Protestant · Compare this tradition with another

Living side by side

no name given · St Martin-in-the-Fields London - Sermons und Thought for the Week · 2026-09-13 · London · Source

Community · main message Humility · carrying

Extreme material poverty and the necessity of shared survival in cramped conditions overcome or relativize racial and ethnic prejudices between different population groups.

These people were as poor as church mice. They had bigger problems than racial differences.

The text recommends a visit to the Tenement Museum in New York City, which shows historic tenement buildings from the period between the 1860s and the 1930s. It describes the living conditions of the Moore family, a black family that shared their apartment with Irish immigrants. The author reflects on his own surprise at this mixed living situation and the racial tensions of the era associated with it. The museum guide's answer, that extreme poverty posed bigger problems than racial differences, corrects the author's modern prejudice. The text uses this historical encounter to thematize the shared hardship of the lower classes as a unifying element. It foregrounds the historical reality of close proximity between Black people and Irish people. The narrative serves as an example of how material hardship could overcome or at least relativize social barriers. No direct call to action for the present is formulated; rather, a historical contextualization is provided.

Worldview

what this means

What, according to this text, is the root of the evil?: Hostility, hatred, the breakdown of community
Where does the evil reside?: in the economy, politics, or social structures
What helps against it?: solidarity, mutual help, belonging
What is human being according to this text?: above all a part of a community or of creation
Where is history heading?: it is getting better, development towards the good (inferred)
What does the text base its claim on?: on personal experience, testimony, encounter
To whom does the text's call for devotion apply?: to every human being, regardless of faith
Where is the text's criticism directed?: at one's own community and at oneself

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What the text calls for

Das Tenement Museum besuchen (social)

Measured

Basic stance: 1 from -2 to 2
Insistence: 2 of 3
Reach: 4 of 5
Concreteness: 3 of 3
Boundary: 1 of 3
Time: past 3, present 1, future 0

Analysed with qwen/qwen3.8-27b, version v3. The same standards apply to every tradition, see Values.

Show the full text

If you get the opportunity to visit New York City, I would recommend a visit to the Tenement Museum in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The museum is housed in two historic tenement buildings, within which several apartments have been restored to the condition in which they were inhabited by impoverished residents at various dates between the 1860s and the 1930s. The tenements were home to low-income New Yorkers, including African Americans in the first generation after emancipation from slavery, and immigrant families from across the world. The buildings were taken over by the museum in a state of disrepair, and personal belongings recovered during the restoration – toys, library notices, dolls, hairpins, tickets – help to piece together the stories of ordinary people who didn’t leave formal archives. On a recent trip, I visited apartment 4A which has been re-created as the home of Joseph and Rachel Moore, Black New Yorkers who moved from a free Black community in New Jersey to live in the tenements during the 1860s and 1870s. New Jersey was the last northern state to enact the gradual abolition of slavery in 1804, but full freedom to families such as the Moores arrived painfully slowly. Life was hard, and money was in short supply: Joseph worked as a coachman and waiter, and Rachel kept house. They shared their tiny 2-room apartment with Rachel’s stepdaughter, Jane, as well as an Irish immigrant, Rose Brown, and her 14-year-old son Louis. The story of the Moore family demonstrates the closely interwoven lives of the free Black community in New York with their immigrant Irish neighbours. I was surprised that, at that time, Black and Irish people would share an apartment. When I asked our guide about this, her reply made me feel foolish: ‘These people were dirt poor. They had bigger problems than racial difference’. Duncan McCall