Angry Baptists Decry Sale of Church to ‘Pagan’ Hindus

A Northridge congregation that dwindled to 10 members is complaining that cash-needy regional Baptist administrators are selling its church building to a group of Hindus whom Baptist protesters referred to as “pagans” and “a cult.”

The Valley View Baptist Church on Roscoe Boulevard “has been sold out from under us” by the Conservative Baptist Assn.’s Southern California headquarters in Anaheim, pastor Arthur B. Houk said this week.

The buyer, a Hindu group that has been seeking a place to worship for several years, plans to convert the church into the San Fernando Valley’s third Hindu temple.

Although the pastor conceded that the sale is probably legal, he complained in letters mailed to the more than 1,000 member churches of the national body that the association’s leaders had betrayed his congregation as well as the Latino and Korean Christian congregations that share space in two buildings on the property.

“Much to the horror of our congregation, we discovered a few days ago that the CBA leadership has already sold the property to a Hindu cult,” Houk wrote.

The pastor of Bell Gardens Baptist Church, the Rev. Jim Covington, also asked in a letter to association leaders whether “by selling this property to pagans, will we make our God seem impotent to His enemies and other onlookers?”

David A. Hay, executive director of the regional Baptist association, declined to be interviewed. But in a July 28 letter to the denomination’s pastors nationwide, responding to Houk’s accusations, Hay noted that California law forbids property sellers to discriminate on the basis of religion.

Prithvi Raj Singh, president of the Artesia-based Federation of Hindu Temples and Associations, took issue Friday with the labels that have been used. “This group is part of a respectable Hindu tradition,” Singh said. “And it is unfortunate that some religious people still use words like ‘pagan’ to describe another religion.”

Jonathan Harrell of Granada Hills, attorney for the regional Baptist group, said other Conservative Baptist pastors support the regional headquarters’ action.

The tiny Valley View congregation in Northridge was no longer economically viable, he said. “We need to put our resources into new ethnic churches in the Valley.”

Escrow opened last week for the sale of the property “for more than a half-million dollars,” he said.

According to the Southern California association’s 1994 annual report, it had debts of nearly $3 million and was, in the words of Finance Committee Chairman Craig Mason, “currently property-rich and cash-poor.”

In his letter to pastors, Hay wrote that Southern California member churches had already been warned that “a major financial crisis” had forced the regional headquarters to halve its staff and put many assets up for sale, including the Anaheim offices.

If the sale goes through, the Northridge Hindu temple would join two others: the large temple complex owned by the Hindu Temple Society of Southern California on Las Virgenes Canyon Road in Calabasas and the Hindu Temple and Indian Cultural Center in Chatsworth.

The buyer, the Northridge-based Hindu Temple Society of California, has been holding prayers and gatherings in members’ homes, said Krishan Varma, a spokesman for the group.

The Northridge church, with its distinctive goedesic dome housing the main sanctuary, was built in the late 1960s, but its congregation has dwindled in recent years.

“Members got old, moved away or passed away,” said William Garza, the church board’s chairman. “The younger crowd never came.”

The congregation turned its debt-free deed over to the regional office of the denomination on Dec. 2, 1993, believing that the step would preserve its status as a Conservative Baptist church, Garza said. Deeding the land and buildings to the regional group was seen by the small congregation as a way of preventing a “hostile takeover”--such as if 20 new members joined and voted to switch the church to another denomination.

Houk, 66, of Sylmar, who pastored churches in Ohio and Indiana during most of his ministry, declared that Hay had declined to meet alone with him and the congregation to answer questions about the property sale.

A Korean Christian congregation that has been meeting in another building on the Northridge property has been promised assistance by the regional Baptist group in relocating, according to Hay.

A Spanish-speaking congregation, whose 200 members have been paying the costs of utilities and upkeep at Valley View Baptist for the past two years, may be on its own in finding new quarters. The congregation is affiliated with the Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal denomination.

Like Houk, the Rev. Joel Gomes, pastor of the Latino congregation, said he was surprised when he was recently told that the building was being sold and his group would have to move.

“We were never notified” that the church was for sale, said Gomes.

Harrell, the association’s attorney, said that although “the property was never listed for sale . . . the CBA has aggressively considered all offers on any property it owned.”