For Sunday April 19, Day 1 released a remarkable sermon by Rev. Katie Nakamura Rengers, with an extended discussion before and after, springing from the story of The Abbey, one of the few communities to have been featured in more than one entry on Magic City Religion (MCR). I strongly encourage you to give it a listen. It provides a vital historical supplement to MCR’s two essays on the Abbey. It also includes what I find to be an arrestingly different take on the Emmaus story (Luke 24:13-25).
The Abbey was established under Renger’s leadership as a coffeehouse and church in 2016. MCR’s first essay on the Abbey was written by Taylore Miller in 2019 the midst of the transition Rengers discusses in the sermon and interview. Knya Knight’s essay on the Abbey’s afternoon worship service at Zion Spring Baptist Church was written 2 1/2 years later.
Rengers has helped my Samford University students not only in writing these essays, but also by speaking in my “Race, Ethnicity, and Religion in the U.S.” course in two semesters. (Full disclosure: she was also sponsored for ordination by the parish to which I now belong.)
Katie’s sermon provides important context for Miller’s article. It also takes a new angle on a favorite Bible passage. My wife and I have a print of the Saint John’s Bible’s illumination of the Emmaus narrative framed in our home. For me the story’s two key phrases are (in Henry Francis Lyte’s paraphrase) “abide with me fast falls the eventide” and (in the KJV translation) “he was known of them in breaking of bread.” Instead Katie, who admits that, unlike many, she has no strong attachment to this story, focuses her sermon on the unrecognized Jesus’ question “What are you talking about?” I’d never focused on this question, or really, on the disciple’s response to it.
I launched Magic City Religion in fall 2019 with assignments in two courses: Introduction to World Religions and a senior seminar focused on religion in Avondale, a neighborhood between “downtown” Birmingham and its gentrified neighborhoods. There are many religious communities that made Avondale an attractive subject for study. One of them was The Abbey, a coffee house church established by the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama. Little did I know that the Abbey was on the verge of a major transition or that it would persist in a new form.
MCR has published two essays on the Abbey. The first, from fall 2019, describes its work shortly after it closed its coffee shop operations, but while it was still in its original location in South Avondale. The second, from spring 2023, presents its life and worship at Zion Spring Baptist Church, where it has held its Sunday afternoon meals and celebration since 2002.
The Sunday of the Day 1 sermon’s release, Katie Nakamura Rengers announced that she and her family were moving to Honolulu, Hawai’i, where she will be priest-in-charge of St. Elizabeth’s Episcopal Church. Her husband, Rev. Josiah Rengers, has been rector of St. Thomas Episcopal Church here, he will serve as a school chaplain. I wish them godspeed.
Published: May 14, 2026, Ascension Day
Magic City Religion 