Our Books
Books from our own Unbroken Circle Press and other titles from leaders and friends of the Fellowship.
Order one of our books in bulk for a 40% discount! Fill out this order form and email it to ubcp@mosestheblack.org.
Mad Madelienne and Other Poems
Discover the profound voice of Mother Macaria, a founding member of the Fellowship of St. Moses the Black. In the mid-1990s, she envisioned a wider scope for our early conference talks, transcribing and publishing them in Epiphany Journal. This laid the foundation for the Fellowship’s first book, An Unbroken Circle. Beyond her editorial works, she was also a gifted poet. In the 1980s San Francisco, she was part of a small band of Christian poets who read in local venues and coffeehouses. Here we offer the memorial edition of her 1987 chapbook, Mad Madelienne and Other Poems, featuring a new foreword by Hieromonk Alexii Altschul and a full interview with M. Macaria about her life journey.
Published: 2026 by St. Xenia Monastic Community
List price: $15.00. Available for purchase from Amazon.
Bookstores and book group coordinators can order bulk copies of books from St. Xenia Monastic Community by using this order form.
Wade in the River: The Story of the African Christian Faith
Wade in the River is back in print! Here we offer the 25th anniversary edition of this classic of Christian History, told from the vantage point of the continent of Africa. Completely reformatted with generous white space for a more comfortable reading experience. The foreword is by renowned historian Dr. Albert J. Raboteau. This volume is enhanced with over 50 photographic illustrations. It boasts extensive references at the end for any who wish to go deeper. Wade in the River begins in the garden of Eden, and takes the reader through to the current-day spread of the Orthodox Faith in African countries such as Democratic Republic of Congo and Kenya. Along the way you will learn about saints and righteous ones both in Africa and its diaspora. For anyone who questions if Christianity is a Eurocentric religion, this book is essential reading—affirming that Jesus Christ came for all men and women.
Published: 2026 by Unbroken Circle Press
List price: $19.95. Available for purchase on Amazon.
Bookstores and book group coordinators can order bulk copies of books from Unbroken Circle Press by using this order form.
From Sorrow to Song
The Story of Matushka Michaila
THIS MEMOIRE TELLS the life of Thelma (Matushka Michaila) Altschul, presented as a question and answer circle with her young friends. Matushka was reportedly the first African American, Orthodox Christian priest’s wife in the US. She overcame great adversity in her youth, and grew up to be sought out for her prayers, her motherly warmth, and her life wisdom. She passed away in 2012 and is as much an inspiration to people now as ever.
“THERE WAS NOTHING in her difficult life that would indicate a future as a priest’s wife. Hardscrabble rural Arkansas, rough urban streets in Kansas City, the death of her beloved daughter, a mission to the poor—this was her familiar territory. But when Matushka first encountered an Orthodox icon she immediately saw Beauty; she saw God, her faith was ignited.”
—Preface by Father Moses & Matushka Magdalena Berry
Published: 2025 by Unbroken Circle Press
List price: $39.95. Available for purchase from Amazon.
Bookstores and book group coordinators can order bulk copies of books from Unbroken Circle Press by using this order form.
Dear Sisters in Christ!
Meditations from a Women’s Prayer Group
Dear Sisters in Christ is a collection of meditations written for weekly distribution to the
Fellowship of St. Moses the Black Women’s Prayer Group. Abbess Katherine penned this selection from 2021 through 2024, and it includes a few by guest writers. The meditations are grouped into
- The Christian Year
- Perfect in Weakness: Prayer, Repentance,
Spiritual Warfare - Women in the Church
- Social and Global Issues
Dear Sisters uses an Orthodox Christian worldview as its lens for framing its wide-ranging topics
ABBESS KATHERINE, who became the President of the Fellowship in 2020, perceived that the Fellowship’s women had a special charism to pray for ach other and those in need, and took on the labor of organizing the prayer requests that came to her from members and sharing it so that they could participate, in a meaningful way, in the work of the Fellowship, alongside their work with the annual conference and local chapters.
The reflections collected here are responses to the spiritual climate in which they were written—the season of the year, events in the larger world, the personal lives of members. Abbess Katherine’s desire to minister and to encourage, her insight and wisdom, have resulted in this book,
nourishing for all of us, men and women alike.
— Matushka Magdalena Berry
Published: 2026 by Unbroken Circle Press
List price: $16.95. Available for purchase on Amazon.
Bookstores and book group coordinators can order bulk copies of books from Unbroken Circle Press by using this order form.
Jubilation: Cultures of Sacred Music
Vol. 2 of the Unbroken Circle Series
This collection of essays from the Fellowship of St. Moses the Black brings forth the old and the new with material from past conferences, and essays and interviews special to this volume.
“Must God Remain Greek? Such is the title of a theology text that could have also asked, ‘Must God Remain Slavic?’ The worship and music of the Orthodox Church was venerably shaped in and through those and other cultural worlds, and subsequently wherever the Church would take
root. This book awakens us to how our Living Tradition is coming to sing within a culture deeply ready for it; it testifies to how the seeds of the Word are growing in rich soil tilled by centuries of faith and struggle. But Jubilation will also significantly broaden, deepen, and enrich any reader’s understanding of the Orthodox Church and of the ongoing journey of Christian faith in America.
It will show us that Orthodox Christianity, with its worship, is a bigger tent than we might have
thought.”
—Peter Bouteneff, D.Phil.
Professor of Systematic Theology & Director, Institute of Sacred Arts
St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary
Published: 2022 by Unbroken Circle Press
List price: $19.95. Available for purchase from S. Tikhon’s Monastery here
Bookstores and book group coordinators can order bulk copies of books from Unbroken Circle Press by using this order form.
Foundations: 1994-1997
Vol. 1 of the Unbroken Circle Series
This collection of talks from the foundation years of the Fellowship of St. Moses the Black Conference, 1994–1997, shows the deep resonance between the faith of the early Church and the heartfelt Christianity born out of the experience of the enslaved Africans on American soil. Indeed, the “sad joyfulness” that characterized the African Desert Fathers and Mothers of the 4th century and that permeates traditional Christianity today, is our legacy from the suffering Church of the enslaved African-Americans, our elders in the faith. Now that the link between America and the African Christian tradition is restored, the time has come to embrace the Unbroken Circle which is our rich heritage from the past—and our hope for the future.
This book is a replacement to, and updated edition of, An Unbroken Circle, which is now out of print.
Published: 2021 by Unbroken Circle Press
List price: $19.95. Available for purchase from Amazon.
Bookstores and book group coordinators can order bulk copies of books from Unbroken Circle Press by using this order form.
Akathist to the Merciful Savior: Healer of the Wounds of American Slavery
A prayer service written in the traditional form of the Orthodox Christian akathist, with 13 sections. Each one is dedicated to the common experience of captive Africans or Native Americans or to specific lives that shone for their especial dedication to Jesus Christ.
Published: 2021 by Unbroken Circle Press
List price: $5.00. Available for purchase from Amazon.
Bookstores and book group coordinators can order bulk copies of books from Unbroken Circle Press by using this order form.
Become All Flame: Lent with African Saints
Recovering the tradition of African Christian holy men and women from centuries-long neglect, Fr. Deacon John R. Gresham, Jr. restores the sacredness of early African Christians to modern seekers. This book is a remedy for the broken images about Black sanctity that have eroded the hope of the African diaspora and the whole Church in the years since violence, greed, and negligence pushed these stories into obscurity. From the African pilgrim who carried Christ’s cross in His passion to the holy women in hiding who overcame demons in Christ’s name, these African Christian ancestors shone so brightly that they still enlighten the Church, extending the call to the African diaspora to reclaim their place at God’s table. With poetic prayers and suggested scripture readings after each brief recollection of a saint, this daily lenten devotional will draw you into habits that will build you up to be more like the saints, too.
This collection of the stories of 49 saints from Africa can be read in Lent or at any time of the year.
Author: Fr. Dn. John R. Gresham, Jr.
Published: Available February 20, 2022 by Park End Books.
List price: $17.95. Available for purchase from Park End Books.
The Prayer of a Broken Heart: An Orthodox Christian Reflection on African American Spirituality
What do African American spirituality and Orthodox Christianity have in common? More than you might think. Drawing on both his own background as a biracial convert to Orthodoxy and historical resources that span St. Athanasius to Frederick Douglass, Fr. Paul Abernathy details the many intersections between these two traditions, including a redemptive understanding of the Cross and a faith shaped by suffering and persecution. In so doing, he points to a new path whereby Orthodox Christianity can uniquely answer the spiritual needs of African Americans.
Author: Rev. Paul Abernathy
Published: 2022 by Ancient Faith Publishing
List price: $16.95. Available for purchase from Ancient Faith.
Ebook: $8.99 at Orthodox Christian Ebooks.
Loneliness or Fruitful Longing
Transformative Wisdom Series, Volume 1
Loneliness or Fruitful Longing is for pastors, counselors, and people seeking hope for their own loneliness. It explores loneliness, its causes and its cures. It describes human vulnerability to loneliness from personal, social, and economic perspectives. It describes the impact of loneliness on physical and mental health, suicide, abortion. Finally, the book proposes spiritual approaches to resolve loneliness. Loneliness or Fruitful Longing expands on a talk originally delivered at the 20th annual Ancient Christianity and Afro-American Conference.
Author: Nun Katherine Weston, MA, LMHC
Published: 2014 by Weston Counseling, LLC
List price: $6.75. Available for purchase from Amazon.
Bookstores and book group coordinators can order bulk copies of Mother Katherine’s books by using this order form.
Race, Identity, and Reconciliation
Transformative Wisdom Series, Volume 2
Race, Identity, and Reconciliation is for anyone who seeks to be part of the conversation on the shifting paradigms of our times. The chapters are expanded from talks presented at the 22nd and 23rd annual conferences of the Brotherhood of Saint Moses the Black.
Different regional views on human value, race, and faith are at the heart of an ongoing national struggle over the identity and direction of the U.S. What insights can the Orthodox Church contribute as an expression of Christianity that was not involved in African slave trade or economy?
Author: Nun Katherine Weston, MA, LMHC
Published: 2016 by Weston Counseling, LLC
List price: $10.00. Available for purchase from Amazon.
Bookstores and book group coordinators can order bulk copies of Mother Katherine’s books by using this order form.
Illumining Shame, Anger, and Forgiveness
Transformative Wisdom Series, Volume 3
Illumining Shame, Anger, and Forgiveness examines these intrinsic human experiences through the complementary lenses of biblical faith and modern psychology. How does shame remind us that we have lost Paradise? What does anger have to do with family and social roles? How can we learn to welcome returning “prodigals”?
Author: Nun Katherine Weston, MA, LMHC
Published: 2017 by Weston Counseling, LLC
List price: $12.00. Available for purchase from Amazon.
Bookstores and book group coordinators can order bulk copies of Mother Katherine’s books by using this order form.
Anxiety, Trust, and Gratitude
Transformative Wisdom Series, Volume 4
Anxiety, Trust, and Gratitude is for any reader who desires to confront the angst of our times through living a more intentional life according to biblical precepts. The essays are based on talks presented at the 16th, 18th, and 25th annual conferences of the Fellowship of Saint Moses the Black, a pan-Orthodox, multi-racial ministry. Early Church writers define anxiety as a natural consequence of fallen human nature. Holy Scriptures give us trust and gratitude toward God as the remedy. What holds us back from practicing these essential virtues? How can we overcome the spiritual and psychological stumbling blocks?
Author: Nun Katherine Weston, MA, LMHC
Published: 2020 by Weston Counseling, LLC
List price: $12.00. Available for purchase from Amazon.
Bookstores and book group coordinators can order bulk copies of Mother Katherine’s books by using this order form.
Wade in the River: The Story of the African Christian Faith
Wade in the River is a fresh approach to the faith of Africa and its contribution to the world. Starting with the Biblical accounts of significant Africans, then passing through early Christianity, winding through the Islamic period, pressing past Western slavery, and finally arriving at the present era, the book describes the riches of ancient, African Christianity. This book fills an important gap in the need for people from all ethnic backgrounds to rethink the idea that “Christianity is a white man’s religion.”
Author: Fr. Alexii Paisius Altschul
Published: 2001
List price: Currently out of Stock – Second Edition coming in 2026.
An Unbroken Circle: Linking Ancient African Christianity to the African-American Experience
This book has been replaced by Foundations: 1994-1997, Vol. 1 of the Unbroken Circle Series. See above.
Reflections on Nature in These Times
Reflections on the Orthodox Christian view of nature with quotes from Scripture, the Holy Fathers, Church Services, Chief Seattle, and George Washington Carver.
Author: Hieromonk Alexii Altschul
List price: $7.95. Available for purchase from Archangel Michael Skete.
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