(nyt)Since its founding 200 years ago as a breakaway congregation, Abyssinian Baptist Church has built itself into one of the city’s most powerful institutions, by virtue of its activist pastors, who have included Adam Clayton Powell Jr., and its congregation, which has long been among the city’s largest. The nonprofit development corporation, formed in 1989 with a single employee and a ,000 grant, has grown into an organization that owns or has developed some 0 million worth of property in Harlem, expanded to 125 employees and played a critical behind-the-scenes role in the transformation of the neighborhood. As the church’s development arm has grown in size and influence, however, it has become a target of critics who say it has ushered in a wave of gentrification that has displaced longtime residents and has been a neglectful landlord of some of its apartment buildings, which have amassed hundreds of unresolved violations. But the Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, Abyssinian’s pastor, who founded the development corporation 19 years ago, said the organization is a good landlord that has stayed true to its aim of providing affordable housing and offering an array of social services in a neighborhood where more than one-third of the residents live below the poverty line. “The claims that we have been responsible for gentrification, or whatever you want to call it, are usually made by people absolutely ignorant of our work, or jealous of our work,” Mr. Butts said. “We are really keeping to our mission. The other market forces coming into Harlem are things which most of us have no control over. We don’t own the real estate.” Critics have a list of complaints: that Abyssinian does not keep the community apprised of its development plans; that it has pushed through projects over the objections of the local community board; that it does not ensure the hiring of minority contractors; that it has opposed historic preservation; and that it has virtually ignored small businesses in favor of chain stores that have damaged the small-town character of Harlem. “They’re just a big business,” said Jeanne Littlejohn, 48, a former parishioner at Abyssinian church who was baptized by Mr. Butts but became disenchanted after a building she owned was damaged, she said, during the construction of an Abyssinian Development project next door. “They don’t care about the community.

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