Church mourns wealthy Harlem's lost Souls

ONCE they were at the heart of the community providing everything from soup kitchens to food for the soul. But hard times have hit the churches of Harlem, victims, ironically enough, of a new prosperity.

The gentrification of the district has helped deplete their ranks, as younger residents, black and white, have arrived but not taken up places in their pews. Established Harlem families, either cashing in on the property boom over the past decade or simply opting to head south for their retirement, have left the neighbourhood and its churches.

From the second to last pew at All Souls' Episcopal Church in Harlem on a recent Sunday morning, Sylvia Lynch, 80, lifted a hand toward the rafters and sang praises through a haze of burnt incense.

Her voice was steady and strong, as was her grip on the cane she leaned on as she stood and sang and peered over the sparsely populated pews, peppered mostly with older women with fancy hats and hair as grey as her own.

"I came up through Sunday school, and I'm still here," Lynch said, taking a step into an aisle at the 104-year-old church after the last hymn. "Back then, it was packed. You couldn't get a seat."

All Souls' Church, on St Nicholas Avenue, and any number of the traditional neighbourhood churches in Harlem that had for generations boasted strong memberships – built on and sustained by familial loyalty and neighbourhood ties – are now struggling to hold on to their congregations, as economic and social factors aided by deaths among the elderly, take their toll.

Without a sustainable membership, and with no fresh wave of tithe-paying, collection-plate-filling young members, these churches have struggled to keep their doors open and to extend their reach in the community.

Some, like All Souls', cannot afford a full-time minister, let alone operate a soup kitchen.

"If we don't have the teenagers and the younger people coming into the church, as the older people pass, who is going to take over?" said Raymond Stevens, 57, a congregation member at All Souls'. "It's an uphill battle."

At All Souls', regular attendance for Sunday service is about 50. When eight children showed up for Sunday school recently, the teacher described the attendance as "huge". But when a 105-year-old member of the congregation died recently, she took with her 25 percent of the church's annual income from offerings.

Last year, the church used seven priests, a formula that proved much less expensive than the cost of a full-time priest's salary, housing, benefits and other expenses.

The void in consistent leadership has cost the church in other ways – slowing efforts to recruit new church members in a changing Harlem, a neighbourhood ever more populated by young professionals.

Yet All Souls' has an important place in American history. In July 1932, the church was the scene of a rebellion, when the all-white vestry announced that the church would be segregated and that black worshippers, who made up 75 per cent of the congregation, would have to worship in separate services.

The "Jim Crow" services were fought by members of the congregation, who printed leaflets that read, "Self-Respecting People Refuse to be Jim Crowed," and handed them out during Sunday service, according to a news account that year. Jim Crow is a derogatory term for black people.

The vestry fought back, threatening to set fire to the rector if he continued to encouraged mixed-race services, forcing the bishop to intercede and rule that services be open to anyone who chose to attend.

Lynch said she had been a member of the church for 71 years, since she was nine – back when the church services were standing-room only affairs. "I was raised here, was married here, and I raised my children here."

The church was the absolute centre of the community, Lynch said, a place where friends came in packs and families and neighbours mingled, a time when families' status, to a degree, could be judged by how "churched" they were.

Her mother opened a hair salon in the neighbourhood and charged 50 cents a head, and a sizeable amount of her income went to the church.

"She didn't make much, but she did everything she could to maintain and build up this church," Lynch said.

Lynch took a few more steps from her pew and down the aisle towards the back of the church, passing the change jar just behind the last pew, where a set of stairs led to a basement hall.

There, the congregation had gathered for a post-service lunch of assorted meats, fried plantain, greens and macaroni and cheese.

Lynch spoke of priests who rose and faded, of rescued street children and of her family and her congregation and the only church she had ever known. "Sometimes it's heart-wrenching," she said. "But there's something about this church that we all love."