Churches before Homes

There was a time when having a house was apart of the American dream. For most people, having a home was the penultimate honor...to be a property owner. After all, the bulk of the 19th century saw land ownership in the hands of the landed gentry, with the common people renting space or occupying small tracts of land that supported basic shelter.



The migration to the urban area saw more accumulation of people in homes, and the changing of the policies to allow for more home ownership. The growth of the ex-urbia created for the downscale American the opportunity to own a new home, some thing to call their own.



The irony of the housing crisis is that it eroding home ownership at at time when it is most critical for some, as a new middle class begins to assert itself in American society.



Black Americans are the exception to the homeownership story. I mean that through the years of slavery, and subsequently through the sharecropping and Jim Crow eras, Blacks had a place they slept, but it wasnt their own home to control.



It was a place where belongings were kept, but final decisions were reserved for the owners.

The only home that these issues didnt encroach on was the Black Church. It was the one place where the rights invested in the constitution were somewhat protect. The right to religous expression was generally respected by land owners, albeit for reasons of control.

African American were founding churches before homes. Keeping it in order of establishment, it poses an interesting paradox for today indeed.

The paradox is that as America, not just Black America, loses control of its homes through the mortgage crisis, it is also turning away from its churches. Church attendance is down across all denominations, and houses of worship are closing, consolidating, or merging.

The secular society is growing away from "In God we Trust", even as the dollar gets weaker.

Will the majority of America find its itself in position of serfdom as home forelosures rise? Or are the seeds of another Great Awakening being planted as economic conditions continue o look bleak?

America may yet find an example in the Black American story, as the establishment of homes came after the spiritual movements that brought freedom to Black citizens, and a reaffirmation of E Pluribus Unum-Out of Many, we are One.