Welcome to the Mormon Church: More African-Americans Are Finding Religion, Community, and Fellowship

By David Crumm Detroit Free Press Columnist While Catholic and mainline Protestant churches are downsizing in urban areas, another predominantly white denomination is growing impressively in African-American communities including Detroit and on the East Coast. Today, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is hosting New York dignitaries for the opening of a five-story Mormon meetinghouse for 900 members in Harlem. Then, on Dec. 10, a new meetinghouse will open in Philadelphia. This winter in Detroit, a Belle Isle-area meetinghouse is under construction near Conner and Mack. Over the past 15 years, Detroit membership has grown from a handful to more than 1,000. Around the world, the rapidly growing church has 12 million members, about half of them outside the United States, including 200,000 in Africa. "As a Black person who comes out of the inner city myself, I think African-Americans are coming to see this church as really welcoming us as brothers and sisters," Ahmad Corbitt, an East Coast Mormon spokesman, said this week as he prepared for opening ceremonies at the 33,000-square-foot Harlem facility. "Very soon after coming into the church, African-Americans find themselves sitting among people who not only respect them, but listen to them, expect them to join in helping other people and, very soon, they become our new teachers and leaders," Corbitt said. What's amazing about this development is that, although the church attracted Black members since the mid-1800s, a restriction barring them from taking higher positions of leadership was not removed until 1978. There wasn't a single Mormon meetinghouse in Detroit for decades, until missionaries moved back into the city in the late 1980s. Now, three congregations are based in Detroit and a fourth will move from Harper Woods to the Belle Isle area when the new building is finished in 2006. A brief mention of this growth in Detroit appeared in a Free Press story last month, and dozens of readers said they wanted to know more about this remarkable trend. In response, I've spent a couple of weeks talking with African-American members of a Palmer Park Mormon congregation about their church. It's clear that the biggest advantage Mormons have in urban areas is organization: The church focuses substantial national resources on starting new congregations. Then, longtime members train and assign new members to form the next wave of leadership. Unlike Catholic or Protestant churches, Mormon congregations aren't built around a pastor. Members take turns speaking at services and serving as leaders, so there's never a shortage of clergy. But that's the big picture behind this urban expansion. On a more personal level, 74-year-old Alberta Mason told me why she decided last year to move from her lifelong involvement in Baptist churches to become a Mormon. "To me, I discovered that these people are very open about sharing their lives with each other," Mason said. "In some churches I've seen, people are so hushed-mouthed. They go to church on Sunday, but then they're withdrawn through the week. And that's not the kind of church I want to be a part of anymore." Day by day, Mason said, she loves the way members share their lives. Checking off her schedule, she began, "Now, on Sundays, we go to church. Then, on Mondays, I go visiting" other members in their homes. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, she's back at the Palmer Park church for classes on theology and the Bible. Then, there are Fridays, when four members of the church come to her home for Bible study and a chance to enjoy one of Mason's home-cooked dinners. That's usually baked chicken, macaroni and cheese, rice and some of Mason's traditional boiled greens with her secret blend of ham, bacon and a single hot pepper. "I like Fridays so much," she said. "I tell people all the time that we don't have any secrets at our church. Come and see for yourself, I always say. And, if you do, you'll find that it feels like family here."