Bridging the chasms and internal divides with God's love

Faith column: Bridging the chasms and internal divides with God's love

Special to the Post and Courier, May 4, 2025

The Reverend Dr Adam J Shoemaker 

This year I began Holy Week, the most profound and sacred days on the Christian calendar, not in my church on Anson Street but in an ornate Cairo mosque where I had come to attend a memorial service for my biological father and an uncle who had died in quick succession.

My father, Hamada, a burly mountain of man, had spent much of his life striving to maintain a relationship with me, his firstborn son, after he and my American mother divorced decades before. I grew up separated from him by continents, language, culture and religion. He would go on to marry again and have six other children, but he never gave up on our relationship even when I went through periods when I tried to push him away.

My father’s desire to get his son “home” ultimately overcame the chasm between us, and in recent years our relationship warmed. I eventually fulfilled his long-held dream of getting me to Egypt where I was finally able to be embraced by my large, extended Muslim family there.

My first trip to Cairo and then Luxor, the Upper Egyptian city that is my family’s ancestral home, was somewhat akin to the Prodigal Son story in the Gospel of Luke. The long-lost son had finally returned, and the distance between me and my sisters and brothers, my aunts, uncles and cousins melted away almost immediately. It was, in a very real sense, an Easter experience that is still bearing fruit in my life by way of a more integrated and holistic appreciation for my identity as a beloved child of God; a child who happens to now be an Episcopal priest born of an Egyptian Muslim father and an American mother with a Jewish family history.

It is an understatement to say that the diversity of my story has not always been easy to bridge. In so many ways, that gap within myself has seemed to mirror so many of the longstanding internal divides we experience in the United States each and every day. Islam, Christianity and Judaism; Arabs and Americans; East and West; the chasms and potential conflicts could go on and on. The love of a father for his son ultimately made the difference in my own story.

Interestingly, one of the throngs of mourners who came to the mosque on the evening of Palm Sunday to pray for my father and uncle was a Coptic priest named George who had been a neighbor of my father’s. Father George later invited me for coffee in his Cairo home and allowed me the privilege of touring his beautiful church on Holy Monday. He told me how proud my father had been of me and about his mentioning my vocation as a priest.

As I walked solemnly through the sanctuary of Father George’s old orthodox church alongside my head-covered Muslim younger sister, Asmaa, gazing up at the Coptic iconography depicting biblical stories common to both of us, I prayerfully reflected on the lifelong journey that had landed me in the warm embrace of my Egyptian family. My sister and I were offered candles to light in memory of our father and uncle, and we stood silently beside one another in prayer as the smell of incense wafted in the air. In that prayerful stillness, the love of God for the whole world was palpable.

The promise of Easter is in the ultimate victory of God’s redemptive love, not despite the conflict, suffering and even death in this world, but in the midst of it. In that hope, I continue to find myself grateful for my father’s love. This love ultimately helped to bridge the conflicts inside of me. This love helped me reconcile with my family in Egypt. And this same love points to the fullness of God’s love for all of us.

Amid the divisions, conflicts and tensions that threaten to diminish us all, I put my trust in the power of that love to draw us all together and continually make the whole creation new. I believe with my whole being that—in the end—that love will have the last word in this world.

The Rev. Dr. Adam J. Shoemaker is Rector (or the priest in charge) of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston. He is originally from New York but has served churches in Massachusetts, North Carolina and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, before coming to Charleston. He is an Egyptian American with Christian, Jewish and Muslim roots in his family tree. 

© 2025 Adam J Shoemaker

Image credit: Shutterstock image Asset id 2131316887, downloaded 5/5/2025.