Policies on Church Loans Hit : Discrimination: Councilman Woo calls the practice ‘religious red-lining.’

The Rev. Nancy Wilson, pastor of the homosexual-oriented Metropolitan Community Church of Los Angeles, appeared at a City Hall press conference Friday to press her protest against banks and other financial institutions for what she called discriminatory lending policies toward churches.

Wilson--now in the 25th day of a fast to draw attention to her protest--was accompanied by other clergy and Councilman Michael Woo, who called the practice “religious red-lining.” She complained her church has been denied $600,000 in loans by 20 different lending institutions.

Woo said the Metropolitan Community Church has “outstanding references and an excellent credit rating. (But it) has two strikes against it, both being a church and being a gay and lesbian church. It’s clear that this is a case of arbitrary discrimination that should not be tolerated.”

For instance, Woo said, Wilson’s church was turned down by the Anaheim-based Evangelical Christian Credit Union on “moral grounds” because the parishioners are largely gay and lesbian.

Mark Holbrook, the credit union president, said by telephone that the church had inquired, through a second party, about joining the credit union. Holbrook said the representative was told that “they would not qualify because their doctrinal beliefs are fundamentally different from ours. We are chartered to serve a fairly narrowly defined group of churches.”

Wilson’s congregation bought its present Culver City site in 1987 for $1.25 million with a $600,000 down payment, but Richard Davis, the church’s treasurer, said the mortgage ultimately had to be refinanced under unfavorable terms. The church, once located in downtown Los Angeles, is the “mother church” of more than 250 similar congregations in this country and abroad.

Woo said lending institutions are generally reluctant to lend to churches because they fear bad press if they have to foreclose on the loans. He called for an investigation by the state superintendent of banks and the state savings and loan commissioner.

A Bank of America corporate spokesman said Friday, however, that his bank does not discriminate against churches. “Our decision on loans to individuals or organizations are based on risk and the willingness and ability of a borrower to repay the loan,” said spokesman Ron Owens.

Also at the press conference were the Rev. Thomas Griffith of the Crescent Heights United Methodist Church of West Los Angeles, the Rev. Carl Bean of the Unity Fellowship Church and Rabbi Janet Marder of Reform Judaism’s Union of American Hebrew Congregations.

“Getting a loan for a church is indeed difficult under the best of circumstances,” Griffith said. “Many lenders are quite willing to make a loan if a church can put up collateral in the entire amount of the loan. If (lenders) can possibly get out of it, it won’t happen.”