How the Other Half Worships

Bringing together more than 300 richly textured color photographs and a series of candid interviews with pastors, church officials, and congregation members, this book explores the conditions, beliefs, and practices that shape the churches and the lives of the nation's urban poor. Over a period of thirty years, sociologist and photographer Camilo Jose Vergara repeatedly visited these places of worship and the eclectic mix of buildings that house them. In twenty-one cities located in ten states across the country, photographic sequences coupled with insightful narrative show how ordinary structures assume, modify, and shed a religious character, how traditional churches - if they fail to adapt to new congregations - are demolished, and how new churches are designed and built from the ground up.