Even if you can’t stand the religion or politics of your local churches, you might find their congregations to be valuable saviors—of your historic and endangered movie theaters.

In other words, please think twice before engaging in a holy war like the one in Fresno over the historic Tower Theater.

The Tower, first opened in 1939, is an arrow-shaped, Streamline Moderne gem anchoring a neighborhood of retail, restaurants, and arts known as the Tower District. But, like so many of California’s signature theaters, it has struggled, especially in the pandemic. So, the theater’s owner is trying to sell. The owner’s preferred buyer is an evangelical church that has opposed same-sex marriage and LGBTQ ministers.

As a practical matter, church takeovers of old theaters make sense. Movies and live shows are often not enough to support the expensive upkeep of these dilapidated palaces. Churches with growing congregations can regularly fill the seats while raising money for maintenance and improvements—and keeping the space available to the community for events and screenings.

But these are polarized, not practical, times. And many growing churches are non-traditional, evangelical, or politically conservative, and thus don’t fit the more secular and progressive entertainment districts where you find old theaters.

In some places, churches and their neighbors look past their differences and focus on their shared interest in the old buildings. Responsible churches agree to preserve and maintain theaters they take over, in exchange for neighborhoods accommodating the traffic or parking headaches of hosting a congregation. Fresno has seen something like that happen when churches took over other theaters.

But at the Tower Theater, conflicts between the church, the theater owner, and the community have escalated, turning a neighborhood problem into statewide controversy.

To summarize: during the pandemic, the Tower Theater owner allowed Adventure Church, a largely Latino congregation located elsewhere in the Tower District, to hold services there (a questionable decision given COVID-19’s perils). Adventure liked it so much that, when Tower’s owner put the property up for sale late last year, the church agreed to purchase it—and keep it open for shows and non-profit events.

But when word of the purchase agreement leaked, many people in the Tower District understandably saw the transfer of the iconic theater to the church not just as a threat to the theater but as an attack on the spirit of the artsy, inclusive neighborhood. A petition opposing the sale circulated widely, and weekly Sunday protests grew. Local businesses also questioned whether zoning permitted having a church there, and thus whether Adventure’s presence might create zoning or licensing problems for bars and cannabis businesses.

The anti-church protests soon drew counter-protestors from right-wing groups, and police erected barriers to keep them separate. Either the church or the theater owner—it’s not clear whom—raised the political temperature by displaying a tribute to the late right-wing talk show host Rush Limbaugh, infamous for his homophobic rhetoric, on the theater marquee. California media, obsessed with culture wars, fueled the controversy with their coverage.

The conflict grew from there. The Tower property includes restaurants; one of them sued to block the sale, saying its own agreement entitled it to purchase the property. Fresno’s mayor, seeking to defuse the situation, offered the church an alternative property, which Adventure turned down. Other city officials floated the idea of taking the theater by eminent domain. There is also considerable talk of other people or institutions who might want to buy the place.

If the neighborhood can find a savior for the theater less problematic than Adventure, that would be wonderful. But there are reasons to doubt whether a relatively poor city government like Fresno’s, or a restaurant, can successfully operate an old and costly theater. If that’s the case, then Adventure or another church might end up being the best option, and it could be smart for the community to hold its nose and negotiate.

Yes, I can hear the howls at the idea of any compromising with an anti-gay church. But a keep-your-enemies-close approach makes more sense. Adventure is already in the Tower District, whether it occupies the theater or not. And if you’re going to have to put up with such a church, why not try to benefit from its presence, by getting it to fix up and preserve the Tower? And if you want the church to stop spreading hate, what better way than to engage with the church, with the goal of changing the hearts and minds of the congregation?

I’ve witnessed this more conciliatory approach bear fruit in two California places. One is Redding, where the huge Bethel Church, and its School of Supernatural Ministry, have long been controversial. Bethel has supported gay conversion therapy and attempts to perform miracles such as using prayer to resurrect a dead toddler. Yet when Redding’s civic auditorium was in trouble, Bethel Church and its members, even in the face of considerable criticism and fear of the church in the community, helped form a non-profit, Advance Redding, to save and manage the auditorium. The deal has been a civic success, with the auditorium hosting a variety of shows and the ministry school making rent payments to support the facility.

The other theater is literally around the corner from my San Gabriel Valley home. The historic Rialto, which famously played itself in movies (as the murder scene in Robert Altman’s The Player, and as the date spot where Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone watch old movies in La La Land) sat vacant and decaying for nearly a decade until Mosaic Church, a growing mega-church with congregations from Hollywood to Mexico City, moved in.

There was some community resistance to the church’s arrival, and concern for what the theater might become. Mosaic is not my cup of tea—I attended services, and while I liked the diverse and young congregation, your cynical columnist cringed at the pop-style music and the over-the-top positivity of the message.

But, three years later, Mosaic is undeniably a neighborhood asset. The church has carefully helped repair the theater, and taken care to keep the place open and welcoming to the community.

Before the pandemic, Mosaic was even screening movies on the Rialto’s giant screen. One of the last films we saw before COVID-19 hit was a Mosaic-sponsored showing of Miracle on 34th Street, the classic Christmas film about having faith in people whose beliefs we do not share.

The post Why Not Let the Church You Loathe Save the Theater You Love? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

In the United States, slave masters were intent on keeping their slaves illiterate. Two events drove Southerners to discourage literacy. In the Stono Rebellion of 1739, more than 20 whites were killed by slaves attempting to escape to Florida. In 1842, the revolt led by Nat Turner in Southampton County, Virginia, cost the lives of 55 to 65 whites and more than 100 slaves. Each event led to new restrictions, in the form of anti-literacy laws and punishments for slaves who tried to learn to read and write.

The objections to slave literacy were threefold: 1) Slaves did not have the mental capacity for education and would only become confused; 2) Slaves might learn to forge passes to non-slave states; and, 3) Insurrection and rebellion might result from slaves reading abolitionist writings.

But some slaves found ways around prejudice and law to satisfy their hunger for knowledge. Their main antebellum sourcebook for literacy was the Bible.

Some masters permitted it, because they saw the Bible as teaching slaves their “divine” role as servants. Beverly Jones, a former slave in Virginia, would write: “Always took his text from Ephesians, the white preacher did, the part what said, ‘Obey your masters, be [a] good servant’ … They always tell the slaves dat ef he be good, an’ worked hard fo’ his master, dat he would go to heaven, an’ der he gonna live a life of ease. They ain’ never tell he gonna be free in Heaven. You see, they didn’ want slaves to start thinkin’ ‘bout freedom, even in Heaven.”

The Second Great Awakening (1790-1840) changed the educational calculus, by putting at the forefront the belief that all men and women from every race were in need of salvation, and that all redeemed individuals were to be “useful” in God’s kingdom. The efforts to reach African American slaves for Jesus resulted in the “planation missions” movement of the 1830s and 1840s. African Americans who embraced Christianity became not only church members but also preachers and ministers.

Plantation missions were part of a greater reform movement to bring about holiness to the whole nation, including to the Negro slave. To accomplish this, leaders of this movement had to demonstrate to the plantation owners that its religious efforts were not antithetical to slavery. Additionally, there was resistance from Southerners because they believed that African Americans didn’t have the capacity for religious experience.

Despite Southern resistance, the efforts of plantation missions were fruitful and many slaves became Christians. A multi-part process of religious instruction unfolded. First came regular sermons geared toward the perceived level of the slaves’ mental capacity. That might lead to a weekly lecture which the master and his family were encouraged to attend in order to provide a good example for his slaves. After that, Sabbath schools were established, and instruction at these school was expressly oral (and not written) “religion without letters” utilizing a question-and-answer method from printed catechisms, homilies and visual aids to achieve learning. Once schooled in Christianity, slave converts participated in regular gatherings at times and places approved by the plantation owner.

That was often as far as things went—until the Emancipation Proclamation and the subsequent end of the Civil War. In post-bellum Southern states, initiatives were carried out to educate freed slaves in subjects beyond religion. The foundation for these efforts came from the freed slaves themselves.

According to James Anderson, author of The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935, “Former slaves were the first among native southerners to depart from the planters’ ideology of education and society, and campaign for universal, state-sponsored public education. In their movement for universal schooling the ex-slaves welcomed and actively pursued the aid of Republican politicians, the Freedman’s Bureau, northern missionary societies, and the Union Army.” Not only did African Americans improve their own educational opportunities, but they also helped improve education for whites by challenging the plantation owners’ educational paradigm that schooling happened in the home, and not in public schools.

Religion retained a powerful, if different, role in education after the war. As African Americans emerged from slavery to freedom, churches became central to their communal life and a foundation for many of self-improvement initiatives in education. The church’s ability to sustain the infrastructure of an informed society—including numerous newspapers, schools, social welfare services, jobs, and recreational facilities—mitigated the dominant society’s denial of these resources to the black communities.

As Northern missionary societies and the U.S. Bureau of Refugees, Freeman and Abandoned Lands (Freedmen’s Board) entered the South in the post-bellum era to educate African Americans, they found that they would be building on educational efforts already established by slaves and free blacks. White teachers, mainly from the Northeast, joined a cadre of African Americans teachers.

One of the important educational innovations in the immediate post-bellum era was the academy—primarily parochial day or boarding schools where the curricular focus was on reading, writing, and mathematics (although courses in cooking, sewing, and domestic arts were also offered.) When these schools were first started, the hope was that students would gain basic literacy so they could read the Bible, complete basic math computations, and understand labor contracts. Instead, a classical liberal arts curriculum was brought to the school by white teachers, many of whom had gained experience in New England boarding schools, and then taught by African-American teachers as they took over instruction. Practical courses in industrial arts were added to the curriculum, although the emphasis was on Latin, algebra, English literature, and foreign languages such as Greek, French, and German.

Charlotte Hawkins Brown, a self-proclaimed disciple of Booker T. Washington, founded Palmer Memorial Institute, but steadfastly resisted efforts to make industrial education an emphasis at her school. Instead, she utilized a college preparatory approach in which her students studied Latin, French, English, algebra, geometry, and science. To balance out the students’ educational experience, students took courses in agriculture, home economics and industrial education, and helped raise food for the school by working on a 120-acre farm. Brown’s school was representative of the pedagogical tension experienced by many academies.

Henry Lyman Morehouse coined the term “Talented Tenth” (popularized by W.E.B. Du Bois) to make the case that developing an African American elite was essential for the advancement of all Blacks. This concept had appeal for both African Americans and Northern missionary groups, especially the American Baptist Home Missions Society (ABHMS). For African Americans the concept of the “Talented Tenth” represented the hope of gaining respectability in American society. For many Whites, the “Talented Tenth” represented a buffer group to negotiate with the “field Negroes” revolt in the post-bellum era.

For all the devotion to education in this era, the schools developed by and for African Americans did not produce a level of property ownership and economic self-sufficiency among its graduates that were among the primary goals of these schools. Education accomplished much, but it was no match for the racist structures of the society, particularly after the end of Reconstruction.

However, this continual thirst for education among African Americans and their continued efforts to achieve it resulted in many institutions of higher education that continue to make significant contributions in the world of academia and the broader American society. Among these were Spelman University—which began as the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary in the basement of the church.

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As an antidote to this madness, every year in mid-November, about 20 people from my church, First Lutheran of Venice, drive to Valyermo in the high desert to spend the weekend in another millennium. My church group includes life-long German Lutherans, converted Lutherans, lapsed Catholics, former cult members, and stray humanists who haven’t yet made up their minds about Jesus. We do not agree on every point of doctrine, nor do we agree on political and social issues. What connects us is our belief in a loving God and our need for community.

Our place of withdrawal is St. Andrew’s Abbey, a community of Benedictine monks who operate a non-denominational retreat house where visitors are “welcomed as Christ.” While at the abbey, we live and eat simply, slowly. Whether we speak or keep silent, it is with intention. We leave behind our individual selves and become reunited as a community. We are able to do all this because of the horarium, the daily schedule of the abbey that prescribes specific times for prayer, study, and community.

The monks’ hospitality is genuine, but the accommodations are not opulent. Two low cinderblock structures of 10 rooms apiece house guests, each room containing two twin beds, a desk and chair, a couple of lamps, a temperamental wall heater, and a small bathroom. Given that this is the desert, one might also expect to find some small creature in the room, annoying but not deadly. The majority of our time is spent in the lodge, with its massive stone hearth and abundance of comfy chairs, or walking the grounds of the abbey, awash in the yellows, browns, and reds of fall foliage, the grayish green of cacti and Joshua trees, and the purple of the surrounding mountains.

At most services, the monks sing softly and in unison as a reflection of their sense of community and humility. In a two-week cycle, they will sing all 150 Psalms to acknowledge the Lord’s presence in the natural cycles of life. Psalms are sung on a single note, rising or falling at the end of a line, and ending in a scriptural refrain that changes according to the seasons of the liturgical year. This gives the worship an ancient quality, and connects the singers to all those who have worshiped in this way since the early church.

After Friday night’s supper, we are greeted by Father Patrick, the subprior, who gives a brief history of the abbey for the first-timers and reminds us all of the horarium and the thinness of the guest-quarter walls. Father Patrick was raised Catholic but lost his faith as a young man. Years later, he felt a deep need in his life and came back to the church. After a retreat much like ours, he decided to pursue a vocation and was ordained at the age of 62. His story resonates with our group, many of whom lost faith and returned to it later in life.

The abbey gets very quiet after Compline, the evening prayers. In the years that I have been going to St. Andrew’s, I have succeeded in observing the “Grand Silence” exactly once and, even then, not for the full 12 hours. The purpose of our silence is to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit. It’s not an audible, get-the-straight-jacket kind of voice; it’s more like the voice of a wise mentor or one’s own conscience. This voice gets drowned out in the everyday busyness of life. Being silent for one hour or 12 doesn’t guarantee a profound revelation, but it is another way of slowing down the racing mind and obtaining peace.

As we adjust to the rhythms of the horarium, some of us are unable to unwind from our sea-level lives and appreciate the quiet, worries clinging to us like commercial-grade plastic wrap. It can be good to sit with that discomfort, the knowledge that you are one hot spiritual mess and the fear that everyone else knows it too. On the other hand, sometimes, you have to let your church group members in on the secret, so they can help you haul that trash to the dump.

Oblate Cemetery at St. Andrew’s Abbey in Valyermo, CA.

This cleansing begins with a morning service of praise called Lauds. Praise is simply being grateful for who God is, acknowledging his nature as Creator, Father, and Defender. It isn’t asking for stuff; the churchy word for that is “supplication.” The Psalms sung during Lauds are chosen because they address some aspect of God’s character. The final stanza of each Psalm is a variation on the phrase, “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” emphasizing the triune nature of God. As the congregation sings these lines, we rise together and bow as a sign of deep humility.

Our meals are served buffet-style in the large cinderblock dining hall with a vaulted ceiling and full eastern wall of stained glass in an abstract pattern. Breakfast is always eaten in silence, and dinner is silent until after a reading from the Lives of the Saints. The brothers are soft-spoken at all times, so we tend to be so as well. At lunch, the soup is ladled out by Brother Peter, who smiles as though this is an ecstatic oblation.

Brother Peter Zhou Bang-Jiu was professed to the original St. Benedict’s Priory in Chengtu, China. In 1952, after several years of persecution, the Communist regime expelled the European monks from China, closed the abbey, and threw Brother Peter into prison, where he remained for 26 years. He kept his sanity by writing copious amounts of poetry, which he committed to memory for lack of pen and paper. He rejoined the abbey, transplanted to Valyermo in 1984 and has served here ever since. His presence alone is a blessing.

The weekend officially comes to an end on Sunday morning, when we hold a private Lutheran service amid a stand of rustling white Aspen trees planted in 1954. As I drive the hour and a half back toward Los Angeles, I think about Father Patrick, Brother Peter, and all those who have journeyed with me and taught me about living a life of gratitude and humility. The purpose of the desert sojourn is to have intimacy with God, yet I find that I have gained greater intimacy with my fellow church members also. The challenge is to keep these gifts once I leave.

The post My Antidote to L.A’s Madness Lies Less Than 100 Miles Outside the City appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

It was the pithiest articulation I’d ever heard of the challenge that has consumed most of my adult life.

Since I was in my early teens, I have felt that God was calling me to be a Catholic priest. But I’m a woman, and the Roman Catholic Church refuses to ordain women. Not exactly an auspicious set-up.

Nevertheless, I spent the bulk of my time in high school and college acting as if I were preparing to be priest. For years on end, I studied theology, philosophy, liturgy, ethics, and New Testament Greek.

I even earned the ordination degree, called the master of divinity, at Yale Divinity School, a traditionally Protestant seminary with a student body that was one-eighth Catholic. Most of my Catholic classmates were 20-somethings called to serve the church, but eliminated from the running because they were women, married men, or openly gay or lesbian.

The degree did eventually secure me a job as pastoral associate and director of faith formation at a progressive parish in New York City. Decades ago, when the church was still flush with clergy, that position would have been reserved for a priest. My primary duty was preparing children and young adults to receive the sacraments, but I myself would not be able to perform the rituals for which I prepared them—baptism, confession, marriage, and Holy Communion. Even this parish community, which took risks and worked overtime to welcome people marginalized by the church and society (LGBT people, women, the disabled, and the homeless, among others), could not elude this church law.

I had an education and experience equal to many priests, as well as a deep desire to serve the church, but my female body, according to official church teaching, made my longing to be a priest illegitimate.

The argument really is that basic. The church teaches that women cannot be priests because they cannot “image Christ.” That is, Jesus had a male body and women’s bodies are not a reflection of the male body. It’s a cosmic catch-22: The body God gave women makes God incapable of working through women.

In July 2013, just months after he was elected to the papacy, Pope Francis reaffirmed the church’s ban on women’s ordination during a press conference on the papal plane. “On the ordination of women, the church has spoken and said no,” he said plainly. “John Paul II, in a definitive formulation, said that door is closed.”

This “definitive formulation” to which Francis refers is the “Theology of the Body,” a teaching first developed by Pope John Paul II in 1979. The late pope argued that though women and men are equal in worth and dignity, their physical and anatomical differences are evidence that God intends them to have different roles and purposes. God designed men and women to complement each other, and their genders dictate their distinct purposes in both church and society.

In 1994, John Paul II declared, as close to the point of infallibility as doctrinally possible, that women would forever be banned from the Roman Catholic priesthood, and that “this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.” In the three years since his election, Francis has repeatedly reasserted Pope John Paul II’s theology of the body and his ban on women’s ordination.

With all of the hot-buttons issues that remain contentious in the church (contraception, a married male priesthood, gay and lesbian inclusion), nothing exacts swift and severe punishment like discussion of ordaining women. Priests who have advocated for women’s equality have been defrocked and excommunicated, and nuns who have spoken out have been silenced or denied access to sacraments.

Even under Pope Francis, fear still runs high. At the September 2015 Women’s Ordination Worldwide meeting held in Philadelphia, yet another priest was banned from celebrating the sacraments at his parish because he appeared on one of the conference’s panels.

A vigil held in 2012 by the Women’s Ordination Conference outside Washington D.C.’s Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle.

So, why don’t I—and other women called to be priests—just leave? Get ordained in a church that looks or feels or smells like Catholicism?

Many women feel that the Catholic Church is their home and that Catholic tradition so shaped their identities that they could not leave Catholicism any more than they could leave being black or Puerto Rican or Italian-American.

For me, and I’m sure for other women, there is also a theological reality to why I call myself Catholic. The Catholic tradition teaches that the finite is capable of the infinite and that grace perfects nature. It’s an academic and churchy way of saying that God is present in all of the experiences, people, and objects we encounter in creation. Since the sacred can be discovered anywhere, we are called to be “co-creators”—visible signs of God’s presence in all of our actions and relationships. I love these beliefs. They help me make meaning of my life every day.

In fact, this theology helps explain Pope Francis’s remarkable popularity. In countless, videos, photos, and tweets, people around the world can see Francis embracing the sick and suffering, washing the feet of the imprisoned, taking selfies with young people. He seems to see the glory of God alive in every person, regardless of how broken or desolate a person might be.

But even Francis’ sacramental vision cannot imagine God working through women as priests.

I share Pope Francis’ deep commitment to lifting up the poor and oppressed. And that commitment is one of the main reasons that I continue the fight for women’s equality in the church in my writing and my public speaking. There are global ramifications to the struggle for women’s equality in the church, particularly for women who suffer disproportionately from poverty, violence, and oppression. Most of these sufferings are rooted in women’s inequality. In most cases the Roman Catholic Church did not create these afflictions, but its doctrine on women serves to reinforce them.

How can women ever achieve true empowerment when their religious leaders declare that women are not entitled to equal religious or spiritual authority? How will women ever see true equality when the church’s hierarchy teaches that a woman’s body is inadequate and invalid when it comes to possessing certain forms of power?

The Roman Catholic Church, with its billion members and its rock-star pope, could have an extraordinary impact on improving the dignity, worth, and equality of women, especially in nations where women are dominated and devalued by the oppressive forces of patriarchal culture.

Unfortunately, Pope Francis, who proclaimed this year that the church should open the doors of mercy to all people, continues to keep a lock on the door that bars women from answering God’s call.

It would be hard to calculate the losses that have resulted from the Pope’s position. Hundreds of parishes have been consolidated or closed because of a lack of priests—while highly educated, well-trained, talented Catholic woman endure the humiliation of sitting idle and powerless. Perhaps saddest of all, countless Catholic communities lose the chance to be ministered to by the women who could have been some of their best priests.

The post God Calls My Name, but the Church Won’t Let Me Answer appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

You can almost feel the anticipation in the air as people enter the Bridges Hall of Music and find a seat in one of four sections according to their vocal range: alto, soprano, tenor or bass. Those who do not want to sing usually sit upstairs in the balcony. The conductor has his back turned to the audience for the orchestral movements and for the solo parts that are performed by four professional singers. But he turns to conduct the audience in singing the seven choruses, ending with the majestic “Hallelujah Chorus.”

This year’s “sing”—the 32nd—will be dedicated to the founder and longtime conductor of the Claremont Sing-along Messiah, Dr. James Fahringer, who passed away unexpectedly earlier this month. A few days before he died, Jim told me that the sing-along was intended as a “musical gift to Claremont.”

At the time of the sing-along’s founding, Dr. Fahringer was the musical director of the Claremont Symphony Orchestra, a volunteer orchestra that has been going strong since 1953. This kind of sing-along concert wasn’t popular yet in 1982 but it was an instant hit.

In the early years, the Sing-along Messiah had the feel of a town party— the audience was made up of mostly locals. I have a long-running joke with one woman, who I’ve known since college; we always say, “I’ll see you next year in the alto section!”

In 2011, the 620-seat concert hall filled up, and we had to turn a few people away. So we added a second performance in 2012. Both sing-alongs were full last year—and we expect the same on Sunday. Not only is the audience bigger but also people are traveling longer distances to attend. There’s a woman who comes to Claremont every year from Long Beach to sing in our “Messiah!”

You don’t have to be good singer to participate. It’s liberating to realize that nobody is listening to you because everybody is too busy singing as well as they can. It frees you up to flow with the music, and your joy is affirmed by being surrounded by all of those people.

Even though the “choir” (i.e. audience) changes annually, the orchestra musicians perform year after year. Some of our musicians have played with the orchestra since that first sing-along in 1982. Last Monday night, at the final rehearsal, the lights clicked off, and the orchestra was in total darkness playing one of the choruses. The musicians continued to play without missing a beat or seeing the conductor! It was enlightening to discover how well we knew the “Messiah.”

One of my favorite parts is the “Hallelujah Chorus” at the end of the performance. Every year, it’s the same. You’re singing these hallelujahs at the top of your voice…and then there’s a brief break before the last one. You can just feel it—everyone is hoping no one falls into that “hole” of silence. And no one ever does. Everybody always quits singing right on time. It’s a feeling like: We made it! Then you sing that last hallelujah, and you really feel it.

The Claremont Sing-along Messiah has become a marker of time for me. I remember taking my children to those first performances. Years later, my daughter sang the solo alto part. Sitting in the audience with my granddaughters, I saw the tradition coming full circle. For my family, the Claremont Sing-along Messiah has been exactly what Dr. Fahringer intended: a musical gift.

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