Saturday, November 27, 2004
SCRIPPS HOWARD
In most cities across the nation, there's a public housing complex people avoid -- a place reputed to be a pit of crime and despair.
In Pittsburgh, that place is St. Clair Village, but not everyone avoids it.
The Rev. Maurice Trent ignores the warnings to steer clear. Near one of the main streets that flow into the village, he's pitched a white tent in an empty field.
Under the tent, there are tambourines, squealing speakers and hallelujah-laced testimony.
The Rev. Mr. Trent, 43, and his Lighthouse Cathedral congregation hold this camp meeting every weekday evening and Sunday morning -- rain, sunshine or cold -- each autumn.
It's been a long haul, said the boyish-looking Trent, who preached for many of the 90 days. "But it's been worth it," he said. "For three months, the drug seller, the drug-addicted and the broken have come."
In this community, violence can spike in the summertime and a lot of people are hanging out, said Mr. Trent. "We want to let people know there is another way," he said, "other than the fighting and the shooting."
It's traditionally a season when churches across the nation make an extra effort to stir the souls of their congregations.
The phenomenon cuts across denominations and race. But the experience is deeply rooted in the black church, those fiery congregations that sprouted independently in the South, beginning in 1787. That year, Richard Allen created the Free African Society and A.M.E. Church, an offshoot of the Methodist Church, so that blacks could worship with full participation and without discrimination.
Igniting the fire
It was these African Methodists, Baptists and the Church of God in Christ congregations, ecstatic to be free from field labor, who lighted the fire for revivals. The spirit couldn't be confined to the land of magnolias, and it washed over most black congregations everywhere.
Their emotionally charged services, flavored with the folkways of Africa, became part of the soul of America.
At revival, the music of the praise team shakes the tent; worshippers speak in tongues; members, anointed with oil, fall to the floor, buckled by the power of the Holy Ghost.
It's no surprise, then, that once the revival begins, the spirit has its way, said Mr. Trent, a small, trim preacher who, a year ago, took helm of the church that was founded by his father.
"It's mind-blowing. We've had people come who've been hooked on crack or alcohol. Bad marriages. They just want to change their life."
Revivals for the black faithful were kindled in summer's twilight nearly two centuries ago.
Laid down their burdens
With the growing season over, enslaved black people laid down their cotton sacks. They laid down other burdens, too. The weeks before fall harvest brought an escape from hard labor. That's when the notion of being revived started, said Lawrence Mamiya, a black church scholar at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
To lift themselves up, enslaved Africans withdrew deep into the woods.
In this invisible church, away from the eyes of their white slave owners, they danced and chanted, drawing upon their African traditions.
Often, they'd gather around an old black pot and beat it to muffle their screams and cries, said Mamiya.
As stirring as it was, revival had a dark side.
If black men were free from the fields at the end of summer, so, too, were white men.
As a result, many organized vigilante posses and went on the "hunt for black people," said Mamiya. "Revival season became lynching season."
Since the day of Pentecost, the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles, recorded in Acts 2 in the New Testament, people have been stirred by the Spirit.
Great awakening
Centuries later, beginning in 1730, a spiritual great awakening swept over the British colonies in America. For 40 years, the evangelical rousing shook those fallen from religion. The emotionally charged movement reached out to Indians and newly enslaved Africans.
A second great awakening blazed through American congregations in the late 1880s.It was marked by large camp meetings, held for days under a tent. Thousands would gather for intense worship sessions. It was heralded as a way to ignite a dying church.
Almost overnight, churches embraced the traditions as a way to lead a believer toward a sinless life and a joyous worship. It launched the holiness movement, a sort of spiritual torch that passed this emotionally driven worship from churches in the corners of Tennessee and North Carolina to Houston and Los Angeles.
In the Southwest alone, there were more than 25,000 conversions to the movement.
In 1906, William Seymour, a black preacher, brought it to Los Angeles. He set up the Azusa Street storefront church and invited black Christians to pray for "a recurrence of apostolic signs and miracles."
His church became the symbol of this new movement, this Pentecostalism. By 1921, the movement had spread around the world.
Wearing a purple suit and a gentle smile, Roger Haley stands by the door at Pentecostal Temple Church of God in Christ, an East Liberty, Pa., congregation known for its ecstatic worship.
Tonight, Haley is an usher, directing worshippers to their seats and handing out programs at the church's Sunday night revival.
Before he shouts, claps and sends up praises, Haley, 72, tells visitors that he found a new life in a tent revival.
It happened almost a decade ago as he was toting four half-gallons of liquor under his arm. Haley had just gotten out of his car, and his thoughts were on the party he was going to attend that night.
Across the street, the gospel music broke through the confines of the tent revival and grabbed his soul. He walked over, looked in the tent and stood there, locking glances with the preacher.
According to Haley, he was delivered -- freed of his worries -- on the spot.
"I was an alcoholic, and I was completely healed," he said.
They've been restored
The church is full of people who have been restored, said the deep-voiced Loran Mann, charismatic pastor of the church.
"We've got the ex-drug user, the ex-drug pusher, the women of the night, the men of the night." They worship, he said, alongside the super-educated and the banker.
Since the turn of the millennium and the terror of 9/11, Mann believes people are hungering anew for the Spirit. It's the only thing that will turn people away from violence and offer restoration to the community, he said.
"We're going back to the street," the Rev. Mr. Mann promised. "People can't ignore a big white tent."