Robert Josias "Raphael" Morgan (c. 1866 - July 29, 1922) was a Jamaican-American who is believed to be the first Black Eastern Orthodox priest in the United States. After being active in other denominations, including the AME Church, Church of England, and the Episcopal Church, Morgan converted to Orthodoxy. He was ordained as an Eastern Orthodox priest of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. He was designated as "Missionary (Greek: Ιεραποστολος) to America and the West Indies." He claimed to have founded the "Order of Golgotha", but the Orthodox Church is not organized into orders.
As a young man he had traveled in the Caribbean and to the United States, where he became a minister in the AME Church, the first independent black denomination in the US. He next traveled to England, and joined the Church of England and began religious studies. He returned to the US, where he was ordained in 1895 after a period as a deacon in the Episcopal Church. He continued studies and worked in several parishes in the US.
Morgan never became fluent in Greek, the traditional language of the Eastern Orthodox Church; he conducted his services mostly in English. Since his life was rediscovered in the late 20th century, he has been the subject of study. But much of his life is not well documented and remains a mystery. According to a 1915 short biography, Morgan had resided all over the world, including: "Palestine, Syria, Joppa, Greece, Cyprus, Mytilene, Chios, Sicily, Crete, Egypt, Russia, Ottoman Turkey, Austria, Germany, England, France, Scandinavia, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Switzerland, Bermuda, and the United States".
Robert Josias Morgan was born in Chapelton, Clarendon Parish, Jamaica, either in the late 1860s or early 1870s to Robert Josias and Mary Ann (née Johnson) Morgan. He was born six months after his father's death and named in his honour. He was raised in the Anglican tradition and received elementary schooling locally.
In his teenage years Morgan travelled to Colón, Panama, then to British Honduras, back to Jamaica, and then to the United States. There he became a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), the first independent black denomination in the United States. He traveled to Germany as a missionary.
Morgan went to England, where he joined the established Church of England. He was sent to the colony of Sierra Leone to serve at the Church Missionary Society Grammar School at Freetown. There he studied Greek, Latin, and other higher-level subjects. Morgan also worked in a paid position as second master at a public school at Freetown. He took courses in the Church Missionary Society College at Fourah Bay in Freetown.
The colony was established in the late eighteenth century as a place for resettlement of the "Black Poor of London" (many of them Black Loyalists of the British colonies, African-American slaves who had been freed by the British during the American Revolutionary War). They were joined by Black Loyalists who voluntarily resettled in Freetown after having first been taken to Nova Scotia, as well as by Jamaican Maroons, and Africans liberated from slave ships by the British navy in the years after the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade.
Morgan was next appointed as a missionary teacher and lay-reader by Samuel David Ferguson, the Episcopal Bishop of Liberia, a country adjacent to Sierra Leone. Morgan later said, during a trip to Jamaica in 1901, that he had served five years in West Africa, three years of this time in missionary work. Liberia had been set up as a colony for the resettlement of free blacks from the United States, and was supported by the American Colonization Society before the American Civil War.
After Morgan returned to England for private study, he travelled to the United States to work as a lay reader in the African-American community. He was accepted as a Postulant and as candidate for the Episcopal deaconate in the Episcopal Church (United States). During the canonical waiting period before ordination, Morgan again returned to England. He was said to have studied at Saint Aidan's Theological College in Birkenhead, and completed his studies at King's College at the University of London, although the colleges do not have records of his attendance.
Episcopal Church (United States)
After Morgan returned to the United States, he was ordained as deacon on June 20, 1895, by the Rt. Rev. Leighton Coleman, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Delaware, and a well-known opponent of racism. Morgan was appointed honorary curator at St Matthew's Church in Wilmington, Delaware, serving there from 1896 to 1897. He also taught in public schools in Delaware. From 1897 he served the Episcopal Church in Charleston, West Virginia.
In 1898, Morgan was transferred to the Missionary Jurisdiction of Asheville, North Carolina (now in the Diocese of Western North Carolina). By 1899 he was listed as being assistant minister at St. Stephen's Chapel in Morganton, North Carolina and St. Cyprian's Church in Lincolnton, North Carolina.
In 1901-1902 Morgan visited his homeland, Jamaica. In October 1901 he gave an address to the Jamaica Church Missionary Union on West Africa and mission work. He also gave a lecture in Port Maria in October 1902, entitled "Africa – Its People, Tribes, Idolatry, Customs".
Between 1900 and 1906, Morgan moved around much of the Eastern seaboard in the US. From 1902 to 1905 he served at Richmond, Virginia, in 1905 at Nashville, Tennessee, and by 1906 at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His address was in care of the Church of the Crucifixion.
At some point during this period, Morgan joined the American Catholic Church (ACC), a sect of the Episcopal Church founded by Joseph René Vilatte, a former Roman Catholic. Morgan was listed in the records of the Episcopal Church (United States) as late as 1908, when he was suspended from ministry the result of allegations of abandoning his post.
By the turn of the 20th century, Morgan began to question his faith, and he began intensive study of Anglicanism, Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy over a three-year period. He was in search of what he called the true religion. He concluded that the Eastern Orthodox Church was "the pillar and ground of truth", resigned from the Episcopal Church, and embarked on an extensive trip abroad beginning in 1904 in the Russian Empire.
Once there, Morgan visited various monasteries and churches, including sites in Odessa, St. Petersburg, Moscow and Kiev. As a black American, he attracted attention. Sundry periodicals began publishing pictures and articles on him, and soon Morgan became a special guest of the Tsar. He was allowed to be present for the anniversary celebrations of Nicholas II's coronation, and the memorial service said for the repose of the soul of the late Emperor Alexander III.
Leaving Russia, Morgan traveled the Ottoman Empire, Cyprus, and the Holy Land. After he returned to the US, he published an open letter in the Russian-American Orthodox Messenger (Vestnik) in 1904 about his experiences in Russia. He expressed hope that the Episcopal Church could unite with the Orthodox Churches. Morgan continued his spiritual quest.