NEWS FEATURE: At an Alabama Shrine, Orthodox Find God and `True Worship’

c. 2000 Religion News Service MALBIS, Ala. _ From blueberry-hued heavens, God looks down on the little town of Malbis. Robes of crimson and ivory drape around him; a white beard flows from his chin. Pearly clouds swell at his feet; canary light radiates above him. He extends his arms in benediction and commission. In […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

MALBIS, Ala. _ From blueberry-hued heavens, God looks down on the little town of Malbis.

Robes of crimson and ivory drape around him; a white beard flows from his chin. Pearly clouds swell at his feet; canary light radiates above him. He extends his arms in benediction and commission.


In the dome of Malbis’ Greek Orthodox church, the Almighty is the same yesterday, today and for the foreseeable future, thanks to the family of Jason Malbis.

The story of Jason Malbis is only a century old, but the Byzantine sanctuary built in his memory appears a relic of generations past.

On a steamy summer afternoon, an air-conditioner shushes inside the ornate chapel. Massive pillars of claret and cream rise high above, supporting a star-studded plaster canopy. Glass tinted red, blue and yellow filters light that illuminates Rembrandt replica and Tzouvaras original alike.

These things, beautiful as they may be, do not bring Gertrude Malbis to her family’s chapel.

She comes, instead, for the peace and contentment that’s visited upon those inside the sanctuary. Beside richly painted murals that impart the story of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, she feels close to God.

That, she said, is what church should be about.

She uttered the words standing just feet away from the sanctuary’s imposing iconostasis, or icon screen, which was carved from the same gleaming white marble as the Parthenon.

Spyros Tzouvaras, a famous Athenian iconographer, worked with two assistants on the chapel’s dozens of paintings. They designed their own stencils, ordered and mixed all of their own dry pigments. They spent three months reclining on scaffolding 75 feet high, painting the Almighty, or, in Greek, Pantocrator.


The chapel, which was dedicated Jan. 3, 1965, is the first mission center of the Orthodox faith in the United States. Now, at 8:30 a.m. almost every other Saturday in this small town outside Mobile, members of the Malbis family along with curious onlookers gather for worship.

“It is a family chapel, so we don’t, per se, have members,” Gertrude Malbis explained.

The hourlong service, offered in both Greek and English, uses the liturgy of St. John of Chrysostom, which dates back to 356.

As worshippers pray, they’re reciting the same words Jason Malbis spoke a century earlier at a monastery in southern Greece.

Jason Malbis was born Antonios Markopoulos in Doumena, a small town in southern Greece. His father brought him to a nearby monastery, Mega Spelaion, which means “Great Cave.” There he carried out religious duties.

But he was restless.

Around his 40th birthday, the monk traveled across the Atlantic. Shortly after landing in the United States, he set up residence in Chicago and changed his name to Jason Malbis.


Still, he dreamed of something more.

With one friend, William Papageorge, he left Chicago. For six months they traveled _ through Illinois and Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas, Mississippi and finally Alabama.

By the time they arrived in Mobile, they were almost out of money. According to a thin paperback, “The Faith of Jason Malbis,” Malbis and Papageorge were sitting on a park bench in Bienville Square one afternoon,considering their options. Hanging from a window on the third floor of a building in front of them was a sign that read, “LOW COST FARMLANDS FOR SALE.”

The two men paged through an English-Greek dictionary to decipher the text. By the next evening, Malbis and Papageorge found 120 acres in Baldwin County to call home. They agreed on a price of $5 per acre. They made a $100 down payment.

“There is no doubt in my mind that this is the place where our plans and goals will come true,” Malbis told Papageorge, according to “The Faith of Jason Malbis.”

He was right.

The land he purchased that day _ and then some _ eventually became part of the Malbis Plantation Inc. As Malbis and Papageorge were joined by other Greek immigrants, they divided stock among themselves, according to each member’s efficiency and ability.

As years passed, their ventures extended beyond farming. They built a power plant, helped reorganize an unstable Chicago bank, built part of Hwy. 90, and operated a restaurant, bakery, canning plant and ice plant.


But while members’ faith served as their bond and raison d’etre, they never built a church. Its construction was one of Malbis’ final wishes.

Before World War II began, Malbis traveled back to Greece. Before he could return to the United States, fighting broke out, he grew ill, and on July 22, 1942, Malbis died.

Members of the brotherhood didn’t receive word until January of 1943. Some time later, a letter from one of Malbis’ friends arrived, providing members of the bereaved brotherhood one last directive from their spiritual and business leader.

“It is my desire that you build a church near the cemetery and close to the living quarters,” Malbis said, according to another booklet about the sanctuary, “Malbis Memorial Church.”

“This should be your primary concern, for we must have a place to come together in order to praise and thank Almighty God in reverence and appreciation for the many blessings that He has bestowed upon us, and for His protection in times of danger and distress.”

The resulting sanctuary, where his bones are now interred, would not be just any church.


Modeled on the Church of the Panagia Chrysospyliotissa in Greece, the sanctuary cost more than $1 million in 1965.

The ornate interior is typical of a Greek Orthodox sanctuary. But unlike many such churches, which include only Eastern art, this one blends Eastern and Western art.

Artists render Eastern Orthodox icons as flat and shadowless; the sacred images are designed to function as windows to the meaning of the person or event depicted, rather than the individual or occurrence itself. Many Western artists, meanwhile, depict emotional, lifelike subjects. The Malbis church includes both to reflect Jason Malbis’ ties to the East and West.

The Rev. James Cleondis, the priest who celebrates services in Malbis as well as at Mobile’s Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church, calls the art “sermons in color.”

Gertrude Malbis recalled a time when most people couldn’t read and relied on pictures for information. One watchful walk through the Malbis sanctuary imparts Christianity’s most beloved stories _ Mary with baby Jesus, a young Jesus in Jerusalem’s temple, Jesus’ celebration of the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, Jesus’ ascension to heaven.

The images of saints are present too, as well as illustrations of beloved men and women of the Hebrew Bible. “Everywhere you turn, you see a saint or you see Christ,” Cleondis said. “You concentrate much more.”


He considers the sanctuary’s art to be its structure.

“When you go inside an Orthodox church, you divorce yourself from the outside world,” he said. “This is the whole purpose of the way Orthodox churches are.”

Cleondis spoke of the peace that Gertrude Malbis noted.

“I find myself concentrating more in what I’m doing than in what I have to do before the service is over,” he said. “It gives me this feeling that you actually become a little closer to the Lord.”

Here in Malbis, Cleondis said, “there is nothing but true worship.”

KRE END CAMPBELL

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