A Fork in the Road to Righteousness

There is a debate that is so talked about, and so hotly debated for decades, that you would be forgiven for thinking it’s over. Assimilation versus integration. The melting pot versus the salad bowl.

There is a sense in which these ideas loosely map to right and left, as they have been understood in the political realm since the French Revolution. But in the context of the diasporic Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Church (EOTC) of the Anglosphere, right and right is more accurate than right and left. The distinctions are blurrier, and change according to the case and situation.

The video clip I am sharing with you all is from a sermonic poem delivered unto the throngs at Bob Marley’s EOTC funeral by one Fr. Amde-Tsiyon (Pillar-of-Zion) Hamilton. I have mentioned him before, en passant. He might have invented West Coast Hip-Hop, alongside his collective the Watts Prophets, via recorded spoken-word poetry over sick beats. He was Los Angeles’ 1st EOTC priest, of the St. Tekle-Haymanot (later splintering into two Marian ones) parish, but has now been retired in the hills for decades.

Politics is a hell of a drug. As a newcomer shepherding the founding Crips and Bloods, Rastafarians, and exiled Ethiopians, he had to put up with our isms and schisms during the fall of the 3,000 yr old empire, and the rise and fall of Marxist-Leninism. You can imagine the legion shocks and aftershocks. And he tells me, there was more than one spook who sat at the door…

Anyhoo, in North America, and the Anglosphere writ large, we have a fork in the road to righteousness. Enough time has passed since both of these fine gents have fallen asleep with the Lord Jesus, for us to have sober analyses of their diverging paths. I’m talking about His Beatitude Archbishop Isaac and His Beatitude Archbishop Melchizedek. The former, at one time, was assigned by Emperor Hayle-Silasé, the task of evangelizing the entire Western Hemisphere; with a special task of debunking the emperor’s divinity amongst the Rastafarians of the Caribbean Islands.

Both men have books about their beloved: The Ethiopian Tewahedo (sic) Church: An Integrally African Church and The Teaching of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Speaking not of their books, but of their life’s work, Abune Isaac is the missionary of assimilation, and Abune Melchizedek is the missionary of integration. The former wanted to present the bare-bones and fundamentals of the faith in digestible English, and did so to the boon of hundreds of thousands of faithful, with thousands of converts, high-profile and low. The latter wanted to feed the flock of Ethiopians who already had buy-in to the church, but needed more internal education. The latter focused on Ge’ez and Amharic, for the diaspora.

In the 20th Century, Abune Melchizedek reïnvented and reïnstated and reïnstantiated sermons and homilies as regular parts of the cycle of the EOTC. Before him, they were arguably lost for centuries; excepting a few minutes hither and yonder during high-holidays. Only Abune Isaac would elevate an ex-convict, whom he had just met that week, to the priesthood, and take full responsibility for whatever happened next. Nothing too bad actually. Only Abune Isaac would be fine with a two-and-a-half minute poem in English serving as a sermon at a funeral.

Abune Isaac ordained the father of my breath of life, up to hieromonk, whilst said father was in his 50s. The standard yet faulty practice is to ordain eight and ten yr olds. Abune Isaac is the father of my breath of life’s father of his breath of life. And Abune Melchizedek was the archbishop of my archdiocese, from when I was a young holy water pourer till his repose, several years into me joining the ranks of the diaconate, and after having me teach in his parish on more than one occasion.

Perhaps, the fork in the road to righteousness is not a mutually exclusive one? Perhaps, they will weave and wind till they connect like the White Nile and the Blue Nile? Perhaps, we can teach and preach the good news, baptizing and catechizing the sons and daughters of the West in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, in Ge’ez, Amharic, and English?