Character Analysis
The Temple of the Fire Baptized, in Harlem, is full of interesting characters. Father James, the stern leader, doesn't show up for the Saturday service where John is saved, but he is there when it's time to lay down the law. He humiliates his nephew, Brother Elisha and a teenaged girl, Ella Mae, making them kneel before everyone because he thinks they're getting too close to sinning together. Elisha is a sweetheart who takes it pretty well, though.
The Praying Women are the standbys in the church. They show up when no one else does. Sister Price is "a single woman who had never, as she testified, known a man" (1.1.255), while Sister McCandless is "an enormous woman, one of the biggest and blackest God had ever made, and He had blessed her with a mighty voice with which to sing and preach, and she was going out soon into the field" (1.1.258). She always lets her opinion be known.
Praying Mother Washington, too, does what her name says. She prays all the time and even helps other people to pray, especially when they're in a hard spot. All three of the women represent the larger society, the community in which John and the others live.