Birmingham Churches and their Cornerstones 126

New Salem Missionary Baptist Church is located in the Mobile Junction neighborhood of Bessemer, Alabama, at 101 Pine Street Southwest in Bessemer, Alabama. Thus far, it is the southern-most church included in this series. It was founded in 1895 and the most recent stone on its exterior marks the renovation of the church in 1999. Besides names and dates, church cornerstones sometimes contain phrases from scripture, or dedicatory phrases such as “dedicated to the glory of God.” This one celebrates the church’s achievement and motivates others by stateing, “It can be done.”

I have not posted many photos in this project for the past few months, because I have been working on an academic project related to them. In August, the Center for Worship & the Arts at Samford University award me an Engaging Worship grant to support the cataloging of this large collection of photographs on church cornerstones. I gave a preliminary presentation on the findings at the meeting of the Conference on Faith & History at Samford last month. My student assistant, Avery Means and I still have a lot more to do. This will include interviews with members of some churches about the cornerstones. If you are interested in being interviewed, let me know (drbains@samford.edu).

I bicycled down to Bessemer to photograph this church (and others) yesterday because (1) it was a beautiful day, (2) I hadn’t been on a long bicycle ride in months, (3) and because this is home church of one of my students, Alonte Hill. Almost all of the photographs in this series have been taken on bicycle rides. It is much easier to stop and check out a church when you are on a bike than when you are in a car.

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

Map of Posts in this Project

The color and shape of the location markers indicate the character of the cornerstones at each site. Stones like these, with a scripture verse or dedicatory phrase and multiple names are and at most one person’s name are yellow. Since there are multiple stones the marker contains a square. Click here for full information on the markers.