The images and sounds of the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy flashed across television screens and social media posts: Wailing toddlers flanked by armed Border Patrol agents. Children huddled under foil blankets in detention centers. A seven-minute recording of weeping youngsters crying out “Mami!” and “Papa!” As news reports and eyewitness accounts of children being yanked …
In the beginning, there will be no lights. The sanctuary of St. Ignatius of Loyola Catholic Church in Spring — shuttered since the waters of Harvey poured through its doors — will be cloaked in darkness. As a procession makes its way through the refurbished church, past the freshly painted walls and over just-installed travertine …
Inside Annunciation Catholic Church, there are vaulted ceilings and gothic arches, frescoes depicting the Angel Gabriel’s apparition to the Virgin Mary and majestic stained glass windows recounting the mysteries of the rosary. There are 149-year-old pews, as old as the structure itself. A 1924 Pilcher’s Sons Opus organ in the music loft. The smell of …
On a corner of Freedmen’s Town, on the holy ground where Mount Carmel Missionary Baptist Church once stood, are circles of crushed granite and worn brick. They spiral past four benches studded with colorful mosaics and into a rosette-shaped center where a stone reads: “To God be the glory.” The historic church, long a mainstay …
In the past, Emmanuel Episcopal Church marked Holy Saturday with a Great Easter Vigil, a deeply spiritual ritual that concludes with the lighting of the paschal candle — a symbol of rebirth and renewal. But this year, a time when so much has changed for so many, members of the Christian church in west Houston …
In her early morning Sunday sermon at New Light Church, Dr. I commands a sweeping stage carpeted in gold and flanked by video screens. Her voice rises full and impassioned over the audience of nearly 5,000 worshippers. Her high heels flash as she strides from one side of the altar to the other. One hand …
Hilda Ramirez never steps foot outside St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church. When her 11-year-old son leaves for school, she holds her breath, praying that he will return. When sirens wail on the streets outside, her heart stops. For much of the past two years, the Austin church has provided sanctuary for Ramirez, a 30-year-old immigrant who …
After the call to prayer and the sermon in three languages, after members of the Southwest Houston mosque hailed one another with the traditional greeting of Assalam Alaikum and the sort of warm embraces familiar to Latino gatherings, the imam beckoned to the new convert. Delmi Realegeño, a newly-arrived immigrant from El Salvador, walked to …
HUNTSVILLE – A steady rain pelted the plain, brick church, muddying the crowded parking lot and blanketing the sky in a gray gloom. Inside the RCCG Rhema International Assembly, however, the spirit was joyful. Congregants sang and swayed and lifted their voices. They praised the Lord in English and in a variety of Nigerian languages: …
Their laughter reverberated over the clatter of cups and silverware, drifting past the lunch-hour cacophony of La Madeleine. The women were gathered round a rustic wooden table, nursing oversized blue cups of cappuccino and tall glasses of iced tea. They greeted each other all at once, words colliding and clashing, like schoolgirls at a cafeteria …
They never know when the travelers will arrive or if they will show up at all. So, eyes trained on the traffic along Main Street, bodies poised to leap up and run out, they wait. This Wednesday was no different. It was already past noon. Kathie Gallagher, Charlotte Bilderback and Carolyn King had been peering …
Little by little, Allison Cogburn embroidered her classroom walls with bold, bright letters in shocks of red, green, blue and yellow, with posters reiterating punctuation rules and parts of speech. On a shelf by the windows, rows of books beckoned, a reminder of the learning to come. On a table near the door, rosary beads …
There is something very moving about religious art. It goes far beyond aesthetic appeal or brushwork technique, and appeals directly to the soul. So writing about an exhibit of Ukrainian icons for this Houston Chronicle piece was both challenging and fascinating for me. Ukrainian Christianity through the ages By MONICA RHOR FOR THE CHRONICLE In …
I didn’t expect to find a Grammy nominee inside a north Houston storefront church. But that’s where I met Kim Burrell, a gospel singer who has recorded with R. Kelly and Missy Elliot and been named by Harry Connick Jr. and Whitney Houston as one of the great voices of music. For the last nine …
One of the great joys of journalism is getting to see the familiar through new eyes. In this freelance piece I did for the Houston Chronicle, I talked to some high school students working on a mural project that combined an exploration of sacred spaces with a creative depiction of faith and religion. They each discovered something new …
The Silk Road, the trade route that once linked Asia to the Mediterranean, is the theme of this year’s Houston International Festival. Here’s a freelance piece I did for the Houston Chronicle about “Religions of the Silk Road,” a morality play that celebrates the faiths found along the road. Silk Road performance celebrates corridor of …