American Indians in Los Angeles County who...

American Indians in Los Angeles County who practice traditional religious rites, notably the sweat lodge ceremony, “often face discrimination, degradation and mockery,” according to a report released this week.

The county Human Relations Commission and the city-county Native American Indian Commission recommended that community relations training for police, fire and other departments provide for “instruction on such traditional Indian religious practices as the sacred sweat lodge and other aspects of Indian culture.” The joint report is based on a two-day hearing held last April in Bell Gardens.

In testimony before the commissions, John Funmaker, a Winnebago Indian, stated that to ask for a Fire Department permit to build a fire for the sweat lodge, used for purification and prayer ceremonies, is “at best demeaning and, at its worst, self-defeating for the ones who ask.” He also cited an instance when police were summoned to quiet the “racket” of a Native American Church service, which included songs and the playing of a water drum.

CONGREGATIONS

The independent United Community Church of Glendale, founded more than 25 years ago by the Rev. Steuart McBirnie and an intermittent, news-making battleground between congregational factions, has voted to affiliate with the Southern Baptists in California. Pastor John Myrick, formerly was on the staff at Southern Baptist-linked Van Nuys First Baptist Church, said the 800-member church with $7 million worth of facilities wanted to “maximize its efficiency for Christ” by becoming part of the Southern Baptists’ worldwide missionary program.

DATES

Dean T. S. Farisani, a South African Lutheran minister tortured in prison because of his anti-apartheid activities, will speak at 3 p.m. during a conference on the Campus Crusade for Christ campus at Arrowhead Springs. The talk is sponsored by the Black American Response to the African Community, a Pasadena-based group that recently responded to Farisani’s plea for emergency relief for victims of the strife.

At Chapman College in Orange, a lecture series by scholars dealing with the earliest traditions about the historical Jesus will conclude next month with a lecture by Robert Funk, director of the Jesus Seminar, a provocative group of New Testament scholars casting votes on the authenticity of about 500 sayings attributed to Jesus. Funk’s lecture is at noon on Nov. 10 at the college’s Hashinger Hall. Before then, Claremont Graduate School scholar James M. Robinson will speak at 11 a.m. Tuesday on the background of the “Sermon on the Mount” and David Sperling of Hebrew Union College in New York will speak at 11 a.m. Oct. 30 on “Jesus the Messiah? A Jewish View.”

MEDIA

A shortwave radio station beaming evangelistic programming at most of Latin America is expected to start broadcasting soon from a 50-foot antenna atop Chatsworth Peak just inside the Ventura County line. Seventy percent of the religious programs on 1.5 million-watt KVOH (King’s Voice of Hope) will be in Spanish and 30% in English, said George Otis, founder-president of High Adventure Ministries in Van Nuys. A high percentage of Latin American broadcasting is on shortwave frequencies, a KVOH spokesman said. Otis’ radio stations in South Lebanon were in the news in October, 1985, when they were destroyed by bombings but they are now back in operation.