Rhetoric Race and Religion
Two churchgoers wait outside Greater Hood Memorial AME Zion, dressed casually in jeans and sneakers. Youth Pastor Tykym Stallings arrives, pushing a stroller. He unlocks the doors and ushers them in to the church with red carpets, organ pipes and crucifix-shaped windows.
“I gotta do a soundcheck,” Stallings mumbles. He plugs his iPod into a speaker and begins scratching behind a set of turntables. He turns up the bass to cochlea-splitting levels. He closes his eyes and nods his head. This is Harlem’s hip-hop church.
“Tonight we present Jesus Christ in an unorthodox way; we like to say uncensored here,” says Stallings, 24. Since December 2004, the weekly Thursday evening service in the church on West 146th Street has preached the Gospel over a grinding hip-hop beat and chanted, “Amen. Word. That’s what’s up,” after prayers.
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