On a Sunday morning, traffic on the southbound Dan Ryan is light. Garfield Boulevard, where I exit and head east, is bustling with cars, but the rest of Englewood is still asleep. Along Garfield, locked grates cover the storefronts, and the sidewalks are mostly empty except for clusters of brightly dressed churchgoers and here and there hawkers trying to sell them Sunday papers. Just past Indiana I pull over and park.
I started attending Life Center Church of Universal Awareness two and a half years ago. My friend Mary Ann had started about a year before that, on the invitation of a friend of hers. Mary Ann described the service as a kind of “spiritual jump start” and said it was the only church she could go to on Easter Sunday wearing a hat and not be conspicuous.
Like many of his parishioners, Barrett was raised poor on the south side. He often spoke during the service not just of the spiritual but of matters of practical importance to the community. He spoke of the evils of drug and alcohol use. He spoke from experience of the necessity for teenagers to stay in school. Every week the order of service, or the program, had an insert with a list of “political awareness” questions; the answers were printed in the following week’s program.
It was difficult to trace who had participated in the program because code names were used. After Channel Two’s investigation, the state’s attorney’s office intervened. Last summer the program was halted and the approximately $180,000 still in Barrett’s possession was frozen in an account at Drexel National Bank.
Since the pyramid game incident about a year ago, attendance at the church has gone down by about half. The nine o’clock and noon services have been combined into one at eleven.
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We sit facing a golden curtain that obscures the whole front of the church. The curtain is decorated with a triangle inscribed in a circle and the phrases “I love you,” “I bless you,” “I have faith in you,” and “I realize God.” From behind the curtain the Youth for Christ choir, who replace the adult Royal Voices of Life choir once a month, begin to sing. The curtain opens, revealing two dozen teenagers wearing black and white and a band consisting of an organ, drums, a piano, two electric guitars, and an electric piano. Set in the wall behind them and the pulpit are five stained-glass windows depicting a black Jesus, a star, the universal eye of wisdom and knowledge inscribed in a triangle (like the one on the back of a dollar bill), and a Hebrew-looking symbol that, according to Barrett, stands for the acceptance of Judeo-Christian principles.
A woman dressed in a crisp white suit steps to the microphone next to the pulpit, faces the congregation, and spouts a cheerful “Good morning!”
