Keeping the faith for 200 years

PROVIDENCE — Alma Alen joined the Congdon Street Baptist Church in 1964. She has volunteered in its kitchen, at events and as an usher for decades.

Her first visit to the church — soon after she and her husband, who was in the Navy, moved to Rhode Island from North Carolina — did not go smoothly.

"They were kind of a little formal," the 91-year-old said. "I was sitting here in the church and they were singing and I started clapping ... and everybody started looking at me funny."

"I said, well, I must be in the wrong church," she continued. "Then, I told them that this isn't y’all’s house, this is God’s house."

The drum set in the corner of the sanctuary pointed to a direction more favorable to Alen's viewpoints at the church, Rhode Island's oldest black congregation, which will celebrate its 200th anniversary over the weekend.

Over the course of two centuries, Harold Metts, a church deacon and Democratic state senator from Providence, said that change has always happened and it is how the church has managed to stay alive.

"You really have to adjust with the times," Metts said. "You have to meet the needs of young families. You’re not going to bring in young families if you don’t meet the needs of young families with infants."

"There has just been a change in the culture, whereas, before, Sunday was dedicated as a day for the lord. Now, I'm surprised when I drive by markets because their parking lots are filled" on Sundays, he continued. "It wasn't like that before. The gospel is just the same and the message has to be spread."

The Congdon Street Baptist Church, which started nearby at the African Union meetinghouse and schoolhouse in 1819, has worked to serve the spiritual as well as educational needs of the black communities of Providence.

"It was built to be a space where blacks could worship freely," said Michele Bazile, the history and engagement coordinator at the church. "A place to not be under scrutiny."

The original members of the church came from the First Baptist Church in America, where they were forced to worship in a segregated space.

In 1863, tensions with white neighbors led to the original church being torn down without the congregation's approval.

"As the Bible says in Romans 12:21, be not overcome with evil but overcome evil with good," Metts said. "Our challenge is to do the best to try to live the gospel in spite of the hate."

He pointed to the aftermath of the 2015 mass shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, in Charleston, South Carolina, where a white supremacist killed nine black churchgoers, as an example of the way to combat such evil.

"It was amazing to me how the families forgave that young man," he said. "That’s always gonna be our challenge given today, and it’s about not allowing evil to overcome you."

Deacon Dayus Metts, who is Harold Metts' wife, said music has been an engine for social and practical change at the church.

"I came here, and baptism was a thing you did when you were about 12 years old," Dayus Metts, who was baptized in 1958, said. "That’s a thing they kind of pushed you to do at a young age. Today, there's more of a discussion. Parents and the priest make sure they know what they are committing to."

"I'd say it started to change in the 1990s, when young people started to sing," she continued, referring to the church's youth choir. "When I was in the church back in the day, it was the older people in control and we didn’t have much participation, other than sitting back and singing."

Demographics has played a large role too in the church's success.

"A lot of people don’t realize that parts of Benefit Street used to be all black," Harold Metts said. "Families have moved away and new generations have come to the church. We have students from Brown, RISD, PC and Johnson & Wales now, and we are more inclusive with them."

Yet even outside the Church on the Hill, its symbolic importance is recognized and given deference.

"This is all the kingdom of God and I am a part of them [the congregation] too because I am a part of the kingdom of God," said Phyllis Lamidi, who grew up in the church but left to join the New Dimension Apostolic Center. "It is part of our history and people know that. People know that Congdon Street was the first church for black people in Rhode Island."

— kandrade@providencejournal.com

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