From the second to last pew at All Souls’ Episcopal Church in Harlem on a recent Sunday morning, Sylvia Lynch, 80, lifted a hand toward the rafters and sang praises through a haze of burnt incense.
Her voice was steady and strong, as was her grip on the cane she leaned on as she stood and sang and peered over the sparsely populated pews, peppered mostly with older women with fancy hats and hair as gray as her own.
“I came up through Sunday school, and I’m still here,” Ms. Lynch said, taking a step into an aisle at the 104-year-old church after the last hymn. “Back then, it was packed. You couldn’t get a seat.”
All Souls’ Church, on St. Nicholas Avenue, and any number of the traditional neighborhood churches in Harlem that had for generations boasted strong memberships ”” built on and sustained by familial loyalty and neighborhood ties ”” are now struggling to hold on to their congregations.
Bishop Manning’s connection with All Souls is interesting:
[i]The Rev. Rollin Dodd, rector of All Souls Church since 1929, provided programs and services for black Episcopalians, and by 1932, about half of those attending services were black, with another 200 black children attending its Sunday School. The white vestry ordered Rev. Dodd to cease encouraging the Negroes, and when he refused, they insisted that he resign and then stopped his salary. When this failed, the vestry erected scaffolding, declaring that the ceiling might fall at any moment, and closed the church by changing the locks. Bishop William T. Manning defended the rector’s stance, and announced that he would preach at All Souls. The vestry threatened to keep him out by legal means, to which Bishop Manning said, “I shall be there.” On the following Sunday, Bishop Manning arrived at the church, where he found the rector, superintendent, twelve policemen and a large crowd waiting. The bishop demanded the keys, and when the superintendent said he had none, asked, “Shall we break in?” While the bishop waited, the the locks were removed, then the bishop went inside and preached firmly on the rights of the rector to serve his neighborhood. “I request, and as Bishop I instruct, that this church…shall be open for services at such times as he shall direct,” and declared that the church would be open “to all the people in the neighborhood who wish to attend its services, without distinction of race or color.”[/i]
From [url=http://www.nycago.org/Organs/NYC/html/AllSoulsEpis.html]here[/url]