Reviving the Spirit: A Generation of African Americans Goes Home to Church

“They call me Sister Lawrence. It sounds funny even to me. I am not a holy roller. I’ve never spoken in tongues and have not yet been visited by the Holy Ghost. Then again, I did not join the church to get to heaven. I joined to survive on Earth.”—Beverly Hall Lawrence

The return in record numbers of young African Americans to the church has been called “a movement sweeping middle-class black congregations’ by the Washington Post. African Americans are not only returning to church in search of divine salvation; they are also returning to the only American institution they truly control, in the hope of reviving its role as a command center and strategic outpost for social change, economic reform, political activism, and urban renewal. Drawing on personal experiences, her own and those of the parishioners at one of the oldest and largest African Methodist Episcopal churches in the country, Beverly Hall Lawrence has written both a provocative analysis of an emerging cultural trend and an insightful celebration of the new African American spirituality.

Beverly Hall Lawrence was born in Ashburn, Georgia, and graduated from Georgia State University. She has worked as a journalist for the Atlanta Journal & Constitution, the Detroit Free Press, the Washington Post, and Newsday. She lives in New York City.