I grew up as a member of a suburban Church. Never mind the sometimes trenchant criticism of such congregations over the years – recall Gibson Winter’s The Suburban Captivity of the Churches (1961) – I remain grateful for that experience. True, my own ministry later unfolded in two radically different worlds, the academy and the city. So I more or less lost track of the life of the Church in suburbia.
Forgive me, then, for just discovering an amazing and new, to me, mission for many, if not all, of our suburban churches, whose ministries over the years, I apologize to say, I sometimes tended to think of, unthinkingly, as exemplars of the worst features of American suburban life more generally (classism, racism, sexism, etc.). Picture all the great ecclesial “plants” everywhere in affluent American suburbia, more than a few of them surrounded by vast lawns, with nary a dandelion. That was the image that I carried with me for decades.
Beginning in the Nineteen Sixties, how many times over the years did I quote Winston Churchill’s comment about the Anglican Church? He called it “the Tory Party at Prayer.” Were the American suburban churches, since the Fifties perhaps, “the Republican Party at Prayer”?
Be that as it may, I was caught up short recently by the following report (Cara Buckley,“Growing Food Instead of Lawns in California Front Yards,” New York Times, Nov. 5, 2024). With this story in mind, I now want to say, as gratefully as I can: “Let’s hear it for the suburban Church!”
“On a corner lot in Leimert Park in dusty South Los Angeles, not far from Obama and Crenshaw Boulevards, sits a curiosity that’s wildly different from all the neighboring grassy yards. Abundant and lush, it looks like a mash-up between a country idyll and something dreamed up by Dr. Seuss.
Tangles of grapes and blackberries grow in clusters along a trellis. Leafy rows of basil, sweet potatoes and mesclun spring from raised garden troughs. Most striking are corridors of elevated planters stacked four high, like multilevel bunk beds, filled with kale, cabbage, arugula, various lettuces, eggplants, tatsoi and collard greens.
Run by a gardening wizard named Jamiah Hargins, this wee farm in the front yard of his bungalow provides fresh produce for 45 nearby families, all while using a tiny fraction of the water required by a lawn.
At just 2,500 square feet, this farm forms the heart of Mr. Hargins’s nonprofit, Crop Swap LA, which transforms yards and unused spaces into microfarms. It runs three front yard farms that provide organic fruits and vegetables each week to 80 families, all living in a one-mile radius, and often with food insecurity. Rooted in the empowering idea that people can grow their own food, Crop Swap LA has caught on, with a wait list of 300 residents wanting to convert their yards into microfarms.”