Neighborhoods have changed around them and they have
offered stability, identity, and some sense of permanency.
And there are other congregations who function in much
the same way. Al-Aqsa Islamic Society holds worship services
in an old furniture warehouse. A few years ago it looked
blighted, but it attracted a very vibrant group of 300 hundred
families from the region. Following the September 11 attacks
in 2001, the mosque was contacted by a synagogue and by a
church. Both asked, “Are you alright?” They found that the
congregation was shell-shocked and feeling vulnerable. The
synagogue and a few Christian churches be gan meeting with
the leadership at Al-Aqsa and decided to have an interfaith
service to mark the first anniversary of 9/11.
Soon after, members of the Jewish and the Christian
congregations said to Al-Aqsa, “No offense, but your mosque
doesn’t look like a mosque. It looks like a plain, old, dumpy
red building. Let’s see if we can help make it look like a
mosque.” Now, this was scary for
Muslims at the time because
they didn’t want to draw atten-
tion to themselves, afraid that it
would incite hateful push back.
With the support of the
Mural Arts Program, Christian
Sunday School students, Jewish
kids, and Muslim kids began
making ceramic tiles for the
building’s facade. What once
looked like a rundown industrial
building was transformed into a
beautiful, colorful, gleaming
mosque. It went from being what
some might see as a sign of
blight to being a visually uplift-
ing, neighborhood landmark.
CM: One of the narratives that
can be told about historic sacred
places is that there is a unique
sense of the sacred that gets built over time. Some believe that
there is no replacement for those layers of history. And yet,
what you are describing is that, with intentionality, collabora-
tion, and resources, there is a significant amount of sacred-
ness that can be recreated and generated with vision for what
a place can be.
KD: It is sort of preservation forward. It is restoring buildings
into sacred purposes that serve the community. It gets to the
same impact that Partners is so committed to, but with a dif-
ferent pool of sacred places that are not historic yet. But they
will be.
CM: One of Partners’ primary target demographics is work-
ing with small churches, the kind that people drive by every-
day without noticing. Your research shows that there is im-
pact, sometimes arguably more per capita impact, in smaller
congregations. Can you explain a little more?
KD: With my research, I wanted to see what the economic
and social value of these places really was. The medium-sized
churches and the larger churches had a number of programs.
The smaller ones didn’t have any, but they had equal social
value in their corners of the city. Smaller churches have con-
tributed a lot in three particular areas: education, the per-
forming arts and basic human services.
CM: What do you think some of the emerging research hori-
zons are for Partners?
KD: I think there is a lot of what you have already done that
can be built on. I can tell you that a cutting edge topic in ur-
ban religion studies is spatial approach. Sociologists of relig-
ion have either looked at megatrends or at congregations in
isolation. There is a growing appreciation for understanding
religion as an agent, as an actor, in producing urban space.
It’s not just that religious groups happen to be living there.
Communities of faith are in a dynamic, symbiotic relation-
ship with other community forces in impacting the space of
the neighborhood. Buildings that are being restored matter in
how people engage the neighborhood and how they practice
their faith.
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