From Saving Souls to Social Activism : Communities: Once-insular evangelical and Pentecostal churches are branching out into programs aimed at helping the poor and fighting urban ills.

In the wake of the tumultuous riots that rocked Los Angeles two years ago, evangelical and Pentecostal churches have emerged as major players in shaping a new and pragmatic religious response to urban problems.

Long relegated to the fringes of the city’s political life and viewed as far more concerned with saving souls than with social action, these once-insular churches are establishing anti-gang, job training, neighborhood development and a host of other inner-city programs once thought to be the exclusive purview of old-line denominations, a new yearlong study has found.

“There’s been a shift in the balance of leadership,” said USC religion professor Donald E. Miller, one of four co-authors of the $115,362 study. “Many of the most vigorous, creative new programs are coming out of evangelical and Pentecostal quarters.”

Traditional Protestant churches, Jewish agencies and large African American congregations remain active in addressing community needs--and still command the most visibility, the study said. But the trend is toward a growing role for evangelicals and Pentecostalists of all ethnic backgrounds.

“I think probably the future rests with those leaders,” UC Santa Barbara religion professor and study co-author Wade Clark Roof said in an interview.

Marked by a populist, grass-roots and neighborhood-based approach to pressing urban problems, the heightened activism in Los Angeles reflects a national trend.

In cities such as Miami, Boston, New York and Chicago, there is a new interest and urgency in ministering to the homeless, the poor, the hungry and the jobless on a scale that heretofore characterized efforts of old-line or traditional religious bodies.

The new civic activism among evangelicals and Pentecostalists is attributed not only to religious convictions, but to a new confidence that has come with maturity as their memberships and influence have increased throughout the United States. Since 1960, for example, the number of denominations affiliated with the National Assn. of Evangelicals has nearly doubled, to 44 denominations representing almost 5 million members.

Further, many of their members are located in the cities’ most trouble-plagued districts, requiring local congregations to either adapt their ministries to the times or risk the decline that many old-line denominations, such as Presbyterians and Episcopalians, have faced.

Twelve years ago, the Church of the Nazarene, an evangelical denomination founded 99 years ago in Los Angeles, operated six nonprofit “compassion centers” in the United States to meet inner-city needs. Today there are more than 75.

“The reality is that evangelical groups are on the front lines,” said Michael Mata, former executive director of the Bresee Institute, one of numerous evangelical-based para-church organizations involved in neighborhood development and job training programs.

Inner-city recipients of these ministries, such as Kalani Benavides, say that without such neighborhood efforts their lives would be miserable.

Benavides, 43 years old and homeless, said she lost her job as a hotel manager last December. She sleeps on a lawn across the street from the First Church of the Nazarene in the Mid-Wilshire district. “We have a lot of people out here who can’t survive on their own,” she said in an interview. “They need to lean on someone.”

Like 300 others every week, Benavides leans on the church’s food program, which serves the homeless, the elderly and families with little or no income.

To be sure, not all evangelicals and Pentecostalists have taken up the urban challenge. Many--perhaps most--continue to be suspicious of a “social Gospel,” according to the Rev. Ron Benefiel, senior pastor at the Nazarene congregation, the mother church of the denomination.

Both evangelical and Pentecostal Christians continue to place great emphasis on the Gospels’ message of salvation and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Compared to old-line Christians, they are generally more intent on seeking converts. In addition, Pentecostalists place special importance on the “gifts of the Holy Spirit,” such as speaking in tongues--ecstatic utterances that are seen by believers as evidence that one has been baptized by the Holy Spirit.

Nonetheless, the study reports a proliferation of inner-city programs. They include Zoe Christian Fellowship’s entrepreneurial training school in Compton, the independent Faith Outreach Church’s anti-gang program in East Los Angeles and the Van Nuys Church on the Way’s food distribution program.

Independent and Pentecostal churches formed the Southern California Coalition of Religious Leaders, which has organized a credit union to help minorities start small businesses.

Para-church organizations active in inner-city work include World Vision, World Impact and the Bresee Institute.

Old-line denominations pioneered and remain active in many of these same ministries. Their most recent and visible program is the Hope in Youth anti-gang program, backed by nine Jewish and Christian denominations and spearheaded by Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Los Angeles. It has a projected five-year, $91-million budget.

But one distinction continues to separate evangelicals and Pentecostalists from traditional Protestants, Roman Catholics and Jews. Although all have successfully applied for government grants to operate nonprofit outreach programs, lobbying government for structural changes to root out the causes of racism and poverty remains the purview of the traditional denominations.

Said one confidant of Mayor Richard Riordan, who asked to remain anonymous: “From the perspective I have from the mayor’s office, I don’t see them (evangelicals and Pentecostalists) at all.”

But few old-line religious leaders disputed the study’s contention of greater activism by evangelicals and Pentecostalists at the neighborhood level.

“I think they are, fortunately, heavily involved,” said the Rev. J. Delton Pickering, executive director of the United Methodist Church’s Council on Ministries in the church’s California-Pacific Conference.

Still, traditional leaders took issue with what may be the study’s most controversial finding, one that John B. Orr, professor of religion at USC and chief author of the study, said may require further research.

Based on interviews and anecdotal information, the study contends that although there has been a surge in activity by evangelicals and Pentecostalists, a 1960s liberal coalition of Establishment Protestant denominations, Jewish congregations and civil rights groups appears to be eroding.

It also said that only the Roman Catholic Archdiocese and, to a lesser extent, Jewish agencies, have been able to maintain the central staffs needed to support the large-scale political leadership that characterized the old liberal coalition.

“I just don’t agree with them,” said the Rt. Rev. Chester Talton, suffragan (assistant) bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. “We are heavily involved,” he said.

Talton, and regional officials of the United Methodist Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, said they have experienced no cutbacks in staff for inner-city programs. Only the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. reported a cutback in its hunger and homeless program.

Harvey J. Fields, rabbi of Wilshire Boulevard Temple, a Reform congregation, and chairman of the Interfaith Coalition to Heal L.A., said old-line denominations remain the dominant players in the city’s political-religious scene.

But he, like the study’s authors, said something is changing. “It is my sense that what we’ve got growing at the heart of L.A. right now is a new birth of interfaith cooperation. It is nascent. It needs a lot of culturing. But what is clearly different from the past is a realization that the mainline, traditional religious organizational structure, particularly Christian-Jewish or Protestant-Catholic-Jewish, is simply no longer a fit for Los Angeles.”