Grace Unbound: The Sacred Activism of an Orthodox Bishop narrates Fr. (now Bishop) Demetrios C. Kantzavelos’s journey closer to a profound but under-appreciated theological truth: every human being is created in the image and likeness of God, and thus every human life is sacred.
In the pages of Grace Unbound, the reader travels back and forth with Kantzavelos from Chicago to Southern Illinois as he narrates the implications of his unexpected ministry encounter with a particular death row inmate, Andrew Kokoraleis, and Kantzavelos’s subsequent advocacy against the death penalty which grew out of that visit.
Kokoraleis had been sentenced to death for the gruesome murder of a young woman, Lorraine Borowski, and he would eventually be executed by the State of Illinois for that crime. This execution was carried out by Illinois Governor George Ryan after Kantzavelos and other prominent religious leaders failed to convince Ryan to issue a stay of execution in light of the state’s demonstrably flawed death penalty system.
As a Greek Orthodox priest, Kantzavelos’s honest reflections on his internal conflicts over the death penalty were striking as he considered the implications of capital punishment on those convicted of murder (rightly or wrongly), as well as the implications of abolishing the death penalty for families of murder victims.
When visiting Kokoraleis in prison and thinking about a murder victim’s family, the desire for justice, and the death penalty, Kantzavelos truthfully contemplates how he would have felt if such a victim had been his sister. The reader also gets the sense that Kantzavelos truly grappled with Kokoraleis’s guilt or innocence.
Even so, Kantzavelos comes to recognize that his visits to Kokoraleis on death row were not for the purpose of being a judge or jury. His visits were to convey that every human being is a child of God—no matter how broken a person is—and thus every human being is loved.
Chapter after chapter in this book conveys the reflections of a person struggling with issues of life and death, justice and injustice, politics and religion, and who also happens to be a Greek Orthodox priest.
At the same time, Grace Unbound navigates the difficult waters of Kantzavelos’s growing desire to create awareness among Greek Orthodox Christians about the AIDS epidemic and to develop compassionate tools for Orthodox clergy and others ministering to people with AIDS.
These efforts grew out of another ministry encounter that Kantzavelos had: an encounter with a man who was infected with HIV and with the man’s family during a pastoral visit to their home. The result was the creation of the Bishop’s Task Force on AIDS– a first of its kind resource within the Greek Orthodox Diocese of Chicago that brought together medical personnel, social workers, clergy, and others.
Today it is easy to overlook just how progressive and controversial this initiative was at the time when so much stigma and misinformation were attached to AIDS. To give some perspective, the Bishop’s Task Force on AIDS was established a year before President Bill Clinton’s White House Office of National AIDS Policy.
At one point in the book, Kantzavelos mentions the importance of a utility player in baseball, a versatile player who can play several different positions on the field, stepping in at whatever is needed.
I found this to be an apt metaphor for Kantzavelos and his ministry at that time as he stepped in to face a broken death penalty system, AIDS, and a host of other important issues that God put in front of him while Kantzavelos simultaneously worked to manage the most active Greek Orthodox diocese in the nation as its chancellor.
A tender part of Kantzavelos’s memoir is his relationship with his family and with his spiritual mentor, the late Metropolitan (Bishop) Iakovos of Chicago. Kantzavelos conveys many special moments he shared with Iakovos when he sought counsel regarding significant initiatives that Kantzavelos wanted to pursue in the diocese. Iakovos, in turn, continually demonstrated trust in his young chancellor over a range of issues that were extremely controversial– and political– and which could have had negative consequences for Iakovos.
The book’s ending may be unanticipated for most readers. Kantzavelos recounts the painful news of Metropolitan (Bishop) Iakovos’s sudden decline in health and death. Kantzavelos then gives a brief sketch of what followed: Kantzavelos’s unwanted transfer out of the bustling Greek Orthodox Metropolis (Diocese) of Chicago by ecclesiastical superiors; his assignment to the quiet St. Photios Shrine in St. Augustine, FL; and his eventual retirement at just 62 years of age.
And yet, this unexpected conclusion to Grace Unbound leaves the reader with a feeling that the ending has yet to be written—with the notion that God’s work of transformation through the ministry of Kantzavelos and God’s Church must still move towards its goal despite the brokenness of human beings and our world.
As St. Paul writes to the Philippians, “I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil 1:6). I warmly recommend this book.
Review by: John Fotopoulos, PhD is Chair and Associate Professor; Department of Religious Studies and Theology at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, IN.
Grace Unbound: The Sacred Activism of an Orthodox Bishop is available for purchase here.
