Interesting piece in the Times today about a road in the Bronx which has thirty storefront churches on the same 2-mile stretch. (Apparently there are seven just on the block pictured above). That's a lot of little churches, especially when you consider that there are times of the week when most of them are full of worshipers! The article tells us that the shops were vacated when an earlier population left, and that surviving shop owners complain that all the churches are bad for business. (Most are shuttered most of most days, so there's not much customer traffic.) The congregations, we're given to understand, are immigrants, mainly from the Caribbean.But something's missing, as is often the case in newspaper articles on religion topics... Is it the possibility that economic marginalization is a cause as well as a consequence of these immigrants' going to church in such numbers? Is it the possibility that these churches provide both economic assistance and/or an economic burden to their members? Is it that we don't know how these churches compete with each other for members (they surely must), or collaborate (they surely must, too)? Is it the possibility that not all of these members are immigrants? Is it that there's no reference to the fact that main street of many American towns is lined with churches? There's not just analysis missing here, but a lot of really interesting stories.
I wonder if Get Religion or The Revealer, my two favorite religion and media blogs, will cover it. (Yes, I mentioned the Times article in part as a way of commending these blogs to you.) Get Religion is five very smart, somewhat conservative religion beat journalists, who do a generally very good job of articulating what's missing or behind newspaper, magazine and television coverage of religion topics. (But they claim never to have heard of "black theology.") The Revealer is a bunch of religion-obsessed sceptics, scoffers and survivors, edited by Jeff Sharlett, who review articles and books. Great fun of a slow afternoon to see what's new in these blogs; I find I've learned an incredible amount, especially from Get Religion.
