21-04-2025
Get to know key leaders at some of East Austin's historically minority churches
Amid the rapid gentrification of central East Austin, historically Black and Hispanic churches have proven to be some of the most resilient cultural institutions. Three century-old churches clustered off East 10th Street — two predominantly Black and another largely Hispanic — have hung on tight as the neighborhood around them continues to transform.
But their congregations are shrinking as members age and increasingly depart for the suburbs. Now they are confronted with the question of how to survive as commuter parishes that have trouble appealing to their new neighbors who trend younger and whiter — and who are less likely to attend church.
Most of the churches have already been displaced once, in the early 20th century when segregationist policies pushed non-white Austinites and institutions east of Interstate 35 from downtown. They've been there ever since, their leaders and longtime members determined to stick around.
Here are some of their stories:
Read first: In gentrified East Austin, these three historically minority churches are at a crossroads
Ardtria Griffin grew up in the days of strict tradition. On Sundays in the late 1960s, the pastor, ministers, and choir of Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church would march down the center aisle of the church to start the service. All would break into a hymn, seemingly always the same one: 'Holy Holy Hooooly, Lord God Almighty…'
'I used to think the AMEs were sanctified or snobbish. We didn't clap. We didn't stomp our feet,' said the 64-year-old, in reference to two common African American church practices. 'Now we're letting our hair down.'
These days, she reflects more on the dedication to faith and community that she saw in her parents and those before her. As a girl, she watched her father walk past East 11th Street's 'pimps and prostitutes' to invite homeless individuals to service. She remembers her mother organizing meals for hundreds in the church's basement on Thanksgiving.
Her faith and loyalty to her church, she said, are in large part the effect of her parents.
'We had committed, dedicated members,' Griffin said. Now, it's her job to be that: 'bringing in the younger generation and training them up.'
It's a role Griffin is trying to take on, picking up family members to bring them to Sunday service, and greeting oldcomers and newcomers alike as the lead usher.
When it's someone's time to stop by the church, she'll be there to support them, 'In any way. In any way that I possibly can.'
Mario Rentería awakes every morning at 5 a.m. and walks out to his backyard in East Austin, where he meditates and prays in front of a simple brick grotto of the Virgin Mary adorned by flowers.
Behind him, through an alleyway, the wooden steeple of Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church gazes down at him as it has for most of his life. The son of Mexican immigrants who married at the church, Rentería became an altar boy for the 6:30 a.m. mass at age 6. Now 73, he serves as a deacon, visiting the sick, assisting with paperwork and running an occasional mass.
'It was ingrained in us by my parents, by my community. As I grew up around here, I realized that that was the center of community life,' Rentería said. 'It still is the center of my being.'
Rentería was born in a now-demolished one-room house across the street from the church and grew up two blocks away in a stone house that was rumored to have been a mortuary for Confederate veterans interred at the nearby Texas State Cemetery. As a boy, Rentería and his siblings spent hours fighting the soldiers' ghosts. On hot summer days, they ran behind the insecticide truck, inhaling its fumes and the dust stirred up from the then-unpaved roads.
He moved back to the neighborhood three years ago, thanks to the help of a nonprofit developer. Nowadays, Rentería can walk down the street to check on old friends and fellow parishioners, like the Guajardo brothers, ages 71 and 74. Sometimes, as he walks through the transformed streets, he finds himself saddened by the disappearance of kids and families from the neighborhood.
'It's kind of weird that we're still here,' he said.
But mostly, Rentería is happy that he can be near the church, repaying his labor to the institution that has kept him grounded in his faith, helping him make sense of family, change and mortality.
It's what seems most logical, he said: 'To continue my service to the community, and more important, my service to God in any way I could.'
In her defense of generations-old hymns and 'biblically sound sermons,' Ebenezer Third Baptist associate minister Janice Bryant mirrors her church's admiration for the depths of tradition.
But Bryant also reflects Ebenezer's commitment to change. In 2003, nearly four decades after joining the church at the age of 26, she became ordained as a minister, a rarity in the Baptist tradition where church leaders are almost exclusively men.
Now 75, Bryant said the accomplishment speaks to the forward-looking nature of the church's storied former pastor Marvin C. Griffin and of the congregation. It also speaks to her determination. Eight years later, she completed her doctorate in ministry.
An educator by profession, Bryant took to helping, then leading, Bible studies at Ebenezer from her first years with the church. 'There's never been a time in my life at Ebenezer, except for maybe the first years, that I've actually not taught,' Bryant said.
Learning one's faith should be transformational, Bryant said. It's what she tries to teach. It's what she tries to hold herself to.
'People think church is just a hobby, that it's just a game,' Bryant said. Or they see 'religion as something extremely stifling.'
'They say 'Peace on earth, goodwill towards men,'' Bryant said. So it's important 'that you actually have goodwill towards people … that you believe that you are responsible in some way, by your attitudes and feelings, to care — and not just know — about the things going on.'
Such, she said, is what one's faith should do.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Get to know key leaders at East Austin's Black and Hispanic churches
