Mormons Celebrate 150th Anniversary

Question: In California history, members of which religious faith published the state’s first newspaper in English, started its first English-language library, founded its first bank, were the first to try irrigation farming and raised the first wheat crop?

The answer, according to Mormon historians, is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The 750,000 Latter-day Saints now living in the state may be forgiven for boasting about its list of “firsts,” only a few of which are cited above. Mormons are now celebrating the 150th anniversary of their little-known pioneering migration into California.

“Mormons have deep roots in California,” said attorney Michael J. Fairclough, new president of the church’s Los Angeles Stake, or diocese, and a partner in the law firm of O’Melveny & Myers.

The first group came in a ship carrying 238 Mormons from New York. They landed in Yerba Buena (San Francisco) at the end of July 1846--one full year before Brigham Young would lead followers into the Salt Lake Valley. And about 300 members of the Mormon Battalion left Ft. Leavenworth in August 1846 and arrived in San Diego in January 1847 to help in the U.S. war with Mexico.

To commemorate the arrival in the San Francisco Bay, many church members in the state will participate in a community workday next Saturday, using the day to clean parks, paint over graffiti, plant shrubs or do other tasks reminiscent of the periodic days when Mormon settlers closed businesses and schools to work on community projects, a spokeswoman said.

At least 70 out of 85 stakes in Southern California will be taking part in the loosely coordinated cleanups. More than 100 Mormons in the Inglewood Stake will spend their Saturday cleaning up along Imperial Highway in Hawthorne.

There have been a series of other commemorative activities, including the appearance of a decorative float promoting the sesquicentennial in the May 25 Strawberry Festival Parade and the July 4 Huntington Beach Parade. In San Francisco, modern-day Mormons are planning to reenact the San Francisco Bay landfall.

Regarding the Mormon claims of firsts, church sources say the first newspaper in English was the California Star, published on a press brought by the ship Brooklyn, which carried the 238 settlers from New York. The first library created in California amounted to 175 volumes brought on that ship.

The first bank, founded by those settlers, was called the Bank of America even before it was bought by A.P. Gianinni of the Bank of Italy. The state’s first irrigation farming was conducted in the San Joaquin Valley by former members of the Mormon Battalion. And the first wheat was grown by Mormon settlers in 1852 in San Joaquin.

PEOPLE

O.J. Simpson will be named an honorary member by the 8,000-member Brookins Community African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles.

The former football great, acquitted last year of the murders of ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Lyle Goldman, is expected to appear at the 8 a.m. service at the church, 4831 S. Gramercy Place, to thank the congregation for its prayers during his trial.

“The Holy Spirit and all of God’s children are welcome in our house of the Lord,” said the church’s pastor, Bishop T. Larry Kirkland Jr.

Kirkland, an All-American football player when he attended Alcorn State University, was elected a bishop of the AME Church and assigned to a district in central Africa this month. He is expected to leave for that post next month if a successor for the Los Angeles church can be found by then.

* The Rev. Harry R. Butman, 92, a minister who was a leader in Congregational churches that remained independent of denominational structures and the ecumenical movement, will deliver his final pulpit sermon this Sunday in Westchester.

Conceding to health constraints, Butman will preach for the last time in the 10 a.m. service at the Congregational Church of the Messiah, where he was pastor from 1953 to 1978, a spokeswoman said. He later served as an interim pastor at the large First Congregational Church of Los Angeles and remains a consulting minister there.

Butman allied himself with Congregational churches that did not join the United Church of Christ. He was moderator of the National Assn. of Congregational Christian Churches in 1963 and chaired the International Congregational Fellowship from 1977 to 1981.

The resident of Acton has preached two previous times this year at the Congregational Church of the Messiah, 7300 W. Manchester Ave., a church of 150 members that is without a pastor.

* The Immaculate Heart Community, a lay organization formed 25 years ago out of the Immaculate Heart of Mary religious order, has decided to switch to team leadership after Helen Kelley ended her three-year term as president.

The 175-member community’s annual assembly recently elected five women to share leadership duties. They are Lenore Dowling, a faculty member of Rio Hondo Community College; Julie Friese, an assistant superintendent in the Rosemead School District; Lee Justen, a former school principal; Mary Kirchen, a research assistant at Los Angeles Orthopedic Hospital, and Elizabeth Mahoney, an educational consultant.

* Rabbi Daniel R. Shevitz, a longtime Hillel director at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before becoming rabbi at an Oklahoma City synagogue three years ago, will become the new spiritual leader of Congregation Mishkon Tephilo in Venice on Aug. 1. Rabbi Naomi Levy is resigning to pursue other interests, said a synagogue spokesman.

CONFERENCES

The Gideons, an international Christian group that supplies copies of the Bible to hotels, motels, hospitals and other public places, will hold its 97th annual convention at the Anaheim Hilton & Towers Hotel for six days, starting Tuesday. Registrants are expected from 60 countries.

* A daylong conference critical of the controversial Jesus Seminar and other liberal Bible scholarship will be led today in Pasadena by J.P. Moreland, co-editor of Jesus Under Fire, at Lake Avenue Congregational Church in Pasadena, and repeated Aug. 3 at Alta Loma Community Baptist Church in the Inland Empire. A similar conference drew 1,500 people last year at Biola University, where Moreland and co-editor Michael Wilkens teach at the Talbot school of theology.

DATES

An Obon festival at Higashi Honganji Buddhist Temple in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo will feature martial arts demonstrations, musical performances and religious services today and Sunday on the Japanese Buddhist holiday honoring ancestors. The Rev. Arthur Takemoto, former minister of the Vista Shoken-ji Buddhist Temple, will give the sermon at the 11 a.m. Sunday service. The temple is at 505 E. Third St. (213) 626-4200.

* Mayor Richard Riordan of Los Angeles will visit the Islamic Center of Southern California, 434 S. Vermont Ave., on Sunday for an 11:30 a.m. discussion of the role of Muslims in the city, according to the sponsoring Muslim Public Affairs Council. (213) 383-3443.

* In honor of arranger-actor Jester Hairston’s 95th birthday, Holman United Methodist Church in Los Angeles will present in concert at 3 p.m. Sunday the finalists for music scholarships in Hairston’s name. Known for his arrangements of African American spirituals, Hairston recently traveled to Seattle to direct a combined choir singing his arrangements of “Hold On” and “Amen.” He also played Deacon Rolly on the TV sitcom “Amen.” The church is at 3320 W. Adams Blvd., Los Angeles. (213) 731-7285.

* The possibilities for a dialogue between Christians and New Agers will be discussed Thursday in Claremont by Georgetown University’s Bruce Epperly, author of a forthcoming book, “Cross of Crystal: Christians and New Age in Creative Dialogue.” The two-hour seminar, which starts at 4 p.m., is presented under the auspices of the Center for Process Studies at the School of Theology at Claremont, 1325 N. College Ave. (909) 621-5330.

* An annual dinner-dance and seminar for Christian singles, which usually draws an average of 1,000 people, will be held Aug. 17 on the Queen Mary, in Long Beach, by the Anaheim-based Spectacular Events. Lakita Garth, the 1995 Miss Black America and a recording artist for N-Soul Records, will speak on “Sex, Lies and the Truth” from an evangelical viewpoint. For information and tickets, call (714) 778-0244.

Notices may be mailed to Southern California File, c/o John Dart, L.A. Times, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, CA 91311, or faxed to Religion Desk (818) 772-3338. Items should arrive about three weeks before the event, except for spot news, and should include pertinent details about the people and organizations with address, phone number, date and time.