The Rev. Gene Scott moved his flock...

The Rev. Gene Scott moved his flock back to downtown Los Angeles on Easter after spending what a close associate said was $2 million on renovation of a classic movie theater.

Scott announced a year ago that he had signed a lease with an option to buy the 1,800-seat theater and building that was erected in 1927 by actors Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin to be the flagship theater of United Artists.

The iconoclastic minister, who has a considerable following among viewers on satellite and cable television around the country, had moved services from his Wescott Christian Center in Glendale to downtown in 1986 when he bought the one-time fundamentalist bastion, the Church of the Open Door. That deal later fell through amid court battles.

The United Artists Theater, on Broadway between 9th Street and Olympic Boulevard, had been closed during the winter of 1988-89 except for occasional stage shows from Mexico. Bruce Corwin, president of Metropolitan Theaters, asked Scott to consider turning the theater into a church. Scott signed a 10-year lease on the ornate building.

Craig Lampe, a consultant to Scott, said Thursday that Scott plans to buy the building. Lampe, a racing-car owner who lives in Indianapolis, says the church emphasizes tithing (contributing 10% of one’s income). “The average person contributes $350 a month,” Lampe said.

Scott, formerly an Assemblies of God minister, calls the new church the University Cathedral. His literature and full-page ads announcing the new services call attention to his doctorate from Stanford University and his role as “pastor/teacher.”

Joining Scott at the overflow inaugural service Sunday were Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, City Councilman Richard Alatorre and Atlantic Richfield Chief Executive Officer Lodwrick M. Cook.

MANUSCRIPTS

A conference on biblical-era manuscripts--and some of the difficulties in getting them published and into the public domain--is planned at Cal State Long Beach on Saturday, starting at 9 a.m. Organized by Robert Eisenman, who has sought to free up more Dead Sea Scrolls, the meeting--open to the public--will include talks on the Scrolls by David Noel Freedman of UC San Diego, on the Nag Hammadi Gnostic Library and the Mani Codex by James M. Robinson of Claremont Graduate School, and on the Cairo Genizah by Norman Golb of the University of Chicago. The sessions, which will end at 5 p.m., will be held, appropriately, in the fifth floor manuscript room of the university library.

HOLIDAY

A Yom Hashoah commemoration, remembering the Holocaust, will be held at 11 a.m. Sunday at the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Memorial Plaza in Los Angeles. Special guests will include Mordecai Paldiel, director of the Department for the Righteous Among the Nations, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem. He will also speak at a 6:45 p.m. community meeting at Beth Jacob Congregation in Beverly Hills after a procession on foot from the Wiesenthal Center. Also on Sunday, at Wilshire Boulevard Temple, Rabbi Harvey J. Fields will present “Echoes of Anguish,” a text accompanied by traditional music and prayers, in an hourlong program starting at 11:30 a.m.

DATES

Sociologist Robert Bellah of UC Berkeley will be the keynote speaker at 7:30 p.m. Friday at a two-day conference on “Integrity in the Workplace” at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena. Bellah’s lecture ($20 admission) and the continuation of the conference will be in Travis Auditorium in Finch Hall on campus.

The 47th annual Pepperdine University Bible Lectures next week will begin at 7 p.m. Tuesday with a lecture by Randy Mayeux of Dallas in Firestone Fieldhouse. About 150 classes and talks by Churches of Christ ministers and lay people are being offered through Friday. Six dramatic and four choral presentations are also scheduled, according to Jerry Rushford, director of church services at the Malibu campus.