{"id":706680,"date":"2010-04-01T12:05:04","date_gmt":"2010-04-01T16:05:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.reuters.com\/faithworld\/?p=12766"},"modified":"2026-10-04T11:58:30","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T15:58:30","slug":"holy-bubble-churches-struck-down-by-foreclosures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/706680","title":{"rendered":"Holy bubble! Churches struck down by foreclosures"},"content":{"rendered":"

By the time thousands of parishioners stream into the 3,000-seat Ebenezer AME Church on Easter Sunday, church leaders hope to have something else to celebrate: financial revival.<\/p>\n

The congregation, one of America’s largest, has been scrambling to raise funds to save the arena-sized sanctuary from potential foreclosure. To that end, it has enlisted national leaders, such as the Reverend Jesse Jackson and Harvard Law School’s Charles Ogletree, who was President Barack Obama’s law professor.<\/p>\n

\"prayer\"<\/p>\n

Thanks to its 10,000-member congregation and connections with business and civic leaders, Ebenezer expects to avoid the fate of a growing number of U.S. churches, which are defaulting on loans, facing foreclosure and even declaring bankruptcy at an unprecedented pace.<\/p>\n

“It’s happening to virtually every church<\/em>,” said the Rev. Grainger Browning, senior pastor of Ebenezer. “At a recent meeting with the 100 top pastors in the country, it was amazing how all of us were facing some sort of challenge with the banks<\/em>.”<\/p>\n

You can see the whole special report by Tom Hals here.<\/a><\/p>\n

(PHOTO:Parishioners hold their offering envelopes and say a pray of thanks for their life’s blessings during a Sunday morning worship service at Ebenezer AME Church in Fort Washington, Maryland, March 28, 2010. Credit: REUTERS\/Jonathan Ernst)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By the time thousands of parishioners stream into the 3,000-seat Ebenezer AME Church on Easter Sunday, church leaders hope to have something else to celebrate: financial revival. The congregation, one of America’s largest, has been scrambling to raise funds to save the arena-sized sanctuary from potential foreclosure. To that end, it has enlisted national leaders, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2585,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4821],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-706680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-2XQ4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2585"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=706680"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":808262,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706680\/revisions\/808262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=706680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=706680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=706680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}