Mass Baptism in New York

August 7, 2000

Source: The New York Times

On August 7, 2000, The New York Times reported that on a recent Sunday "hundreds of people, dressed from head to foot in white cotton dresses or slacks and shirts" were baptized by fire hose on 115th Street between Lenox and Fifth Avenues. "Each August since 1937, the United House of Prayer for All People, a nondenominational Pentecostal church with three million members in 28 states," has used a fire hose to baptize hundreds of people. "Baptism is a faith thing and has nothing to do with the actual water," explained Apostle H. M. Swaringer, the pastor of the United House of Prayer in Harlem, at Frederick Douglass Boulevard and 125th Street. "In the Scripture, in places where there was no water, they used the clouds. It's all according to the conditions, what's available to us."

"It makes you feel good, relaxed," said Rose M. King, 41, of Harlem, shivering in a soaked T-shirt. "It takes all the evil away."