Religion : Offbeat United Methodist Church Caters to Avant-Garde : Experimental ministry: The Church in Ocean Park focuses on artistic freedom and liberal causes. It plans a concert soon called ‘Naked in the Church.’

Church in Ocean Park, a United Methodist congregation that ministers to the young and unconventional, began planning a concert last summer “designed to affront the sensitivities of the prudish.”

The Nov. 17 concert, called “Naked in the Church,” will feature performance artists who will do separate pieces about the “body” and “pornography,” music by The Underthings, described as a provocative rock group, and a film short, “Elektra,” by two “feminist underground filmmakers.”

“There is not anything done without taste,” said the Rev. James Conn, pastor of the Santa Monica church.

The show’s original purpose was to protest threatened curbs on the National Endowment for the Arts. Although that issue has cooled, Conn still feels the concert will make a worthy statement about artistic freedom.

While most churches might be more likely to protest rather than sponsor such a concert, the avant-garde Church in Ocean Park has long been unique among Christian churches in Southern California. It helps that Conn aims his ministry at the artistic, socially liberal community in Santa Monica.

Despite having only 100 active members, the congregation had more members than any other church taking part in last winter’s sit-in demonstrations at the Federal Building in Los Angeles over U.S. aid to El Salvador. Conn was arrested six times and about 20 members were arrested at least once for blocking entrances.

The church has long supported civil rights for homosexuals and their participation in the congregation. Conn has performed “celebrations” of same-sex unions but has escaped Methodist censure because they are not technically weddings. Next Saturday night the church will hold it first annual Lesbian and Gay Square Dance. “You can dress like Roy or Dale or just like your cute self, honey!” advises the church newsletter, which has a mailing list of 1,000.

The church also sponsors an erotic-literature reading group. “There aren’t many churches that would entertain that notion,” Conn commented wryly.

Even so, United Methodist Bishop Jack M. Tuell of Los Angeles said he is “grateful” for what the church tries to accomplish.

“Not everybody approves of the ministry there, but I’ve never had pressure to step in and stop anything,” Tuell said. “I welcome efforts like this to reach groups of people we don’t always reach,” the bishop said. The church expresses itself differently than other churches, but “it basically seeks to be a United Methodist church,” Tuell said.

Indeed, the congregation does some typical churchy things, including providing space for groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous and holding a pre-Christmas gift fair.

The 46-year-old pastor, casually dressed, sits on a stool to give his Sunday sermons, and the ensuing discussion is sometimes just as lengthy. The music is a cappella, led by Elinor Graham, who has members learn traditional American music or other songs without aid of books or printed lyrics.

Conn said he talks at the morning service with more illustrations from contemporary culture than from the Bible.

“It’s more like a Unitarian church in many ways,” said member Ida Bucher of Westwood. “There is not a lot of stress on God. But it’s Christian if you think of Christian as caring for others.”

The church feeds the homeless each Sunday at the Ocean Park Community Center, which operates in an adjacent, church-owned building. Bucher became acquainted with the church because of its day-care center for children in foster care whose parents were drugs addicts or otherwise troubled.

Church in Ocean Park was 50 years old and fading in membership when Conn was appointed pastor in 1973 and given the mission of making it an experimental church with a politically and socially liberal perspective.

“It’s been a lengthy ‘experiment,’ ” he conceded. “One might call it an alternative church at this point.”

Conn said he enjoys the challenges and intellectual ferment at the church.

“It’s fair to say this church has attracted people who are not surprised by the offbeat and incongruous,” Conn said. “In fact, they sort of expect and look forward to it.”

He conceded that the upcoming “Naked in the Church” concert has lost some of the provocative sting it had last summer.

Congress has since voted to scrap tough restrictions on the kinds of art eligible for federal subsidies. Not only that, the government agency has quietly dropped a controversial requirement that grant recipients must sign a non-obscenity pledge.

Conn is happy about the developments in Washington, but he nevertheless said the show is “an affirmation that needs to be made about the freedom of artistic expression.” It is also the last of three fund-raising events this year at the congregation.

Cheri Gaulke, one of the performance artists, is expected to present a work similar to one she gave at the church several years ago. It included a scene in which she portrayed Eve, covered only with a fig leaf, being crucified on a cross.

Anybody who “thinks there is some dichotomy between the flesh and the soul, between God and sex, would be in deep trouble going to this show,” Conn said.

A concern with public issues once led Conn to politics. He served eight years on the Santa Monica City Council, the final two as mayor. He did not seek reelection in 1988, he said, because he “decided there was more to life than going to meetings every Tuesday night and answering constituents’ complaints.” As a pastor and a politician he was working about 80 hours a week, he added.

Conn said his church duties include the kinds of things pastors typically do. “My task is to stand with people as they go through passages of their lives . . . weddings, funerals, communion. It’s just that my style is different.”

Members say the musical contributions of Graham are just as important as Conn’s messages during the Sunday service.

“Elinor is magic,” said Susan McCorry of Santa Monica. “She and Jim work so in sync. We sing folk songs, hymns, protest songs, you name it.”

An ex-Catholic and a single mother, McCorry said she enjoys the church’s annual trip to Catalina Island, the potluck dinners and acceptance by others. But she took the newsletter for a dozen years before, in the midst of personal crisis, she was drawn to a scheduled sermon on why people believe in God.

“We do a lot of serious things--and fun things,” she said.

After church one Sunday last spring, she said, the pastor and churchgoers pushed the chairs aside, got down on the floor to make kites and went to the beach to fly them.