“Orthodoxy in Bayou Land: The Ancient Faith in Northeast Louisiana”
By Walt Garlington
It is not unusual to run across ancient things in Northeast Louisiana – Native American arrowheads and burial mounds, old French and Spanish names and settlements, and petrified wood here and there.
But, strange as it will sound, the most ancient of them all arrived here only in the 20th century, carried here by a band of Greek immigrants: the Orthodox Church, the oldest of the Christian confessions, tracing Her lineage back to the Holy Apostles themselves. But even more than this, being the Divine-human Body of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, She shares in His timelessness.
Greeks Arrive in Monroe
Other Orthodox ethnic groups were present in the area prior to the arrival of the Greek (among them Arabs, Serbs, and Macedonians)1, but the Hellenes would arrive in such numbers that they quickly became the predominant representative of the Orthodox Faith in Northeast Louisiana.
The early 20th century was a time of intensified conflict between the Ottoman Empire and Greece, as well as financial hardship for the Greeks, which led many to seek out more favorable living conditions elsewhere, including here in this corner of the South.2
The first public record of Greeks in this region is a 1911 advertisement for the Greek American Confectionary Company that was located at the time at 236 Desiard St. in Monroe. It was owned by Mr. George Vambis, who is listed in the city directory as living in Monroe in 1912; and in 1920, according to the U. S. census, in Ruston.3
More would arrive shortly. A partial check of immigration records shows several new Greek arrivals to U. S. shores between 1908 and 1911 being naturalized in Ouachita Parish between 1923 and 1928.4
As the Greek community grew and became better organized, plans were made and put into motion to regularize their religious life:
Throughout the 1940s Orthodox Christians in this area went to Shreveport for their church services, baptisms, and weddings. Then, in 1951, a group of about twenty Monroe families purchased a house on 1104 North Fourth Street with the hope of converting it into a church when a priest could be found. In the fall of 1952 Father Spyridon Markopoulos arrived to serve the budding community and to celebrate the first Orthodox liturgy in Monroe. By 1953 the Fourth Street house had been paid off, and there was talk of fulfilling the dream of many an immigrant group: the building of a church.
Things moved quickly. Our current Forsythe Street property was acquired in 1954 and construction began immediately on the church. Father Spyridon, Mr. Kokkinos, and Mr. Primos must have kept the contractor’s feet to the fire, for by August the church was finished and the first liturgy was celebrated there. The first baptism, that of Kosta Kolokouris, was held in November of that year.
The enthusiasm of the parishioners was contagious; individuals donated pews, chandeliers, icons. Many non-Orthodox friends pitched in and the little church was soon furnished in proper Orthodox fashion. In 1956 the community was confident enough to play host to a three-state district convention of AHEPA, which was attended by over 350 people. And soon the city of Monroe became acquainted with old-world traditions: the Good Friday procession outside the church, the Grecian dinners, Easter bread, and baklava.5
The Greeks would not remain in an isolated ghetto. They acclimated to this part of the world, such that ‘in November of 1979 another milestone was reached with the arrival of the first American-born priest to serve the church, Father David Buss.’6
And a few more changes would be in store for the parish as the 20th century ended and the 21st began:
Though old-style immigration has largely ceased, the church ministers today to a different sort of immigrant: expatriates from Shreveport and Boston, Orthodox from many national backgrounds–Greek, FYROM, Russian, Ukranian, Serbian, Arabic, as well as Americans of European, African, and Asian ancestry. The church also serves as a spiritual beacon to Orthodox students from Greece, Cyprus, and the Middle East. It offers them a place to worship, to congregate, to feel a little less far from home.
With more than half a century behind it, Saints Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Church (which is the feature image at top) now looks to the future. Its 2000-year-old Orthodox services are partly in English now, its congregation a comfortable ethnic mix, its outlook decidedly American. Yet this Orthodox spiritual home in northern Louisiana remains true to its original character: a small outpost of the Church of the Christian East ministering to an ever-changing flock of faithful.7
Greece & Dixie
The predominantly Greek manifestation of the Orthodox Faith in Northeast Louisiana is perhaps a Providential gift, for Southerners have always had a soft spot in their hearts for Greek culture. Many Southern buildings, from plantations to courthouses, included ancient Greek elements. Similarly, the works of Homer and other ancient Greek writers adorned many a Southern bookshelf, from colonial days onward8, and many antebellum Southern universities required students to read and translate works in the Greek language, ranging from Xenophon to Saint John’s Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles9. And major Southern literary figures, including Edgar Allen Poe and Andrew Lytle, drew inspiration from the Greek past10.
Familiar, but Deeper
There are other reasons Southerners will feel a kinship with the Orthodox Church, aside from Greek connections.
The Centrality of the Holy Scriptures
Unsurprisingly, the Bible plays a central role in the life of the Orthodox Church. Not only does one get the proper Old Testament canon, which includes books like Baruch and Tobit, from the authoritative ancient text (the Septuagint, another Greek connection), but one also gets in Orthodoxy the best commentators on the Scriptures. St. John Chrysostom and St. Cyril of Alexandria, St. Bede of Wearmouth-Jarrow, St. Theophylact of Ochrid, Archbishop Averky Taushev, to name a few – one’s understanding of the Holy Bible is greatly enriched by spending time with these Holy Fathers.
The Jesus Prayer: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!’
Or, in the more familiar Southern version, ‘Lord, have mercy!’
This phrase is often on the lips of Louisianans, but the significance of it for our spiritual lives probably goes overlooked in most cases. But if we use the name of the Lord Jesus Christ in a focused and meaningful way, we will experience the deep and abiding presence of the Lord in ways here-to-fore unknown. The Metropolitan Bishop Kallistos Ware gives a few details:
It is this biblical reverence for the Name that forms the basis and foundation of the Jesus Prayer. God’s Name is intimately linked with his Person, and so the Invocation of the divine Name possesses a sacramental character, serving as an efficacious sign of his invisible presence and action. For the believing Christian today, as in apostolic times, the Name of Jesus is power. In the words of the two Elders of Gaza, St Barsanuphius and St John (Sixth century), ‘The remembrance of the Name of God utterly destroys all that is evil.’ ‘Flog your enemies with the Name of Jesus’, urges St John Climacus, ‘for there is no weapon more powerful in heaven or on earth. … Let the remembrance of Jesus be united to your every breath, and then you will know the value of stillness.’
The aim of the Jesus Prayer, as of all Christian prayer, is that our praying should become increasingly identified with the prayer offered by Jesus the High Priest with us, that our life should become one with his life, our breathing with the Divine Breath that sustains the universe. The final objective may aptly be described by the Patristic term theosis, ‘deification’ of ‘divinization’. In the words of Archpriest Sergei Bulgakov, ‘The Name of Jesus, present in the human heart, confers upon it the power of deification.’ ‘The logos became man,’ says St Athanasius, ‘that we might become god.’ He who is God by nature took our humanity, that we humans might share by grace in his divinity, becoming ‘partakers of the divine nature’ (2 Pet. 1:4). The Jesus Prayer, addressed to the Logos Incarnate, is a means of realizing within ourselves this mystery of theosis, whereby human persons attain the true likeness of God.
The Jesus Prayer, by uniting us to Christ, helps us to share in the mutual indwelling or perichoresis of the three Persons of the Holy Trinity. The more the Prayer becomes a part of ourselves, the more we enter into the movement of love which passes unceasingly between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Of this love St Isaac the Syrian has written with great beauty:
Love is the kingdom of which our Lord spoke symbolically when he promised his disciples that they would eat in his kingdom: ‘You shall eat and drink at the table of my kingdom.’ What should they eat, if not love? … When we have reached love, we have reached God and our way is ended: we have passed over to the island that lies beyond the world, where is the Father with the Son and the Holy Spirit: to whom be glory and dominion.11
This wonderful practice of the constant invocation of Christ’s Holy Name also ties in with another Southern trait – the love of the creation, seen in the many flowerbeds, gardens, farms, hunting camps, and fishing holes of Southerners – all of which we know very well here in Northeast Louisiana. Metropolitan Kallistos shows how the two tie together:
The Jesus Prayer causes the brightness of the Transfiguration to penetrate into every corner of our life. Constant repetition has two effects upon the anonymous author of The Way of a Pilgrim. First, it transforms his relationship with the material creation around him, making all things transparent, changing them into a sacrament of God’s presence. He writes:
When I prayed with my heart, everything around me seemed delightful and marvellous. The trees, the grass, the birds, the air, the light seemed to be telling me that they existed for man’s sake, that they witnessed to the love of God for man, that everything proved the love of God for man, that all things prayed to God and sang his praise. Thus it was that I came to understand what The Philokalia calls ‘the knowledge of the speech of all creatures’ … I felt a burning love for Jesus and for all God’s creatures.12
Story-Tellin’
A favorite pastime across the South is sharing stories with one another, whether with kinfolk around the dinner table, or with a stranger at a store. This custom is much valued in the Orthodox Church as well, particularly in the telling and retelling of the Lives of the Saints. Hieromonk (now Abbot) Damascene explains why this is so important for the Christian life:
In order to begin to understand the importance of the Lives of the Saints for our spiritual lives, I believe we can turn to no better or more thorough source than St. Justin Popovich’s Introduction to his own compilation of the Lives of the Saints. A theologian, St. Justin saw no dichotomy between the Lives of the Saints and the theological writings of the Church. For him, as for the Church, theology and the Lives of the Saints form one whole. He called the Lives of the Saints “experiential theology” or “applied dogmatic theology,” and he viewed them and wrote about them in a theological manner. Likewise, he viewed theological writings as an expression of the experience of the life of Grace in the Church, and not just an intellectual, abstract or polemical exercise.
How does St. Justin view the Lives of the Saints theologically? At the center of all of St. Justin’s thought is the Theanthropic vision: the fact that God became man in Jesus Christ, uniting human nature with Divine Nature. The fact of the God-man, the Theanthropos, is the axis of the universe: it is the reality according to which everything else must be viewed, whether it be the nature of the Church or the problems and issues of everyday life.
Thus, when St. Justin looks at the Lives of the Saints, he does so in the light of the God-man. Real and true life—eternal life in God—became possible only with the Incarnation, death and Resurrection of the Saviour, and this life is the Life of the Saints. St. Justin saw the Lives of the Saints as bearing witness to one life: the Life in Christ.
St. Justin wrote: “What are Christians? Christians are Christ-bearers, and, by virtue of this, they are bearers and possessors of eternal life…. The Saints are the most perfect Christians, for they have been sanctified to the highest degree with the podvigs of holy faith in the risen and eternally living Christ, and no death has power over them. Their life is entirely Christ’s life; and their thought is entirely Christ’s thought; and their perception is Christ’s perception. All that they have is first Christ’s and then theirs…. In them is nothing of themselves but rather wholly and in everything the Lord Christ.” [1]
With these words of St. Justin before us, we might well ask ourselves if Orthodox spiritual life is even possible without the testimony of the Lives of the Saints. The answer to this, I believe, must be “no.” True spiritual life begins when we live in Christ and Christ lives in us, right here on this earth. And the Lives of the Saints bear witness to us that the Life of Christ on earth did not end with His Ascension into Heaven, nor with the martyrdom of His Apostles. His Life continues to this day in His Church, and is seen most brilliantly in His Saints. And we, too, in our own spiritual lives, are to enter into that continuing, never-ending Life.
I spoke recently to an Orthodox priest who had converted to Orthodoxy from Protestantism. He told me that, when he was received into the Church, the officiating priest told him: “You will never be truly Orthodox without reading the Lives of the Saints.” Later, when he himself became a priest, he found that the most pious people in the churches are those who read the Lives of the Saints, and that those who make the most progress in the spiritual life are those who read the Saints’ Lives.13
Familiar Characters
In the Lives of the Saints, Louisianans will find many to whom they can relate. Here are just a couple.
St. Guthlac – The Saint of the Swamps
St. Guthlac of Crowland (+714 A.D.) spent most of his life in repentance in the swamps of southeastern England, a place resembling very much the marshy bayous of Northeast Louisiana:
As is generally known, numerous desert fathers in ancient times, especially in Egypt, lived in deserts. However, the hermits of the British Isles chose small islands, shores, cliffs, sometimes forests, mountains and hills as their “deserts” as Britain does not have natural deserts. Guthlac was unique even for English saints as he preferred to live as a hermit, surrounded by dangerous and impassable bogs and swamps from all sides. His spiritual labors and experiences in all respects resembled the life of the venerable monks of the Egyptian deserts.14
Why he chose this kind of life is explained in one word – repentance, another characteristic ingrained in the Southern ethos:
The birth of the great hermit Guthlac was accompanied by marvelous miracles. The parents and all the relatives felt that this child would surely become a man, great in the eyes of God and in the eyes of men. Guthlac was an obedient boy; he avoided all the usual childish games and pranks or idle talks. He grew into a very clever adolescent, his face always shone with a particular spiritual joy; he was innocent in all his activities. However, with time his temper changed very radically: he became more and more inspired by deeds of contemporary heroes and those of the old times. A sort of belligerent mood awoke inside him. It was said that at that time Guthlac for some time served in the Mercian army. At the age of 15 Guthlac formed his own gang and together with other youths gave himself up to banditry, robbery, bloody raids on neighboring settlements and other horrible crimes.
He and his band then became a real plague for the surrounding districts and their population. He spent about nine years in such grave crimes and brigandage until one day he suddenly remembered about the Lord and a very strong awe and fear of God appeared in his heart. As was the case with many other former thieves who, realizing their way of life, repented and served the Lord and people for the rest of their lives, Guthlac was spiritually transformed, confessed all his previous sins to God and firmly decided to be His faithful and ardent servant. He gave back all his loot to the people and called upon his gang members to do the same. After that, following the Lord’s revelation, Guthlac came to the double Monastery of Repton in the present-day county Derbyshire which was in Mercia. He wished to start serving Christ as a monk there.
… In Repton Guthlac soon learned the whole Psalter by heart. He studied the Gospel and teachings of the Holy Fathers very thoroughly and zealously practised everything he found in their instructions. Once he read the Lives of the Egyptian desert fathers he began to have a strong and fervent desire to imitate their way of life in order to be closer to Christ Whom he loved most of all. So the saint resolved to live alone in the wilderness, somewhere in the back of beyond. With the blessing of the holy elders the ascetic began to search for such a place.15
Not long after that, St. Guthlac would find his way to the Fens, the place where he was to work out his salvation for the remainder of his life.
St. Mary of Egypt – An Icon of Repentance
The lives of Sts. Mary (+6th century) and Guthlac are both examples of a hallmark of the Southern religion alluded to just above – the radical conversion of a sinner by the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Having read a bit about this in St. Guthlac’s life, here is how St. Mary’s testimony begins, as she relates it herself to the Holy Elder Zosimas:
My native land, holy father, was Egypt. Already during the lifetime of my parents, when I was twelve years old, I renounced their love and went to Alexandria. I am ashamed to recall how there I at first ruined my maidenhood and then unrestrainedly and insatiably gave myself up to sensuality. It is more becoming to speak of this briefly, so that you may just know my passion and my lechery. For about seventeen years, forgive me, I lived like that. I was like a fire of public debauch. And it was not for the sake of gain — here I speak the pure truth. Often when they wished to pay me, I refused the money. I acted in this way so as to make as many men as possible to try to obtain me, doing free of charge what gave me pleasure. do not think that I was rich and that was the reason why I did not take money. I lived by begging, often by spinning flax, but I had an insatiable desire and an irrepressible passion for lying in filth. This was life to me. Every kind of abuse of nature I regarded as life.
That is how I lived. Then one summer I saw a large crowd of Libyans and Egyptians running towards the sea. I asked one of them, ‘Where are these men hurrying to?’ He replied, ‘They are all going to Jerusalem for the Exaltation of the Precious and Lifegiving Cross, which takes place in a few days.’ I said to him, ‘Will they take me with them if I wish to go?’ ‘No one will hinder you if you have money to pay for the journey and for food.’ And I said to him, ‘To tell you truth, I have no money, neither have I food. But I shall go with them and shall go aboard. And they shall feed me, whether they want to or not. I have a body — they shall take it instead of pay for the journey.’ I was suddenly filled with a desire to go, Abba, to have more lovers who could satisfy my passion. I told you, Abba Zosimas, not to force me to tell you of my disgrace. God is my witness, I am afraid of defiling you and the very air with my words.”16
Having reached the Holy Land, she continued on in this manner until she reached Jerusalem, where an extraordinary event brought her to her senses:
The holy day of the Exaltation of the Cross dawned while I was still flying about, hunting for youths. At daybreak I saw that everyone was hurrying to the church, so I ran with the rest. When the hour for the holy elevation approached, I was trying to make my way in with the crowd which was struggling to get through the church doors. I had at last squeezed through with great difficulty almost to the entrance of the temple, from which the lifegiving Tree of the Cross was being shown to the people. But when I trod on the doorstep which everyone passed, I was stopped by some force which prevented my entering. Meanwhile I was brushed aside by the crowd and found myself standing alone in the porch. Thinking that this had happened because of my woman’s weakness, I again began to work my way into the crowd, trying to elbow myself forward. But in vain I struggled. Again my feet trod on the doorstep over which others were entering the church without encountering any obstacle. I alone seemed to remain unaccepted by the church. It was as if there was a detachment of soldiers standing there to oppose my entrance. Once again I was excluded by the same mighty force and again I stood in the porch.
Having repeated my attempt three or four times, at last I felt exhausted and had no more strength to push and to be pushed, so I went aside and stood in a corner of the porch. And only then with great difficulty it began to dawn on me, and I began to understand the reason why I was prevented from being admitted to see the life-giving Cross. The word of salvation gently touched the eyes of my heart and revealed to me that it was my unclean life which barred the entrance to me. I began to weep and lament and beat my breast, and to sigh from the depths of my heart.17
And with this, St. Mary began a life repentance and transformation. For 17 years she lived in the wilderness beyond the Jordan River, undergoing severe trials until she became a pure and shining vessel of the Grace of the Holy Ghost.
Just as a family in the South will repeat a favorite story about Pa-Paw Wayne or Cousin John out of affection for him, so the Orthodox Church loves to retell the life of St. Mary of Egypt for the uplifting of the faithful and to honor this wonderful friend of the Lord’s, who now intercedes for all of us with Him. This the Orthodox Church does on April 1st, the day to celebrate her falling asleep in the Lord, and on the 5th Sunday of Lent.
Orthodoxy in Northeast Louisiana Today
What had its origins in immigrant communities in Northeast Louisiana has now developed roots in the region, as converts to the Orthodox Faith of the Apostles from among Louisiana’s ‘old families’ may now be found across the region: from Jonesboro to Farmerville, from West Monroe to Winnsboro.
The journey from the familiar forms of Southern religion to the Orthodox Faith is not a rejection of Southerness, but its fulfillment. All the best parts of them are in the Orthodox Church, too, only more perfectly expressed.
And as more people, more families, more communities, in Northeast Louisiana join themselves to the Orthodox Church, we await eagerly to see what beautiful things the Lord will bring to pass in our region!
Appendix – A Convert Story from a Northeast Louisiana Native
Mr. M.G. from Jena recounts his story:
I came to learn about Orthodoxy the same way many recent converts have: via the internet. Some friends and I had created a Christian chat room, a healthy place for Christians to gather and talk, and some of the people who joined this group were Orthodox Christians of both the cradle and converted variety.
At first it seemed strange. I didn’t know what to make of them, or their theology. Being raised a Southern Baptist, I had never even heard of their faith, much less been around any of its practitioners. And if I’m being honest, a good deal of it set off every Protestant alarm bell that had ever been hardwired into me from birth. Nonetheless, as time went by and I became closer to them, a lot of what they were saying began to make sense to me. The way they spoke about scripture, worship, Christ, the creation and our place in it began to intrigue me – and then it began to ring true to me. I was attracted to the sense of wholeness about it, the calm, measured and mature way these topics were treated, along with the ancient history and traditions.
I began to educate myself as well as I could through my own means, reading and watching documentaries, videos of Liturgies and other services. The more I studied, the more I prayed, the more sure I became that I had found the truth, and the true church. Not that I felt that my Baptist raising had been incorrect necessarily, but simply incomplete.
This change took place within the course of about a year. I reached out to the Orthodox church closest to me, and made a visit. The second I stepped through the doors, my life was changed. I don’t have adequate words to describe how that moment felt, but I can tell you that I knew for the first time in my life that I was truly home.’
Acknowledgments
My thanks to those who took the time to answer my questions and direct me to helpful sources: Mr. Andrian Antis and Mr. Steve Rodakis. Special thanks go to Ms. Cynthia Robertson and her staff at the Ouachita Parish Public Library’s Genealogy and Special Collections Department for providing valuable information on the Greek immigration to Northeast Louisiana.
For more information about the Orthodox Church
Orthodox Christian Information Center
Orthodox Outlet for Dogmatic Enquiries
Notes
1E-mail from Mr. Steve Rodakis, 9 June 2022.
2Sonia Benson and James L. Outman, ‘Italian and Greek Immigration,’ accessed 10 June 2022.
3E-mail from Ms. Cynthia Robertson, 8 June 2022.
4Ibid.
5Mr. Steve Rodakis, ‘A Brief History of Our Parish,’ accessed 10 June 2022.
6Ibid.
7Ibid.
8Dr. James E. Kibler, Jr., The Classical Origins of Southern Literature, Abbeville Institute Press, McClellanville, South Carolina, 2017, p. 4, etc.
9Professors Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene Genovese, The Mind of the Master Class, Cambridge UP, New York, 2005, p. 256.
10Kibler, pgs. 144-5, 229. Gregory Wolfe, ‘Andrew Lytle: Myth and Memory,’ Beauty Will Save the World, ISI Books, Wilmington, Delaware, 2011, p. 144.
11‘The Power of the Name,’ accessed 6 June 2022.
12Ibid.
13‘The Place of Lives of Saints in the Spiritual Life,’ accessed 6 June 2022.
14Mr. Dmitry Lapa, ‘Venerable Guthlac of Crowland, Wonder-Worker,’ accessed 6 June 2022.
15Ibid.
16‘The Life of Our Holy Mother Saint Mary of Egypt,’ accessed 11 June 2022.17Ibid.
Walt Garlington is a chemical engineer turned writer and editor of the website Confiteri: A Southern Perspective. This longtime Southern Baptist, then Anglican, was united to the Orthodox Church in 2012 and makes his home in Louisiana where he attends a GOA parish.
