A Downtown REVIVAL-IZATION (Page 1 of 1)

From a movie theater to Market Square, new spins on traditional worship flock to the city’s center, where business and politics are next-door neighbors

In the heart of Knoxville, Church and State intersect.

    The roads, that is.

    To some city-dwellers, these pathways’ crossing is an apt metaphor for the intermingling of the gospel and government here — a city whose spiritual leaders and elders and political figureheads may, at times, have been the same people.

    At the crux of the city, business and politics already rub shoulders within approximately 100 blocks of shared space in downtown, but some residents say they’d prefer more elbowroom when it comes to inviting religion to the table.

Church steeples have speared the city’s skyline for nearly 200 years. First Presbyterian, First Baptist, Church Street United Methodist, St. John’s Cathedral, First Christian, St. James Episcopal and Immaculate Conception Catholic churches have established deep roots in downtown as other neighboring businesses have come and gone, even through moments in Knoxville’s history when others had seemingly abandoned the dilapidated inner city.

“They’ve been here and, in many ways, have been the stabilizing work in the core of the city,” says City Council member Chris Woodhull, “particularly at a time when there was just an exodus from the city.”

Today, as downtown revitalization efforts help the city flourish on borrowed time, new churches are also magnetized to the city’s core.

Knoxville Life Church, a new congregation, meets every Sunday morning in the less-than-one-year-old Regal Cinemas Riviera Stadium 8 movie theater on Gay Street. All Souls Church currently meets every Sunday evening in the old convention center, and The Crossings Church will lease The Square Room at 4 Market Square, in a space that will also be occupied by a Christian internship program called Knoxville Fellows.

Many eagerly welcome the increasing religious presence, but others offer some concerns about how that presence will affect the dynamics of a downtown, its growing nightlife and its politics.

Despite diverging opinions of whether evangelism is wanted or even needed in these small 100-shared blocks, it’s clear that as the city continues to grow, so too will the number of churches to its grid.

“There’s so much good stuff going on down here, I suspect we’ll see other new churches start up downtown,” says Doug Banister, pastor of All Souls Church. “A lot of times, the newer churches are a little more innovative because there are already historic churches downtown. So I would suspect you might see a little more worship on the fringes.”

CINEMA CHRISTIANS

A 9:30 a.m. call to worship is early for even the most devout of Knoxvillians. That’s why Sean Alsobrooks, pastor of Knoxville Life Church that meets every Sunday in the Regal Riviera movie theater on Gay Street, fuels his 100-or-so congregants with ample Starbucks, continental-style breakfast foods and up-tempo Christian rock instead of traditional hymns.

As summer worshippers drift into the lobby, their shorts, T-shirts and flip-flops hint that this won’t be the usual Southern fundamentalist church service.

More people gather, some with tattooed arms and dreadlocked hair. “Jesus” in Gothic letters is inked across one man’s forearm. “Chai,” the Hebrew word for “life,” adorns the flesh of one woman’s neck.

The theater doors, across the aisle from the movie house reserved for matinee showings of Sex and the City, are thrown open for the adult service, and where Chronicles of Narnia is showing in an adjacent room, children gather for games and coloring.

Debbie Doerfler, along with her husband Randy and their two boys, is among those mingling at the coffee and snack tables. She’s a newcomer to town, having just moved to Knoxville from Phoenix, Ariz., in November.