Basiskirche in Amerika

Aus der Washington Post:

"Camilo Jose Vergara has spent the past three decades taking his camera to some of the poorest neighborhoods in the country, documenting places few outsiders ever visit.

Over the years, he noticed that urban areas emptied by blight were filling up with storefront churches. The pastors were cabdrivers and retired steel and transit workers with little or no formal religious training, yet they took on an important role in their communities. (...)

Amid this decay, many of the congregations thrived, providing aid to the poor and homeless, a social network for church members and a human presence in areas that had been all but abandoned. (...)

Among the congregations were affiliates of the Church of God in Christ, a black Pentecostal denomination with a large membership nationwide; independent churches promoting hard-line traditional views of the Bible; and Spiritualist churches, whose members believe in communication with the dead. Many immigrant groups started congregations, and churches generally were organized according to ethnicity or native country.

Vergara was particularly fascinated by the pastors. He said many were retirees who 'in the pecking order of society, weren't really high up' but had become revered within their own churches, he said. The start-up congregations also gave worshipers a chance to play important roles they could not fill in larger, more established churches, he said."