Black Church Commuters By Jamal Watson

Going extra mile to worship
For dedicated believers, a lengthy drive to Chicago is their weekly journey of faith

By Jamal Watson
Tribune staff reporter
Published August 8, 2004

By 8 a.m. every Sunday, Cerise Reed is speeding down Interstate Highway 94 from Racine to the South Side of Chicago, her 6-year-old son Marcus strapped in his car seat, headed for church.

"You got your Bible?" she asks Marcus.

About the same time, Michael J. Evans is shepherding his three children into the family's Mercedes SUV outside their home in Munster, Ind. With gospel music pumping from the sound system, Evans, 44, a financial planner, says the Sunday morning commute to another South Side church flies by.

"When we're in the car, we're rocking to music," he said. "By the time we get to church, we're fired up. We're just happy to be there."

Reed and Evans are among a group of dedicated churchgoers who make their way into Chicago each Sunday from all points of the compass, by car, by bus and, in at least one case, by airplane.

Although believers of many varieties travel to worship with people who share their faith, language or ethnic heritage, the phenomenon is particularly strong among middle-class African-Americans, many of whom have other options much nearer to home.

Some travel with a strong desire to hear a specific preacher. Some are holding onto roots in a neighborhood they left behind. There are family ties and, in some cases, a bond with a particular congregation that goes back generations.

"The black church has always been at the center of the black community," said James Cone, a theologian at Union Theological Seminary in New York. "We haven't had anything else to define us, and so blacks cling ... to something unique they can call their own."

Unlike other churches that share a common liturgy or hierarchy that binds worshipers throughout the nation or world, black Protestant congregations are often independent, with a unique style and a pastor who comes to embody the institution.

That has contributed to a history of fierce loyalty. During the Great Migration of blacks from the South to the North, some whole churches relocated, reconstituted over years with the same pastor and much of the same congregation.

Now, as money and schools and other attractions draw city dwellers to the suburbs, some will go great distances--in the face of rising gas prices, traffic and a national trend away from religious observance--to make and maintain that kind of bond.

Five years ago, Reed did not belong to any church but wanted to find one. She had been listening on the radio to Rev. Clay Evans, a nationally known preacher and gospel singer, so she decided to visit his Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church at 45th Place and Princeton Avenue, roughly 80 miles from her house.

"There are so many churches popping up that you just don't want to be going anywhere," said Reed, explaining why she bypasses a handful of churches in her native Racine. "The drive isn't that bad. I get some good prayer time in."

Reed, 38, a single mother, takes her two children with her and has racked up 224,000 miles on her green 1995 Honda Civic.

Rev. Charles Jenkins, 28, pastor of the 4,500-member Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church since Evans' retirement, said that kind of devotion is not hard to understand.

"If you like a particular restaurant, you will drive far to get there just to get the food because it tastes so good," said Jenkins. "Some people are drawn to a particular church because of a particular delivery."

Perhaps because of the commitment they make, some of the church's more distant members have become its leaders.

Ephraim Pugh, 65, became a Fellowship member 29 years ago after moving to far south suburban University Park, where he could not find a church he liked.

Since then, he's been driving 37 miles each way, arriving each Sunday at 8:30 a.m. and returning home sometime after 7 p.m. He's a deacon and chairman of the church's credit union.

"With the exception of the snow blizzard of 1979 and the snow blizzard of 1999, I have attended every church service," said the retired salesman. "When I go to church, I want to be around my own people. If I have to drive to do that, it's OK."

Michael Evans, from Munster, feels the same way. His family is one of only a few black families in their neighborhood.

"We think it's important for our children to interact socially with the other black children at church," said Evans.

He was invited almost 20 years ago to join Apostolic Church of God, which has 19,000 members, and never looked back. Evans spends hours after church on a typical Sunday socializing with other members.

"It's a big family," he said. "It's easy coming into the church, but it's difficult getting out."

The Pentecostal megachurch in Chicago's Woodlawn neighborhood draws many other travelers besides Evans, including some from Iowa.

One church member regularly makes the hourlong flight from Detroit after relocating several years ago.

Smaller storefront churches attract devoted commuters, too.

Percy Davis makes the 35-mile trip each way from south suburban Glenwood to the city's Edgewood neighborhood every week. Davis, who left Edgewood in 1992 to escape a spate of drive-by shootings, drug dealing and poor schools, still wanted to maintain a connection to his working-class roots.

When his brother-in-law moved his newly created Restoration Missionary Baptist Church, with about 50 parishioners, into a storefront between a grocer and an outlet, Davis immediately joined and was appointed a deacon.

"Because I'm back here several times a week, it's like I never left," said Davis. "I don't mind the commute, but for someone who does not drive it would be very discouraging, because the public transportation to get here is not very good."

Black churches in Philadelphia, Los Angeles and New York have reported similar trends.

At Abyssinian Baptist Church, New York City's most famous black church, Rev. Calvin O. Butts III said church members drive from as far away as Philadelphia and Baltimore to worship in the cathedral where Adam Clayton Powell III, a former congressman, served for many years as pastor.

The preacher, Cone said, is the bait that keeps such parishioners returning.

"The minister is at the center of the black church," he said. "Most blacks go to a particular church largely because they like the minister, and if they move ... they're coming back on Sundays just to be with the minister."

Reed agrees.

"I like the fact that our pastor keeps it real," says Reed. "You don't ever have to leave church wondering what he's talking about. He brings it down to 2004."

For a fleeting moment, she contemplated moving to Chicago, but after a bit more reflection, she rejected the idea.

"The cost of living there is too high," she said, adjusting the rear-view mirror to check in on her son, who is typically fast asleep at this early hour. "The taxes are too high, and I can't see no fields in the distance."

And so for now, the Sunday commutes will continue.