Photos Explore African-American Culture Of Faith

March 19, 2009

Author: Theresa Winslow

Source: Examiner/The Associated Press

http://www.examiner.com/a-1913972~Photos_explore_African_American_culture_of_faith.html

If Leroy Evans doesn't go to church, he feels lost.

"It's a part of me," said the trustee of Mount Olive African Methodist Episcopal Church in Annapolis, where he's been going for decades. "It's about everything. I came in young, I've really enjoyed being here, and I ain't going anywhere else."

Evans is far from the only one who feels this way, and Mount Olive is certainly not the only church that evokes this kind of devotion from its members. Evidence of this can be found not only during Sunday services, but at the Banneker-Douglass Museum.

A new exhibit there titled "Soul Sanctuary: Images of the African American Worship Experience" features 75 pictures from black churches in 25 states. It's the result of a 10-year project by Washington, D.C., photographer Jason Miccolo Johnson, who also published a book of the same name.

The exhibit fittingly ends a nationwide tour in Annapolis at the site of a former church and in time for the museum's 25th anniversary celebration. Part of Banneker-Douglass is housed in the original Mount Moriah African Methodist Episcopal Church, and the photographs, showcased in groups in the general order of a Sunday service, are spread out on the walls of what used to be the sanctuary.

The only local churches in the exhibit is Mount Olive, with the Rev. Johnny R. Calhoun shown leading worship, and Mount Moriah.

Calhoun, who serves as senior pastor, said the African-American church fulfills a deep need for the black community. "It affirms, encourages and heals," he said. "(It fills) a level of social as well as spiritual needs."

Johnson shows the many facets of worship by depicting services throughout the year and involving all ages. He covers both rural and urban churches, all with an eye toward capturing the emotions worship can evoke.

His research took him to 200 churches from 1995 to 2005, capturing 15,000 images on black-and-white film.