Detroit J Term Reflection, Part II

Death on the outside, life on the inside.

The first thing you notice in a new place is the exterior, the outermost layer of something. In Detroit, the first thing we noticed were the façade of the houses- either boarded up and graffittied, or burned out, the collapsed roofs and open windows exposing a hollowed out used-to-be home. On the corner of the street where we stayed, there was an abandoned Methodist church; through the broken windows you could see the arched ceiling where songs used to rise to the glory of God. This is the dominant theme in the exterior landscape of Detroit- emptiness. Abandoned, uncared for, absent. In the last ten years, Detroit has lost over half of its population. 880,000 now live in the city limits where 2.2 million used to reside. The 8 lane wide streets that were designed to help traffic in the decades when the economy was flourishing and large populations drove their commuter cars to work each day, now feel like a child in an adult XXL T-shirt. Detroit has shrunk.

My first experience riding through the actual city was on Sunday morning, when a woman named Miss Betty picked us up in Immanuel Lutheran Church’s van on her pre-worship rounds. As we drove through the neighborhood picking up other members, we experienced first hand the sense of abandonment. There was no one on the streets, and every second house was boarded up. In my memory, the only colors on this trip are the white of the snow that had fallen through the night and would not be plowed, the gray of the streets, sky, and houses, and brown, the color of the bare trees and most people’s skin. What was once a neighborhood with a busy population, colorful houses and Sunday dresses was now to our eyes, the “ghetto.”

On one corner in this neighborhood, we stopped at Immanuel Lutheran Church, a brick building which had a yellow banner out front inviting people to worship. Stepping out into the sunshine of the street, we walked up the front stairs and into the sanctuary. What greeted us were hundreds of people conversing with one another, scurrying teenagers, and pre-worship Gospel music tinkled on the organ. In contrast to the cold, bleak conditions outside, the church was bustling with life! Pastor Gahagen, who had led a talk on racism with us the night before dressed in jeans and a Red Wings cap, was clad in a long black robe and freshly combed hairdo. We had entered Detroit for real at that moment- no longer confined to looking at the city from the outside, we had entered the space where real people lived, breathed, gathered, sung, and worshipped. Although the exterior of the city was seemingly lifeless, at Immanuel Lutheran church we entered a living space, out of the Detroit that is no more into the Detroit that is. By entering into that interior, we would get to know the living, breathing, community, not just a faceless facade.