Imagined Change Made Real
This week’s eNewsletter Feature
was written by Rev. Raymond Hylton
FPCE senior pastor.
Dear friend,
I was not born in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, but while living and serving God’s church there in the western portion of the “Keystone State,” I developed a special love for the place.
The simple, straightforward, hardworking people who made up our church in New Castle, along with the hills, rivers, and lakes, reminded me of people and places back in my homeland of Jamaica.
While doing my doctorate at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and making numerous hospital ministry visits to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), I learned the remarkable comeback story of the City of Pittsburgh and the western Pennsylvania Region.
Once proudly called the Steel City and “steel capital of the world,” Pittsburgh eventually became a major part of the American Rust Belt in the late 1980s and 90s, when the steel industry imploded due to overseas competition of an increasingly globalist economy. With that grim descent, many feared Pittsburgh and environs were on a path of no return.
