Library of Congress Control Number: 2021949529 Printed in the United States of America

Copyright ©2021 by Paul Abernathy.

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 This book is dedicated to all my ancestors who suffered in slavery

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Table of Contents Preface

vii

Introduction

1

Chapter 1

Faith Fashioned in Suffering

9

Chapter 2

The “White Man’s Religion”

31

Chapter 3

Embracing Christ

41

Chapter 4

An “Invisible Institution”

61

Chapter 5

Spirituals

81

Chapter 6

The Cross

97

Chapter 7

Racism

121

Chapter 8

To Redeem the Soul of America

149

Chapter 9

“Join the Angelic Train”

163

Acknowledgments 187 Bibliography

193

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Preface

M

uch discussion has occur r ed a mong Orthodox Christians about evangelizing the African American community. To many this feels like a monumental task in that African American culture seems ill suited to traditional Orthodox Christian worship. These differences, however, appear greater than they actually are. African Americans have inherited a spirituality fashioned in suffering and brokenheartedness. The very character of this faith introduces to many a kind of spirituality whose emphasis on divine encounters and the otherworldly seems more in line with that of the ancient Church.

At this point, you may be wondering how this book came to be in the first place. It is, perhaps, an unusual starting point: an effort to find the connections between two seemingly disparate religious traditions. And yet, as I’ve said, these two traditions are not so different.

What’s more, they both exist within me personally.

With an African American father and a Syrian-Italian-Polish mother, I have been blessed to view the world through a diverse and culturally vibrant lens. For me, my heritage was never about emphasizing differences but rather recognizing similarities. At various points in my life I could most certainly recognize how these seemingly different worlds came together. Christian faith and prayer in particular were at the center of this confluence. It wasn’t necessarily the sound of the prayers but rather the spirit in which these prayers were prayed that seemed so similar to me. vii Sample pages only. Purchase the full book at http://store.ancientfaith.com/prayer-of-a-broken-heart/

t he pr ay er of a brok en he a rt What was at the heart of this similarity? This question would eventu­ ally compel me to embark on a journey of reflection and research to better understand what I had naturally observed throughout my life.

And it gave rise to this book you now hold in your hands.

The purpose of this book is twofold: first, to frame African American spirituality in a redemptive light; and second, to bring to light the parallels that already exist between that heritage and Orthodox Christian theology. While doing this, we will mention very little outright about the Orthodox Christian Faith. The book in some ways assumes the reader has at least some familiarity with Orthodox Christian theology, while in others it encourages a deeper exploration of the ancient Orthodox Church. Toward the end of the book, we’ll look more closely at the correlation between points of African American and Orthodox Christian spirituality.

Research for this book included examining firsthand accounts as well as academic works related to the field of study. We will give much attention to the slave religion in the antebellum United States, as it is the faith to which many African Americans can trace their spiritual origins. Moreover, the book highlights many of the profound aspects of the slave religion that can still be found in African American spirituality as lived out in twenty-first–century America. Topics will include the foundations of African American faith, slave conversion to Christianity, personal encounters with Christ, spirituals, the cross in Black spirituality, and the Black Church.

The majority of my research comes from non-Orthodox Christian sources. Slave narratives, African American testimony, speeches, spirituals, and poetry provide the foundation of research for this study. All of this is supplemented by conversations, presentations, and interactions with the Fellowship of St. Moses the Black, a national organization focused on the ministry of racial reconciliation and sharing the Orthodox Christian Faith with people of color, as

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Preface

well as with Orthodox Christians who focus on evangelizing African Americans.

Hopefully, you will emerge from this book with a better understanding of African American spiritual identity. God willing, you will be able to use these parallels to introduce Orthodox Christianity to African Americans by emphasizing a common spirituality.

Fr. Paul Abernathy Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania August 28, 2021 Feast Day of St. Moses the Black

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Chapter 1

Faith Fashioned in Suffering A broken and humbled heart God will not despise.

Psalm 50/51:19

A

lthough many in the Wester n world acknowledge the reality and history of the slave trade, they often overlook the horrors that millions of Africans endured when captured and sold into slavery. Like all terrifying, shared experiences, those of slavery have been softened with the passage of time. As a result, you’ll usually hear, or possibly even say, “Slavery must’ve been awful,” before moving on to another point. But I might argue that there is value in pausing before the transition. In confronting this past, we can better understand the people who lived it, the culture they developed, and the spirituality they passed to us.

The slave trade and institutional slavery that existed in what would become the United States of America left countless testimonies of daily indignities, torture, and inhumane treatment. Yet, throughout this experience, the faith that emerged in the context of suffering is most extraordinary. In order to understand the profundity of a spirituality that focused so much on faith, hope, patience, longsuffering,

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t he pr ay er of a brok en he a rt and love, we first need to examine the suffering through which these human beings came to know God.

Separation This ex a mination begins with the slave trade, as it is the beginning of the African American story. The European slave traders captured slaves in abhorrent and usually violent ways, leaving millions broken and destroyed.

John Atkins was a surgeon in the British Royal Navy, which voyaged around the notorious “slave triangle” in the early 1700s. This excursion would eventually lead Atkins to become one of Britain’s earliest abolitionists. In 1735, he published a lengthy account of his voyage, in which he describes the slave trade in great detail. In his account, Atkins records an incident he witnessed with a newly captured slave who was not willing to accept the degrading treatment of the slave traders: Once, on looking over some of the old Cracker’s Slaves, I could not help taking notice of one Fellow among the rest, of a tall, strong Make, and bold, stern aspect. As he imagined we were viewing them with a design to buy, he seemed to disdain his Fellow-Slaves for their Readiness to be examined, and as it were scorned looking at us, refusing to rise or stretch his Limbs, as the Master commanded; which got him an unmerciful Whipping from Cracker’s own Hand, with a cutting Manatea Strap, and had certainly killed him but for the loss he himself must sustain by it; all which the Negro bore with Magnanimity, shrinking very little, and shedding a Tear or two, which he endeavored to hide as too ashamed of.1

1

Quoted in Wright, African-American Experience, 42.

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Faith Fashioned in Suffering

Eventually Atkins came to learn that the newly captured slave, called Captain Tomba, was a leader of some country villages that opposed the slave traders and had resisted them at the Nunez River in present-day Guinea. For this reason, the slave traders “surprised, and bound him in the night . . . and from thence was brought hither and made [in the words of the slave trader] my property.”2 Here one can perhaps imagine the full tragedy of Captain Tomba’s fall from heroic village leader to degraded slave. The injury that accompanies the moment one’s liberty is unwillingly lost makes a profound impact not only on the one who is taken but also on his or her descendants, who may well have contemplated how the enslavement of someone long ago could lead to generations of shattered lives and enslaved families.

There is much here to be said on historical trauma, and the research that supports this understanding significantly increases each year.

Parenting styles, cultural narratives, and even genetics become vehicles for inadvertently perpetuating the impact of historical trauma.

And what about the spiritual impact of such atrocities? Should we not recognize the deep wounds that occur here and the haunting legacies they would engender?

Dr. Jacob Olupona, a Nigerian professor of indigenous African religions at Harvard Divinity School and professor of African and African American studies in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, offers insight into the role of religion in Africa. On the topic of African spirituality he states, For starters, the word “religion” is problematic for many Africans, because it suggests that religion is separate from the other aspects of one’s culture, society, or environment. But for many Africans, religion can never be separated from all these. It is a way of life, and 2

Quoted in Wright, 42.

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t he pr ay er of a brok en he a rt it can never be separated from the public sphere. Religion informs everything in traditional African society, including political art, marriage, health, diet, dress, economics, and death. . . . African spirituality is truly holistic. For example, sickness in the indigenous African worldview is not only an imbalance of the body, but also an imbalance in one’s social life, which can be linked to a breakdown in one’s kinship and family relations or even to one’s relationship with one’s ancestors. 3

Here we see to what extent spirituality informs the African worldview. The consequences of slavery in this paradigm are earth­ shattering. Being ripped from close relationships, experiencing separation from ancestral traditions, and enduring torture and disease would all be viewed through a spiritual lens. Given this reality, we cannot even begin to imagine the unseen tragedy that occurred in the depths of African souls and has reverberated within their descendants ever since.

We may here also underscore the effect Captain Tomba’s capture had on the people of his village. What must they have said? Perhaps they asked, “Should we continue to resist the slave traders? How can we avoid capture if our leader is taken?” We can’t ignore the insidious fear that must have pervaded their lives from that moment forward, because it would shape the narrative of that village as well as the perspectives of its people for generations to come.

To illustrate this point, we need only look as far as Benin, a country that was once the largest slave port in West Africa. For over two hundred years, men, women, and children were brutally abducted and sold as part of the transatlantic slave trade. This period of history was so traumatic, its effects ripple through to today. A 2018 Washington Post article reported, “In villages where people were abducted for 3

Quoted in Chiorazzi, “Spirituality of Africa.”

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Faith Fashioned in Suffering

the slave trade, families still ask reflexively when they hear a knock on the door whether the visitor is ‘a human being’ or a slave raider.”4 For Captain Tomba, capture was not the end of the tragedy.

Atkins reports that the cruelty continued after an attempted escape in which Captain Tomba and a few other slaves actually killed three slave traders: Why, Captain Harding weighing the Stoutest and Worth of the two Slaves, did, as in other Countries they do by Rogues of Dignity, whip and scarify them only; while three others, Abettors, but not Actors, nor of Strength for it, he sentenced to cruel Deaths; making them first to eat the Hearts and Liver of one of them killed. The Woman he hoisted up by the thumbs, whipp’d, and slashed her with Knives before the other Slaves till she died. 5

Beyond the physical tortures inflicted on newly captured slaves, the other reality was in many ways far worse than physical punishment: a new, radical individualism, introduced to them by a life of separation. Indeed, they were separated from loved ones, familiar culture, common language, and even friendly relationships.

As slaves were taken from different tribes, ethnic groups, and regions, they were quite often combined in communities filled with persons who could barely communicate with one another.

Instantly, these Africans found themselves far from their native land and customs and despised by those among whom they were living, experiencing the pang of the separation from loved ones on the auction block, knowing the hard taskmaster, and feeling the lash. 6 The resulting extreme loneliness made it almost impossible for these newly enslaved Africans to find any hope in this new 4 5 6

Seif, “African Country.”

Quoted in Wright, African-American Experience, 42.

See Johnson and Johnson, Books of American Negro Spirituals, 20.

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t he pr ay er of a brok en he a rt world. Furthermore, such loneliness was undoubtedly destructive to persons who came from cultures marked by a warm social life and close familial bonds.

Suffering The initial cruelty with which Africans were captured, abused, and sold into slavery marked the beginning of a journey that would be defined by pain and suffering. In 1834, Rev. La Roy Sunderland published a work entitled Anti-slavery Manual in which he chronicled the horrors of slavery in the United States. Reverend Sunderland recorded the experiences of Charles Ball, who was a slave for forty years in Maryland, South Carolina, and Georgia. Ball gives an account of his separation from his mother during a slave auction, when he was a young child: At the time I was sold I was quite naked, have never had any clothing in my life; but my new master had brought with him a child’s frock, or wrapper, belonging to one of his own children—and after he purchased me, he dressed me in this garment, took me before him on his horse, and started home; but my poor mother, when she saw me leaving her for the last time, ran after me, took me down from the horse, clasped me in her arms, and wept loudly and bitterly over me. My master seemed to pity her, and endeavored to sooth her distress by telling her that he would be a good master to me, and that I should not want anything. She then, still holding me in her arms, walked along the road beside the horse, as he moved slowly, and earnestly and imploringly besought my master to buy her and the rest of her children, and not to permit them to be carried away by the negro buyers; but whilst thus entreating him to save her and her family, the slave-driver who had first bought her, came running in pursuit of her with a rawhide in his hand. When he overtook us, he told her he was

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Faith Fashioned in Suffering her master now, and ordered her to give that little Negro to its owner, and come back with him.

My mother then turned to him and cried—“Oh master, do not take from me my child!” Without making any reply, he gave her two or three heavy blows on the shoulders with his rawhide, snatched me from her arms, handed me to my master, and seizing her by one arm, dragged her back towards the place of sale.7

This heart-wrenching scene was by no means unique. Rather, it epitomizes the means by which African American slaves were frequently torn from one another.

Although Ball was merely a child at the time of his separation from his mother, the pain would remain with him for the rest of his life.

He reflects, “Young as I was, the horrors of that day sank deeply into my heart—and even at this time, though half a century has elapsed, the terrors of that scene return with painful vividness upon my memory.”8 As Ball indicates, moments like his are seared into the African American memory, both personal and collective. How those experiences shaped a slave’s perception of the world, and how that perception was passed down from one generation to the next through culture, oral tradition, and child-rearing practices, give important insight into the way many African Americans found their hearts.

I had a professor in seminary, Dr. Christopher Veniamin, who taught us that when our heart is broken, we then learn that we have a heart and that this is our spiritual center. Pain enables us to find our spiritual center. This truth resonates with the African American experience, where devastating pain and loss would lead many to

7 8

Quoted in Sunderland, Anti-slavery Manual, 70.

Quoted in Sunderland, 71.

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t he pr ay er of a brok en he a rt discover their hearts, to reject the world that rejected them, and to turn to God with all their might.

Physical torture was a regular part of slave life in the United States. It was often inflicted for trivial reasons, including the desire to maintain control and create a subservient mentality by fear.

Again, Ball relays accounts of torture he witnessed over the course of his captivity: I had often seen black men whipped, and had always, when the lash was applied with great severity, heard the sufferer cry out and beg for mercy—but in this case, the pain inflicted by the double blows of the hickory was so intense that Billy never offered so much as a groan; and I do not believe he breathed for the space of two minutes after he received the first strokes. He shrank his body close to the trunk of the tree around which his arms and legs were lashed, drew his shoulders up to his head, like a dying man, and trembled, or rather shivered in all his members. The blood flowed from the commencement, and in a few minutes lay in small puddles at the root of the tree. I saw flakes of flesh as long as my finger fall out of the gashes in his back; and I believe he was insensible during all the time that he was receiving the last two hundred lashes. When the whole of five hundred lashes had been counted by the person appointed to perform this duty, the half dead body was unbound and laid in the shade of the tree upon which I sat.9

As horrible as this scene is, the conduct of the torturers immediately following the event is even more appalling. Ball writes, “The gentlemen who had done the whipping, eight or ten in number, being joined by their friends, then came under the tree and drank punch

9

Quoted in Sunderland, 79.

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Faith Fashioned in Suffering

until their dinner was made ready, under a booth of green boughs at a short distance.”10 Ball relays yet one more method of torture to us in Rev. Sunderland’s Anti-slavery Manual. Slave owners regularly practiced a punishment known as “cat-hawling.” Ball references a situation when the punishment was meted out because a hog had allegedly been stolen by slaves: A boy was then ordered to get up, run to the house, and bring a cat, which was soon produced. The cat, which was a large gray tomcat, was then taken by the well-dressed gentlemen and placed on the back of the prostrate black man, near the shoulders, and forcibly dragged by the tail down the back, and along the bare thighs of the sufferer.

The cat sunk his nails into the flesh and tore off pieces of the skin with his teeth. The man roared with the pain of this punishment, and would have rolled along the ground, had he not have been held in his place by the force of four other slaves, each one of whom confined a hand or foot.11

The slave owner did not know who had stolen the hog and had simply elected one slave to receive the punishment. Ball goes on to explain that, in the midst of the torture, the slave named the guilty person, who then received the same torment.

Broken Hearts Cry to God The story of how these African slaves would become Christians is a long and complicated one that will be covered later. What we should note here is that slaves indeed embraced Christianity with 10 Quoted in Sunderland, 80.

11 Quoted in Sunderland, 80.

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t he pr ay er of a brok en he a rt open hearts crying out for God’s love and mercy. The story of this fervent faith, as with all else in this saga, begins in Africa.

Africans were a religious people long before encountering European slave traders and Christian missionaries.12 Theirs was a faith that was characterized by a deep spirituality. Olaudah Equiano was an African slave captured from his home at the age of eleven in what is today eastern Nigeria. After serving as a slave in Barbados, Philadelphia, and England, he purchased his freedom in 1766. In 1789 he published his memoirs, which, among other things, describe religious life in Africa. Equiano writes, “As to religion, the natives believe that there is one Creator of all things. . . . They believe he governs events, especially our deaths or captivity.”13 In the traditional religions of West Africa, the power of gods and spirits was present in the lives of men, for good or ill, on every level— environmental, individual, social, national, and cosmic.14 For this reason, Africans strongly believed that they must keep their relationships with the gods in their proper perspectives. In the life of an African community, a close relationship existed between the natural and the supernatural, the secular and the sacred.

Albert J. Raboteau quotes Pierre Verger, a self-taught ethnographer who dedicated his life to the study of the slave trade: “The heavenly world was ‘not distant . . . and the believer’ was ‘able to speak directly with his gods and benefit from their benevolence.’”15 As this account reveals, Africans, from the very beginning of their slave life in America, understood the Divine to be close and active in their lives and responsive to prayer and supplication. This prayer and supplication offered to God would come to mystically transform their faith and relationships with the Almighty.

12 Sernett, African American Religious History, 13.

13 Quoted in Sernett, 13.

14 Raboteau, Slave Religion, 11.

15 Raboteau, 16.

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Faith Fashioned in Suffering

Throughout slave narratives we can see time and time again accounts of prayers offered in the context of suffering. Even when questioning the reason for being captured and enslaved, these broken hearts often first turned to God. Many slaves realized the futility of asking slave owners and slave drivers for mercy because they encountered daily their cruelty and hardness of heart. Despite these experiences, however, an otherworldly hope emerged over worldly despair, and many chose to cry to God, the only One to whom they could in all reality turn.

As Frederick Douglass writes in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave: I have often, in the deep stillness of a summer’s Sabbath, stood all alone upon the lofty banks of that noble bay, and traced, with saddened heart and tearful eye, the countless number of sails moving off to the mighty ocean. The sight of these always affected me powerfully. My thoughts would compel utterance; and there, with no audience but the Almighty, I would pour out my soul’s complaint, in my rude way, with an apostrophe to the moving multitude of ships:—You are loosed from your moorings and are free; I am fast in my chains, and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before the bloody whip! You are freedom’s swift-winged angels, that fly round the world; I am confined in bands of iron! O, that I were free!

O, that I were on one of your gallant decks, and under your protecting wing! Alas! betwixt me and you, the turbid waters roll. Go on, go on.

O, that I could also go! Could I but swim! If I could fly! O, why was I born a man, of whom to make a brute! The glad ship is gone; she hides in the dim distance. I am left in the hottest hell of unending slavery. O God, save me! God, deliver me! Let me be free!16

16 Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 68–69.

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t he pr ay er of a brok en he a rt Douglass offers here more than a simple soliloquy to entertain readers. He confesses from his heart an earnest prayer, which he screamed to “the Almighty.” Furthermore, the honesty of this prayer is remarkable in that, in the very next breath, Douglass utters, “Is there a God?” He then goes on to say that he will try to escape from slavery, affirming his attempt by saying, “God helping me, I will.”17 This prayer is the sincere cry of a suffering soul, the likes of which can only pour from a broken heart.

The struggle of faith indicated here in Douglass’s writing is profound. It illustrates that the path by which many slaves came to have such devout faith was not simple or without struggle. This faith was instead severely tested. And while it might occasionally waver, it would also eventually emerge as something deep, robust, and alive.

When slaves embraced God, they did not do so while ignorant of or naive to the suffering of this world. Nor did they seek God as a means to a happy ending in their lives on earth. They did so because they found God in their struggle, and that encounter would transfigure countless lives and lay the foundation for an unwavering faith.

In the midst of great suffering, in other words, the slaves began crying out to God with prayers filled with tears and sorrow that expressed an almost frantic yearning for solace and relief. This reveals the attitude of a people who, even in their darkest hour, found hope in the Divine permeating their wounded hearts.

In her narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs offers an account of a slave woman who attended a Methodist class meeting called by a White minister: This white faced, black-hearted brother came near us, and said to the stricken woman, “Sister, can’t you tell us how the Lord deals with your soul? Do you love Him as you did formerly?”

17 Douglass, 69.

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Faith Fashioned in Suffering She rose to her feet, and said, in piteous tones, “My Lord and Master, help me! My load is more than I can bear. God has hid himself from me, and I am left in darkness and misery.” Then, striking her breast, she continued, “I can’t tell you what is in here! They’ve got all my children.

Last week they took the last one. God only knows where they’ve sold her.

They let me have her sixteen years and then—O! O! Pray for her brothers and sisters! I’ve got nothing to live for now. God make my time short!”

She sat down, quivering in every limb.18

Jacobs goes on to explain how the White preacher, trying to conceal his amusement at her suffering, told her to pray. At this point, Harriet records: The congregation struck up a hymn, and sung as though they were free as the birds that warbled around us: Ole Satan thought he had a mighty aim; He missed my soul, and caught my sins.

Cry Amen, cry Amen, cry Amen to God! He took my sins upon his back; Went muttering and grumbling down to hell.

Cry Amen, cry Amen, cry Amen to God! Ole Satan’s church is here below.

Up to God’s free Church I hope to go.

Cry Amen, cry Amen, cry Amen to God! Precious are such moments to the poor slaves.19

There is no doubt that when they sing “Cry Amen,” these slaves were really crying out with all their hearts, participating in a shared 18 Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, 199–200.

19 Jacobs, 200.

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t he pr ay er of a brok en he a rt moment with a suffering woman at the very end of her rope. Such moments in the lives of slaves served to deepen the prayer, which they confessed with every fiber of spirit they could muster.

Countless accounts are found elsewhere as well of slaves crying out to God in moments of great suffering. Reverend Philo Tower was a Northern Evangelical pro-slavery supporter who moved to the South for three years. Instantly horrified by the abuse of slaves, he published a book in 1856 titled Slavery Unmasked, in which he chronicles the shocking way slaves were treated. In his account, Tower speaks of slaves who were whipped repeatedly for various reasons: The monster in human shape flies at them, sometimes in great rage, with his implements of torture, and cuts on with all his might, over the shoulders, under the arms, and sometimes over the head, and ears, or on parts of the body where he can inflict the greatest torture. Occasionally, this devil, the whipper, especially if his victim does not beg enough to suit him while under the lash, will fly into a whirlwind of passion, uttering the most horrid oaths, while the bleeding victim of his rage is crying, at every stroke, “Lord, have mercy! Lord, have mercy!”20

In his slave narrative, William Wells Brown offers similar testimony: I have often laid and heard the crack of the whip, and the screams of the slave. My mother was a field hand, and one morning was ten or fifteen minutes behind the others getting into the field. As soon as she reached the spot where they were at work, the overseer commenced whipping her. She cried, “Oh! Pray—Oh! Pray—Oh! Pray”—these are generally the words of the slaves when imploring mercy at the hands of their oppressors.21 20 Tower, Slavery Unmasked, 197.

21 Quoted in Andrews and Gates, Slave Narratives, 378.

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Faith Fashioned in Suffering

Though they suffered at the hands of human torturers, they made their ultimate appeal to God. Perhaps one of the most poignant observations of the personal suffering of victims of the slave trade came from Christian missionary Dr. David Livingstone, who made his first missionary journey to Africa in 1841. While traveling along a trail in one of his travels across the continent, Livingstone noticed a woman who was shot and stabbed after she could no longer walk. He later passed another woman, tied to a tree by the neck, who was also dead, as well as a man dead from starvation. All these murders were committed by the slave traders. Of the atrocities he came across, he writes, “The strangest disease I have seen in this country seems really to be brokenheartedness, and it attacks free men who have been captured and made slaves.”22 Clearly, the African American story begins with a broken heart.

This broken heart would not only serve as the foundation of the African American experience; it would come to define the faith of a people who would resolve to endure suffering while “leaning on the Lord.” The prayers of these broken hearts would immediately and continuously forge the spirituality of African Americans who, with faith and personal experience, came to know the living God. Divine encounters resulting from these brokenhearted prayers shaped African American life in astonishingly beautiful ways that continue into the present. I remember one day in particular when I walked into a grocery store in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, a predominantly Black neighborhood. There, I encountered a man I knew who, aware that I was clergy, approached me and began to share the news of his nephew, who had just been shot and killed in Pittsburgh.

This man was severely grieving.

22 Christianity.com, “David Livingstone.”

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t he pr ay er of a brok en he a rt My parish, St. Moses the Black Orthodox Church, as well as my ministry, the Neighborhood Resilience Project, are located in the Hill District. Despite its many contributions to the region and the nation, the neighborhood has experienced significant adversity over many decades.

Elders in the neighborhood often speak of a glorious past in which men, women, and children dwelled together in a vibrant, multiethnic community. The community was indeed diverse: a professor of urban planning from Carnegie Mellon once told me that he believed the Hill District, prior to 1958, was the most integrated neighborhood in the United States. This community was always the center of African American culture in western Pennsylvania, but it was also home to Syrians, Greeks, Russians, and many other ethnic groups from around the world.

The area was so diverse that Harlem Renaissance poet Claude McKay famously referred to the Hill District as “the crossroads of the world.” The churches, stores, community centers, and parks of days past came alive in the stories of our elders as a beautiful mosaic that was at once a celebration of what was and a lamentation of what is.

Everything changed in 1958 when the city of Pittsburgh dismantled the lower Hill District as part of its “Urban Renewal” program.

Eight thousand people were displaced, and four hundred businesses were destroyed as the city razed one-third of the community to make way for the Civic Arena, where the Pittsburgh Penguins would play hockey. A segregated community was the result.

Some wondered if this was intentional. The displacement happened just as the civil rights movement was gaining momentum, and the Hill District actually gave the nation a real example of a successful, vibrant, and beautiful integrated community. But the Urban Renewal program ushered in a new era of segregation and divestment. The riots that occurred in 1968 after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. further affected the community. Then, in 24 Copyright ©2021 by Paul Abernathy.

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Faith Fashioned in Suffering

the 1980s, crack cocaine hit, which would eventually fuel the War on Drugs and unprecedented gang violence, all of which was devastating. Sadly, the neighborhood has never recovered from this history, and tragedy continues to mark the lives of many who have roots here.

When the man approached me in the grocery store that day, I was already familiar with this kind of encounter. I had, in fact, been sought out countless times by people whose lives were steeped in unimaginable tragedy. But while I had grown accustomed to these encounters, I had never grown numb to them. Each tear I witnessed stung my own wounded heart, searing into it a memory that would come to inform and instruct my personal prayers. Such is the life of a priest called to serve a suffering community.

In some neighborhoods, the priest or minister is an afterthought.

People attend church services on Sundays, exchange simple pleasantries with the pastor and one another, and then go about their lives.

That was never my reality. People in the Hill District often reject in their own way the very world that has rejected and betrayed them over and over again. As a result, many regularly seek counsel from clergy and encourage one another to pray and turn to the Lord in times of crisis. After all, God alone has never abandoned them. Amid so much heartache, many people desire only spiritual healing and renewal. In this context, clergy are raised up as “community leaders”—people are looking to be led to heaven, not Wall Street. It is a vocation that is as beautiful as it is weighty, and I learned quickly that to be a priest among these people is to enter into their sorrow with them daily in the church, on the streets, in the parking lot, in the projects.

I cannot put into words how much beauty I have found among these suffering people. I often see their compassion for one another in embracing a broken family member, friend, or even stranger in his or her hour of suffering. They speak with patience, offer words of understanding and comfort, and pray fervently in the moment for the 25 Sample pages only. Purchase the full book at http://store.ancientfaith.com/prayer-of-a-broken-heart/

t he pr ay er of a brok en he a rt Lord’s mercy. In their pain they are radiant with faith, and it is with that faith that they often ask for prayer.

The man began, “Pray for me. Pray for me. My nephew was just shot and killed. I lost my wife, I lost my son, I lost my daughter, and now I lost my nephew.” He began to cry uncontrollably and could barely hold himself up. I grabbed him by the shoulder as an older woman, leaning on a shopping cart, came walking up ever so slowly.

I noticed the woman immediately. Her face wore deep lines that reflected a wisdom and stoicism acquired through extraordinary struggle. Though she had not yet uttered a word, I sensed that she was moving from a place of peace. It was as if she, though familiar with his pain, had herself been freed from her own sorrow—as if she had been healed at some point by divine mercy received after many hours of fervent supplication.

Over the years, I have encountered on many occasions a wisdom in the community that is not of this world. Some people from outside look at the trauma within as a reason to come and teach coping strategies like mindfulness and yoga. Sadly, these people never realize that a deeper, mystical reality is already present within our community, and it has done far more than spread the message of mindfulness. It has freed people from the pain of slavery.

These outsiders want to come as teachers, but really, they should come as students. I heard a woman once say that she had her “PhD,” but that to her it stood for “Pittsburgh’s Hill District.” I too felt like I was getting my PhD, as in this community I had many professors: They were women who had lost their sons to gun violence and went to minister to young men incarcerated for acts of violence. They were men who had taken in others off the street, even though they themselves lived in single rooms and had almost nothing. They were hungry children who shared what little food they had with other hungry children. These acts so often came from a place of deep spirituality and a radical embrace of the gospel. They taught me daily, and it 26 Copyright ©2021 by Paul Abernathy.

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Faith Fashioned in Suffering

seemed very much to me that the approaching woman was one such professor.

The moment was raw and grief stricken. The man’s sorrow was pouring out of his heart, stirring those nearby. He cried out in supplication, and the old woman heard him.

“Who is my neighbor?” a certain lawyer asked Jesus in the Gospel of Luke.

Jesus responded with the Parable of the Good Samaritan, highlighting the mercy and compassion that the Samaritan showed a victim of thievery, who had been lying naked and “half dead” in the road.

“So which of these three do you think was neighbor to him who fell among the thieves?” Jesus asks the lawyer, referencing a priest and a Levite who, unlike the Samaritan, callously passed by the wounded man. The lawyer responded, “He who showed mercy on him.”

“Go and do likewise,” said the Lord (Luke 10:25–37).

Of this parable the Blessed Theophylact, an eleventh-century biblical scholar of the Orthodox Church, writes, “All mankind shares the same nature and thus all men are your neighbors. Therefore, you too must be a neighbor to them and be near to all, not by location, but by the disposition of your heart and by your care for others.”23 It is not enough to be physically close to another. We become a neighbor in the biblical sense when we draw near to one another with our hearts. One may assume this old woman was a stranger to the weeping man, and yet in that moment she was his neighbor in the truest sense. In that moment, she drew near to him with her heart.

“Father God, come by here,” she said in a slow, melodic voice.

“Come by here, Father God. There’s too much pain.”

The prayer, as if uttered for hundreds of years, was now left ringing in our hearts, as it had rung in the hearts of our ancestors. The 23 Theophylact, Explanation of the Holy Gospel According to Luke, 3:118.

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t he pr ay er of a brok en he a rt old woman’s prayer brought an otherworldly peace as other African Americans in the parking lot, not knowing one another, came together in a circle of prayer to share the pain they too were experiencing. Everyone knew what to do. We had learned from the echo of our ancestors. It was time to pray, to be with God. It was time for the mercy of our dear Lord Jesus. The prayer wasn’t a request to bring back a fallen nephew or to restore some bitter loss. It was rather a simple asking of the Lord to “come by here.”

With this we remember the prayer offered in Psalm 50/51:19, “A sacrifice to God is a broken spirit, / A broken and humbled heart God will not despise.” Indeed, the prayers of these broken hearts in the parking lot of a Pittsburgh grocery store were as precious to God as the prayers offered by their enslaved ancestors. In fact, the two are deeply intertwined.

For hundreds of years, the prayer of a broken heart has been passed down from one generation to the next. It is this prayer that carried millions through slavery and millions more through Jim Crow. It is the prayer of families who watched their loved ones burned and hanged from trees by lynching mobs. It is the prayer that sustained men, women, and children even as they were bitten by dogs, sprayed with water cannons, arrested, and beaten while professing forgiveness and nonviolence in the cause of justice and reconciliation. It is the prayer of neighborhoods that watched generations of young men incarcerated or gunned down in the streets. The prayer of a broken heart has long been the cornerstone of the African American experience, and with it a deep tradition that rings as true today as it did in generations past.

This prayer was also the beginning of a faith new to the United States that would in many ways deeply reflect the ancient spirituality of the Christian East.

The catacombs of the early Church, where Christians first prayed secretly beneath the yoke of persecution, would come to life again in 28 Copyright ©2021 by Paul Abernathy.

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Faith Fashioned in Suffering

America. This time, it wasn’t in ancient tombs but rather in the fields, woods, and streams of the United States that a suffering Christianity would be reintroduced to the Western world. This spirituality, once exclusive to the persecuted Christians of the early Church, would come to resonate in the hearts of millions of Africans. Although they did not know the ancient history of the Christian East, they learned to pray with the same radical, otherworldly faith.

The prayers of these broken hearts mark the beginning of one of the most remarkable testimonies to hope and perseverance in human history. The tearful prayers of these broken hearts served as the font in which African American Christianity was initially baptized.

Harriet Jacobs

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