Founded After Slavery, Visited by Dr King, Closed by Gentrification: A 149-Year-Old Church Says Goodbye in Shaw

• Lincoln Congregational Temple in Shaw held its last service on 30 September 2018
• It was founded in 1869 and once drew around 1,000 worshippers
• Shaw-Logan Circle’s Black population fell from 65% to 29% between 1990 and 2010
• Members were to decide within a year whether to sell or repurpose the building

Lincoln Congregational Temple United Church of Christ, founded by African Americans in 1869 in Washington, DC’s Shaw neighbourhood, held its final service on Sunday 30 September 2018, NewsOne reported. The congregation that once hosted Martin Luther King Jr, Paul Robeson and Julian Bond had dwindled to a few dozen worshippers.

The reason, members said, was the changing neighbourhood. Between 1990 and 2010 the African-American share of the Shaw-Logan Circle area fell from 65 per cent to 29 per cent. “The members have changed over the years. Mainly due to the changing demographics in the city,” the designated pastor, Barbara Breland, told WUSA9. “It has been harder to attract them.” The church tried to adapt, declaring itself open and affirming and hosting farmers’ markets and community events, but it could not reverse the decline.

The church’s 1929 building, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was still in use by a Spanish-language congregation and the Shaw Community Center, which runs an after-school programme in the basement. Members were to decide within a year whether to repurpose or sell the structure, leaving tenants uncertain. “New buildings have gone up, old buildings have been renovated and modified,” said church moderator Jeanne Cooper. “It will be a day of mixed emotions.”

Breland insisted the closure was not the end of the church’s mission. “Lincoln Temple the congregation is dissolving. But, God is not, because God continues on and God is eternal,” she said. The former interim minister, Rubin Tendai, added: “Somehow, this church will never die in the hearts of the people.”

Jamaicans in Washington, New York and Toronto have watched similar change reach the neighbourhoods where they first settled and worshipped. Lincoln Temple’s story is a reminder that a church’s most valuable asset may be its building, and that the time to plan what happens to it, whether through a trust, a housing partnership or a community use, is while the congregation still has the numbers to decide.

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