San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Wealth gap hits hard in houses of worship
Richer institutions thrive while poorer struggle to survive amid jobless crisis
At Bayview Baptist Church, old toilets leak and the water bill rises. Cracked sidewalks earn citations from the city. A storage shed sits with a new foundation but no walls.
The repairs cost more than Pastor Timothy Dews, 70, can afford, after the pandemic shut his church and caused donations to dry up.
Across the bay, another religious institution has fared better. The synagogue at Congregation Beth Israel in Berkeley is also closed, but more people are attending programs and activities via Zoom, and some donors are giving larger amounts than they used to.
“We’ve seen some of our larger donors who have doubled, tripled, or even quintupled the contributions they’ve been making,” said Daniel Magid, the congregation’s president.
The fates of the two congregations reflect a sobering reality in the Bay Area: Much as the pandemic has worsened societal inequalities, it is also widening the divide among religious institutions. Small mosques, synagogues and churches like Dews’ are struggling, while larger and wealthier houses of worship are bringing in more money from welloff donors than ever before.
“It’s almost like a tale of two cities,” said Michael G. Pappas, the executive director of the San Francisco Interfaith Council. “I’ve spoken with a lot of our larger anchor institutions ... and a lot of them are telling me that not only is attendance up, but giving is also.”
At the same time, he said, “There are a lot of congregations in the city who didn’t have the resources or the support . ... They’re the ones that are going to suffer really the most.”
Houses of worship rely on donations from congregation members to maintain buildings, pay staff and offer services. Some also rent out their space or charge for day schools, in addition to getting funding from national religious organizations. Donations are the primary source of revenue now that most schools are closed and events are canceled.
Many larger institutions have taken advantage of loans from the federal Paycheck Protection Program. But smaller ones have struggled, church leaders say; Dews, for example, did not apply for a PPP loan for his church because of gaps in its records.
Among their congregants, some religious institutions have seen a mix — people who are hardhit, and those who are able to share relative good fortune. At the South Bay Islamic Association in San Jose, a drop in donations from unemployed worshipers has been balanced by an increase from wealthier donors.
“We believe in that day of judgment, and on that day of judgment you’re going to be asked: ‘Several of your brothers and sister are in rough shape. What did you do about it?’ ” said Athar Siddiqee, the association’s chairman.
The association runs one large mosque, the Masjid alMustafa, on the outskirts of San Jose and a smaller facility downtown. Many people who attend the downtown mosque — mostly students, as well as Uber and taxi drivers — have struggled financially during the pandemic, so the smaller mosque is now dependent on increased donations at the larger Masjid alMustafa, Siddiqee said.
While some donors are motivated to help those who are struggling, people are also more in touch with their mortality, Siddiqee said — so “another part of it is, ‘I want to help my bank account with the higher power’ ... because who knows when my time will come.”
While the association can host distanced prayers outdoors at Masjid alMustafa, most religious institutions have been forced to cancel all inperson events due to shelterinplace rules.
But as indoor worship services have given way to Zoom, some religious leaders were surprised by new enthusiasm among their congregations.
At Congregation Sherith Israel in San Francisco, the switch to online services and classes caused a surge in attendance — the Saturday morning Torah study, for example, has about doubled in size. “The thing that we did not anticipate was the degree to which by moving things online we effectively opened the door to people who otherwise were not able to participate,” said Gordon Gladstone, Sherith Israel’s executive director.
Alongside increased attendance, donations have held up for Sherith Israel. Because the Jewish community refrains from handling money on the Sabbath, the congregation was already accustomed to donating online.
People who can afford to give more have an obligation to support their institutions at this moment, said Noah Alper, a donor who has increased his contribution to Congregation Beth Israel. He said the same should apply to all philanthropic organizations. “My feeling is that if people can afford it, they should really step up,” he said.
But for pastors like Dews and other religious leaders in the Bayview neighborhood, the lack of inperson services has often been devastating.
Many small congregations were not prepared for the switch to virtual streaming services, and countless had never used social media, according to the Rev. Joseph Bryant, the pastor at Calvary Hill Community Church in the Bayview. Dews’ church, for example, has not gone to Zoom. Instead it has set up tollfree conference phone lines for the large proportion of senior churchgoers uneasy with social media. But with a conference line, “people can’t see what the physical needs are,” Dews said.
Bayview Baptist’s faith community is small at around 45 to 50 people. Some have lost jobs, and others faith. Dews estimates that since the shelterinplace orders began, the church has lost out on at least $12,000 it would otherwise have raised from donors and renting out the building.
“You don’t have a lot of people you can talk to for advice,” he said. “Suddenly, you’re now just not the pastor, you’re an administrator.”
Despite his church’s losses, Dews is determined to continue serving his community and eventually finish the repairs to the Bayview Baptist building. “It’s like cutting down a tree. You just keep chopping at the trunk until it falls,” he said. “Even if it takes eight months to knock it down.”