Grappling with the Impermanence of Place: A Black Baptist Congregation in South Los Angeles

Abstract

Based on over two years of fieldwork with Faith Family Missionary Baptist Church, I illustrate how this congregation grounds their sense of place when place itself is impermanent. In the midst of poverty, unemployment, and violence, the community views their Christian calling in their mission to reshape the younger, disenfranchised generation into godly individuals. Congregants build fellowship by pooling their resources in an attempt to follow the call of God to do good, and to recruit and save the disenfranchised. I argue that this congregation’s sense of place is shaped by and grounded in this fellowship, i.e., the concrete relationships they form through such practices. Despite having few resources to generate a large impact in the broader city, the congregation acts as a system of support crucial to individuals in these neighborhoods. While the congregation’s location in the city is invisible to many outsiders due to their mobility, further attention should be paid to such alternate forms of civic participation and practice. [Urban Christianity; Black Los Angeles; Place; Fellowship].