Customer Reviews

How the Other Half Worships

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The Chilean-American sociologist, Camilo Jose Vergara has spent the past 30 years visiting the poorest urban areas of his adopted country. His passion is to go back year after year and photograph the same buildings. At first glance, his photographs are unremarkable. However, Vergara's eye for detail and beauty come out when looking at entire book of photographs. Through the years, he has shown the decline, death, decomposition and then re-birth of many of the country's poorest neighborhoods. This life cycle is shown with Vergara's special brand of compassion and insite.

Vergara's original intention when preparing this book was to write about the evolving architecture of religious buildings in America's poorest ghettos. But as he spent more time with African Americans and Latinos he became fascinated with the form of Christianity that they had brought with them from the rural South and Latin America. His interest was "aroused by the sheer number and variety of churches, the vitality of their services, and the poignancy of formally dressed church members emerging from decayed buildings and walking through empty lots".

Although written by a trained sociologist, this book was written for the general reading public. In my opinion, Vergara's genius is in making the reader more aware of his or her surroundings. Having finished this book, I now stop and pay more attention to the many storefront churches that dot the streetscape of my city. This book is highly recommended. Purchase it and you will see why Camilo Jose Vergara was a recipient of the MacArthur Genius Grant.

I heard about this book on NPR. I love varied religious imagery, and this is certainly an interesting mix. However, you wonder what it is about the author that led him to avoid the Southeast, considered the Bible Belt of our continent. When I think of the prevalence of artists influenced by their faith in Appalachia, and the "praise anywhere" strategies employed by all classes in the Southeast, a piece is missing of what would have been an amazing patchwork of fill-in-the blank-here American faith.