When the Los Angeles Rams and the New England Patriots meet in Super Bowl LIII in Mercedes-Benz Stadium, they'll be playing on hallowed ground.
Five years ago, the site — which in a little more than a week will shake from the stomping and chanting of thousands of worshipping fans — vibrated to a completely different sound of adoration: the lifting of voices to God.
Mercedes-Benz is built where two historic black churches, Friendship Baptist and Mount Vernon Baptist, had stood for generations. They were demolished in 2014 to make way for the behemoth $1.5 billion stadium, which is giving Atlanta the Super Bowl for the first time since 2000.
For members of the congregations, focus on the nation's most-watched sports event has brought with it mixed emotions about the stadium and echoes of the soul-searching they went through in deciding to leave their buildings.
“My heart is still on Mitchell Street,” Friendship member Juanita F. Carter said after a recent service at the church’s massive new home on Walnut Street, just a couple of blocks from where its predecessor stood for more than a century.
“You don’t give up history of 150-plus years,” she said of the church’s former Mitchell and Northside Drive home. “For us to tear it down, no, I wasn’t happy. I love football, but not that much.”
Mount Vernon member Katherine Easley had a different take on the decision. Easley said she misses the community, but traffic gridlock and a slow move toward gentrification in the area made staying less attractive to her.
“That area over there has gotten so congested,” she said. “It’s getting so commercial over there.”
Unlike Friendship, whose congregation can see the new stadium from the church’s parking lot, Mount Vernon, which called 441 Martin Luther King Drive home for more than five decades, relocated seven miles west to Lynhurst Drive near I-285.
A new beginning
The relocation of the two churches was key in the Atlanta Falcons' effort in 2013 to secure a site to replace the Georgia Dome. The city paid Friendship, the larger and older of the two, $19.5 million, while the Georgia World Congress Center paid Mount Vernon $14.5 million. Besides paying for their new homes, the congregations say the money has been used to continue their missions of serving others.
The decision to sell was an agonizing one whose consequences — good and bad — are still being felt today, close to two dozen leaders and members of the churches said in interviews with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
For instance, Mount Vernon lost some older members for whom the trip across town would have been physically difficult as well as students at the Atlanta University Center, who could no longer walk to services from dorms that were just four or five blocks away, said Rev. William Harris.
Spelman College graduate Leonia McRae is still trying, five years later, to wrap her mind around the loss of the church that she identified with the birth of her beloved alma mater. Spelman was founded in the basement of Friendship’s first church in 1881, and the congregation maintained its bond with Spelman as it met for 135 years at its Mitchell Street location.
“Every time I drive by (the stadium), I really miss it,” she said.
Mount Vernon pastor Rodney Turner said the church was deeply involved in helping people in Vine City and English Avenues — two of the poorest communities in Atlanta that abut the stadium — through its outreach ministry on HIV, homelessness, drug recovery and hunger.
But in its new locale, the focus shifted more to counseling and support services for children at schools in that neighborhood, such as Benjamin Mays High School and Jean Childs Young Middle School. To remain involved in its old neighborhood, the church has partnered with the Salvation Army to maintain services it offered before it moved such as food and clothing for the needy and homeless.
“We are a church that has a mission to help the least, the lost and the less,” he said, explaining why it’s important for the church not to forget its Vine City/English Avenue roots. “Our outreach ministry was one of the things that gave us the greatest satisfaction.”
Community commitments
Friendship paid $4.3 million for the land its new building is built on while Mount Vernon bought an existing church from Zion Hill Baptist for $2.5 million, according to Fulton County records.
Both have sought to reinvest some of their funds back into the community, Mount Vernon through outreach and Friendship through an ambitious $300 million, 13-acre mixed-use development dubbed “North and King.” That project, which is still in the planning stages, is to include office space, retail, townhomes, single family dwellings and a 45,000-square-foot grocery store when completed, said Lloyd Hawk, a trustee with Friendship.
The church's goal is to create a mixed-income community to address gentrification concerns and to be a welcome mat to businesses that for years have shunned the area because it lacked the basics such as a grocery store.
“When they built the (Georgia Dome) 25 years ago, people weren’t thinking about moving here,” he said. “But the amount of publicity this area got after they built the new stadium got people thinking about how less expensive this community is than Buckhead or Midtown but still having all the access.”
A church is not its walls
On a recent Wednesday before Bible study, Turner sat back and smiled as he tried to pinpoint where in the stadium he would have given a sermon in 2014. He’s not sure, but he thinks his pulpit would have been in one of the end zones.
Mount Vernon, like Friendship, carried not only its congregation to its new home, but also mementos of its past, including a massive crystal chandelier that is the congregation’s pride and joy (it now hang’s in its fellowship hall ) and the original pulpit, Bible and pews from the church, which was founded in 1915.
“Our history is in Vine City, that’s our roots,” Turner said. “You can never not miss your home.”
Friendship installed some of the stained glass windows from its Mitchell Street location into its new home and held onto the building's cornerstone, Samuel W. Williams organ and an antique offering plate.
Janine Anthony said she struggled initially with the idea of Friendship selling its home for a stadium. Her concern, she said, was less about the building and more about whether the church would still be able to serve the community. Once the decision was made to stay in that area, she made her peace and moved forward.
“This is something we can do just as well from 80 Walnut as we did from Mitchell and Northside,” she said.
Mount Vernon member Angela Yarbrough said she has been to the stadium and has missed the community she left behind. But God dictated the church's next move, and she trusts His judgment.
“The lord placed us where we needed to be,” she said.
It’s a sentiment that Friendship pastor Richard Wills echoed two Sundays before the Rams and Patriots knew they would play on the sacred ground of his former home.
“We are the church, and not the building,” he said.
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