Still Flocking To Prince George's

Charles County Newcomers Endure Long Commutes To Keep Their Church And Community Ties

The Bible teaches that God rested on the seventh day, but many of his modern disciples do not. Consider Michele and Vernon Davis, who leave their home in Charles County at 7:15 each Sunday morning for the 45-minute drive to church in Prince George's.

The Davises are among thousands of families who leave Southern Maryland not only for work but for worship. The trend is particularly acute in Charles, where rapid population growth has been fueled by people moving south from Prince George's County.

Although experts say the geographical division between residents' home lives and their community activities is not surprising in an emerging community, some leaders in Charles find the trend worrisome. If people don't worship in the communities they live in, they say, small churches face the risk of extinction, and families have no one familiar close by to turn to when they need help.

"It's been incredible with all the foreclosures; people need help within the county, so they come to these churches they haven't been a part of," said Sandy Washington, who helps run a ministers' alliance in Charles. "If you can come to the community for help, why can't you support the community by worshiping there?"

Demographers and sociologists say the pattern echoes one from a generation ago, when legions of upwardly mobile middle-class black families moved to Prince George's from the District, creating the nation's wealthiest majority-black suburb. For years, many of those families continued to attend D.C. churches before developing a thriving religious community of their own. Now, many similarly situated families are leaving Prince George's for Charles, looking for larger houses and lower crime rates.

"Part of what you have going on in the Prince George's-to-Charles move is a sense of the black middle class's engagement with black religious communities that have nurtured their families," said James Hudnut-Beumler, dean of Vanderbilt University's divinity school and author of the book "Looking for God in the Suburbs: The Religion of the American Dream and its Critics." "These people want a piece of a larger, greener lawn and a new house, but they have no desire to sever ties with the old community that helped their family grow and develop."

After three years as members of the First Baptist Church of Glenarden, the Davis family moved to Waldorf in 2006 to find a larger home. With three children (one now attends Delaware State University), they had outgrown their home near Fort Meade in Anne Arundel County and could not afford houses in Hyattsville or Laurel.

In Waldorf, they found a four-bedroom, two-bathroom home with a deck on a leafy cul-de-sac for $20,000 less than they would have paid in Prince George's. The neighbors are polite, Michele Davis said, but after more than two years, the family barely knows them.

"We're never really here, so they're only familiar to me," she said. "We leave early in the morning and get home when they're already in bed, so there's not much opportunity. Maybe 10 percent of our life is actually in Waldorf."

With their two younger children, they drive 45 minutes from their home in Charles to the Glenarden church up to a dozen times a week for services, Bible study, cheerleading, choir practice and Girl Scouts.

"I guess you can get used to anything, so it's become tolerable, but it still gets really tiring," said Michele Davis, 40, who works at the church as an audio technician. "But for us, there's no other option."

The family has never considered joining a church in Charles. After three years at First Baptist, the church has become a much larger part of their lives than their home. Financial difficulties forced them to pull Aneisha, 13, and Kayla, 10, out of the private school connected to the church this year, but all of the girls' extracurricular activities take place at First Baptist. One of several megachurches in Prince George's, it has more than 10,000 members and ministries for nearly every interest.

Michele Davis leaves home at 8:30 a.m. on weekdays, arriving at her church office an hour later. When she returns to Waldorf at 4:30 p.m. on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays, she honks the horn in the driveway to call her daughters out to the car, then goes straight back to the church for Girl Scouts, Bible Study, youth group or choir practice. The choir meets again on Saturdays, when Kayla also has cheerleading practice. Most nights, dinner is eaten on the road.

On Sunday mornings, the Davises try to leave home by 7:15 a.m. so that Michele will make it to her 8 o'clock class at the church's Bible Institute. They generally attend the 10 a.m. service, head home after socializing with friends, then drive back to church for the 6:30 p.m. service.

Davis says that driving back and forth takes a mental and financial toll and that many others would not make the same choices. Many of her neighbors have cut back on commuting to Prince George's, although most said they are not looking for a church in Charles.

Karina Leake, 27, attends Sunday service at Reid Temple African Methodist Episcopal Church in Glenn Dale with her husband and two children, but she has resisted becoming more involved in the church she grew up in because of the hour-long drive from her White Plains home. "There are some activities and ministries that I'd like to participate in or get the kids in, but we can't because we live so far away," she said.

Still, Leake said she's never thought seriously about joining a church closer to home, and like Davis, she feels largely disconnected from where she lives.

It's a widespread sentiment that some local religious and community leaders find troubling. Hudnut-Beumler, the Vanderbilt religion professor, said healthy development of exurbs such as Charles can be stifled if a large percentage of residents don't consider the community more than a place to sleep.

The trend is far less visible in Northern Virginia, where several megachurches have been constructed in Loudoun and Prince William counties. McLean Bible Church, one of the largest megachurches in the region, operates a satellite campus in Loudoun, and Prince William houses a thriving religious community, religious leaders say.

Washington, the ministers' alliance director, said Charles may never flourish unless more people choose to worship there. The tension was sharply illustrated last fall, when a Charles tragedy -- four La Plata High School students killed in a car crash -- was mourned most visibly in Prince George's, where three of the funerals were held.

"Charles is where people come for large houses and good shopping, but not for spiritual fulfillment, which creates a very fractured community," Washington said.

Historic evidence indicates that many people eventually will switch church affiliations to their new communities, often because their children push to spend more time with friends from school, Hudnut-Beumler said. Within several years, he said, Charles will have its own megachurches, which will draw people who want cheerleading and adult education classes, too. That will pave the way for a large, diversified religious community, he said -- just like the one that began from similarly humble roots in Prince George's a generation ago.

"Bit by bit, the newcomers will begin to put down roots, starting with school and then expanding outward to form an identity in the community," Hudnut-Beumler said. "And then the community will begin to have its own identity."