Condemned to Debt: The State Separates Church From Property

Well, it doesn’t say anywhere in the Bible that you can’t have a church in a converted AT&T; building.

And that’s where Pastor Glen Merriman and his Pentecostal congregation of 90 are meeting these days, there on the corner of Lemon and Orangethorpe in Anaheim. Nobody’s saying the phone company building has the charm of the 70-year-old steepled church on West Broadway where they used to meet, before Caltrans razed it to make way for Interstate 5 widening . . . but, well, that’s where the story starts.

By the time that Merriman came to the Anaheim Church of the Foursquare Gospel in 1992, he knew the church with the landmark “lighthouse” motif was going to go. Caltrans had condemned the property, and Merriman had been scouting for a replacement church, under the impression that Foursquare Gospel would be paid enough to approximate the original.

Instead, the church is in court, with the church’s attorney calling Caltrans’ actions “reprehensible,” and Caltrans not budging.

The dispute is over money. There’s no getting around that, but Merriman says it goes beyond that.

“I guess I’m a bit naive, but I’d like to think that people--and I want to say this carefully--are going to deal in realistic figures and good faith, and I would like to think we could settle this without all the legal ramifications.”

Instead, Merriman says, he was immediately put off by what he perceived as Caltrans’ unwillingness to improve its offer or its seeming indifference to the church’s problems in relocating.

I tried to reach both the Caltrans lawyer handling the case and an agency spokesman, but was unsuccessful.

The church hired an appraiser who valued the condemned property at between $1.35 million and $1.75 million. According to John C. Murphy, the attorney hired by the church, Caltrans has not improved on its original offer of $722,500. Except, Murphy says, to at one point reduce it to $480,000, raising it back to the original offer during a pretrial settlement conference Friday.

Murphy has handled eminent domain cases from both sides of the fence. In fact, he says, he condemned 45 parcels for the Tollway Corridor Agencies. But he says Caltrans’ attitude is unusually off-putting.

“I don’t think contentious is the right word,” he told me Friday, in response to my question. “Some of my better friends are at Caltrans, and it’s my job to get along with them. But it’s true the gap here is unusually big, and Caltrans has given no indication it has any interest in serious negotiations.”

Appraising a church is different than a commercial or residential building, Murphy says, and California law recognizes that. “Unlike commercial properties, a major part of the value [of churches] is sentimental, the historical permanence they represent to their congregation.”

The Legislature, Murphy says, has said traditional market-value appraisals are not enough. Rather, he said, the standard is what it would cost to “reproduce” the church. “Caltrans is saying basically that churches are widgets. They’re replaceable. Go out and see what the market says without reference to the special value a congregation places on a church.”

Merriman, whose church has for the last several years had a “food ministry” in which meals and groceries are provided for the needy, said he scouted new sites for two years. With the Caltrans offer, he couldn’t find one that was affordable and that provided enough parking for his congregation.

The AT&T; site had the parking but, as a byproduct, is more than twice the size of the old church. Buying the bigger building has thrust the church into debt, Merriman says.

Merriman insists he never wanted this fight. “I feel like what Caltrans is missing is some sense of responsibility--that if you’re going to take a church, they had some responsibility to see that we were able to relocate. I guess they will argue that. They felt they gave us enough to relocate. When I said, ‘Why don’t you find it?’ they said, ‘We don’t do that.’ ”

I wonder if Caltrans didn’t think it had a patsy in a small church in a poor neighborhood that catered to charismatic Pentecostalists. I wonder if it thought the little church would be happy with anything. I wonder if it thought Foursquare Gospel would take on a state agency.

It has, and the trial is scheduled to begin Nov. 18 in Orange County Superior Court.

The 53-year-old Merriman says he only wants to preach the gospel. He wants to fight hunger and poverty, not the state of California.

“You’re talking about a Michigan farm boy who had the greatest respect for authority,” he says. “Never in my wildest imagination when I became pastor did I think I’d have to negotiate the rapids in this river.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.