“Afrika was not kidnapped in that way, but in a way she was kidnapped by the culture of our streets,” he said. “That someone like her might be sucked in — an A student, a brilliant child — tells us how powerful the street is, and how much harder we have to fight.” (He added that he believed Ms. Owes was innocent of the charges against her, until proven otherwise.)

But Judge Edward J. McLaughlin refused to allow the church to post bail for Ms. Owes without first taking a vote among congregation members. So a vote was held on April 7. Theodore M. Shaw, an Abyssinian member who is acting as lawyer for the church, said the tally was 470 in favor, one opposed.

“Could we do this for every member of our congregation? No,” Mr. Shaw said later. “But there was a feeling among us that here was somebody we could still catch. We just didn’t want to see her life flushed down the toilet.”

Adding to the willingness to raise the money was a consensus emerging in recent weeks among ministers and elders who knew Ms. Owes best that her troubles may have developed after she left the fold.

“I had the sense that things started to shift for her when she went away to prep school,” Mrs. Turman said, referring to Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts, which granted Ms. Owes a full scholarship in ninth grade, two years ago. Ms. Owes completed one year but was expelled, for undisclosed reasons, the following year. In her second year at Deerfield, prosecutors taped phone calls between Ms. Owes and Mr. Layne that they said were incriminating.

On Tuesday, Ms. Owes entered court in downtown Manhattan with her hands cuffed behind her back. Her mother, Karen Owes, sat in the gallery surrounded by friends, ministers, deacons and others who had answered the call to show up in force. (Mr. Butts made the plea from the pulpit on Sunday, though he was not able to make it to court himself, having been invited to a breakfast in Washington with President Obama.)