Methodists Launch Peace, Jobs Program : Rebuilding: Bishops announce cooperative effort to improve life in riot-scarred Los Angeles. The church will use it as a model for urban renewal around U.S.

Amid graffiti-marred buildings and hope for a new urban beginning, 130 United Methodist bishops launched a nationwide program in Los Angeles Monday to help bring jobs and peace to the inner city.

Meeting at an intersection in the Pico-Union district that was torn by rioting a year ago, the church leaders pledged to raise $2.8 million this year to fund peace or “shalom” zones as part of an urban mission to promote community rebuilding and understanding.

“This is an opportunity for us as a Christian community to renew our commitments, to re-enter that city. This is not a time for timidity or fear, but a time for courage, for creativity and for high resolve to rebuild our communities,” Los Angeles Bishop Roy I. Sano told a crowd of about 400 who gathered for a rally and tamale dinner.

The church, the second-largest Protestant denomination in the United States, has already raised $350,000 for planning.

In the wake of last year’s riots, Los Angeles is viewed as an urban laboratory to test the church program in hopes that it will become a national prototype.

“It has become for us in that sense a holy city,” said Bishop Joseph Yeakel, president of the national church’s Council of Bishops.

The shalom zone would combine community-based participation, decision-making and planning to promote urban rebuilding, political activism and “increased understanding, reconciliation and healing,” church officials said.

Job creation and training with the help of private and public matching funds is a key goal. Bishops also said they hope the program will promote a systematic transition from charitable approaches to aiding the inner city to “economic justice” that leads to self-sustaining enterprises.

The task is both formidable and urgent, Sano said. He told the gathering that since last year’s civil unrest--which resulted in 53 deaths and $1-billion damage--there have been 900 murders in Greater Los Angeles, many of them gang-related. Sano said 115,000 weapons have been purchased during the past 12 months, while hunger and hate crimes have each increased 38% in the Los Angeles region.

Among those present was President Clinton’s nominee for U.S. surgeon general, M. Joycelyn Elders. Elders, director of health in Arkansas and an active Methodist laywoman, is honorary chairwoman of the Shalom Committee.

She said religious groups often have more credibility in the inner city than government agencies but that they must do more.

Many denominations and faiths have made similar promises within the past year--and there are numerous indications that they are doing good.

On Saturday, for example, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Los Angeles, helped break ground for Nehemiah West, a low-income housing project in Bell Gardens. The archdiocese has worked closely with the Southern California Organizing Committee to get the project under way. Two days earlier, the Salvation Army announced that it had met its goal of raising $4.5 million to build a new youth house and recreation center in the heart of Hollywood.