It is significant that the church the Grimes family attends is a storefront church. It is significant partly because it is not a church; it is a storefront used as a church, an example of a diminished standard or expectation, a symbol of a people forced to use and be satisfied with that which others have discarded. A church can, of course, be any building or place where people come together to worship, but the fact the edifice in which the saints gather was not originally intended to be a church gives the reader a clue to the social status of the characters. They are poor and of a lower social class. The grand churches of the city are reserved for those who have more money and social status than they.
Gabriel has his first taste of hypocrisy in the church during the banquet following the Twenty-Four Elders revival meeting. The ministers are ostensibly the messengers of God, men who had forsaken worldly pleasures in order to serve God and their fellow man. In practice, however, they are much different. Gabriel finds them too well dressed and too well fed and more full of themselves than they are of the holy spirit. That these men of God mock Deborah and ridicule her rape repulses Gabriel.
Of course, Gabriel is not the model Christian either. He is a violent man who beats his wife and children. He has had an adulterous affair and has stolen money from his wife to keep a liaison a secret. He is also a hypocrite. He has dismissed his own affair with Ester as forgiven but refuses to allow Elizabeth the same courtesy. It is not surprising that the young John feels some ambivalence toward the church when the reality of the institution varies so widely from the ideal.
