Grandmama and The Church of the People

About the Book

Grandmama and the Church of the People

Inspired by Psalm 78 v. 1-4, this engaging series of lesson-laden vignettes, set in a fictitious, small-town, Negro church in South Carolina over the course of 20 years between 1945 and 1965, serves as a pretext for Grandmama to teach her passel of unnamed grandchildren about the curious ways of the "Good Lord God"...Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Through the telling of her stories, Grandmama unfurls fables about the forms and fashions as well as the fun foibles of faith fellowship at The Church of the People, and shows us all that in our human-ness, we will surely fall short of God's perfect ways sometimes, even Grandmama, her own self.

The stories are related in the conversational Ebonics of that era. Grandmama is a woman with a formal education that only reached sixth grade, yet she has the Master's degree in Christian life learning, as taught by the Holy Spirit.

Most of the stories are light and some are "fall out" funny, but others tackle subjects that challenge Christian communities to eschew the worship of denominations, individual churches or charismatic leaders in favor of a real personal relationship with God, the Holy Father of all Creation...God, the Son, who sacrificed everything for the undeserving...and God, the Person of Holy Spirit, who walks and talks with us through the signposts of life, and who can get His feelings hurt when we disobey, in the name of God.

About the Author

Yvonne Cohen began writing this book shortly before she met and married Ben Cohen. But when he began reading the stories, his vivid vision of Grandmama's character led him to begin writing his own stories about the Church of the People. Most of the stories evolved collaboratively, in the hope and belief that this collection of parables could be enjoyed on different levels and by different kinds of people?perhaps as different as the unlikely pair of Christian writers of the book you hold now.

Yevonne Johnson was the 2nd child to an Arkansas-born African-American father, who never overcame the stress and shame of the Jim Crow south, even after he achieved middle-class status in Flint, Michigan. He was a violent, tyrannical drunk, who beat his wife and five children regularly. Her first book, A Miracle in the House chronicles her struggle to rise above the world's low expectations and her own deep circumstances. When Yvonne found Christ at age 27, she had a 10-year old son and more than a few poor choices to look back on. Needless to say, God cannot fail. Today Yvonne lives with her husband and a cat in Owings Mills, a suburb of Baltimore. She has a double Masters Degree, and trains human service workers to respond effectively to victims of family violence and dysfunction, including churches. She has authored several life skills manuals for vulnerable populations, such as, Fostering My Path to Independence, for foster children "aging out" of the system. Yevonne's joy is in her family, especially her three grandsons, and in her Lord. She periodically preaches, but only if she feels the congregation is ready to?"keep it real". She married Ben in 2004.

Benton Cohen was the middle child of three, born to Dr. Jonas Cohen in Northwest Baltimore City. Ben's Great, Great, Great Grandfather started the first Temple in Baltimore. In the midst of this middle-class Jewish "ghetto", a long-suffering, sickly little 5-year old received intervention, in the person of Mindella Scott Carr, the family's new live-in maid. Years later, Mindella explained to Ben that she would pray over him when his parents were out. Ben describes his parents as, a lukewarm Jewish father and a devoutly atheistic mother, who raised her children to be completely self-reliant. Both his mother and younger sister ended up committing suicide, and finally, at the age of 43, Ben came to, what he terms, "the end of himself" and found the faith to believe that he was inadequate to the task of self-reliance, in the face of the world he found around him. He accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior. Today, after abandoning a 20-year career in marketing, Ben assists the poor and underemployed in finding jobs and he avidly collects and chronicles recordings of post-WWII African-American music?an avocation reflected in many of the stories in this book.