Birmingham Churches and Their Cornerstones 120

“Redeemed and Renervated 1934” so proclaims a cornerstone on St. James Baptist Church at 7309 Oporto Avenue in the Birmingham’s Brown Springs neighborhood. It celebrates the work the congregation was able to due in the Great Depression to sustain its building.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “renervate” solely as “of a person’s strength: to return.” It also states that unlike “redeemed” it is an intransitive verb, nonetheless, that usage of the word may make sense here. (The OED also says “renervate” is rare and now obsolete.) The Merriam-Webster online dictionary does not contain the word. Wiktionary: The Free Dictionary lists its meaning as “restore nerve stimulation to” but lists usages only beginning in 1982.

Or course, “renovated” might have been the intended word and would be the most common use in context. But I prefer to think that the stone was phrased intentionally to celebrate not only the freeing of the church from substantial debt but also the restoring of its strength.

All of this refers to an earlier buildng. The current two-story building was constructed in 1964, one year before the neighboring St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church constructed its current building.

Directly across from the church is an ecoscape preserving the springs that gave Brown Springs its name and provided water to this African American community on the edge of East Lake in its

Read this first post for more on this series on Birmingham churches and their cornerstones.

Map of Posts in this Project

Each site in this project is mapped below. Clicking on an icon will bring up a box with a link to the post on the site. Please use it to browse the collection.

The color and shape of the location markers indicate the character of the cornerstones at each site. Stones like this, multiple names are red. Since there is more than one name, a square maker is used. Click here for full information on the icons.