Crusaders Take Aim at Church Members : Abortion: A group distributes leaflets outside a church they say supports Operation Rescue, a charge the church denies.

Christians confronted Christians Sunday as foes of the antiabortion group Operation Rescue distributed leaflets outside a Van Nuys church opposed to abortion.

Both sides argued passionately but politely as the abortion rights activists handed out their literature and leaders of The Church on the Way tried to stop them.

Leaders of the 8,000-member charismatic congregation called the demonstration underhanded and subversive, and alleged they had been set up by abortion rights advocates who told the press about their plans before informing church officials.

The letterlike leaflets--which began “Dear friend”--were prepared by Episcopalians Paul Courry and his wife, Larkette Lein, self-styled abortion rights crusaders from Orange County. The letters urge fellow Christians to shun Operation Rescue, whose tactics include blockading medical clinics that provide abortions and trying to prevent patients from entering, often by force.

Courry and his supporters passed out the leaflets in sealed, blank envelopes to worshipers as they left the morning service, telling them only, “Good news.”

“No, no, don’t take it,” Jeff Freeman, a church administrator, admonished Bible-carrying worshipers on the sidewalk just outside the sanctuary.

“How are we going to work together as brothers of the Lord?” Freeman asked Courry. “We’ve tried to work with different groups and now you try to paper us? Our people are going to be disgusted by this.”

“Start a dialogue within your church,” Courry said. “We’re simply passing out information.”

The 20-minute confrontation at 14300 Sherman Way ended when church members warned by Freeman and other church officials began refusing the leaflets. Freeman agreed to arrange a meeting on the issue--which was Courry’s goal.

Courry said five supporters also planned to distribute leaflets Sunday at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church in Glendale. Last weekend, he said, 30 activists passed out leaflets at the Vineyard Christian Fellowship in Anaheim.

Courry, a computer project manager from Irvine, said the 8,000-member Church on the Way was targeted because of its alleged affiliation with Operation Rescue, including a rally held at the church last April, during Holy Week.

But although Freeman, assistant to his church’s director of ministries, said that his church opposes abortion, he denied that the church had lent Operation Rescue any financial or organizational support. The rally was not an Operation Rescue event, said Freeman.

He acknowledged that a small percentage of church members had participated in Operation Rescue events. He said the church as a whole has neither endorsed nor condemned Operation Rescue, and treats members’ participation as a personal decision.

“That’s why we’re here,” interjected leaflet distributor Lois Appleton of Arleta, in reference to her belief that abortion should be similarly treated as a personal decision.

The leaflet alleges that Operation Rescue’s tactics are un-Christian, and are hurting Christianity because observers are “inspired only to loathe the name of Jesus and to despise the symbol of the cross.”

“Rather than accomplishing the purpose of saving the souls of the lost,” the leaflet says, “these techniques only confirm unbelievers in their opinion that ‘Christians are just a bunch of hypocrites,’ and worse than hypocrites, outright deceivers who sing sweet songs while gouging others in the groin, who claim that life is precious but denigrate the bearers of that life as incapable of making moral decisions.”

The leaflet also urges those who oppose abortion to encourage women “to continue their pregnancies” in other ways, by “raising funds for prenatal care, to keep obstetric wards open in county hospitals, to provide day care for infants and toddlers for working single moms.”

Courry, 36, said he and his wife wrote the letter after deciding “we just couldn’t idly stand by and watch Christians as a whole get a bad name” because of Operation Rescue.

He said they mailed the letter to the pastors of several churches they believe are tied to Operation Rescue, then decided to approach parishioners directly when they received no response.

Freeman’s wife, Cecelia, said she checked the office of church Pastor Jack Hayford and said it appeared the letter was never received.