Faith on the Avenue Faith on the Avenue:
Religion on a City Street
( Oxford University Press, 2014) is the latest book by Katie Day.
Faith on the Avenue is a unique contribution to the sociological study of congregations. Author Katie Day spent years studying all of the religious congregations that border the length of Germantown Avenue in Philadelphia- over eight miles and roughly 90 Christian churches, meetinghouses, mosques, and syncretistic religious communities. Day employed a variety of research methods in her study, including much the same quantitative valuation tool, the Economic Halo Effect of Sacred Places, developed by Partners in collaboration with Dr. Ram Cnaan at the University of Pennsylvania. She also used qualitative analysis through interviews and observation. She also used documentary photography and census data. As a whole, her study provides a detailed crosssection of urban, religious experience in 21 st century America.
Katie Day is the The Charles A. Schieren Professor of Church and Society at United Lutheran Theological Seminary where she has taught for over 30 years. She is ordained in the Presbyterian Church USA. She also serves on the Advisory Committee of the National Fund for Sacred Places( see page two), and has been a friend of Partners for many years. up and down Germantown Avenue daily. In a complex, urban context, change is dynamic and subtle.
CM: In the book you write about what makes these places sacred. Could you talk a little more about this idea?
KD: Faith communities, both Christian and Muslim, have taken over very ordinary buildings on Germantown Avenue. A big warehouse, shoe stores, former liquor stores, theaters, funeral parlors. The oldest funeral home in America moved out to the suburbs after generations of being on the corner of Germantown and Washington. It was bought by a Jamaican Pentecostal congregation called Brand New Life. The irony was not lost on them.
The congregations that come into these ordinary, often dilapidated buildings make them sacred in different ways. For example, Brand New Life had a lot of exorcisms and“ cleansings.” On Sunday mornings they still have prayer warriors that come and stand over each chair to bless it, cleanse it, and reestablish the place as sacred.
Across the street is Germantown Mennonite Church( the“ mother” church of the denomination, founded in 1683). They took over what was an ironworks factory and warehouse. It is now this beautiful, open, and airy worship space. Mennonites don’ t go in for a lot of iconography, stained glass windows, and some of the traditional trappings that we think make a place sacred. Rather, it was the sweat equity that they had put into it. The cleaning, renovating, and envisioning they undertook themselves. The space then became sacred because of their work, and remains sacred every time they are there.
CM: As you know well, the work of Partners is primarily focused on historic religious buildings. How does your research inform the kind of work we do?
KD: There are a number of Mainline Protestant churches that have had continually worshipping congregations for over 300 years. That is pretty amazing.
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