Anglonautes > 2000s - 2010s - 2020s > Vocapedia > English vocabulary > Subject, topic > Religions / faith > Christians > What's inside the church, objects in churches

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church is one of the oldest, most storied black congregations in the South. Its members met in secret in the years when black churches were outlawed here before the Civil War, and it contains a shrine to one of its founders, who helped organize a slave revolt in 1822.

So the mass shooting that took the lives of nine churchgoers, including a state senator who was pastor, Clementa C. Pinckney, had a particularly deep resonance in this genteel city, proud and mindful of its history but still torn by race and class.

“Christ said to Peter, ‘Upon this rock I will build my church,’” said Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina, the highest-ranking African-American in the House. He flew to Charleston on Thursday morning to attend a prayer vigil for the shooting victims.

“Emanuel A.M.E. Church is the rock upon which the A.M.E. Church throughout the South is built,” Mr. Clyburn said. “That church has more historic significance to Charleston than any other church in this community.”

Intentionally or not, the gunman had found in Emanuel A.M.E., and in its 41-year-old pastor, rich symbols to attack with deadly racial hatred. Pastor Pinckney was a well-known civil rights leader in Charleston. He was elected to the South Carolina House at age 23, and then to the State Senate at age 27.

After Walter Scott, an African-American, was shot in the back by a North Charleston police officer in April, Mr. Pinckney helped guide through the State Legislature a bill requiring officers to wear body cameras.

Jaime Harrison, chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party and a friend of Mr. Pinckney’s since their teenage years, said all the young Democrats coming up together in the state looked up to Mr. Pinckney. “We all aspired to be like Clementa,” Mr. Harrison said.

Mr. Pinckney was not a divisive figure, community and political leaders say. State Representative James E. Smith Jr., the minority leader and a Democrat who was elected to the State House at the same time as Mr. Pinckney, called him, “a giant voice for justice in South Carolina,” and a conciliatory leader, not a bomb thrower.

Tyler Jones, political director of the South Carolina House Democratic Caucus, said, “I have never heard anyone utter a negative word about Clem Pinckney, and that’s not an exaggeration.”

Mr. Smith, along with others, including Mr. Clyburn, saw the true target as the church itself.

“It’s in the historic district,” Mr. Clyburn said. “It’s where people go when they’re touring the city. It’s right around where all the activity is. So he might have just stumbled upon the church — but I doubt it.”
Photo
Mourners placed ribbons outside Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., on Thursday. Credit Brendan Smialowski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

It is impossible to overestimate the importance of the church in the African-American South, said Edward Ball, author of “Slaves in the Family,” a history of Low Country South Carolina. Mr. Ball’s forefathers enslaved the forefathers of Emanuel A.M.E.’s leading parishioners.

“This church is much more than a place where people sing gospel,” Mr. Ball said. “It’s tethered to the deep unconscious of the black community.”

Charleston’s historic district has always been home to the city’s white elite, built on wealth generated by the slave trade and rice that could only be cultivated as intensively as it was with slave labor. Charleston was one of the richest cities in antebellum America, and old Charleston has long been known for its clannish exclusivity.

Many of the African-Americans who were able to remain in the historic district over the last century have been chased out more recently by gentrification and soaring property values.

But Emanuel A.M.E. has remained firmly ensconced in what is known as the “Holy City,” a name inspired by all its church spires.

With its prideful reminders of its legacy of rebellion, “Mother Emanuel,” as it is known by blacks here, is still “symbolically recognized by everyone as the thorn in the side of the white body — at the very center of town, the very center of white society,” Mr. Ball said.

The killing of nine people at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., is among a long list of attacks targeting predominantly black churches in the United States.

In 1822, the authorities were tipped off before plans for the slave revolt could be put in effect; 313 suspected conspirators were arrested, and 35, including Denmark Vesey, the organizer who was a founder of the church, were executed. Angry whites in town burned the original church down.

The church, rebuilt in 1891, holds that history dear. A memorial to Mr. Vesey within its Gothic Revival walls is a reminder not only of the revolt, but also of Charleston’s past.

In the 1960s, the church was a center of civil rights organizing. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at the church in 1962.

In his remarks on the killings on Thursday, President Obama acknowledged the church’s special history.

“This is a place of worship that was founded by African-Americans seeking liberty,” he said. “This is a church that was burned to the ground because its worshipers worked to end slavery. When there were laws banning all-black church gatherings, they conducted services in secret. When there was a nonviolent movement to bring our country closer in line with our highest ideals, some of our brightest leaders spoke and led marches from this church’s steps.”

He added, “This is a sacred place in the history of Charleston and in the history of America.”

On Thursday, Emanuel was off limits, cordoned off from Charleston’s citizens with police tape and emergency vehicles. The city’s leaders and citizens gathered at Morris Brown A.M.E. Church, about a half-mile away, for the prayer vigil.

The walk between the two churches along King Street leads past trendy galleries, new and trendy restaurants and bars, historical markers and the old American Theater, whose marquee read, “Pray for our Mother Emanuel AME Church.”

Inside Morris, members of the clergy spoke effusively of unity and vowed not to let hate divide the city. Blacks, whites, Jews and Christians jammed the aisles, prayed and sang. A street minister, Mark Irvin, implored “all European-Americans, all non-African-Americans, whether you think your ancestors are innocent or guilty, bring yourselves to ask forgiveness from the Lord.”

Bishop John Richard Bryant looked out on the multiracial, multiethnic throng from the pulpit and pronounced: “You look like what we in the Low Country call a quilt. You’re patches. You all fit somewhere.”

But in front of the church, under a sweltering midday sun, after the clergy had gone inside, an angrier group of young men took over. The memory of Walter Scott’s shooting is still fresh. They held handwritten poster boards declaring, “Black lives matter.”

Terrence Meyers, 34, held one such sign at King and Morris streets as the crowd emptied out of Morris A.M.E., chased out by a bomb threat that seemed to underscore the angrier tone outside the church. He said that as dozens of police cars were screaming toward Emanuel A.M.E. on Wednesday night, he was pulled aside and ticketed by a policeman for riding his bicycle home from work on the sidewalk without a headlight.

He was still furious the next day.

“There’s no such thing as peace, not now,” he said. “Peace is over.”

Jason Horowitz contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print

on June 19, 2015,

on page A1 of the New York edition

with the headline:

Scene of Carnage Has Long History of Pain,

Pride and Dignity.

Killings Add Painful Page to Storied History of Charleston Church,
NYT,
JUNE 18, 2015,
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/19/
us/charleston-killings-evoke-history-of-violence-
against-black-churches.html

A Prayer at Christmas

December 24, 2012

The New York Times

By ANN HOOD

Providence, R.I.

BACK when I was 8 or 9 and wanted to be a nun, I would often stop at church on my way home from school. The school sat across the street from two churches: St. Joseph’s, which we called the French church, and Sacred Heart, which is where my family went. Sacred Heart was built by and for Italian immigrants, an odd pale stucco building in the midst of rundown mill houses. I would enter and let my eyes adjust from the bright afternoon light to the dim interior. The smell of incense and candles burning permeated everything, and I liked to stand still for a moment and breathe it in before I dipped my hand into the holy water in the marble aspersorium. My wet fingers made the sign of the cross as I made my slow, reverential way down the worn maroon carpet to the altar.

I prayed a lot in those days. For straight A’s, which I got without God’s help. For a friend, since I was a lonely, peculiar child who had trouble making friends. For my father to come home from Cuba, where he was based with the Seabees. For a real Christmas tree, instead of the fake silver one with pompom tips my mother put up in my father’s absence.

These prayers were fervent, desperate. But when I went to church alone on those long-ago afternoons, I prayed just for the sake of comfort, for the peace it brought me. Sometimes a nun might appear in her habit and allow me to scrape the melted candle wax from the marble. I imagined, briefly, a life of devotion like that. A swishing black dress and a giant wooden crucifix swinging from my rosary beads.

That fantasy disappeared eventually, along with the ritual of churchgoing. I didn’t get the same sense of peace at Sunday Mass. For reasons I can’t remember, my family eventually stopped attending church, and I started questioning the Catholic Church’s beliefs. I dabbled a little, but nothing stuck.

So I was surprised when I was struck with a desire to go to church earlier this month. Not a Mass, but inside a church, where I might pray quietly and alone. In my adult life, I had spent a lot of time angry at God, mostly over the sudden deaths in my family — my brother at 30, my daughter at 5. This year we’d suffered another sudden loss, a favorite aunt killed in a car accident. Why on this December afternoon I felt the need to check in with God, I cannot say. Maybe a conversation with a friend who spoke about going to church when her daughter was ill, or maybe the appearance of Christmas lights and decorations around town.

Whatever the reason, I walked to a Catholic church a few blocks from my home in Providence. The afternoon was chilly. Boughs of evergreen draped across the wrought-iron gate. I climbed the steps to the front door and pulled. Locked. I walked around to the side. Then the other side. Then the back. All locked. There were other churches, I thought. Plenty of them.

I went home and got in my car and drove from church to church to church. All of them were locked. With each locked door, my need to get inside and pray grew. I felt it was imperative, that if a person needed to go to church and pray, she should be able to do that. All the things I wanted to pray about washed over me. I wanted to explain to God why I’d been so angry. I wanted to apologize for things I’d done wrong. I wanted to put in a good word for my son, and for my daughter, and for my mother’s health, and for a dozen other things. But six, then seven churches were locked.

When I told my husband, he looked confused. I was not a religious person, after all. “It’s expensive to keep them open,” he, the churchgoer in our family, explained. “But what about truly desperate people?” I insisted. “It’s probably not safe to keep them open like that,” he said. Then he added, “Maybe in bigger cities?”

The next day, I was in New York City. The weather had turned as warm as spring, and after a lunch in Midtown I decided to take a walk. The mild temperature made me forget that it was Christmastime, and I was surprised to see a line of people in front of Saks Fifth Avenue waiting to see its window displays. I joined them. Then I crossed the street to stare up at the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center and smile at the white angels blowing their trumpets in front of it.

As I turned to walk to the subway, a sign caught my eye: ST. PATRICK’S IS OPEN. I read it again. ST. PATRICK’S IS OPEN. Although I quickly realized the sign was there because of all the scaffolding around the church, I still couldn’t help but feel that it was also there just for me.

A church that was open! I crossed the street and went inside. The grandeur of St. Patrick’s is nothing like the little stucco church of my childhood in West Warwick, R.I. And even on a Tuesday afternoon, it was crowded with tourists. But the candles flickered, and the smell of wax and incense filled me. I dipped my fingers in the holy water, and walked slowly up the long center aisle to the altar. Around me, people snapped pictures of the manger with their phones. A woman holding a baby in a Santa suit rushed past me. When I got to the front pew, I lowered the kneeler, and I knelt. I bowed my head and I prayed.

In the years since I’d done this simple act in church, I have prayed at home and in hospital waiting rooms. I have prayed for my daughter to live, for the bad news to not be true, for strength in the face of adversity. I have prayed with more desperation than a person should feel. I have prayed in vain.

This prayer, though, was different. It was a prayer from my girlhood, a prayer for peace and comfort and guidance. It was a prayer of gratitude. It was a prayer that needed to be done in church, in a place where candles flicker and statues of saints look down from on high; where sometimes, out of nowhere, the spiritually confused can still come inside and kneel and feel their words might rise up and be heard.

Ann Hood is the author, most recently,

of “The Red Thread”

and the forthcoming novel “The Obituary Writer.”

A Prayer at Christmas, NYT, 24.12.2012,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/25/opinion/a-prayer-at-christmas.html

New Translation of Catholic Mass

Makes Its Debut

November 27, 2011
The New York Times
By SHARON OTTERMAN

Roman Catholics throughout the English-speaking world on Sunday left behind words they have prayed for nearly four decades, flipping through unfamiliar pew cards and pronouncing new phrases as the church urged tens of millions of worshipers to embrace a new translation of the Mass that more faithfully tracks the original Latin.

The introduction of the new English translation of the Roman Missal, the book of texts and prayers used in the Mass, appeared to pass smoothly in churches, despite some confusion and hesitancy over the new words.

But behind the scenes, the debate over the new translation has been angry and bitter, exposing rifts between a Vatican-led church hierarchy that has promoted the new translation as more reverential and accurate, and critics, among them hundreds of priests, who fear it is a retreat from the commitment of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s to allowing people to pray in a simple, clear vernacular as they participate in the church’s sacred rites.

There was no reference to that history Sunday morning in the cavernous nave of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, where Msgr. Robert T. Ritchie, in purple robes to mark the start of Advent, told thousands of worshipers, “Today is a special day — today is the start of a new translation of the Mass,” and directed them to follow the new words listed on laminated pew cards.

But when Monsignor Ritchie said to the assembly, “The Lord be with you,” many reflexively responded with the words that have been used for decades, declaring, “And also with you,” rather than with the new response, “And with your spirit.”

And though he had carefully studied the new service, even Monsignor Ritchie lost his place at one point, raising his eyebrows as he flipped through the missal, looking for the right words before the start of communion.

Across the Atlantic, the scene was similar at Westminster Cathedral in London, where the pews were filled with worshipers clutching freshly printed pamphlets under soaring, dark stone ceilings.

The Rev. Alexander Master, celebrating the Mass, made no direct mention of the change, but his sermon centered on the concept of upheaval, which, he said, had been “especially marked” this year. What the future holds, he said, “is known only to God.”

The new translation, phased in throughout the English-speaking world over the past year, was officially introduced over the weekend in every English-language Mass in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and India.

Because the form of the Mass was not changed — just the details of the translation — many Catholics reacted mildly.

Rebecca Brown, a parishioner at St. James Cathedral in Seattle, said she felt well prepared for the new translation. “I’m not fond of the linguistic choices, how it rolls off the tongue,” Ms. Brown said. “But on the other hand, the Catholic Church is always about renewal and reforming itself. This is just one of those changes.”

“It was interesting,” said Danielle McGinley, 31, a parishioner at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown Los Angeles. “It feels more like a Spanish Mass to me. The Spanish Mass is a more literal translation. I like it.”

But George Lind, 73, in New York, had a more visceral reaction. He tried to say the new language at the Church of the Holy Cross in Times Square during the Saturday night Mass, he said, but he became so angry that he had to stop speaking.

“I am so tired of being told exactly what I have to say, exactly what I have to pray,” he said. “I believe in God, and to me that is the important thing. This is some attempt on the part of the church hierarchy to look important.”

Most of the changes are within the prayers the priests say, but there are some notable differences in the responses by worshipers. The Nicene Creed, the central profession of faith, now starts with “I believe in one God” instead of “We believe in one God.” Jesus is now “consubstantial with the Father” rather than “one in Being with the Father.” Communion begins with the words, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof,” instead of “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you.”

The mixed emotions in the pews broadly mirrored the reception that the new translation has received from clergy and liturgical scholars. More than 22,000 people, including many priests, endorsed a petition, on the Web site whatifwejustsaidwait.org, to postpone the introduction of the new Mass. An association of hundreds of Irish priests called for the translation to be scrapped.

The Rev. Anthony Ruff, a scholar of Latin and Gregorian chant at St. John’s University and seminary in Collegeville, Minn., worked on parts of the latest translation with the International Commission on English in the Liturgy, but he left after he became “increasingly critical of the clunky text and the top-down secretive process” with which it was being created, he said.

“The syntax is too Latinate — it’s not good English that will help people pray,” he said in an interview. “Rome got its way in forcing this on us, but it is a Pyrrhic victory because it is not bringing the whole church together around a high quality product.”

Catholics throughout the world worshiped in Latin until Vatican II, when the church granted permission for priests to celebrate Mass in other languages. The English translation used until this weekend was published in the early 1970s and modified in 1985. Scholars then began work on a new translation, and by 1998 a full draft of the new missal was completed and approved by bishops’ conferences around the English-speaking world.

But Rome never approved that translation, and instead, in 2001, issued new guidelines requiring that the language of the Mass carefully follow every word of the Latin text, as well as the Latin syntax, where possible. That marked a dramatic philosophical shift from the more flexible principle of “dynamic equivalence” that had guided the earlier translations.

The Rev. Michael Ryan, pastor of St. James Cathedral in Seattle, who started the Web petition to postpone the new text, said he believed that nearly all critics among clergy would nonetheless use the new translation.

“I am not going to change a word, because the only way it will get evaluated is if people hear it as it is,” he said. “I trust the people will indeed speak up.”

The Rev. Daniel Merz, associate director of the secretariat of divine worship for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which is in charge of promulgating the changes in America, said the text had been widely discussed before it was put into use. He said the new translation was more poetic and filled with imagery.

“I don’t think there’s ever been a document that’s been so consulted in the history of the world,” he said.

“Over time, we have realized that there is a better way to pray,” he added. “Not that the old way was bad, but we hope and believe that this new way is better.”

Ian Lovett contributed reporting

from Los Angeles,

Isolde Raftery from Seattle

and Ravi Somaiya from London.

    New Translation of Catholic Mass Makes Its Debut,
    NYT, 27.11.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/nyregion/
    for-catholics-the-word-was-a-bit-different-amen.html

Jamestown Thought to Yield Ruins

of Oldest U.S. Protestant Church

November 13, 2011
The New York Times
By THEO EMERY

JAMESTOWN — For more than a decade, the marshy island in Virginia where British colonists landed in 1607 has yielded uncounted surprises. And yet William M. Kelso’s voice still brims with excitement as he plants his feet atop a long-buried discovery at the settlement’s heart: what he believes are the nation’s oldest remains of a Protestant church.

The discovery has excited scholars and preservationists, and unearthed a long-hidden dimension of religious life in the first permanent colony.

It may prove to be an attraction for another reason: the church would have been the site of America’s first celebrity wedding, so to speak, where the Indian princess Pocahontas was baptized and married to the settler John Rolfe in 1614. The union temporarily halted warfare with the region’s tribal federation.

Last week Mr. Kelso, the chief archaeologist at the site, hopped into the excavated pit topped with sandbags and pointed to where Pocahontas would have stood at the altar rail. Orange flags marked the church’s perimeter. The pulpit would have been to the left and a baptismal font behind, with a door opening toward the river.

“I’m standing where Pocahontas stood,” Mr. Kelso said, gesturing to the earth at his feet. “I can almost guarantee you that.”

It would have been unthinkable for the intrepid settlers, as ambassadors of country, crown and church, not to erect a building for worship and conversion of Native Americans in their Virginia Company encampment.

Nor is it the nation’s oldest house of worship: Britain’s earlier “lost colony” in North Carolina may have had a church, and remnants of 16th-century Catholic churches and missions have been identified, according to Mr. Kelso. But the 2010 discovery and continuing excavation has generated excitement partly due to the size of the 1608 structure — at 64 feet by 24 feet, it was an architectural marvel for its time — and also because of how little has been understood about religion in Jamestown.

Some scholars lament that popular knowledge of colonial-era religion has been flattened into a view of the Virginians as greedy and indolent, while later colonists in Plymouth, Mass., were pious and devout.

The distinction is rooted in their origins. While Virginians were largely loyal to the Church of England, the pilgrims in Plymouth repudiated the church and came to America to escape it.

“Fundamentally, they’re different places,” said David D. Hall, a scholar of colonial religion at Harvard Divinity School.

Religion would still have been central to Jamestown, and theories abound as to why there has been scant attention. Histories tend to emphasize commercial pursuits of its colonists, and scholars also point to the Civil War: with the Union victory, the story of Northern colonial virtues — including piety — triumphed over those of the South. Another view is that Plymouth had a prolific printer and Jamestown did not.

“You have two very different Christian experiences; both of them can be equally rich and nuanced, but one tended to leave a much richer and more layered testimony about itself,” said Richard Pickering, deputy director of program innovation at Plimoth Plantation, the recreated colonial village in Plymouth that uses the historical spelling of the name.

There is also a practical reason: until recently, relics of early Jamestown were underground. For centuries, the fort was believed washed into the James River. But Mr. Kelso, unconvinced, began digging along the river’s banks in 1994.

By 1996, he was certain he had located James Fort’s perimeter. The site has since yielded about 1.4 million artifacts, many of them stored in a locked, fireproof laboratory nearby.

But the original church remained elusive. Then, last fall, the archaeologists located remnants of a new structure beneath Civil War earthworks.

“Every one of our colleagues had goose bumps. It was something we’ve been looking for 17 years,” said the senior staff archaeologist, Danny Schmidt, 33, who first worked at Jamestown as a high school intern in 1994.

The dig has continued through the fall. The graves will be investigated in the spring, Mr. Kelso said.

“This is as close as you can get to a time capsule,” he said.

The church would have been the fort’s biggest structure by far. Paul A. Levengood, president and chief executive officer of the Virginia Historical Society, said a conspicuous church served a political purpose for the British.

“To put up a big church on this island in the Chesapeake region was a very clear political sign as well, saying, ‘We’re here, stay out, we claim this area, and we’re willing to fight you,’ ” he said.

The site will mark the spot of perhaps the best-known part of Jamestown’s history, the wedding of Pocahontas, who adopted the name Rebecca after her baptism and marriage.

Popular knowledge of that wedding could enhance attention to religion at Jamestown, said James Horn, vice president of research and historical interpretation at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, which manages the park. He said the church may be partially reconstructed atop the site.

H. Wade Trump III, a Williamsburg pastor who traces his ancestry back to the Jamestown colonists, sees the site as a New World Jerusalem where the nation’s religious heritage began.

“This church would be a place for Christians from all over the country to see where their roots are,” Mr. Trump said. “This is really the birthplace of the Judeo-Christian faith in America.”

Today, James Fort resembles an outdoor archaeology classroom, with school groups and tourists watching archaeologists at work just feet away.

Barbara Costin, 70, of Beaverdam, Va., made a circuit of the fort with her friend Marshall Healey, 82. Ms. Costin wondered if the discovery of the church was not an extension of the mission to convert native inhabitants, and exploit their land and wealth.

“Power, control — that’s what it’s about,” she said.

Myron Semchuk, 64, visiting from Norwalk, Conn., took a different view, calling the discovery “fascinating,” another key to the nation’s origin.

“The rights that we enjoy today had their roots here. This is where they first started,” he said. “And those religious beliefs, I think, were the foundation.”

Jamestown Thought to Yield Ruins of Oldest U.S. Protestant Church,
    NYT, 13.11.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/14/us/
    ruins-of-oldest-us-protestant-church-may-be-at-jamestown.html

The Political Pulpit

September 30, 2011
The New York Times
By STEPHANIE STROM

This weekend, hundreds of pastors, including some of the nation’s evangelical leaders, will climb into their pulpits to preach about American politics, flouting a decades-old law that prohibits tax-exempt churches and other charities from campaigning on election issues.

The sermons, on what is called Pulpit Freedom Sunday, essentially represent a form of biblical bait, an effort by some churches to goad the Internal Revenue Service into court battles over the divide between religion and politics.

The Alliance Defense Fund, a nonprofit legal defense group whose founders include James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, sponsors the annual event, which started with 33 pastors in 2008. This year, Glenn Beck has been promoting it, calling for 1,000 religious leaders to sign on and generating additional interest at the beginning of a presidential election cycle.

“There should be no government intrusion in the pulpit,” said the Rev. James Garlow, senior pastor at Skyline Church in La Mesa, Calif., who led preachers in the battle to pass California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage. “The freedom of speech and the freedom of religion promised under the First Amendment means pastors have full authority to say what they want to say.”

Mr. Garlow said he planned to inveigh against same-sex marriage, abortion and other touchstone issues that social conservatives oppose, and some ministers may be ready to encourage parishioners to vote only for those candidates who adhere to the same views or values.

“I tell them that as followers of Christ, you wouldn’t vote for someone who was against what God said in his word,” Mr. Garlow said. “I will, in effect, oppose several candidates and — de facto — endorse others.”

Two Republican candidates in particular, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas and Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, would presumably benefit from some pulpit politics on Sunday, since they have been courting Christian conservatives this year.

Participating ministers plan to send tapes of their sermons to the I.R.S., effectively providing the agency with evidence it could use to take them to court.

But if history is any indication, the I.R.S. may continue to steer clear of the taunts.

“It’s frustrating,” said Erik Stanley, senior legal counsel at Alliance Defense. “The law is on the books but they don’t enforce it, leaving churches in limbo.”

Supporters of the law are equally vexed by the tax agency’s perceived inaction. “We have grave concerns over the current inability of the I.R.S. to enforce the federal tax laws applicable to churches,” a group of 13 ministers in Ohio wrote in a letter to the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, in July.

Marcus Owens, the lawyer representing the Ohio ministers, warned that the I.R.S.’s failure to pursue churches for politicking violations would encourage more donations to support their efforts, taking further advantage of the new leeway given to advocacy groups under the Supreme Court’s decision last year in the Citizens United case.

Lois G. Lerner, director of the agency’s Exempt Organizations Division, said in an e-mail that “education has been and remains the first goal of the I.R.S.’s program on political activity by tax-exempt organizations.” The agency has posted “guidance” on what churches can and cannot do on its Web site.

The agency says it has continued to do audits of some churches, but those are not disclosed. Mr. Stanley, Mr. Owens and other lawyers say they are virtually certain it has no continuing audits of church political activity, an issue that has been a source of contention in recent elections.

The alliance and many other advocates regard a 1954 law prohibiting churches and their leaders from engaging in political campaigning as a violation of the First Amendment and wish to see the issue played out in court. The organization points to the rich tradition of political activism by churches in some of the nation’s most controversial battles, including the pre-Revolutionary war opposition to taxation by the British, slavery and child labor.

The legislation, sponsored by Lyndon Baines Johnson, then a senator, muzzled all charities in regards to partisan politics, and its impact on churches may have been an unintended consequence. At the time, he was locked in a battle with two nonprofit groups that were loudly calling him a closet communist.

Thirty years later, a group of senators led by Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, passed legislation to try to rein in the agency a bit in doing some audits. While audits of churches continued over the years, they appeared to have slowed down considerably after a judge rebuffed the agency’s actions in a case involving the Living Word Christian Center and a supposed endorsement of Ms. Bachmann in 2007. The I.R.S. had eliminated positions through a reorganization, and therefore, according to the judge, had not followed the law when determining who could authorize such audits.

Sarah Hall Ingram, the I.R.S. commissioner responsible for the division that oversees nonprofit groups, said the agency was still investigating such cases. “We have churches under audit,” Ms. Hall Ingram said. “Maybe they just aren’t the clients of the people you’re talking to.”

None of the churches involved in previous pulpit Sunday events have received anything beyond a form letter from the I.R.S. thanking them for the tapes, Mr. Stanley said. “They haven’t done anything to clarify what the law is and what pastors can and can’t say,“ he said.

Mr. Owens, the lawyer representing the Ohio churches, said that Ms. Lerner had told a meeting of state charity regulators in late 2009 that the agency was no longer doing such audits. “I have not heard of a single church audit since then,” Mr. Owens said.

He said the agency could have churches under audit for civil fraud or criminal investigation. “I know of at least one of those,” he said.

Ms. Lerner said she could not recall what she had said at the meeting. Grant Williams, an I.R.S. spokesman, declined to describe the type of church audits the agency was doing or their number.

Last year, the I.R.S. also quietly ceased its Political Activities Compliance Initiative, under which it issued reports in 2004 and 2006 detailing its findings of illegal political campaigning by charities, including churches.

Paul Streckfus, a former I.R.S. official who publishes a newsletter about legal and tax developments in the tax-exempt world, said the reports had served as an alert. “They also gave us some idea of how big the problem of noncompliance actually was, and that the I.R.S. was actually doing something about it,” Mr. Streckfus said.

Mr. Garlow said he planned to outline where the candidates stood on various issues and then discuss what the Bible said about those issues, calling on church members to stand by their religious principles.

“The Bible says render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s,” he said. “But Caesar is demanding more and more of what was once considered God’s matter, and pastors have been bullied and intimidated enough.”

The Political Pulpit, NYT, 30.9.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/business/
flouting-the-law-pastors-will-take-on-politics.html

Up From the Ashes,

a Symbol That Hate Does Not Win

September 25, 2011
The New York Times
By DAN BARRY

SPRINGFIELD, Mass.

In the hours after the 2008 election of the country’s first African-American president, three white men crept up to a predominantly African-American church being built here in Springfield, blessed it corruptly with gasoline — and faded into the fresh November night.

Soon the church’s pastor, Bishop Bryant Robinson Jr., was at the crime scene’s flickering edge, weary, saddened. Moments before, he had been anticipating a new chapter in American history, and now here was one page, stuck. He didn’t need an investigation to tell him this was a racist act of arson. He is a black man with snow in his hair; he knew.

As he watched the new home for the Macedonia Church of God in Christ burn to the ground, Bishop Robinson imagined only one response: Rebuild.

Now, nearly three years later, that election night’s crisp air of possibility has all but faded in Washington, where the first African-American president, Barack Obama, struggles with grinding wars, a broken economy and spirit-killing partisanship. But here in Springfield, the smoke has lifted to reveal a new, 20,000-square-foot church standing on top of an old crime scene, its sanctuary walls painted the color of a clear blue sky.

Resting in one of its pews the other day, a silver cane by his side, Bishop Robinson, 74, said that this building on Tinkham Road reflects the ever-unfolding American story of race, in Washington, Springfield, everywhere. “The hatred in our country,” he said. “And the goodness in our country.”

The election night burning of a New England church became national news. A “This Land” column shared how the pastor’s father had left segregated Alabama, gathered together a congregation in Springfield, and bought an old downtown church to use as a house of worship; how his eldest son and successor, Bryant, worked for years to raise the money to build a new church on the city’s outskirts; and how, when it burned down, he just knew that racism had fueled the fire.

Now, sitting in a pew, Bishop Robinson referred to another part of family history. How, in Emelle, Ala., on July 4, 1930, his grandfather and uncles found themselves in an argument with a white store owner over a car battery. How that dispute escalated into a violent, hate-filled mob scene that left several dead, white and black, including a pregnant black woman and the bishop’s Uncle Esau — who was lynched.

So, you see, Bishop Robinson just knew.

Two months after the fire, three white men in their 20s were charged with burning down the church to express their rage at the thought of a black president. Two pleaded guilty, and the third was convicted after trial, in a case that The Republican newspaper of Springfield described as a “blot on the whole city.”

“Unfortunately, it was a confirmation of my experiences as an African-American,” Bishop Robinson said, adding: “My faith teaches me to forgive, and I forgive them. But I cannot be accepting of their behavior. I cannot be victimized by hatred. So I have to move forward.”

In moving forward, he and his congregation of a few hundred found outstretched hands. Donations arrived from around the country, while volunteers cleared the debris and carted away the ruined foundation. But the journey had its peaks and valleys.

For example, its leaders applied for federal assistance under the Church Arson Prevention Act of 1996, which was enacted after a spate of house-of-worship burnings. They filled out a checklist that asked, with bureaucratic bluntness, what the arson had destroyed:

Sanctuary (yes). Choir seating (yes). Fellowship hall (yes). Pastor’s office (yes).

The Macedonia church eventually won the very last government loan guarantee available under the law, which was good. But it had trouble securing a loan for the government to back, which was bad.

That is, until Gov. Deval Patrick addressed the Urban League of Springfield in February 2010. He explained that the church had just learned that day that its bank was not inclined to provide a vital construction loan, even though the church had already paid off the loan related to its first attempt at a new home.

“I know that in this audience tonight are people who care about Macedonia,” Mr. Patrick had said. “Are people who understand we need this church to rise as a symbol that hate doesn’t win. And I know that there are people here who are in the finance field or know people who are, who can rally to help this very, very worthy cause.”

Soon the church had the $1.8 million bank loan it needed. And construction began in earnest.

Along the way, a group called the National Coalition for Burned Churches offered rotating teams of volunteers. Here came some Catholics from suburban Chicago. Here came some Methodists and Jews from Northern California. Here came some students from Harvard, and some Congregationalists from the town of Millbury.

A few of these volunteers left behind handwritten messages on the walls concealed by the church hallway’s dropped ceiling — a form of spiritual graffiti, you might say. “His love endures forever.” “May God dwell in this house forever.”

There is still work to do; the landscaping, for example, will have to wait until spring. And the need to pay for everything remains; the church, Bishop Robinson admits, is in perpetual fund-raising mode. No matter: what has risen is a large, simple structure of wonder.

A sanctuary — yes — with 60 wooden pews purchased from a North Carolina business called Affordable Church Furniture. Choir seating — yes — with many of the chairs donated by a Lutheran church. A fellowship hall — yes — with more than enough room for wedding receptions and funeral repasts.

And — yes— a pastor’s office, on the very spot where gasoline was poured on that hopeful, horrible November night. “The guys came from those woods,” Bradford Martin Jr., the church’s indefatigable lawyer, said as he led a tour through the building. “They busted in here. They splashed it on the outside and they splashed it on the inside.”

On Saturday’s misty morning, members of the Macedonia congregation gathered in their new home for a rousing dedication. Dressed in their finest, they prayed and sang and swayed.

Here was the governor of Massachusetts, and the mayor of Springfield, and a police officer who worked on the arson investigation, and, all the way from California, Charles E. Blake Sr., the presiding bishop and chief apostle of the Church of God in Christ.

And here, of course, was Bishop Robinson, steadied by his cane and giving thanks for this celebration that would not, could not, be denied.

Up From the Ashes, a Symbol That Hate Does Not Win,
NYT, 25.9.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/us/
church-rebuilds-after-2008-election-night-arson.html

After Smoke, Soot and Water,

a Great Church Is Cleansed

November 30, 2008
The New York Times
By DAVID W. DUNLAP

The Very Rev. James A. Kowalski has been dean of the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine for nearly seven years. In all that time, he has never heard its great organ played during a worship service.

On Sunday, he will finally have his chance.

So will countless congregants and visitors as the Episcopal cathedral is formally rededicated. Everyone is invited to the 11 a.m. service, though the cathedral advises the public to arrive at least an hour early to claim passes for unreserved seats. At least 3,000 people are expected to attend.

The rededication signifies the return of the whole cathedral — all 601 feet of it — to useful life.

Since a fire on Dec. 18, 2001, one part of the cathedral after another has been closed for cleaning, refurbishing and restoration. Now, from the bronze doors on the west front to the stained-glass windows in the easternmost chapel, the cathedral seems to have shed not only the mantle of destructive smoke, soot and water stains (for the most part), but also the general dulling brought on by more than a century of hard use.

The rehabilitation was financed by a $41.5 million settlement of the cathedral’s insurance claim with the Church Insurance Companies, an Episcopal organization. Stephen Facey, the executive vice president of the cathedral, said scaffolding and cleaning accounted for about 50 percent of the cost.

The fire broke out in the unfinished north transept, which housed a gift shop. Some of the damage elsewhere in the cathedral occurred in the interest of protecting artistic treasures. For instance, to avoid the need to ventilate the fire by breaking stained-glass windows, firefighters drew smoke through the baptistry, which adjoins the north transept.

“This was black — it acted like a chimney,” Mr. Facey said as he walked through the octagonal baptistry this month. One must take him at his word, because the room is now a near riot of color, with a frieze of shields splashed in vibrant greens, oranges, reds and blues.

It does not seem unreasonable to think that the cathedral has not looked this good since it was first dedicated, on Nov. 30, 1941, after the nave was completed. As 10,000 people watched, immense gray curtains parted at the east end of the nave, permitting a view all the way to the apse.

“The entire length of this building, America’s greatest cathedral, the largest Gothic cathedral in the world, now stands open for the worship of God and for the blessing and inspiration of men,” Bishop William T. Manning declared in his sermon that day. He added that he hoped the towers, the crossing and the north transept might be finished while he was still bishop.

But that aspiration ended with World War II, which Bishop Manning foreshadowed in his sermon as he acknowledged that the cathedral was rising at a time “when we see in this world an outbreak of almost incredible evil, a return to sheer barbarism and to unbelievable cruelties.”

Seven days later came the news from Pearl Harbor.

After Smoke, Soot and Water, a Great Church Is Cleansed, NYT,
30.11.2008,
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/
nyregion/30cathedral.html

Bad Times

Draw Bigger Crowds to Churches

December 14, 2008

The New York Times

By PAUL VITELLO

The sudden crush of worshipers packing the small evangelical Shelter Rock Church in Manhasset, N.Y. — a Long Island hamlet of yacht clubs and hedge fund managers — forced the pastor to set up an overflow room with closed-circuit TV and 100 folding chairs, which have been filled for six Sundays straight.

In Seattle, the Mars Hill Church, one of the fastest-growing evangelical churches in the country, grew to 7,000 members this fall, up 1,000 in a year. At the Life Christian Church in West Orange, N.J., prayer requests have doubled — almost all of them aimed at getting or keeping jobs.

Like evangelical churches around the country, the three churches have enjoyed steady growth over the last decade. But since September, pastors nationwide say they have seen such a burst of new interest that they find themselves contending with powerful conflicting emotions — deep empathy and quiet excitement — as they re-encounter an old piece of religious lore:

Bad times are good for evangelical churches.

“It’s a wonderful time, a great evangelistic opportunity for us,” said the Rev. A. R. Bernard, founder and senior pastor of the Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn, New York’s largest evangelical congregation, where regulars are arriving earlier to get a seat. “When people are shaken to the core, it can open doors.”

Nationwide, congregations large and small are presenting programs of practical advice for people in fiscal straits — from a homegrown series on “Financial Peace” at a Midtown Manhattan church called the Journey, to the “Good Sense” program developed at the 20,000-member Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill., and now offered at churches all over the country.

Many ministers have for the moment jettisoned standard sermons on marriage and the Beatitudes to preach instead about the theological meaning of the downturn.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses, who moved much of their door-to-door evangelizing to the night shift 10 years ago because so few people were home during the day, returned to daylight witnessing this year. “People are out of work, and they are answering the door,” said a spokesman, J. R. Brown.

Mr. Bernard plans to start 100 prayer groups next year, using a model conceived by the megachurch pastor Rick Warren, to “foster spiritual dialogue in these times” in small gatherings around the city.

A recent spot check of some large Roman Catholic parishes and mainline Protestant churches around the nation indicated attendance increases there, too. But they were nowhere near as striking as those reported by congregations describing themselves as evangelical, a term generally applied to churches that stress the literal authority of Scripture and the importance of personal conversion, or being “born again.”

Part of the evangelicals’ new excitement is rooted in a communal belief that the big Christian revivals of the 19th century, known as the second and third Great Awakenings, were touched off by economic panics. Historians of religion do not buy it, but the notion “has always lived in the lore of evangelism,” said Tony Carnes, a sociologist who studies religion.

A study last year may lend some credence to the legend. In “Praying for Recession: The Business Cycle and Protestant Religiosity in the United States,” David Beckworth, an assistant professor of economics at Texas State University, looked at long-established trend lines showing the growth of evangelical congregations and the decline of mainline churches and found a more telling detail: During each recession cycle between 1968 and 2004, the rate of growth in evangelical churches jumped by 50 percent. By comparison, mainline Protestant churches continued their decline during recessions, though a bit more slowly.

The little-noticed study began receiving attention from some preachers in September, when the stock market began its free fall. With the swelling attendance they were seeing, and a sense that worldwide calamities come along only once in an evangelist’s lifetime, the study has encouraged some to think big.

“I found it very exciting, and I called up that fellow to tell him so,” said the Rev. Don MacKintosh, a Seventh Day Adventist televangelist in California who contacted Dr. Beckworth a few weeks ago after hearing word of his paper from another preacher. “We need to leverage this moment, because every Christian revival in this country’s history has come off a period of rampant greed and fear. That’s what we’re in today — the time of fear and greed.”

Frank O’Neill, 54, a manager who lost his job at Morgan Stanley this year, said the “humbling experience” of unemployment made him cast about for a more personal relationship with God than he was able to find in the Catholicism of his youth. In joining the Shelter Rock Church on Long Island, he said, he found a deeper sense of “God’s authority over everything — I feel him walking with me.”

The sense of historic moment is underscored especially for evangelicals in New York who celebrated the 150th anniversary last year of the Fulton Street Prayer Revival, one of the major religious resurgences in America. Also known as the Businessmen’s Revival, it started during the Panic of 1857 with a noon prayer meeting among traders and financiers in Manhattan’s financial district.

Over the next few years, it led to tens of thousands of conversions in the United States, and inspired the volunteerism movement behind the founding of the Salvation Army, said the Rev. McKenzie Pier, president of the New York City Leadership Center, an evangelical pastors’ group that marked the anniversary with a three-day conference at the Hilton New York. “The conditions of the Businessmen’s Revival bear great similarities to what’s going on today,” he said. “People are losing a lot of money.”

But why the evangelical churches seem to thrive especially in hard times is a Rorschach test of perspective.

For some evangelicals, the answer is obvious. ”We have the greatest product on earth,” said the Rev. Steve Tomlinson, senior pastor of the Shelter Rock Church.

Dr. Beckworth, a macroeconomist, posited another theory: though expanding demographically since becoming the nation’s largest religious group in the 1990s, evangelicals as a whole still tend to be less affluent than members of mainline churches, and therefore depend on their church communities more during tough times, for material as well as spiritual support. In good times, he said, they are more likely to work on Sundays, which may explain a slower rate of growth among evangelical churches in nonrecession years.

Msgr. Thomas McSweeney, who writes columns for Catholic publications and appears on MSNBC as a religion consultant, said the growth is fed by evangelicals’ flexibility: “Their tradition allows them to do things from the pulpit we don’t do — like ‘Hey! I need somebody to take Mrs. McSweeney to the doctor on Tuesday,’ or ‘We need volunteers at the soup kitchen tomorrow.’ ”

In a cascading financial crisis, he said, a pastor can discard a sermon prescribed by the liturgical calendar and directly address the anxiety in the air. “I know a lot of you are feeling pain today,” he said, as if speaking from the pulpit. “And we’re going to do something about that.”

But a recession also means fewer dollars in the collection basket.

Few evangelical churches have endowments to compare with the older mainline Protestant congregations.

“We are at the front end of a $10 million building program,” said the Rev. Terry Smith, pastor of the Life Christian Church in West Orange, N.J. “Am I worried about that? Yes. But right now, I’m more worried about my congregation.” A husband and wife, he said, were both fired the same day from Goldman Sachs; another man inherited the workload of four co-workers who were let go, and expects to be the next to leave. “Having the conversations I’m having,” Mr. Smith said, “it’s hard to think about anything else.”

At the Shelter Rock Church, many newcomers have been invited by members who knew they had recently lost jobs. On a recent Sunday, new faces included a hedge fund manager and an investment banker, both laid off, who were friends of Steve Leondis, a cheerful business executive who has been a church member for four years. The two newcomers, both Catholics, declined to be interviewed, but Mr. Leondis said they agreed to attend Shelter Rock to hear Mr. Tomlinson’s sermon series, “Faith in Unstable Times.”

“They wanted something that pertained to them,” he said, “some comfort that pertained to their situations.”

Mr. Tomlinson and his staff in Manhasset and at a satellite church in nearby Syosset have recently discussed hiring an executive pastor to take over administrative work, so they can spend more time pastoring.

“There are a lot of walking wounded in this town,” he said.