{"id":5718,"date":"2006-01-06T23:54:40","date_gmt":"2006-01-06T23:54:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/how-the-other-half-worships.html"},"modified":"2006-01-06T23:54:40","modified_gmt":"2006-01-06T23:54:40","slug":"how-the-other-half-worships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/how-the-other-half-worships.html","title":{"rendered":"How the Other Half Worships"},"content":{"rendered":"

NYTimes piece about a book of photography and essays about worship and church life in inner cities:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
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The title is a nod to the influential Jacob Riis book of photography published in 1890, ”How the Other Half Lives,” about tenement life on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.<\/p>\n

Vergara, also a New Yorker, filled his book with photos of churches in unlikely places: a former car dealership, a shutdown Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant, a former furniture store. Many still have iron bars and metal gates that had been used to protect merchandise inside.<\/p>\n

A few of the congregations are located in houses of worship that once served another faith. A Jewish synagogue in a destitute section of Brooklyn has become a Latino church called La Sinagoga. Stars of David still adorn the facade and sanctuary.<\/p>\n

Inside, the churches were often decorated with paintings by congregants, or items they found in vacant churches or bought cheaply in local stores. Hanging on the walls of one church was contact paper from a home supply store with a pattern that worshippers said reminded them of stained glass.<\/p>\n

As compelling as the buildings are, Vergara said he was struck even more by the devastation that surrounded them.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Amazon link to the book.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NYTimes piece about a book of photography and essays about worship and church life in inner cities: The title is a nod to the influential Jacob Riis book of photography published in 1890, ”How the Other Half Lives,” about tenement life on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Vergara, also a New Yorker, filled his book with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nHow the Other Half Worships - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/how-the-other-half-worships.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How the Other Half Worships - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"NYTimes piece about a book of photography and essays about worship and church life in inner cities: The title is a nod to the influential Jacob Riis book of photography published in 1890, ”How the Other Half Lives,” about tenement life on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5718\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}