NEW ORLEANS — These old walls have never heard music like this. On Sundays, when morning light fills the vaulted space of the former First United Methodist Church on Canal Street, drummer Vel McCall sometimes lays down an up-tempo, hip-swaying gospel beat for what used to be that sober Protestant standard "Blessed Assurance."
The choir is mixed, black and white. So is the rest of the Mid-City congregation, which also includes Hispanics — and occasionally, members say, a handful of people whose scruffiness suggests homelessness, or something close to it.
All are quite welcome in the First Grace United Methodist Church, the new racially diverse congregation created in the marriage of predominantly white First United Methodist Church and predominantly black Grace United Methodist Church.