Evangelism Isn't Just for Red States Anymore
By Sarah Feightner

New York has always been more Sin City than City of God.

But from suburban-style megachurches like the Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn to small Southern Baptist congregations like Times Square’s 411, evangelical Christianity is a growing presence in New York City.

Photo by Rodrigo Campos

A new church community in New York City celebrates communion.

Watch and listen to New York City evangelicals at Forgiven, a congregation in Union Square.

“It’s been part of the vision of the church to make New York a great city,” said Benjamin Chee as he stood before about 75 worshippers at Emmanuel Presbyterian Church in upper Manhattan.

Approximately 1.5 million New Yorkers – many of them transplants from the Bible Belt or immigrants from countries with strong Christian missionary movements – attend evangelical churches in the city, according to Tony Carnes, a sociologist at Columbia University and a writer for Christianity Today. Billy Graham’s 2005 crusade at Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens reportedly drew a crowd of more than 200,000, and the congregation at the Christian Cultural Center megachurch has doubled since 2001 to more than 15,000 – almost enough evangelicals to fill Madison Square Garden every week. But the real Christian boom in New York City has come from “church planting,” a growing network of small church and fellowship groups spreading across the five boroughs.

Meeting each week in a chapel complete with stained glass and organ music, the Columbia University-affiliated Emmanuel Presbyterian is one of more than 100 churches that have been sponsored or “planted” since 2001 by New York-based Redeemer Presbyterian’s church planting initiative. By creating new churches to serve the influx of immigrants from South America and Asia, where Christianity is growing the fastest, evangelical organizations like Redeemer hope to transform this notoriously secular town into a city of faith.

The idea behind church planting, according to Randal Balmer, a professor of American Religion at Barnard College, “is that you have individuals or churches who sponsor others to try to start another congregation.” Church by church, the network grows, he said.

Emmanuel Presbyterian’s approach has been to reach out to the community through service projects, like their “Roots in the Heights” mentoring project in the Washington Heights area.

“As a church, I know we feel like we’ve been pretty effective at serving the university, but less effective in serving other parts of the neighborhood: Harlem, Morningside Heights,” said Mara Torres, 25, who helped spearhead the mentoring program.

Emmanuel Presbyterian hopes to be able to found its own daughter church in Washington Heights by Fall of 2007.

On the other side of town, another church takes a different approach to bringing New Yorkers to Christianity. Forgiven, a 25-person congregation located in Union Square, was started by Reverend Charlie Albertell in 2003.

“We’re trying to minister to people in the context of the arts,” said Albertell. The small evangelical group, sponsored by the nationwide Christian and Missionary Alliance, meets in bars, cafés and theaters in the Union Square area. Instead of holding traditional worship services, Forgiven prefers to organize comedy clubs and musical events.

“The church pushed away from the arts as being a worldly thing,” said Ed Nicholson, a member of Forgiven and the group’s music coordinator. “Now the church has come to embrace it. How can we utilize pop culture to bring people into the church?”

Albertall said all churches have the same goal: to expand Christianity in New York City with new churches. “We’re just kinda approaching it in a different way,” he added.

Whether through community service or arts and culture outreach, evangelical church groups have spread across the city from the Bronx to Queens and Brooklyn. 

TOP | PRINTER-FRIENDLY