The Harlem First Ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints found its home at 128th Street and Lenox Avenue. (Photo by Ali Leskowitz)

A bulletin board hanging outside the bishop’s office of the Harlem First Ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints displays pictures of congregation members — a sea of various ethnicities and backgrounds. Church member Ned Gardner, the former president of the ward’s Elders Quorum, matches the smiling faces to countries of origin. “Honduras, the West Indies, she’s from Iran, Panama, Brazil, Pakistan,” he says, pointing to each picture.

Bishop Jay Salmon — who began his tenure about three months ago and has been a member of the ward, the name for a large congregation, for two years — explains that the Harlem ward prides itself on the diverse makeup of its congregation. “We’re one of the most diverse wards in Manhattan because of the local people born and bred in Harlem,” Salmon says. “Other congregations are full of interns or students, where our ward is much more local.” Church members say that individuals, like students, stay in a ward only temporarily while they are in school. Their congregation feels like more of a long-term community.

About 160 people attend services at the Harlem First Ward on a weekly basis, compared with the 50 to 75 individuals who attended before the ward moved to its present home on Lenox Avenue in 2005. Eighteen baptisms have been performed since January.

Joseph Smith started the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in New York in 1830, but the movement soon moved West and is based in Utah. Mormons are not a natural fit in Harlem, where churches that adhere to African-American culture dominate most blocks. “There was resistance to the church having a presence in Harlem,” Gardner says. “It’s seen as this very white religion.”

Yet, the areas of Harlem the ward covers are about 60 percent black and 20 percent Hispanic, and the congregation reflects the area’s demographics. “The church can be homogenous in different areas,” Gardner says. “In the West, families are similar-seeming. Here you’ve got people from every walk of life.”

Salmon notes that this variety might be shifting. “I think with the gentrification happening in Harlem, we’re seeing a slight influx of Caucasians,” he says.

The ward works to keep close ties with the neighborhood. “The intention is to come into the community and impact it in a good way,” Gardner says. When its new building opened, the ward held an open house and invited Harlem choirs to sing gospel music. “We were trying to sway; I looked awful,” Gardner says. Tourists often come to the church expecting the gospel music for which Harlem is famous and find themselves confused when they hear what Gardner refers to as the church’s “very Protestant sound.”

Harlem residents seem to have gotten used to the church’s presence, but nevertheless question how much it fits in the neighborhood. “I thought it was kind of weird when they opened,” says Jose Lopez. “They don’t really bother anyone, but it doesn’t make too much sense.”

The church itself has a tense history with African-Americans; members of African descent were restricted from participating in certain crucial religious aspects, such as holding priesthood and achieving the highest level of salvation, until 1978.

Despite perhaps clashing with Harlem’s culture, the ward tries to assimilate. The church holds a Christmas drive to collect and donate toys and also opens its indoor basketball court on Thursday nights for anyone to play. “We like to be considered another church in Harlem that provides open doors to anybody and everybody,” Salmon says. Every August, the ward sets up a genealogy booth during Harlem Week where volunteers work with individuals — regardless of church affiliation — to find ancestral history. Mormons emphasize genealogy in their teachings, so the booth allows the ward to extend its expertise into the greater community.

Being in Harlem even drove the ward to adopt what many members cite as one of their favorite traditions. New members stand up at the end of services and introduce themselves, after which the entire congregation verbally welcomes them. Influences such as Bishop Edwin Pabón, who grew up in Harlem and served for five years before Salmon was called, bring a more colloquial flair to worship.

However, when the church moved from its windowless, overcrowded home around the corner to its current location, many community members opposed the shift. Squatters in the derelict building the church bought and tore down protested in front of the new structure with sandwich boards claiming they had been forced out. “That just stopped after a while,” Gardner says.

Protesters drew graffiti on the facade and at one point attempted to throw a garbage can through the front doors. An individual from a rotating corps of the congregation now serves as a security guard throughout services, and security cameras were installed outside the building. Members say such incidents have ceased as the community has accepted the church.

As the newest leader of the church, Salmon simply hopes to continue what he considers the proud legacy already established at the Harlem location. “I think we’ve really improved the image here as a whole,” Salmon says. “People are happy that the building is there. It adds a legitimacy to that corner.”

Tykym Stallings, youth pastor at Greater Hood Memorial AME Zion, leading sparsely-attended services at the Hip-hop Church. (Photo by Paul Smith)

Harlem’s Hip-Hop Church by Hellopaulsmith

Two churchgoers wait outside Greater Hood Memorial AME Zion, dressed casually in jeans and sneakers. Youth Pastor Tykym Stallings arrives, pushing a stroller. He unlocks the doors and ushers them in to the church with red carpets, organ pipes and crucifix-shaped windows.

“I gotta do a soundcheck,” Stallings mumbles. He plugs his iPod into a speaker and begins scratching behind a set of turntables. He turns up the bass to cochlea-splitting levels. He closes his eyes and nods his head. This is Harlem’s hip-hop church.

“Tonight we present Jesus Christ in an unorthodox way; we like to say uncensored here,” says Stallings, 24. Since December 2004, the weekly Thursday evening service in the church on West 146^th Street has preached the Gospel over a grinding hip-hop beat and chanted, “Amen. Word. That’s what’s up,” after prayers.

Pioneering 80’s rapper Kurtis Blow, ordained a reverend in 2009, used to lead the service until 2008, attracting crowds from Harlem and overseas. The congregation christened it lyrical theology and inspired a generation of urban Gospel worship from East Coast to the West Coast.

But on this evening, attendance is sluggish. Worship begins in 10 minutes, and only 18 people occupy the benches. No one sits near the front. The congregation looks tentative and clutch New York City guidebooks and maps.

“There are no locals here,” observes Caroline Le Moign, 25, on vacation from Paris, “only tourists.” She read about the church in a Lonely Planet travel guide, which recommended the hip-hop service as a “truly unique experience.”

Stallings starts rapping, bellowing into a faulty microphone, which cuts in and out. With his encouragement, the audience timidly claps along. A dozen more people trickle in from a Bronx rehabilitation program. Stallings’s wife, Juliette, assumes DJ duties, allowing him to bound about the altar, as if he were on stage.

The couple performs D.R.I.V.E., from his debut E.P., which stands for Doing Right In a Violent Environment. Once the music stops, they sing the verses acapella. Then Juliette Stallings, 21, gives her testimony, an account of finding God after a youth traumatized by sexual abuse. Now the service feels less like a concert and more like church. The tourists leave at 8 p.m., while a select few, mainly the Stallings family and friends, stay longer.

“I was hoping there’d be more people and the crowd would be cheering,” Le Moign says outside, lighting up a cigarette. “It was fun, though. The pastor was very energetic.”

It’s the same the following week, with a predominately international congregation from Italy and Switzerland. Only two people are from Harlem: Deborah Coleman-Mason, and her teenage daughter Juanita Watkins, lifelong members of the church. “My friends usually come, but some are away at school right now,” says Watkins.

Reflecting on the congregation, Juliette Stallings says: “We get a lot of tourists. It’s really hard for some of them to understand, so a lot of the time they just come for entertainment. Sometimes it’s frustrating, like, ‘Why don’t you guys understand what I’m saying? This is good news,’ but if God wants them to hear it, they’ll hear it.”

Lamar “Noah” Haney, 25, who raps at services, began attending the church as a teenager.

“I was here for the first hip-hop services,” he recalls. “It was amazing: a whole lot of people in the building. Kurits Blow was here. It was a new chapter; a ministry being born within Greater Hood Memorial.”

Back when the hip-hop church was a novelty, attracting MTV camera crews, attendance could exceed the building’s 300-person capacity and spill into standing room only.

“Lately we’ve been losing locals,” says Juliette Stallings. “In retrospect, people were coming for Kurtis, rather than to hear the word.”

Harlem-born Blow enjoyed a string of hits in the 1980’s, and was the first rapper to have a gold-certified record, with “The Breaks.” In 2008, he moved to California, where his wife and sons live. He leads a monthly hip-hop service in L.A., but returns to Greater Hood “every couple of months.” Speaking on the phone, he compares his work to evangelism.

“God gave the Apostles this popularity and this wisdom and he sent them out into barren churches, so when the apostles come to town, everyone comes to church,” says Blow. “And while the Apostle is there, he is building up the church and it is growing and growing and then he leaves and goes on to the next.”

Blow is reluctant to accept responsibility for the service’s dwindling audience. Instead, he cites “changes to the executive,” with the director of music leaving to start his own Baptist church. He also points out that different programs stopped coming, and that it isn’t promoted locally. “The church itself has hundreds of members and they have at least 20-30 kids who should be there every week,” he says.

To target the youth, Juliette Stallings is contemplating moving the service to Friday evenings. Noah Haney suggests evangelizing on the street, while acknowledging they “can never build it back up to where it used to be.”

While money is a problem, according to Tykym Stallings, it’s no less of an issue now than it was in the church’s heyday, in 2005. The influx of tourists, in place of the neighborhood, doesn’t faze him either.

“Our attendance fluctuates,” he shrugs. “Everybody comes for a reason. We’ll minister to them, whether there’s 50 or 500 or 5. If ever we don’t have room, we’ll minister outside.”

For now, he’ll continue to preach his message with zeal and a set of turntables.

A woman passes the Church of Scientology in Harlem (Photo by Chris Le)

The Church of Scientology in Harlem doesn’t quite look like a church—yet. Enter and you see desks, posters and bookshelves lined with the writings of L. Ron Hubbard, the church’s founder: “The Way to Happiness,” “Knowing Who to Trust,” “The Complete Dianetics How-To Kit” (also available in Spanish). On the wall hangs a picture of soul singer Isaac Hayes, “Lifetime Member.”

The church moved into this location on Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard in March. But these are only temporary quarters, says the church’s minister and executive director Phyllis Mack; the church plans to move into a more luxurious building it calls the Ideal Org.

In 2007, the church purchased buildings 220-232 on East 125^th Street, previously unoccupied structures totaling 12,615 square feet, according to the New York City Office of Environmental Remediation.

The Ideal Org will be a beacon, Mack says, hosting Sunday services, social events and community programs like drug counseling and student tutoring. The programs will be open to non-Scientologists and showcase the church’s “technology,” a frequently-used term to describe Hubbard’s self-help techniques.

Also available at the Ideal Org: auditing courses, one-on-one sessions intended to unearth and expunge negative memories. The results, Scientologists believe, allow for maximum personal potential. “You’re freer to be you,” Mack says.

It remains unclear when the facilities will open; director of special affairs Verlene Cheeseboro says contracts and renovation permits are still needed. To date, the buildings remain untouched.

In the meantime, the church hopes to grow from its smaller location on Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, where five to 20 people attend services most Sundays, Mack says. “We get a lot of curious people,” she says. “We give them information and some come back to find out more.”

Terrance Rushing, a 28-year-old Army veteran, is among those who came back. While visiting his sister in the hospital, Rushing filled out the Scientology personality test (which includes questions like “Are you a slow eater?” “Do some noises set your teeth on edge?” “Does life seem vague and unreal to you?”). The results amazed him.

“They were so accurate and so detailed in all the troubled areas of my life,” he says. “I just became intrigued.” Rushing has been involved with the church for two months.

No less curious is 22-year-old James Jones, wandering outside the church’s storefront. “I noticed it about four months ago,” he says. “There was a crowd in front, even on a weekday.” But he acknowledges, “I never take the time to go in and sit down.”

This curiosity, Cheeseboro says, is common among African-Americans and has helped expand Scientology. “Black people are more open, very spiritual,” she explains. “Scientology just fits right into them.”

Integration will be key for the church, which is trying to grow in a predominantly Christian area, three blocks from the renowned Abyssinian Baptist Church. Many Scientologists are converts — Cheeseboro, a Harlem native, is a former Baptist, and Rushing’s family is predominantly Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Scientology has operated under a cloud of controversy for years. One source of contention is its reported policy of “disconnection,” in which members separate themselves from nonbelievers, including family and friends. The church released a statement in 2008 denying all claims of disconnection. But Jenna Miscavige Hill, niece of current Scientology chairman David Miscavige, disputed that. Born into the church, Miscavige Hill was denied access to her parents for years when they defected and she remained; the church prohibited her from even answering the phone, she claimed in an open letter to the church that same year.

The Harlem Church of Scientology remains steadfast in its denial of disconnection. “We change nobody’s religion,” Mack insists. “In fact, we encourage them to stay wherever they are.”

“Not true,” says Rev. Isaac B. Graham of Macedonia Baptist Church. “I’ve seen them in my building. I’ve witnessed them trying to convince people.” But Graham, while not a proponent of Scientology, acknowledges their right to practice their religion.

The more radical tenets of Scientology go unmentioned at its current Harlem location. Notably missing are any hints of its creation story, in which an alien god named Xenu brought billions of people to Earth and killed them with a hydrogen bomb. Their souls now inhabit the bodies of those living today. Critics call it bad science fiction. Hubbard described it as space opera.

The story remains unknown to many, including members.

“I only heard about it in news interviews saying Tom Cruise was a Scientologist,” Rushing says. “I had no idea what it meant.”

Asked about the story, Cheeseboro bursts into incredulous laughter and claims she never heard such a thing. Mack brushes it off, saying, “We need to get this hearsay out of the way. We need to focus on making a whole community with our commonalities.”

And that’s a theme among its membership: the Harlem Church of Scientology looks to improve the community. That’s why it’s there, Cheeseboro says.

“Scientology gives people of the community the chance to rise up,” says Cheeseboro. “It empowers my people through knowledge.”

“Harlem is my heart,” she adds. “Harlem is my love. That’s why I wanted a church in Harlem.”

Facade of landmarked St. Cecilia's Church (Photo by Elizabeth Harball)

The Rev. Peter Mushi stands outside Saint Cecilia’s Catholic church in East Harlem after Sunday mass, surrounded by a diverse crowd. The priest, who seems to know each churchgoer by name, laughs with elderly women, asks children about their schoolwork and places his hands on those who ask for a special blessing. He congratulates people on birthdays and anniversaries. Although his first language is Chaga, spoken in his native Tanzania, Mushi easily switches between English and Spanish when speaking with his parishioners.

Saint Cecilia’s has more than 750 members, including Dominicans, Ecuadorians, Mexicans, Filipinos and African-Americans. Throughout its 138-year history, it has aided East Harlem’s immigrants. Today, it helps operate a food pantry, hosts Narcotics Anonymous meetings and supports the Momentum Project, providing meals for people with HIV/AIDS.

But the church is in desperate need of repair. Its ceiling and walls are dotted with patches and re-patches. Water has crept down into the sanctuary and damaged a mural. Outside, the gutters are rusted and leaky, and the asphalt roof, installed over the church’s original tin roof, has cracked and eroded. The church’s intricate exterior masonry, including a beautiful terra-cotta relief panel of Saint Cecilia playing an organ, has weathered and weeds have begun to grow in the crevasses.

Repairs will be complicated and expensive. “It has not been maintained for a while,” says Mushi. “It cries for help.”

Mushi has been campaigning to raise money for this project since he arrived at the parish two years ago. He points out that the two historic buildings flanking the church, the Julia del Burgos Latin Cultural Center and Cristo Rey High School, have already been restored. He’s determined to “complete” the block.

Built in 1887, the church is a New York City Landmark and is also listed on the U.S. National Historic Register of Historic Places. The building was designed by Napoleon LeBrun and Sons, which also designed the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower, a midtown landmark. Built by Irish immigrants, its construction was overseen by the Rev. Michael J. Phelan, known as “the Builder of Churches.”

Mushi explains that the original roof was made of tin, which is no longer available. It will be replaced by a tinted copper material, which will cost about $1.2 million, a daunting figure for a church more focused on serving residents rather than seeking their donations.

According to the New York City Department of City Planning and the 2000 U.S. Census, 38 percent of East Harlem residents live below the poverty level. Saint Cecilia’s neighbors include several housing projects and its Sunday collection never exceeds $4,000, barely enough to cover maintenance costs, Mushi explains. In fact, Saint Cecilia’s recently reduced its food pantry program due to budget cuts by Catholic Charities.

Despite such financial challenges, Mushi and church members agree that restoration should be a priority.

“We are worried that the roof is going to fall,” says parishioner Victor Alicea. “Someday, somebody will get hurt.”

An April fundraiser raised $18,000, only enough to pay for temporary roof patches. Instead of asking parishioners for more money, Mushi has focused on getting grants.

He recruited grant writer Anne* Saxon-Hersh, who was impressed by the church’s historical and cultural role and describes it as “a very important cog in the wheel” of East Harlem. Noting the local trend towards gentrification, Saxon-Hersh hopes that a restored St. Cecilia’s will become the heart of the El Barrio Historic District.

“East Harlem is going up, not down,” she says, “but will Saint Cecilia’s be a part of that?”

Last year, Saxon-Hersh and Mushi succeeded in winning three major grants. The largest, from the New York State Environmental Protection Fund, was for $200,000. Two others, totaling $80,000, came from the New York Landmarks Conservancy.

Ann Friedman, who directs the Conservancy’s Sacred Sites Program, was the first to urge Mushi and the Archdiocese to replace the roof with tinted copper rather than asphalt, in order to preserve the church’s Romanesque Revival architectural style. She explained via email that the Conservancy grant aims “to provide an incentive for a high level of restoration, by funding the difference in cost between routine repair and state-of-the-art restoration.”

However, the state grant is a matching grant; to receive the $200,000, the church must first raise that amount from within its community. And to begin repairs next summer, Saint Cecilia’s must somehow come up with the money by May. “This is the biggest challenge,” says Mushi.

Trying to think creatively, Mushi plans to collect cell phones and printer cartridges to re-sell to a recycling center. If he collects 75,000 phones, he will raise $225, 000 – more than enough to secure the grant. He has mobilized young parishoners, encouraging them to use social networking to spread the word. He also sought help from other New York City churches, such as Saint Phillip and Saint James in the Bronx.

Collecting that many phones and cartridges will be difficult, he admits, but he is determined to accomplish his goals.

“You know, problems make you think,” he says, smiling.

*In the original article, Anne Saxon-Hersh’s name was misspelled as Ann Saxon-Hersh.

Rescue Baptist Church, like other small Harlem churches, is struggling with a decreasing congregation (Photo by Paula Rogo).

“All the ground is sinking sand,” Mother Francine Knight sings along with the congregation in the basement of Rescue Baptist Church. 

She’s wearing a smart black skirt and jacket, wisps of her gray hair – she’s 82 — escaping from under her wool cap. She stands at a long table with seven fellow parishioners, each with similarly gray hair and life-weathered skin. 

They usually hold services in the small red-carpeted space upstairs, with its five-row choir section and old wooden piano behind the pulpit. A large portrait of the founder, Pastor Frank Nunn, gazes over the 10 pews. But on this particular Sunday, the gas has run out in the heater, forcing the 11 a.m. service into the warmer basement. In the adjacent kitchen, pots of water boil on the stove to help heat the room. 

“All the ground is sinking sand,” Francis repeats as the hymn continues. 

This brownstone church on West 123rd Street between Adam Clayton Powell and Frederick Douglass Boulevards, a modest space with a shrinking congregation, faces problems found in many small Harlem churches. In the last few years, Harlem churches have seen a steady decrease in membership, resulting in fewer houses of worship in a neighborhood once said to have “a bar on every corner and a church on every block.” 

“Honey, you ain’t seen nothing,” Knight says after the service. “When I came here in 1944, churches were in storefronts. They were next to bars. There was a church in every corner.” 

“Harlem is a melting pot socially and culturally,” says Dr. Obery Hendricks, explaining Harlem’s historically large numbers of churches. Hendricks is a visiting scholar at the Institute for Research in African American Studies and the Department of Religion at Columbia University. 

“Some of these churches were ethnically oriented,” he says. “Some people were Caribbean, others were African; they were the same denomination with a different cultural setting.” The Presbyterian Church of Ghana still sits on the same block as Rescue Baptist, as do two other churches 

But others have disappeared. In the last three years, Harlem has seen the closing of Our Lady Queen of Angel Church, Greater Calvary Baptist Church and the Little Flower Baptist Church on Frederick Douglass Boulevard. On Nov. 2, 76-year-old Mount Moriah Baptist Church at 2050 Fifth Avenue was seized after a foreclosure auction last summer. “Mount Moriah Baptist Church is no longer meeting at this location,” reads a sign taped to the door. A “building available” ad covers the church’s welcome sign. 

“Most of these smaller churches close because of rent and low membership,” says Deacon Albert Baldwin, 81, of Rescue Baptist. “We don’t have that problem because we own the space.” 

Rescue Baptist, which celebrated its 86th anniversary in October, bought its current building in 1967, when it moved from 119th Street and Fifth Avenue; it also bought the brownstone next door, which it rents out to help pay the bills. 

But many smaller churches rent their spaces and depend on congregants’ donations to pay the rent, Deacon Baldwin adds. This means membership directly affects their financial stability. 

“We are keeping our heads above water with offering and the rent,” Deacon Baldwin said. “But the tenant just moved out, so we’ve lost that.” 

Mary Baldwin, 78, Deacon Baldwin’s wife recalls the 80s as a great decade for the church. “We had good membership then,” she said. “Sometimes there were so many people, we had to bring chairs from the basement to seat everyone.” 

But to Sister Corine Corbett, head of church finances for years, the 60s represented the church’s peak. “With collection, we would make on average $400 and something on a Sunday,” she remembered. 

“That’s if people gave a maximum of $15,” Knight chimed in. 

“But today we get about $235,” Corbett continued. “Sometimes we do $200. There’s not that many of us.” 

With such decreased income, the church is unable to pay Pastor Anthony Harris a salary. “We don’t have funds,” he says. “We have bills.” Instead, he receives a “love offering” each Sunday, Knight explains: money from a tray passed around during the service along with the church’s collection tray. Harris has been forced to work as a sales associate at Yankee Stadium to bolster his income. In the off-season, he occasionally works as a parking attendant. 

He receives no benefits “Small churches don’t have insurance,” he says. “We can’t afford stuff like that.” 

What would happen if Rescue Baptist didn’t own its building? Deacon Baldwin looks over his eyeglasses. “You don’t need me to say it, do you?” 

 

After the service, Corbett hands out pieces of cake wrapped in foil to each attending member, her ritual each Sunday. Upstairs, the now-heated main room waits to be used by another church, which pays to use the space while its own undergoes renovations. 

Most of the Rescue Baptist’s members still cluster around the table in the basement, including Corbett, Knight, Deacon Baldwin and his wife. 

“They are the four pillars of Rescue [Baptist],” Harris calls them. “They were there to elect Pastor Tyne, and most of them are in their 80s.” Harry J. Tynes was the pastor before Harris; he served for 45 years. Harris was Tynes’ assistant pastor for 12 years, until Tynes’ death just over a year ago. 

On the wall, laminated photographs of church members, apparently taken in the late 70s to the 80s, show a different Rescue Baptist Church. Women are fashionably dressed in their Sunday best, big hats displayed peacock-like for all to see. Young men, women and children — age groups starkly missing at today’s service — are in evidence. The church choir, in full regalia, smiles at the camera. 

“We had 25 or 35 in the choir,” Corbett says. 

“I had to stop singing in the choir at one point because there were too many of us, “ Deacon Baldwin laughs. 

Now, looking over the photos, they point out the people they remember. “She’s gone,” Corbett says pointing at one woman. “She passed.” 

It becomes a common refrain. “He’s gone. She’s gone. She’s in a nursing home. She passed.” 

“This woman played the piano until she died,” Corbett says pointing at a woman with her hair hidden under a blue head wrap. 

“She was 92 years old,” Knight adds. 

“She used to call on me to sing louder,” Corbett remembers, laughing. 

Deacon Baldwin met his wife Mary in the church choir. Both from Georgia, married for 62 years, they are, at 78 and 81, the congregation’s oldest members. “They are the pillars that are still here,” says the Rev. Henrietta Shepard, assistant to the pastor. 

The church has always played an important role in African American history and culture. 

“Historically, churches were in many ways the only wholly-owned black institution,” Hendricks says. “It was the only place that black people could be somebody. Where you could wear a shirt and tie.” 

Today, Hendricks believes, other institutions fulfill the church’s role . “It comes from the rise of the black middle class,” he says. “It’s to do with financial mobility and economic and social empowerment.” He sees this “rising secularization of African Americans” as a mostly northern, urban phenomenon, less common in the Bible Belt. 

He also blames mega churches for crowding out more traditional congregations. “They start to attract much of the constituents of the smaller churches,” he says. “They are more of an audience than a congregation. These mega churches provide more entertainment and services.” 

Rescue Baptist’s Pastor Anthony Harris points out, however, that even larger churches are facing decline. “The problem is all over. People just don’t go to church.” 

Some have such small numbers that only the pastor, his wife, and perhaps three or four other members remain, says Harris says, who also occasionally preaches in Brooklyn. 

“The younger generation is not into church,” Shepard explained. “And the older members are dying.” 

The announcements read at the end of the service at Rescue Baptist list ailing members; there’s no mention of marriages or new births, evidence of its failure to attract younger members to replace its dying flock. 

“When kids grow up, they move on,” Knight said. “Families used to stay in one place, but it’s not like that anymore.” 

Nor do blue laws, designed to keep businesses closed on Sundays, help fill the pews as they once did, she points out. “Delicatessens were the only places allowed to be open. Now liquor stores are open, and people like to spend their Sundays at the laundromat.” 

Harris’ goal in the next few years is to attract younger and middle-aged people to the church. He believes that communicating with them about contemporary issues, without pressuring them to join, is key. “Someone has to talk to them, he says. “Young people today experience a lot of violence. I want to remove them from a worldly realm and bring them to a spiritual realm.” 

Deacon Baldwin believes that some people just don’t find what they’re looking for at Rescue Baptist. “They want a certain preacher or certain choir,” he says. 

“And mega churches do not ask much of their congregation,” Hendricks observes. “In small churches, that’s where people learned their social etiquette in bonding with those in church. You don’t get that in large churches. It’ll contribute to loosening of social fabric, and could have a harmful impact on the raising of young people.” 

Harlem’s gentrification has also had an impact, he adds. “Those moving in are not replacing those moving out.” 

Congregants at Rescue Baptist, however, refuse to believe that the future of their church is dire. 

“People just don’t’ go to church like they used to,” Corbett says. “But I know it’s going to get better.” 

The sentiment seems universal. “God can do anything but fail,” Knight says. “Do you know how many churches in Harlem have failed? But we are still here.”

Though Chanukah would not officially start for another night, over 600 people turned out to spin dreidels at Yeshiva University Tuesday night. And while dreidels are best known for their starring role in a traditional Chanukah game, on this night they represented a shot at glory.

The crowd of mostly college students, parents and small children packed into the school’s athletic center at 185th Street and Amsterdam in hopes of breaking the Guinness World Record for most dreidels spun simultaneously. “Dreidelpalooza” participants would need to spin more than 541 of the four-sided tops to break the record set in 2005 by congregants at Temple Emanuel in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

A big number, but definitely beatable, said Jason Katz, a Yeshiva junior, as he stood near the bustling registration table. One of two student organizers, Katz said that over 350 people had pre-registered for “Dreidelpalooza,” a number that made him and other organizers “fairly confident we’ll break the record.” Besides, he added, playing dreidel “is just like spinning a top, so it shouldn’t be that complicated.”

Junior Fiona Guedalia, the other lead organizer, explained that she and Katz had planned the event in hopes of raising scholarship money for fellow undergraduates. They’re co-presidents of Students Helping Students, launched three years ago.

“It’s really important for us to raise this money,” Guedalia said, explaining that nearly 80 percent of Yeshiva students receive financial aid. Though Dreidelpalooza was a free event, participants were asked to donate $5 at registration.

Collecting money for scholarships wasn’t the only aim, however. “Our goal is to raise as much as we can, but it’s more about getting the people here and having a great time,” said Guedalia.

The gym grew noisy as more and more people streamed in, armed with brightly colored plastic dreidels and “I Spin for Scholarships” stickers. Though participants would need to spin for just 10 consecutive seconds to break the record, a full 45 minutes before the 7:30 p.m. spin time, the gym was bustling with people playing warm up games.

Many wandered over to the back corner where Eric Pavony, 31, the “Knishioner” and founder of Major League Dreidel, was showing off his signature walled-in dreidel boards, called Spinagogues. “This is where all the spinning, winning, gelt and glory take place,” said Pavony, adding that he and his fellow Major League Dreidel representatives had come to Dreidelpalooza to help Yeshiva students “put their best dreidel forward.”

At least one participant felt that setting the record was a New York imperative. Looking around the crowded gym, Washington Heights community board member Elizabeth Lorris Ritter said, “I myself view this as a matter of hometown civic pride because the current record is held in New Jersey. I mean, what’s up with that?”

Co-organizers Fiona Guedalia and Jason Katz address the crowd shortly before the official spinning began. (Photo by Gianna Palmer)

At 7:30, Katz and Guedalia called for everyone’s attention and asked that people take seats. Soon after, a buzzer sounded for 10 seconds, signaling people to spin their dreidels. When the buzzer stopped, the room erupted in cheers and “We Are the Champions” by Queen blared over the gym speakers.

For now, it appears the record won’t be New Jersey’s much longer. After the spin, organizers frantically counted registration sheets, before announcing the night’s final headcount: 618 spinners.

Though Yeshiva must wait to hear from Guinness World Records before they can call their victory official, the mood was celebratory as spinners headed next door to the after party to eat sufganiyot, a traditional Chanukah jelly donut, and hear a newly-founded campus a capella group, the Y-Studs, sing a Hebrew version of  “Let it Be.”

The facade of North Presbyterian Church on 155th Street. (Photo by Jason Alcorn)

At North Presbyterian, a stately African-American church facing Trinity Cemetery in Washington Heights, two-story stained glass windows and a century-old pipe organ still adorn the sanctuary.

But where a thousand people once worshiped, barely a dozen now gather most Sunday mornings, scattered among the empty wooden pews.

The congregation survived a 2003 motion to dissolve by the city presbytery, the denomination’s regional body. With a new lease on life and a new pastor, the Rev. Christopher Smith, who arrived in 2006, it has set out to cast off the perception that, as Smith says, “This is the church of the mink coats.”

The result is a flurry of initiatives. A group of Ghanaians worships in the sanctuary on Sunday afternoons; a congregation from Long Island holds services in the basement; a Boy Scout troop will be moving in; and long-time tenant Head Start has plans to enroll more preschoolers next year. Tomorrow, the church will open a food pantry. Next month, it’ll double the frequency of its meal program for seniors and the poor.

Responding to increased hunger in Harlem and Washington Heights, North Presbyterian is trying to feed the neighborhood, even as it struggles to keep its own footing.

“We already know what we’re doing, and we’re doing it without money,” says Smith. “Can we expand it?”

The church is fighting against the demographic trends that re-shaped Harlem and Washington Heights over the last six decades. Instead of joining North Presbyterian, worshipers frequent the Baptist church down the block, Roman Catholic churches that offer mass in Spanish, or one of the many evangelical storefronts nearby.

“Elsewhere, a church this small would not still be open,” says Smith.

Yet, North Presbyterian has faced troubles uniquely its own. The most recent upheaval began over a decade ago when the congregation split over a pastor and the presbytery formed an administrative commission to run the church.

By the time two lay leaders traveled to Tremont Presbyterian in the Bronx in 2003 to argue against shuttering the congregation, the church had lost nearly two-thirds of its 82 parishioners.

The leaders won the day, but the congregation did not regain full independence until 2006, when average Sunday attendance had bottomed out at 10 people.

By last year, it had rebounded a bit, drawing 20 worshipers most Sunday mornings. “We slowly got back on our feet,” says Sylvia Hayward, the church treasurer and a member since 1965.

She credits Smith with the revival. He started as just a warm body to fill the Sunday pulpit, while working for the Department of Education during the week. An ordained minister since 1996, Smith had moved from Indiana in 2001 to join the first class of New York City Teaching Fellows.

“If you look at this congregation and you look at what I would’ve set up as a search pattern, we never would have met,” says Smith. He wasn’t looking for a full-time church position, but he fit in almost immediately.

“He started doing good things for the church,” says Hayward. “He listens. He brings good ideas. He’s useful. He gets your attention.”

Smith preached every other week at first.  Asked by the Session, the congregation’s governing body, to take a more permanent role, he agreed.

The changes seemed small at first. Hayward recalls learning to keep meeting minutes, something she had never done. “He shows you the way it should be done,” she says of Smith. “But he let’s you feel like you’re doing it on your own, like it’s your idea.”

After a decade of outside control, Smith says his biggest task was to remind the Session of what they needed to do.

“When finally, at a Session meeting, someone said, ‘I disagree with you,’ I knew we were finally beginning to make it.”

North Presbyterian still faces great financial risks. The church collected less than $15,000 in member contributions last year. Of the six members of the Harlem Council of Presbyterian Churches, it is the smallest.

Years of indifference to the building’s deterioration have left walls streaked with water damage. Plaster crumbles from sanctuary buttresses. Unexpected repairs could mean insolvency.

“We sit on the brink of that all the time,” Smith says.

In recent years, two other small Presbyterian congregations in New York City elected to disband: Woodlawn Heights Presbyterian in the Bronx and Fort Hamilton Presbyterian in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. In each case, a new congregation moved into the church building.

The North Presbyterian administrative commission, which spent nearly $185,000 on capital expenditures in 2000 and 2001, according to the church’s annual reports, mostly exhausted the endowment. Hundreds of thousands more were spent in 2002 and 2003, years for which the church did not report any figures, says Smith.

In 2008, capital expenditures that included critical roof repair totaled $152,868, according to the reports. The city Administration for Children’s Services, which has a long-term lease to operate a Head Start program in the building, is spending $250,000 in federal stimulus money to renovate the kitchen and other common areas.

“The last five years added a good 30 to 40 years to the building,” says sexton Walter George.

Despite such investments, the parts of the building Head Start doesn’t share remain dilapidated. Old wiring needs to be replaced, and the sanctuary carpet is held together with duct tape. And this winter, again, the large church must be heated.

“We spend more on oil than on sextons,” says Smith.

Smith hopes that the renovations will pay off with new opportunities, though. In a city where space is always at a premium, the building remains the church’s most valuable asset.

The food pantry is stocked and ready to open on November 20. (Photo by Jason Alcorn)

On Saturday, trays of baked chicken send the aroma of home-cooked food through the church basement and out onto the sidewalk, where flyers advertise a free meal. It‘s a monthly tradition started 13 Thanksgivings ago.

As recently as 2005, the basement, where a dozen long tables are set, was very nearly unusable. Water rats crowded along exposed piping and the only lights were strung along extension cords, says George, the sexton.

Now, the room is clean and well lit. The first arrivals show up at 11:15 and take a seat.

In the kitchen, volunteer Lois Germain mixes a large bowl of Hawaiian Punch — “original,” she says. “Then we go ahead and add a little love and kindness by putting pineapple juice in it.”

Each week volunteers, not only from North Presbyterian but also from the Ghanaian fellowship and from the neighborhood, run the meal, one tradition that has lasted.  They pay for groceries out of their own pockets.

“The church was supposed to give us a certain amount, but they were always poor so they didn’t,” says one of the meal’s original founders, Mercedes Murphy, about North Presbyterian.

With roughly $10,000 in grants from the presbytery and the national denomination, the program will expand. The church received a city permit to operate weekly, and it sent staff and volunteers to receive training.

“We noticed in the last couple of years there being more need for food,” says Smith. “The idea is now that the church would have something on a weekly basis instead of a monthly basis.”

This Saturday, the church will cut the ribbon on Ethel’s North Pantry, named for the lay leader who helped start the meal but died in September.

While other food pantries operate nearby, they, too, see the need in the community and support North Church’s contribution. “The more the better,” says Jemette Smith, who operates a Tuesday pantry at New Covenant Holiness Church two blocks north.

The shelves are already stacked with boxes of cereal, jars of jelly and peanut butter, pasta, and canned soup.

Archives reveal the names of those buried under the bus depot. (Photo by Marina Kolobova)

The oldest church in Harlem celebrated its 350^th anniversary amid a battle for its original cemetery, buried beneath an MTA bus stop on First Avenue between 126^th and 127^th Streets.

U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel, New York State Assembly candidate Robert Rodriguez, City Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito and Sen. Bill Perkins attended the celebratory service on Sunday Oct. 24, congratulating the Church on its anniversary. A proclamation from the mayor’s office stated that Oct.24 will be known hereafter as Elmendorf Reformed Church Day.

Perkins, who in March held the Senate hearing which kick-started the Church’s campaign to protect its cemetery against further MTA construction work, told The Uptowner that the slaves who built the first road to Harlem left a legacy preserved by Elmendorf. “It is astonishing that a descendant would go back 350 years to reclaim the history of those bodies, those souls, who actually built the place,” said Perkins of Elmendorf’s current pastor, the Rev. Patricia A. Singletary

“This is more than about the church,” Singletary said of the Harlem milestone. “This is about celebrating the village.”

Robed in white at the Sunday service, standing under a big yellow cross, Singletary, who has led the battle to reclaim the 17^th century cemetery, honored members of the African Burial Ground Task Force with certificates for their work.

The Elmendorf cemetery closed for use in the mid-19th century, at which point the white bodies buried there were moved to another location, leaving only African-American remains. The site was built over by the Third Avenue Railway in 1947 before the MTA bus depot arrived, said Hilary Ring, MTA government affairs director in March. The burial ground came to public attention when the MTA announced plans to rebuild the depot on the site for 2015 .

“We would like them to remove it and never build it again,” said task force member Christine Campbell, who wrote “Sweet Spirit,” a play about the burial ground.

This is not the first time that an African burial ground has been discovered in New York City. Workers at Ted Weiss Federal Building at 290 Broadway discovered the remains of 400 people during construction. In 2006, the site was memorialized with a sculpture and now also includes a visitors center.

Surveys and archives, some held locally at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, show the existence of the burial ground on First Avenue, between 126th and 127th Streets. The records list the names and the ethnicity of those buried.

Local parish registers also show that the Elmendorf burial ground was shared by at least three Harlem congregations, said historian and Landmarks Preservation Committee member Christopher Moore, who worked for the preservation of the African-American cemetery downtown.

Several colonial maps leave the size of the burial ground in dispute. The last known written property record from the 19th century logs a burial ground of one-fourth acre underneath the bus depot, said Moore, but he believes that the area it occupied is much larger than the MTA recognizes because of the cemetery’s long duration. It was used for an estimated 200 years.

The MTA declined an interview, but MTA spokeswoman Deirdre Parker said in email that “the precise dimensions of the burial ground are difficult to establish, but historical accounts and early maps indicate that it covered about one-quarter of an acre.”

An MTA investigation will look into the site’s possible archaeological value and the likelihood that remains “have survived the disturbances created by subsequent building on the site, including the construction of the current depot,” wrote Parker.

If there are untouched human bones under the bus depot, they would be buried 25 feet deep after years of burials and landfills, said Moore.

Singletary emphasized that the task force is currently communicating with the MTA in “a collaborative manner to honor the burial ground.”

“We are working to set a date with the task force co-chair for a working session,” wrote Parker, “to share our findings and review the research from the task force and the Elmendorf Church.  Once that is done, the findings will be presented to the State Historical Preservation Office and the Landmark Preservation Committee.”

Church archives have allowed the task force to determine the family lines and some biographical details of people buried between 126^th and 127^th Streets.  The Nichols family, for instance,  belonged to St. Mary’s Church, lost a baby on Sept. 8, 1854 and buried her at Elmendorf’s cemetery.

The Elmendorf Reformed Church was originally known as the Reformed Low Dutch Church of Haarlem. Its first building, at First Avenue and 127^th Street, was connected directly to the burial ground, first used around 1664. In 1658 Governor Peter Stuyvesant planned for a second village in Manhattan, ordering slaves to build a road from Greenwich Village. The Church was organized in August 1660 under a Royal Charter, when Haarlem received its village charter.

“Who is the original MTA?” asked Moore. “The slaves.”

Tourists come to the Trinity Church cemetery and mausoleum in Washington Heights to learn about upper Manhattan’ s past. The 168-year-old burial ground provides the final resting place for many celebrated New Yorkers: John James Audubon, Clement Clarke Moore, Ralph Waldo Ellison, and Jerry Orbach, to name a few.

Community Board 12 Historian James Renner serves as a knowledgeable guide, leading the way past hundreds of tombs that stretch over two city blocks.

Renner led a group of sightseers through the maze of graves on Sunday and allowed The Uptowner to tag along.

Another cemetery and mausoleum tour is scheduled for late December. Renner’s collection of upper Manhattan research can be found here.

Imam Shamsi Ali on a workday, clean shaven and wearing a suit. (Photo by Hani Yousuf)

Imam Shamsi Ali sits with his group of three students in the main prayer hall of the mosque at 96th Street and Third Avenue, officially the Islamic Cultural Center of New York. Recent converts to Islam, the students attend the imam’s Saturday lectures on subjects ranging from prayer rituals to looking beyond the Quranic text to its essential meaning. The class is informal: students get to ask questions during and after it, and Ali smiles a lot. He makes references to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.

“What happened?” he calls across the hall when a student hurriedly walks out just after coming in. He has accidentally brought shoes into the prayer hall, not allowed in a mosque. Allah always forgives mistakes, Ali says with a smile.

Imam Shamsi Ali wears a suit and has no beard. He doesn’t conform to the stereotype of a Muslim cleric and doesn’t feel he needs to dress the part. Robes and a long beard are not necessary criteria for being a good Muslim, he says. He has a slight build and calm voice, speaking clearly and articulately despite the accent and grammar of one who is not a native English speaker.

Named one of the city’s “influentials” by New York Magazine in May 2006, he is best known for his efforts towards interfaith harmony. “He’s soft spoken but projects this moral force,” says Walter Ruby, Muslim-—Jewish program officer at the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, who has worked with Ali on interfaith relations.

For two years, since his predecessor retired, Ali has led this mosque, overseeing everything from cleaning to settling religious issues. He has modernized the mosque’s communications by encouraging email use and has placed stricter rules around distributing zakat, a charity all Muslims are required to contribute to. He was also instrumental in planning an Islamic school, Manhattan’s first, scheduled to begin next fall.

Ali is an unconventional Muslim cleric. Unlike many other imams, he doesn’t consider music unIslamic. He doesn’t believe women need to cover their faces and thinks they should have roles equal to men, in religion and otherwise.

The imam dressed to lead prayer. (Photo by Hani Yousuf)

Ali believes that American Muslims should have an identity of their own rather than trying to adopt their parents’.

“I personally am in the view that we must create our own identity as a community,” says Ali. “ So, I want to see in the future American Muslims that identify themselves as Muslims and Americans; in other words they are not forced into certain identity as Pakistanis or Bangladeshis or Africans or Arabs.” He adds that he wants the Muslim community in New York to be very “advanced” socially, culturally, educationally and politically.

Born in Indonesia, Ali went to an Islamic boarding school there. It was unlike madrassahs elsewhere in the Muslim world, he emphasized; his school required biology and history along with Islam, he says. After graduating, he attended the International Islamic University in Islamabad, Pakistan, then located at Shah Faisal Mosque, considered the country’s most beautiful. He received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Islamic education, then went to Saudi Arabia to teach. In 1996, he came to the US with the permanent mission to Indonesia for the UN and led a small mosque for Indonesian Muslims in Astoria, Queens.

“September 11 then gave me even more opportunities to reach out,” says Ali, speaking in his spartan office in the mosque. “I represented the Muslim community at the Yankee Stadium’s Prayer for America weeks after September 11.” One of two Muslims who received President George W. Bush at Ground Zero, Ali told the president the terrorists did not represent the Muslim faith, but their own “ego.”

And after that he was everywhere, Ali says, lecturing at universities, speaking to the FBI and police officials, appearing in synagogues and churches. He believes such efforts landed him the job of assistant imam at the Islamic Cultural Center of New York, where he has organized many seminars and talks with rabbis and priests.

Last year, Rabbi Michael Weisser invited Ali to be the guest speaker at the Free Synagogue of Flushing on Holocaust Memorial Day, which takes place each year after Passover. Since then, Weisser says, he has spoken at the mosque after Friday prayers and the two have participated in prayer together at both the mosque and the synagogue. “He’s a shining light on the world,” says Weisser. “He sees the truth and then speaks the truth.”

Weisser calls Ali an inspiration not only to Muslims, but to Jews and Christians as well. “I introduce him to people as my rabbi,” says Weisser laughing and adds that Ali introduces him as his imam.

Ruby, from the Foundation of Ethnic Understanding, says Ali is a “very impressive guy.” While many Muslims have denounced terrorism, says Ruby, Ali is especially outspoken — despite the criticism he’s encountered from within the Muslim community.

“We organized a two-day seminar on what the holy book says about the others,” says Ali. “The Quran is very critical of the Jews and Christians and how should Muslims understand those verses that talk about the Jews and Christians? And in the meantime, we must maintain our relationship with the Jewish community and the Christian community.”

Bishop Ebony Kirkland of the Church of the Living God Worldwide in Queens Village, Queens, has been involved with Ali, since he spoke at an interfaith dialogue at the church. During a debate about which religion was right, she was struck by the imam’s statement that, “ There is really no absolute, the only absolute is God.”

“He has a peace that passes all understanding,” she says, referring to his calm manner. “He teaches in such a spirited way,” Kirkland adds. “There is such an ease of learning from him.”

Ali has also recently received the Prince Naif award, given by a Saudi official for intereligious harmony.

To help Muslim immigrants in the U.S. better assimilate, Ali organizes Thanksgiving celebrations every year and has been very involved with the Muslim Day Parade, which he sees as an opportunity for integration. “Get from the city and give back to the city,” says Ali. The parade, which usually takes place in early fall, proceeds down Madison Avenue, from 42nd Street to 24th, followed by bazaars and cultural shows.

Though orthodox Muslims consider music unlawful, Ali has brought children from the Indonesian community school in Astoria, Queens to perform Islamic songs at the post-parade celebrations.

“Some imams talked,” says Ali. “But they didn’t talk directly to me. Probably they know that when they talk to me, I will make them understand.”

His own colleague at the 96th Street mosque, Assistant Imam Abdul Rehman, thinks music is unacceptable.

Ali leading prayer at the 96th Street mosque. (Photo by Hani Yousuf)

“For me music is a neutral thing,” Ali responds. “Depends on what kind of music you’re talking about. And for which purpose you are using it. And so, if music is used for Islamic song where you are reminded of God and Islam, then what is wrong to use the music?”

He adds, smiling, that he has watched disapproving imams’ faces during the singing and they seem to be enjoying it.

As for the practice of women covering their faces, Ali agrees with the controversial Egyptian scholars who deem it more cultural than religiously required. “I see it as sometimes kind of embarrassing when I see a woman walking on the street covering her face,” says Ali. “People tend to say, ‘This is the way Muslims treat their women, covered from head to toe. They cannot move.’ This is not what Islam is about.” Though the niqab veil is regarded as a sign of modesty, Ali sees it differently. A veiled woman walking in Time’s Square will get stared at, rather than avert attention, he says.

Further, women with covered faces can’t participate in the mosque and its affairs as much as he thinks they should. While he doesn’t think women should lead prayer, which hasn’t been done traditionally, he believes women can lead other mosque activities.

He does believe that women’s covering their heads is essential to modesty but also sees it as a choice which shouldn’t be imposed.

This has brought critics within the community, including a widespread rumor that he once tried to convince a woman to have an abortion, considered a sin by orthodox Muslims.

Ali says he doesn’t remember such an incident, but that Islam is flexible on that issue, given the circumstances. In the case of teenage pregnancies or when there is a threat to a pregnant woman’s life, the religious leader needs to be wise and flexible while advising someone, he says.

The Islamic Thinkers Society, an Islamic advocacy group, has posted Ali’s picture circled in red, with a caption that reads “FBI Mouthpiece.” The site denounces him as a hypocrite and criticizes him for bringing music into the Indonesian mosque he leads in Queens and for allowing the “free-mixing” of the sexes. Ali thinks the FBI accusation stems from Islam-awareness lectures he held for FBI employees.

The Islamic Thinkers Society, emailed for comment, did not respond.

“These individuals oppose me basically because I oppose their ideas, their hateful ideas, their narrow mindedness in understanding our religion and I really disagree with them and I oppose them strongly and I will never agree with them in their approach,” responds Ali.