Refurbishing of Church of Angels Takes Wing at Last : * Pasadena: Twenty years after the Sylmar earthquake damaged its tower, the chapel--which was built in 1889--is being restored.

Passers-by on Avenue 64 at the southern tip of the San Rafael Hills in Pasadena may wonder why the steeple of the Church of the Angels has no cap--until they notice that sitting beside the church on the grass is a steeple cap.

The church’s spire and the wood steeple cap supporting it were taken down in October to correct an architectural atrocity committed against the elegant 1889 chapel in the aftermath of the 1971 Sylmar earthquake.

After the earthquake shook loose the church tower, the congregation decided to make the repairs in the least expensive way--by unbolting the weathered wood steeple cap, and removing, stone by stone, eight feet of the fractured belfry beneath it. More than 400 stones were stored on the church grounds.

When the steeple cap was replaced on the lowered belfry, the bell looked “like it had a hat pulled down over its ears,” said Richard Rose, a church member who is also an architect.

It was still that way--a stark indicator of the impoverished condition of the tiny Episcopal congregation--when its current priest, Robert Gaestel, 38, took his assignment 12 years later, in 1983.

Gaestel recognized the church building as his best vehicle for rebuilding the congregation.

“The beauty of this church is its strongest evangelical tool,” he says.

Patterned after Holmbury St. Mary’s Church near Dorking, Surrey, in England, the Church of the Angels was one of the Pasadena area’s first public buildings. It was erected as a memorial to wealthy British landowner Alexander Robert Campbell-Johnston by his widow, Frances.

Its story, related in Donald W. Crocker’s local history “Within the Vale of Annandale,” begins with the Campbell-Johnstons stopping at an obscure town called Garvanza--today the north end of Highland Park--while on a drive down the Pacific Coast in 1883.

Liking what they saw, they purchased more than 2,000 acres of land that would eventually be known as the San Rafael Ranch. Alexander Campbell-Johnston died there five years later, and his widow hired the English church architect Arthur Edmund Street to draw up plans for his memorial.

Set in a three-acre garden, the building was constructed of sandstone hauled from quarries in the San Fernando Valley. A carved marble angel near the main entrance was a gift to the church by its workers.

Later, the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles acquired the church, and it has since been known colloquially as the Bishop’s Chapel.

During the ongoing construction, the church’s exterior is surrounded by geometric scaffolding that looks like an out-of-place metal sculpture. But even imprisoned in such a sorry way, the church’s beauty shines through, particularly inside.

The vaulted ceiling, which resembles the underside of a capsized boat, is made of Douglas fir, as are the pews, which still have their original finish. Lining the pew seats are rich, red carpet runners along the red brick walls.

Angels seem to float everywhere. Large, brightly colored angels are in the magnificent stained-glass window behind the pulpit, little ones appear in smaller windows, and the angel motif is repeated in script on a wall: “There is joy in the presence of the angels of God.”

The church also has quaintness. In an upstairs tower room that is barely larger than a wardrobe (though it has a working fireplace), there is an opening in a closet wall through which the priest could see whether Frances Campbell-Johnston was seated in her pew so he could start the morning service.

By the late-1960s, though, the church had fallen on hard times.

“I feel that the earthquake damage in 1971 may indeed have been the work of angels,” Gaestel said. “I think the people didn’t recognize how deteriorated the church had become. The priest was old and sick. Everything had been let go for years.

“There were hardly any members. In 1971, the congregation had dwindled to such a degree that the diocese wanted to close (the church) down. But they managed to limp along through the decade of the ‘70s.”

But during the past three years as its strength has grown, the congregation has raised half the $350,000 required to lift the “hat” back up and replace the stones around a structure of steel. The remainder will come from fund-raising drives, targeting the community and foundations.

With architect Rose supervising, the belfry is being reconstructed, restoring the tower to its original 44-foot height and the tiny church to its 1889 appearance.

Gaestel sees the church’s physical restoration as symbolic of its spiritual rebirth.

“The restoration of this church is not just a physical act,” he added, “and it’s not just a nostalgic look at the past.”

Today, the parish has 75 families in its membership, several of whom live in counties as distant as San Bernardino and Orange. “They come because they feel the church is an extended family,” Gaestel said.

Like many other congregants, Jaye and Charles Bohlen came to the church initially for purposes other than membership.

“We went to have our daughter, Avis, christened,” Charles Bohlen said. “When we met Father Bob, we decided to make it our church. We’re there because of the theology rather than because it’s a neighborhood church--and for its beauty and spiritual qualities.”

Gaestel, a philosophy major at Chapman College in Orange before he entered divinity school, said he was set upon the course of the priesthood by a senior class on “Foundations of Christian Faith,” a book by Karl Rahner, which helped him integrate piety and intellectual thought.

Gaestel says he chooses activities for his congregation that will “help people deepen their faith in God, which makes a real difference in the way they respond to the challenges they face in life.”

He said he focuses on the intellectual and contemplative aspects of the faith. He attempts this with such adult programs as seminars on spiritual Ecclesiastes of the past and group studies of Christian classics within the context of science. He also started a program called “Encounter with Wisdom,” in which retirees converse with younger members.

For Jaye Bohlen, 42, the discussions are exhilarating.

“We read Pope John Paul’s latest Encyclical and discussed it in a search for human dignity in the workplace,” she said. “Here, you bump into discussions of everything from economics to feminism to the nature of anger. It’s provocative.

“And when Bob preaches,” she said, “you feel a seriousness of purpose and a breadth of thinking.”