By David R. Bains, founder and editor of Magic City Religion

What does Christain worship look like in Birmingham, Alabama? In spring 2025, students in my Christian Worship: History and Theology course at Samford University examined fourteen more examples for Magic City Religion. (Previous studies were in 2021 and 2023.) In the course we discuss at least fourteen distinct historical “families” of worship, and this semester’s student essays discuss examples of seven of them ranging from Byzantine (St. George Melkite and St. Symeon Orthodox) to Charismatic (Arise and Met by Love). Geographically, the congregations ranged from Arise on the east side of Irondale, south to Christ Church (Methodist), and east to Shiloh Bapitst Church in Brighton.

The sample of churches this year particularly helped expand our website’s coverage of “more liturgical” congregations. In addition to the Byzantine churches, five of the congregations celebrate the eucharist (or Lord’s supper) at all of the their Sunday services. These churches are in three different denominations: Roman Catholic (Cathedral of St. Paul and Our Lady of Sorrows), Episcopal Church (Ascension and St. Stephen’s), and Presbyterian Church (USA) (Edgewood).

Dawson Memorial Bapist Church
Episcopal Church of the Ascension
Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Chruch
St. Symeon Orthodox Church
Samford Met By Love
Shiloh Baptist Church

According to the 2020 Religion Census in terms of both number of congregations and number of adherents the largest denominational traditions in Jefferson County, where Birmingham is located, are the Baptists (424 congregations) followed by the Methodists (158 congregations). These congregations are divided among several different Baptist and Methodist denominations. Even more structurally divided are the 249 non-denominational churches included in the census. While many Samford students have a strong well-founded assumptions about what to expect at a non-denominational church, these do not aways hold true as you will read in the essay on Mountain Brook Community Church.

There is also considerable diversity in worship within the Methodist and Baptist traditions. Locally most of the larger historically White congregations in the Methodist tradition offer both contemporary and traditional worship services. The essay on Christ Church focuses on a traditional service at a congregation that recently left the United Methodist Church to join the Global Methodist Church. Shiloh Baptist Church in Brighton is a congregation that sustains the two-part Sunday service once common among African American Baptists. First there is deacon-led “devotion” were songs are “lined out” or sung in “call and response.” This then gives way to the faster tempo of the “worship” led by the choir.

Choir-led worship at Shiloh Baptist Church in Brighton (July 2024) from church’s Facebook video.

The last two essays revisit churches whose worship was first studied for Magic City Religion in spring 2021 as congregations were still dealing with Covid-19 restrictions. They are Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, the City of Birmingham’s oldest Black Baptist church, and Dawson Memorial Baptist Church which celebrated its one hundred anniversary in the services examined.

Varieties

There are several other varieties among the essays worthy of note:

The student authors’ relation to the services studied varies. Some are insiders who work at the churches they discuss (Dawson and Shiloh). Others encountered a very different tradition from their own in preparing this essay (St. George, St. Symeon, St. Paul).

Most of the essays focus on Sunday morning services, but three essays examine services of a different type. Met by Love is a student fellowship that worships in a classroom at Samford on Monday nights. The essay at St. Symeon focuses on an evening service of vespers. And the essay on St. Stephen examines a Sunday evening “Celtic Service.”

Musicans assist the Celtic service at St. Stephen’s by playing string instruments.

Several essays play special attention to the aesthetics of the worship space. The extensive decorations at St. Paul, St. Symeon, and St. George impressed the writers, but so too did the natural simplicity of St. Stephen’s.

The congregational composition between churches is also strikingly different. For example, the congregations at Our Lady of Sorrows and Dawson ranged across generations, while that at Christ Church‘s traditional service was decidely older, younger members of the congregation presumably attend the contemporary service.

While writers do not explicitly address it, like nearly all churches in Birmingham, most of the congregations studied here are racially homogenous. One of the chief reasons for this is that Birmingham’s ecclesiastical and residential landscape are still shaped by its history of legal segregation. Eight of the congregations examined were established when segregation was the law. This legal oppression made the Black Church an important institution. It still is as the essays on Shiloh and Sixteenth Street show. Concerning some of the other churches, we might say the “White Church” is still an important institution as well. A few recent Birmingham churches were founded on an intentionally interracial basis. But all are influenced by Birmingham’s historic divide between the city proper in Jones Valley and the “Over the Mountain” suburbs.

This map shows areas where African Americans predominate in shades of green and where Whites predominate in shades of blue. Darker shades have the higher concentrations. Screenshot from bestneighborhoods.com.

In framing their reflections students draw on course readings and their own backgrounds. Most engage with the idea of “telos” (goal or purpose) and “ethos” (character) that Edward Phillips introduces in his Purpose, Pattern, and Character of Worship (Abingdon Press, 2020). They also reflect on what is “sacramental,” that is what are the means by which God is particularly known or experienced. In some cases they also reflect personally on what they can affirm about the services and what they want to treat with caution.

I hope these snapshots of worship in Birmingham prove interesting and useful. I’ve listed these from 2025 along with those from past years below by denominational or liturgical tradition. If you have any comments, I’d love to hear them! Please reach out through the comments, at drbains@samford.edu or 205-726-2879.

Essays on Christian Worship in Birmingham from 2021, ’23, ’25

Anglican and Episcopal

Baptist (African American founded)

Baptist (White founded)

Byzantine Liturgical Tradition

Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

Methodist

Non-denominational Evangelical

Pentecostal and Charismatic (Non-Denominational)

Presbyterian

Roman Catholic

Published June 19, 2025.

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