One Urban Panorama Fades, Another Rises

On this morning, Brother Irving is called to testify. He is wearing a royal blue suit. He is deep in prayer, and then the spirit takes over and he hops across the carpet on his invisible pogo stick. Four men surround him, a circle of safety to make sure he doesn't hurt himself. The organ pounds and someone grabs a tambourine. Chairs empty and a swirl of human passion erupts: heads thrown back, tears streaming, people shaking and clenching their fists. Mr. Robinson, the quiet doorman, shouts "Hallelujah" in a high, broken voice, and Minister Darryl comes over and tenderly wipes his face with a handkerchief. Two D.C. paramedics arrive and take a woman out on a stretcher. Children doze peacefully.

Brother Irving returns to the front, his white cuffs peeking from his blue suit as he raises his hands, flattening his palms in the air as if against some imaginary window pane. "Deliverance is in the building," he announces.

Garrison is out sick, so her husband, Lawrence, does the preaching. Even when she misses church, she keeps an Oz-like presence over the congregation, issuing decrees through her co-pastors. One day she sends word that all women should wear stockings to church. This morning, her husband merely mentions her name and the congregation applauds.

Garrison grew up in the District's Clay Terrace public housing, where as a teenager she preached at tent revivals and in church basements. In 1967, she started the Free Evangelistic Church on the corner of Eighth and G streets SE near the Marine barracks, one of the first female preachers in the city. Her style was raspy and ferocious, and her big wide eyes intensified the experience. In 1974, Garrison shocked her congregation when she announced that they were moving across town to 14th and T. "People said, 'Fourteenth and T, are you crazy?'" Althea Jackson remembers. "You just didn't come up here, especially at night." But Garrison convinced her congregation that they were missionaries and there were souls to save. The church paid $220,000 for the old Adams-Burch restaurant supply company building.

From 14th and T, Garrison began broadcasting the Freedom Revival Hour on WYBC-AM. Men sat on one side and women on the other, with Garrison up front, her straightened hair flipped low over her forehead, her sermons full of pragmatic prayers for the federal city. "God, I want to be a GS-14," she preached during one of her broadcasts. In those days, some members lived close enough to walk to church or take the bus. Others were joining the exodus to the Maryland suburbs.

In 2000, as the real estate market surged, Garrison considered selling the church but decided instead to stay and renovate. Problems followed with contractors and a pastor who took money. The church struggled with debt. Parking grew worse as boutiques opened on 14th. During Thursday-night prayer services, the Black Cat nightclub across 14th was rocking just as hard as the church. Garrison's preaching against homosexuality was no longer theoretical; the neighborhood had become one of the gayest in the city. Garrison put the church on the market and sold last spring.

As the search for a new property begins, the congregation is spared details, but tantalizing hints are dropped during services. "I see where we've been, and I seen where we are going," says Charlton Woodyard, who is involved in the sale of the church and the search for a new location. "When you see where we are going, whoo-whee, this is a new day!"

The churchgoers are frozen in a humble, working-class mindset. At collection time, the organ plays softly as Pastor Penny takes the microphone and urges, "Give what you can, saints, and if you can't give, just touch the basket."

When church is over at 2 or 3 on a Sunday afternoon, they pour out onto the 14th Street sidewalk, holding keys and Bibles, in no hurry to go. Most of the license plates are from Maryland. For many, Church of the Rapture is their last tie to the city. "It's going to be unbelievable when we ride through here," says Theresa Reliford. "'Oh, there was our church, and look at it now.'"

Some of the children run up to the KFC on the corner. A man in a three-piece suit with slicked-down hair walks past the Sunday brunchers at Cafe Saint-Ex eating organic eggs and polenta and then past a male couple walking arm in arm.

Woodyard is not sentimental about leaving. "D.C. had a lot of black churches back in the day," he says. "It's not that way anymore. It's a business now. This is an occupied territory."

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