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St. John the Baptist Romanian / St. Ruth Holy Science Temple / Isaiah New Testament Way Church

It is common in Detroit for once church building to have many names, as congregations expand or dissolve, selling their building to other congregations. One such church is visible from I75, a single steeple rising up out of a gutted neighborhood on the north side of Detroit.

There are few details about the history of St. John the Baptist Romanian Byzantine Catholic Church, which built a small church on Orleans Street sometime in the 1910's or 1920's. By 1955, they had moved to a new church on Woodward Avenue which is still active today.

St. Ruth was part of the Antioch Association of Metaphysical Science, a spiritualist church founded by H. Lewis Johnson. After moving to Detroit in the 1920's, she organized St. Ruth Holy Science Church in 1932 at Orleans and Monroe in the neighborhood of Black Bottom. In 1944, the church relocated, presumably to the former St. John church on Orleans. The Holy Science organization grew to five congregations in 1965, with St. Ruth being the main church.

It appears that St. Ruth folded sometime in the 1980's. By 1990, the church building was being used by Isaiah New Testament Way Missionary Baptist Church, but had fallen out of use by 2011. It is currently abandoned.