Tenacious church holds out hope in its changing North Charleston neighborhood

When North Charleston Baptist Church was founded in 1920, and its fortress-like brick building first rose at Crawford and Cherry streets just south of Montague Avenue, the area consisted of tracts of woodland and decaying plantations along the Cooper River and tidal creeks.

Some industry had cropped up -- a construction company, General Asbestos and Rubber Co., the Navy shipyard, E.P. Burton Lumber Co., railroad lines and shipping operations that transported cotton and other commodities upcountry, downriver and around the world -- but houses were scarce.

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First Baptist Church of North Charleston

First Baptist Church of North Charleston, founded in 1920 and celebrating its 90th anniversary this year, has been a rock in a changing community. At its start, the area had few residents. Park Circle was little more than a concept. By mid-century it was flourishing. But when the demographics of North Charleston started to change, and then the Naval Base closed in the mid-1990s, the church began to decline.

Park Circle was little more than an idea, its concentric street design laid out in the 1910s by a group of Charleston developers who had its streets named for them. The area beckoned investors and adventurers willing to become the first generation of a new English garden-style model community, a place where people lived and worked and cultivated a sense of belonging. It would need churches to serve the growing population.

Ninety years later, the Rev. Dr. Paul Pridgen Jr., 83, considers the historical trajectory of the church he knows so well, its early challenges, rapid growth, outreach and eventual decline. The church has been like a rock in the community, even as that community has undergone dramatic transformations over the years.

Pridgen inherited its pulpit from his father, a fiery evangelical preacher inspired by the Third Great Awakening who presided over the growing congregation from 1929-62.

The elder Paul Pridgen was preceded by three pastors: B.J. Woodward, who with help from the state's Baptist Convention started the church; W.E. West, who presided for seven years; and A.L. Flury, who moved to Georgia soon after his appointment. The younger Pridgen retired in 1991. He was followed by the Rev. Jerry Brittingham, the Rev. Keith E. Goretzka, then the Rev. Daniel E. Johnston, who is the current pastor.

The elder Pridgen, once a formidable baseball player who helped establish local leagues, paid off the church debt. He was among the first Baptist preachers to take to the radio airwaves, crusading against vice.

The Pridgen family lived in the parsonage next to the old church building for a while. Eventually, the elder Pridgen purchased property off North Rhett Avenue, and in 1963 built the house his son still lives in.

Called

Paul Pridgen Jr. said he remembers childhood excursions with friends, riding bikes into the woods of Yeamans Hall Plantation for wiener roasts and campouts. These were welcomed respites from the constraints of a religious life.

"Our whole life was consumed by church," he said. "I often say I cut my teeth on the church pews."

As a young man, he resisted the constraints of religious life -- and the influence of his charismatic father -- becoming, briefly, hostile toward the church, he said. He resented his lot in life, having to play the role of a preacher's kid.

After a "restless" period, though, he felt called to the ministry, if not yet the pulpit. He focused on music, education and pastoral care. He attended Furman University, then Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Periodically, he assisted his father as an associate.

Cleon M. Brown, 77, remembers playing in the woods near North Rhett Avenue as a child. He has been a member of First Baptist Church since arriving at age 10 in June 1943.

After three years in the Marine Corps, during which he saw action in Korea, Brown settled into the church's new education building and assumed the first of what would be many positions: teacher.

The church moved to its present location on Rivers Avenue in 1955. It was a boom time for North Charleston. Industry buzzed, small businesses bloomed, the Naval Base employed thousands. Rivers Avenue became a commercial artery. Middle-class housing went up from the Chicora area to Hanahan.

Growth

The church changed its name from North Charleston Baptist to First Baptist in 1946, when the congregation still occupied the building that would become Cooper River Baptist Church. Two years later, the elder Pridgen started his radio program. It wasn't the first time the preacher took to the airwaves: In 1933, he started a program called "Brother Paul and Brother Lee and the Gospel Singers," which aired Sunday nights on WCSC.

That effort was followed by others at other stations: a program called "The Voice of Temperance" in which he railed against liquor consumption, a show called "Inspiration Time" and another called "Gospel Hymn Time."

By the time the United States entered World War II, the church membership had reached 500. Nearly 1,000 were enrolled in Sunday school. And the church built its missionary Gospel Center on what was then called Dual Lane Highway.

The Gospel Center served indigent residents of the area and many in the armed forces, and it attracted a variety of Southern Baptist evangelical preachers who came to speak in "God's House by the Side of the Road," according to published church history.

Throughout the long tenure of the elder Pridgen, which ended in 1962, the church grew and grew. When he arrived, membership was 125; when he retired, membership had reached 1,000.

Built partly as a tribute to him, the church auditorium was erected in 1959. Local artist William Halsey painted a portrait of the accomplished pastor. It hangs by the Memorial Chapel, where today the church's 4 1/2-year-old Spanish-language ministry operates.

The population of the North Charleston area was a little under 1,000 in the 1920s. By the time the city was incorporated in 1972, the number of residents had reached 20,000, and it grew rapidly, partly because of annexation, in the decades that followed. Today, nearly 90,000 call North Charleston home, making it the third largest city in South Carolina.

Outreach

"Where there is no vision, the people perish" -- a mantra of the elder Pridgen, embraced by his son.

The younger Pridgen took over the day his father retired: Nov. 11, 1962. Three months later, the day-care center opened, run by Millie Pridgen, the pastor's wife.

In 1965, Baptist College at Charleston, started by John A. Hamrick, spent its first academic year at First Baptist Church. It would move to a site off U.S. Highway 78 and in 1990 change its name to Charleston Southern University. But for the year it was housed at the church, the building bubbled with learning and activity.

In 1970, Prigden introduced a program to address topical issues called "Exercises in Understanding." Topics covered included sex, race relations, drug abuse, pollution, pornography, war, abortion, poverty, immigration and dying.

It was a response to social and political trends, and it was a risky enterprise in some ways, Pridgen said. The sessions included many religious leaders from other denominations. Part of the goal was to foster interfaith dialogue, "to build bridges of understanding," he said. "Sometimes those things created problems, but they formed a core of what the church really is."

Pridgen forged relationships with Catholics, Jews and Christians of other denominations.

"We reached out," he said. "Churches reaching out don't need to lose their identity but should become aware of what's going on around them."

Decline

And so the church flourished.

Until it didn't.

Neighborhood demographics were changing. Industry was in decline. Middle-class residents were moving away from the area, their church sanctuaries thinning out.

The economy was fueled increasingly by retail chains. The 800,000-square-foot Northwoods Mall opened in 1972 near Rivers Avenue and Ashley Phosphate Road, creating a new commercial center far to the north of "downtown" North Charleston. As the middle class abandoned the area near the Naval Base, the shops on Reynolds and Cosgrove avenues closed.

The fate of the Naval Base came into question, and between 1993 and 1996, the base was shut down and 15,000 jobs vanished.

For Pridgen and the congregation at First Baptist, the change was disheartening. Once in a while, community leaders would talk about "revitalization" and new development, about this or that commercial initiative that would restore a little glory to a depleted neighborhood. And Pridgen's ears would perk up.

When a grand plan for a "New American City" was devised in the late 1990s, Pridgen threw his support behind it. Noisette. A vast "city-within-a-city." An area targeted for "integrated restoration as a sustainable community."

Finally, the preacher thought, a project that might remake the cityscape and reinvigorate First Baptist Church. But after more than a decade of effort, the Noisette project has fizzled, along with Pridgen's expectations.

Hope

Eight years ago, the Rev. Daniel E. Johnston, now 75, inherited the pulpit of the grand church building.

The sanctuary is large, bright, accommodating. Behind it lies facilities most church people would envy: A library; a large kitchen and banquet hall; a nursery, game room, prayer room and weight room; a series of classrooms; a chapel that seats up to 200; and upstairs, a music library, storage space and second chapel.

Johnston said he was indebted to the leaders who came before him. Thanks to the Pridgens, hundreds were saved, and many went on to become preachers and religious leaders, he said. Its deacons have included J.D. Long, North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey and other prominent residents.

Where once the sanctuary would fill up with 1,000 worshippers on a Sunday morning, the church today might draw 100 on a good day.

"I regret that we're not a growing church," Johnston said. "But the spirit of the church is absolutely great."

And there's a degree of hope.

"We don't know what the future holds," Cleon Brown said, "but we do know who holds the future."

Reach Adam Parker at aparker@postandcourier.com or 937-5902.

Editor's note: Earlier versions of this story did not include Pastor Keith E. Goretzka, who presided from 1996 to 2002. The Post and Courier regrets the error.