Straight Gate International Church (Detroit, Michigan)

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The 165,000 sq. ft. building was constructed in 1952 for the Temple Baptist Church, a congregation of
national significance. Featuring a 5,200 seat auditorium, its most prominent pastor was the Rev. J. Frank Norris, a Baptist fundamentalist who used his position to promote his brand of conservative ideology. Established in 1921 Temple Baptist Church attracted southern migrants drawn to the city by the automobile industry. With the arrival of Rev. Norris from Texas in 1934, and his fire and brimstone sensationalist preaching, he worked to shift the center of Fundamentalism from cities in the northern United States, where it had originated, to its present-day center in the South. By 1950 the existing church building at 14th Street and Marquette Street had become too small for the Church's 4,000 members. Also with the neighborhood adjacent to the old church becoming more racially mixed, the all white, staunchly segregationist, church with over 75% of its members from the south decided to relocate to the Grand River Avenue property which had been purchased years before as a site for revival meetings.

Another Temple Baptist Church pastor, the Rev. G. Beauchamp Vick, founded the Baptist Bible Fellowship International, now among the largest fundamentalist Baptist organizations in the United States with a following of over one million.

In 1968, again in response to neighborhood demographic change and the movement of members to the suburbs, Temple Baptist Church moved to a new 165,000 sq. ft., church located at 23800 West Chicago Boulevard east of Telegraph Road, in Redford Township.

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