She was the lone member of his congregation in the room.
In the next two decades, as their lives develop, the pair are watched over by the female congregation of Upper Room Chapel (the Mothers of the title), who contribute choruslike sections of narration.
The yoga faithful make room for them, as the congregations make room for me when I get to church.
"We're the S.R.O., the standing room only congregation," said Rabbi Marc Schneier of the Hampton Synagogue, in Westhampton Beach.
The plan would have extended the altar platform 12 feet toward the congregation to allow more room for parishioners to take part in services, installed an enlarged altar closer to the pews and removed the ornate communion rail separating the altar from the people.
In Jamaica, Queens, a Methodist church split between Latin American and Caribbean congregations has just made room for a small Pakistani one.
"Jesus didn't hang out with hoity-toity, holier-than-thou religious people," he told the congregation in the standing-room-only chapel.
Meanwhile, at the booming end of British Christianity, charismatic congregations looking for more room have found the perfect space to worship, free of Victorian gothic tracery: old cinemas.Religion has long been in decline among Britain's middle classes.
The civil rights campaigner Jesse Jackson called for a wider reaction, preaching to a standing-room only congregation of hundreds at Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church in Eatonville, Florida, about 20 miles from the site of the shooting.
In the 1940s, the congregation converted some central rooms into a sanctuary with stained glass and an organ, but much of Smith's décor was left intact, including honey-colored carved woodwork and elaborate plaster moldings.
