City of God: Faith in the Streets
Miles, the founder and director of the Food Pantry and director of ministry at St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco, offers this heartfelt memoir as homage to her faith community. But it is also a testament to the concept of faith itself as Miles, an atheist when she first came to St. Gregory’s, accepts communion for the first time, ironically in the place with the lowest rates of church attendance of any major U.S. city. She began discovering faith in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill and Mission neighborhoods, especially through the Ash Wednesday liturgies with their recognition, she writes, of common mortality and the call for repentance and change. Even as mainline Protestant congregations decline, she notes there is a growing network of unhoused congregations that meet outdoors to serve people living on the streets. Their stories are a big part of this, as is her discussion of the importance of finding the common good, a notion that is under siege as the Mission becomes more gentrified. An informative, luminous memoir of faith and community. --June Sawyers