Religion : A Loud, Clear Message of Hope : Activism: Methodist minister started reaching out to the down and out 32 years ago. Thousands, including celebrities, now flock to his services and self-help programs.

SAN FRANCISCO — It has been 32 years since the Rev. Cecil Williams moved here from Texas to take over the ailing 35-member Methodist congregation on the edge of the city’s infamous Tenderloin district.

Then, church members didn’t take too well to Williams’ egalitarian views, as he invited the destitute from the strip clubs, X-rated movie theaters and flophouses that lined the streets around the church to join the all-white, middle-class congregation in worship.

Today, Williams’ Glide Memorial United Methodist Church boasts the city’s largest congregation and its most active social program, which ministers to thousands each week.

More than 6,000 people attend his Sunday services or participate in the church’s free meal and self-help programs. Glide churchgoers today are drawn from the ranks of the city’s homeless, prostitutes, drug addicts and gang members, as well as its most powerful politicians and wealthiest residents.

Williams’ “feel good” worship services on Sundays are standing room only. Some of the celebrities who have joined in the lively, spirit-filled sessions include poet Maya Angelou, comedian Bill Cosby, talk show hostess Oprah Winfrey, Mayor-elect Willie Brown and John F. Kennedy Jr.

Even President Clinton has attended Williams’ Sunday sermons. He was so impressed that he called Williams on Thanksgiving Day to congratulate him and his army of 1,300 volunteers on the hard work they performed that day, when they fed 6,500 meals to the city’s down and out.

Williams began Glide’s tradition of service 30 years ago by offering classes at the church to help people kick drug and alcohol addictions. Today, the church’s self-help menu includes 37 programs teaching everything from computer technology to anger management.

Eventually, Glide became the city’s most comprehensive nonprofit provider of human services, feeding meals to the 3,500 people who every day form a line that snakes around the block.

Adding to the services it offers, Glide will break ground in the fall for a $9-million homeless shelter next door.

Williams, now 66, hopes his empire will one day become a model and training center for other churches. He promotes cultural, lifestyle and religious diversity at his church--where Christians, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists worship side-by-side--and thinks other ministers, priests and rabbis must do the same if the nation and the church are to survive.

“It seems to me that Sunday morning is still the most segregated hour in America,” Williams said. “That really does speak against what the church should be doing. I’d like to have an exodus occur where the churches begin to move to . . . where they will become more inclusive and stop worrying about a person’s sexual identity or a person’s color, a person’s class or whatever. We’ve got to move beyond that.”

In his years at Glide, Williams has done more than just talk about social justice. Within a month after his arrival, he launched a campaign to stop what he considered police brutality against the area’s prostitutes. And he soon became known in the surrounding homosexual community as a fierce advocate for society’s unwanted.

He’s been known to march into drug-infested housing projects, bellowing into a megaphone, “It’s recovery time!” And he often works seven days a week, 11 hours a day ministering to the area’s needy.

“His conviction is faith-based,” said Jeanne Zarka Brooks, executive director of the St. Anthony Foundation, a soup kitchen located around the corner.

“It springs from his real spiritual belief,” she added. “There’s a real sense of hope in that mission. There’s a real sense that there are ways out, that there is a better time ahead. And it’s much, much more than a job as the executive director of an agency. For him, it’s a real vocation.”

Williams’ peculiar brand of theology can be controversial. He describes the theme of his preaching as “unconditional love and unconditional acceptance.” That, he says, can turn around the toughest junkie and break down the walls that separate people.

He tells parishioners to stand up for their rights and be proud of who they are.

“We’re not going to be bland and unresponsive,” he said. “We’re not going to turn our backs on people. We’re going to open our hearts. We’re controversial.

“There’s no middle ground here. We’re very clear about our lives. Either you’re with us or you’re not.”

His in-your-face style has angered some. He has had racial slurs and swastikas painted on his house, hate messages left on his answering machine and death threats--one as recently as three weeks ago, he said.

But the threats don’t stop him.

Although he is making plans to retire in five or six years and has cut back to four days a week in the wake of prostate and cancer surgeries, Williams said he’ll never be able to cut his ties to Glide completely.

“I wish I were 30 years old, to tell you the truth, because I just incredibly love what I do. I grieve at times because I know I’m moving toward finally retiring. But again, I’ll always be busy doing something.”