Pathways of Faith

Anne Reinders, 35, of Granada Hills goes with her husband to The Church on the Way in Van Nuys at least twice a week despite her parents’ lingering misgivings about a church that holds Pentecostal beliefs in healing, casting out demons and the prayer-like speaking in unintelligible tongues.

“Before becoming a Christian, I had been deeply involved in the mid-1970s at Berkeley with the Church of Divine Man, where they taught you to leave your body and allow another spirit to come and speak through you. Happily, I was there only six months. But my parents thought I took another big swing when I joined a Pentecostal church in Kentucky. But Church on the Way is a wonderful place, and my parents have come to see it is not as bad as they thought.”

About 24 years ago, Harriet Massingill, 64, of Canoga Park, a retired elementary school teacher and a lifelong Episcopalian, decided to switch from a conservative Episcopal parish in the West Valley to a liberal one in Granada Hills--St. Andrew & St. Charles Episcopal Church.

“Episcopalians, I know, have an image of staunch conservatives. But this church is on the liberal end. You are free to be yourself and believe what you want to believe.” She welcomes the debates in her denomination over homosexuality. “I think the issue should be aired. The church should ordain homosexuals if they qualify as priests in all other ways.”

Even though there was a Christmas tree last month in the Northridge home of 18-year-old Jeannie Connolly in keeping with her father’s Christian background, the student at Cal State Northridge follows the Buddhist faith of her mother.

“I sometimes go to the Hsi Lai Temple in Rowland Heights with my friends. It’s like if there is something bad in our lives we want to pray to the Buddha--not to make it better but to make us feel better. I usually go to temple more often when we visit my grandmother in Taiwan. There is always a celebration or something going on there.”

About the only time recently that dedicated Catholic Nancy Violette, 32, an unemployed mother of two, stayed away from weekly Mass at Northridge’s Our Lady of Lourdes Church was shortly after her father died. The Mass reminded her of the funeral service, and she couldn’t get through without crying. But otherwise, she said, church life is a given for her and her Catholic-raised husband.

“It gives us moral support in things we do every day. It helps with life, it helps with death, it gives meaning.” She had been involved in activities at two Santa Monica parishes before she and her husband moved to the Valley six months ago. “I went away from the church when I went to college, but when I had a botched love affair I came back.”

Raised Catholic in the Philippines, Joe Leyba, 22, of Van Nuys now does volunteer work as a youth worker in the Filipino ministry of Faith Baptist Church in Canoga Park. About 150 Filipinos attend the special service at that church.

“I got saved--I was born again--when I was 15 years old in the Philippines. I was introduced to the Bible, which is the inerrant word of God.” On issues of whether women or homosexuals should be allowed to be clergy in any denomination, Leyba said he does not want to be judgmental but feels that the Bible rules out those possibilities.

Eugene Goodwein, 58, and his wife were among the original members of Stephen S. Wise Temple, a hilltop synagogue complex that is the largest Reform Jewish congregation in Southern California. The Van Nuys couple had grown up in more traditional Jewish families--his a part of the Conservative wing and hers adhering to Orthodox Judaism.

“When I was a youngster, I tried to get out of Hebrew school. But I honestly don’t remember that any of our three children ever said they didn’t want to go to temple. Stephen S. Wise Temple kept the kids’ interest so it motivated me to go too. It made me comfortable with Reform Judaism. We don’t keep our home kosher, but my wife lights candles on Friday night and we celebrate Passover with a Seder in our house.”