Tongues of Fire: Pentecostals of the Lower East Side

Pentecostals of the Lower East Side

I see her on the streets. Shy, young Latina–familiar. Maybe 14. Knock-kneed, with deep dimples and slow, rippling brown hair halfway to her hips.

Tonight, she wears a yellow dress. She sits bolt upright with hands folded, her eyes peeled on the bald man who paces–practically jogs–across the tiny room. Around her newborns wail. An old guy dabs tears with his Salvation Army shirtsleeves. She grinds in her seat when the bald man calls out ¡Enfuércate, y sea valiente! Be strong and of good courage. Joshua 1:9 in machine-gun Spanish, and she gets it. He thrusts his open Bible into the air, summoning moans, urging the spirit, and in his mounting ardor the little room shimmers with holy voltage.

And then her head snaps. Wham! Like a spring bolt. She heaves against the brown folding chair, whipping hair screaming across my nose. ¡Gracias señor! ¡Hey-soooos, mi alma! She spasms on and off for the next 30 minutes while a well-dressed young man sitting a few seats to my right smiles at me, glances at her and then quickly back with this rapturous glint in his eyes like, That! That is what we come here for!

At 10:45 on a Friday night, the Hispanic congregation of the Iglesia El Olivo Verde–The Green Olive Tree Church–spills out onto the Attorney St. sidewalk. I want to find out what she saw, how it felt, but the girl is off through some playground gates, melting into the dark. The other parishioners are leaving or returning inside to pray before the start of the Visual, a service that begins every Friday at midnight and lasts until daybreak.

"God bless you," they tell me, one by one. "You’re welcome anytime."

"Thanks. Good night."

Across the street sits an architect’s trailer, nerve center for one of those much maligned Giuliani-sponsored public-garden-to-housing conversions. An apartment building’s going up. I poke around a bit until I’m confronted by a trio of Chihuahua-sized rats that’ve decided it’s not worth the trouble of moving. Feeling charitable, I take a split second to consider the claim they have on this territory. If not exactly homesteaders, rats are at least outriders, deputy assistant ambassadors from an oft-hallowed period in the recent life of this neighborhood; from back when the rents were kinder and the sidewalks smelled worse–more flavor more danger, or so we remember it.

That’s all then. I nod to the verminous enduring constants, and run like a sissy. Two minutes later I’m on Stanton St., east of Norfolk, where I see a lighted plastic cross hanging from the lintels of a tiny storefront. The sign says: Christian Pentecostal Church Assemblies of God. Visible through the crucifix-shaped window: an impossibly skinny room with about 10 short pews scorched in hard, chalky light. The linoleum and overabundance of cheap wood paneling lend a sad-sack, Bowery meekness. I look at this place and want to swig antifreeze fluid. Here is the obverse of money-power: this storefront church and the one I’ve just come from and the four or five other resistant little nodes of charismatic Protestantism down here on the Lower East Side, whose modesties swell in proportion to the size of their Jewish and Roman Catholic neighbors, not to mention everything else.

When the lighted cross goes dark, what remains–aside from the cold–is the familiar echo of the party circuit. Psalms to Crapulence–humming along Clinton, Rivington, Suffolk, Ludlow, Stanton, Orchard and Houston Sts., leaking through the walls of Chaos and Lansky Lounge and alt-vanguard eateries like 71 Clinton Fresh Food, from which a nervous dotcommer or a visiting suit exits onto Clinton St. He scratches himself immodestly and voids his overfed guts of chived potatoes and Bordeaux, splattering his just-bought Campers the color of mud; it’s that vibrating night-after-night music performed by the wealthier, whiter, reliably atheist-leaning Lower East Side Other–me–and the vast, chain-wallet clerisy who luxuriate in tight-assed suspicion of any sort of demonstrative faith and are clueless as to the Christ-wrought paroxysms of their tawny- and black-skinned immigrant neighbors.

So. Who really needs these churches? And what really do they believe?

New Year’s Eve, 8 p.m. I’m back inside the dimly lighted Iglesia El Olivo Verde, where one gentleman is kneeling on the floor, bent over a folding chair. Two women are up at the altar, one young, one old. The urgent cast of the younger woman’s face, underscored by her sharp, Aztec features, is consistent with the words she keeps repeating: " ¡Señor! ¡Tengo hambre de ti!" I hunger for you, Lord.

Beside her, a gray, frizzy-haired abuela is singing quietly. As the minutes pass her song turns to prayer. More minutes and she’s achieved high prayer velocity. Maintaining this rapid tempo, she elevates her pitch gradually until she’s a full two octaves above her point of origin. I’m looking elsewhere, at the wall-to-wall photo of a Rocky Mountain river scene behind the drum kit, at the childproof covers on the electrical sockets, when it finally hits me–that’s not Spanish!

Ohh mamni ma chai koo koo ra di va chai oooo. Ooo ma nia noo noo ma rookoo to dividivi hi ooo. Oohh ma dea koo koo ka ka goo roo koo to–

She accompanies her tongues with that familiar charismatic wave–one hand on the heart, the other up to God.

George, one of the church directors, is at the entrance looking a little worried. Many of El Olivo Verde’s 100-person congregation come from the outer boroughs, and with all the snow, he’s expecting a low turnout. But 20 minutes later the room is packed and that simultaneous sonorous holy oneness prayer is mounting, by turns. George points across the room to a man in a black suit. He is bald, with pronounced cheekbones, and a jutting cranial canopy that keeps his eyes in deep shadow.

"That’s Antonio Rivera. Twenty-five years a heroin addict."

I learn that Rivera’s been in prison most of his life and walks around with a .45 slug lodged in his right femur. He was saved in prison 12 years ago, and for the last nine, he’s been doing missionary work in the Dominican Republic, where Iglesia El Olivo Verde has established six permanent churches. It was Rivera who’d delivered the sermon my first night here.

George points out other members. Pastor Manuel Herrera, 29 years teaching junior high at P.S. 22; a parishioner who lost her children to the city; a recovering alcoholic. I ask him about the rent situation. He doesn’t answer. Just opens the door and points to Rodriguez Grocery, a boarded-up store across Stanton St.

"Eight hundred dollars a month to three thousand dollars. Just like that."

A portentous blast of the organ and the band careens into "Yo Te Amo, Señor," a mid-tempo devotional.

"We’re looking for a new place right now. We’re as economically valuable to the neighborhood as any retail store. We want to grow and we’ve asked the city for help with locations around here. But ours isn’t the currency they’re interested in."

George changes the subject abruptly, asking if I’ve got plans for tonight. I tell him that I do, and that they probably violate his church’s no drinking, no dancing code. We both chuckle and wish each other a Happy New Year.

"Good luck with your search," I say, and cringe instantly at my faux pas.

Outside, the snow is piled high in the Attorney St. cul de sac. Since my last visit, the architect’s trailer has been tagged with graffiti. Looking around, it occurs to me that you can now purchase imported, designer graffiti spray. It’s called Belton, and it’s available at this hiphop boutique on Orchard St. (formerly a bra and girdle store) where the rent is also probably $3000 a month.

"Hi, would one of you be the pastor?"   The big lettering on the shop window reads "Helen’s Beauty Salon." The small sign above the shop window says "Holiness Unto the Lord Church, Pastor: Helen Jenkins." It’s one of the few English-language churches on the Lower East Side.

The ladies skinny their eyes at me.

"Thought perhaps one of you might be Miss–"

"Sit!"

The one in the beautician’s chair. Maybe 50 or 60, hair in curlers and grave expression. She has two thumbs on her right hand. Stop staring! I tell myself.

"You a reporter?"

"Yes."

"I already told that one paper Jesus don’t need them! Not with all that phone sex and prostitution dirt they sell."

"I’m just–looking into–curious about this, uh–"

But now my tongue is all thumbs.

"If you print that dirt you’re working for the devil."

A shrug, and then she meanders across the floor and tucks her head under this ancient beehive hairdryer. There’s an atavistic strain running through this salon. I half expect the paperboy to come a-hollerin’ news of a successful moonshot.

"Well, just a quick thing or two. Like your ministry, is it Pentecostal or Baptist?"

"The Lord says, ‘No man cometh unto the Father, but by me.’"

"Which means then–"

"Baptist, Pentecostal, Charismatic, what’s the difference–long as you’re saved? Long as you accept Jeee-suss into your heart."

"And what about the rent? With all the development going on, are you affected?"

"Big changes around here, and a lot of them bad. The wages of siiiinnn! Could I tell stories."

"Think I could come check out a church service?"

She tips her glasses to the end of her nose. A slow, awkward 30-second stare ends with a smile. Perhaps she likes what she sees. Perhaps she’s scanned my soul and detected in me conversion material. From inside the hairdryer, she starts to sing a hymn. But she’s smiling as she’s singing, and it creeps me out. She’s looking at me like we’re sharing some private joke. In my book, pious plus carefree gets you to apocalyptic. I brace for the Seventh Seal/End Times lecture, but instead, she reveals how judgmental I can be.

"You seem like an okay boy," she says.

I’m ashamed.

"And there’s a lot of bad around."

She says I can attend her next service on the condition she peruse the paper I write for.

That Sunday I arrive at the beauty salon church on Stanton St. She and her dapper six-person congregation are standing in the center of the room, between the mirrors and the hairdryers. But it’s obvious, even as they strain to smile and welcome me among them, that something’s way off. Pastor Jenkins approaches me at the door.

"I’ve spoken to Jesus about this."

"Yes?"

"And we prayed long and hard."

"Uh-huh?"

She places her right hand on my shoulder, again with the smile, but whispering this time. "I’m afraid Jesus doesn’t want to be associated with that filth you print. You’ll have to go."

"Thanks," I say. "Thanks anyway."

I mean it, and then I’m gone. About 30 minutes later I hear half a dozen voices inside, hymnifying a cappella. Hers is in there somewhere–dark and reedy, but beautiful in its own way, and capable, I’m sure, of restoring guilt to a wayward conscience. I admire her storefront display window. It’s filled with ficus and spider plants. A small sign at eye level reads:

"This kind of Christianity is lasciviousness!"  So say opponents of Pentecostalism, on the basis that it promotes a form of lazy, mind-neutral worship. Indeed, it’d be tough to imagine the starched, Presbyterian forebears on my father’s side praying with their mouths open, let alone quivering on thin pile in the throes of a jiggy tongue fit.

Still, what it’s about for the average Pentecostal, be he from Togo or Topeka, conservative or progressive, is the personally felt experience of the Divine. Happy, rowdy, solemn, quiet, contemplative, drunk, laughing, vomiting or otherwise slain in the Spirit–eso es la cosa.

So let’s say you’re strolling of a summer’s day along Rivington St. You and the literate, Buddhist, spontaneous, mildly halitotic, disappointingly rotund filmmaker/ waitress you’ve just met through the Nerve Web personals are getting chummy. Then, quite out of nowhere, this cacophonous merengue ado comes spilling out onto the sidewalk. You’ll want to say something smart, but "Man, those Spanish Jesus freaks rock!" isn’t gonna cut it with her.

A brushup, then, on origins of the faith.

First the name. It’s derived from the first Pentecost Sunday in Jerusalem, into which the Holy Spirit is said to have descended and spiritually, palpably, touched his believers. Modern Pentecostalism is rooted in the Reformation. Where the Bible was officially tagged Sola Scriptura, i.e., the unique source of divine revelation, the reformers basically said, it’s the indwelling Holy Spirit in the hearts of you and me–Christian believers that we are–that’s the sole interpreter of the Scriptures. This, and not the alleged "divine authority" of the Pope and his Vatican cronies, ought to direct the life of a Christian.

Fast-forward to the 19th century. Protestantism had taken hold, and sectarian groups like the Irvingites (and the Shakers and Mormons, too) began witnessing all these amazing external manifestations of the divine presence in converted believers–speaking in tongues, the receiving of divine prophecies, miraculous healings and the raising of the dead. But by this time, the Protestant parent bodies had about as much verve as a hangnail. They looked upon these external conversion phenomena with stony indifference. Ticked, the upstart sects separated.

These sectarian groups earned a sizable chunk of theological street cred due to the parallel rise of the Holiness movement, founded by the famed Methodist preacher John Wesley. Here, as with the Irvingites, the emphasis was on the conversion experience and personal awareness of the Spirit. All it took was for some of these Wesleyan Holiness outfits to link up with the Irvingites and their counterparts, and modern Pentecostalism was born.

1900 saw the beginning of the denominational period. By the early 1970s, 200 distinct denominations were recognized. It’s now estimated that there are 10 million Pentecostals in the United States alone. The largest foreign contingent is in South America, where missionaries from the States have successfully evangelized in most countries. Brazil alone has four million, of whom 1.8 million are communicants–converts who were originally baptized Catholics. Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, which supply the majority of New York City’s Hispanic Pentecostals, have also been heavily evangelized.

So, recalling that the descent of the Spirit was palpably perceptible on Pentecost Sunday, it’s the way in which that perceptibility manifests itself that’s important. The three biggies are internal phenomena, external phenomena and the missionary urge. These first two are the stuff of striking Walker Evans photo essays, piquant encomia on Appalachian life and a bit of Simpsons humor–Moe to Homer, when invited to join the do-nothing religion: "Sorry Homer, I was born a snake handler and I’ll die a snake handler."

They’re also the subject of your next snotty joke.

It’s a passionate kiss, a lesbian kiss. Suffolk St. in the drizzle, and there’s tongue, caress and moaning. But then, this short one, she’s–I mean, she’s just too young! Prelegal nymphette, can’t be a day over–okay, 15. But still, I mean throwing–literally slamming–the taller, older one against a railing and drilling her knee, a piston, up high into the bough, and the taller one moaning, "Uuunngggghhh, yeah, yeah, uh huh!" And then, "Uunnggghh, uh, oh, oh yeah, no, you and me! No! No! Hold it. We gotta getta room. Gonna call Lizzie. She’ll–Got! To! Get! A! God! Damn! Room! UGGHH!"

Church starts at 7:30 p.m. I’m killing time on the corner of Suffolk and E. Houston outside the Iglesia Pentecostal Arca de Salvación, a dull, beige box of building that faces Meow Mix, the dyke bar whence this concupiscence materialized. If you live down here or frequent the area, then you’ve passed the Arca de Salvación a thousand times. It’s still easy to miss, partly because it’s only two stories tall, but also because of the anomic gating that wraps around its front and side, keeping you three feet from its walls. Physically, Arca de Salvación is the largest of the Pentecostal churches in this area. And aside from the Primitive Christian Church down on E. Broadway, its congregation is the oldest, having lasted two decades.

My umbrella is broken, and so I decide to knock a few minutes early. A man answers the door, sees I’m getting wet and hurries me inside. We stumble through our introductions in Spanish. His name is Jorge; he’s a custodian at one of the local public high schools, but does work around the church, too. He tells me the schedule of services and says I can wait inside in the chapel.

I sit alone in the last of the 24 pews and look around. It’s a long room with a low ceiling. Red velvet cloth covers all of the windows. Six chandeliers hang above the aisle, which leads to a lectern and, just beyond that, a stage. There are three lounge chairs on the stage, each covered in protective vinyl. The drum kit and organ are to the right of the dais. A bunch of handheld rhythm instruments sit on top of the organ. Each of the seven people who trickles in shakes a few hands (including mine) and says, "God bless you," and then sets to praying.

By now, I can say that initial movements of a Pentecostal service are fairly standardized: arrive, greet, kneel and pray. As always, the praying is intense. Once, at the Asamblea de Iglesias Pentecostal de Jesucristo on Norfolk St., I watched a withered old matron kneel upright at an altar with no arm support. She lasted nearly three hours.

As he steps into the room, Jorge makes the eighth and final member of tonight’s congregation. And with the low turnout there’ll be no fading into the plush for me. Seeing that I’ve got no Bible, Jorge pulls me up next to him in the second row so that we can share when the time comes. The silent prayer ends when the young man who’ll be leading the service (but who is not the pastor) takes the mic, faces the altar and whispers a long, rolling Spanglish plaint, "TueresSeñor. Graciasgracias. ThankyouLord." His whisper rises into a normal talking voice and the parishioners pray out loud, too.

"I’mnothingwithoutyouLord. Gracias Señor. Yoteamo. Mialma. Allelujah."

He’s swallowing the mic, and with these low-ohm public address systems, plosive consonants are like little bombs. The letter "S" is its own torture device. A few weeks earlier, I’d found this period of simultaneous intonation noisy and painful. But now I’m inured. Now the voices just coalesce into their own sort of beatific sonorous unity. Then they swell, over a period of 15, 20, sometimes 30 minutes. From there it can turn into a free-for-all or drop back to nothing–preacher’s call. In some churches, this portion of the ceremony is performed in the dark, and the rising-voice effect becomes even more pronounced. As I listen this evening, it occurs to me that if I were a believer, this collective supplication that goes on at the start of every Pentecostal service would be the most delightful of spiritual ear candies.

Next comes the Scripture reading. Jorge points along with his finger and every so often I ask him for a translation. Misericordia? Mercy. Dejes en tu lugar? Stand firm! He compliments me on my Spanish, but in fact it’s weak, and so, during the liturgy, my thoughts turn to my own personal ideas about faith. Tonight I’m thinking about my Greek Orthodox christening. Family legend says I lost control and took a whiz on poor old Father Cosmogaithuri. (The Greeks dunk you butt-naked in tepid water. What do you want?) I impute oracular meaning to this incident. The urination, a permanent rejection of faith; lacking an overarching spiritual framework, true fulfillment is unattainable; I rage against any attempt by family to bring me into the believing fold, and I die the cold, lonely death of the atheist. Lights out, you’re over.

These thoughts bug me now more than they used to. Thankfully, Jorge’s got these two wooden blocks and he’s banging them together, and a six-year-old behind me is whacking at a tambourine. The musical portion of the ceremony is well under way. I tap on the pew. Everyone sways side-to-side, even when there’s no music. It seems as though the most popular hymn on the current Hispanic Pentecostal playlist is "Tu Fidelidad." So this is what we sing together. Under the leadership of a skinny middle-aged man named Felix, the eight of us in this large, empty chapel, make a joyful, if atonal, noise to the backing of cowbell plunks and cabasa rattles. "Tu fidelidad es grande, Tu fidelidad es poder Señor," we sing without any kind of backing melody. And soon I’m fighting the urge to hop on the organ, though if I did, nobody would mind. When Felix is finished up front, Jorge tells me anyone can take a turn up at the mic. He raises his eyebrows and gives me a little elbow nudge. I respectfully decline. Tonight’s service is shorter than the two to three hours to which I’m now accustomed. After the music, Pastor Orlando Blancovitch gives a blessing and then dismisses us. On my way out he greets me.

"How did you know about us?" he asks.

"I walk by all the time," I say. "Might do an article."

I get this question a lot in Lower East Side churches. I try to avoid talking about my own lapsed/indifferent Christian status, but that hardly matters, since nobody here ever asks. With few exceptions, in fact, the people I meet are so friendly and welcoming that if I’m ever suspicious, it’s by default. No proselytizing, or conversion efforts either. As for race, yeah, I’m quite aware of mine, which almost never happens. But nobody else seems to care.

"You’re welcome here anytime," says the pastor.

"God bless you," says Jorge.

"Thanks Jorge. God bless you, too."