Religious Science Leaders Plan Gathering

More than 700 U.S. ministers, practitioners and lay leaders of the United Church of Religious Science will attend the annual convention of the Los Angeles-based denomination next week at the Sheraton Universal Hotel.

Religious Science churches, which teach a metaphysical philosophy and emphasize a positive outlook, grew out of the Science of Mind movement founded in 1927 by Ernest Holmes.

Addressing the opening convention session at 7 p.m. Wednesday will be the Rev. Mary Manin Morrissey, founder-pastor of the Living Enrichment Center, a church and retreat center in Wilsonville, Ore. The free talk is open to the public.

Author Leo Booth will lead an all-day workshop Thursday titled “Spirituality, Not Religion: Connecting to Your Spiritual Power.” Booth is the parish priest at St. George Episcopal Church in Hawthorne. The cost of the workshop, which includes lunch, will be $50.

The convention will close Sunday with a business meeting and a service at 11:30 a.m. with the Rev. Dan Morgan, pastor of Guidance Church of Religious Science in Los Angeles. For more convention information, call (213) 388-2181.

QUOTE

“It amazes me that people are so ready to be certain in their own minds that only their points of view are pleasing to God. This is where a humane skepticism can help us. We have to read widely and think deeply and not buy the quick fix, whether it’s technological or theological.”

--Stephen Toulmin of USC, a teacher in religion, international relations, communications and anthropology. He was named this week by the National Endowment of the Humanities to give the Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities on March 24, an honor that carries a $10,000 stipend.

MUSIC

Celebrating Black History Month, Holman United Methodist Church will present its 38th Negro Spiritual Concert next weekend in the sanctuary of the church, 3320 W. Adams Blvd. Charles Dickerson, newly appointed music director at Holman, will conduct the choir in performances at 3 p.m. on Feb. 22 and 23. Tickets, required for admission, range from $10 to $50. (213) 731-7285.

* The 64th annual Los Angeles Bach Festival at the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles will begin at 8 p.m. Friday with the U.S. debut of English organist David Briggs. It will conclude March 9 with Bach’s Mass in B Minor performed by the festival chorus, orchestra and soloists under the direction of Thomas Somerville. For festival brochure and ticket orders, call (213) 385-1345.

* Music’s connection to philosophical and spiritual realms will be explored at noon Friday at Cal State Fullerton by violinist Donald Ambroson, a professor of music at Cal Poly Pomona. The free, music-oriented lecture at University Hall’s Room 339 is sponsored in part by the university’s Department of Religious Studies. (714) 773-3452.

DATES

Some of Loyola Marymount’s top scholars will speak on religious and secular topics next Saturday during the Catholic university’s annual President’s Day. LMU President Father Thomas P. O’Malley will talk about “Imaging New Stories in the New Testament.” Other topics include “What Are They Saying About the Historical Jesus?” and “Socrates and Buddha: Common Ground.” Registration will begin at 9:30 a.m. followed by three series of concurrent lectures. $30. (800) 338-ALUM.

* In a 2 1/2-hour performance to benefit student scholarships, Steve Allen and Jayne Meadows will present anecdotes, comedy and music at 1:30 p.m. Sunday at Claremont School of Theology’s Mudd Theater. $25 and $10 (students).

* Former state Assemblyman Mike Roos, who heads LEARN (Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now), will address “The Crisis in Public Education” at 8 p.m. Friday during the Sabbath service at Leo Baeck Temple, 1300 N. Sepulveda Blvd., in the Sepulveda pass. (310) 476-2861.

* Last year’s PBS television series “Search for God in America” will be the focus of a five-week Lenten series open to the public and starting at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Arcadia Congregational Church, 2607 S. Santa Anita Ave. (818) 447-8053.

* A Presbyterian pastor and an Episcopal priest will alternate hosting a six-week series of Lenten supper programs in Anaheim, starting at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at First Presbyterian Church, 310 W. Broadway. The Rev. Robert McClaren, the Presbyterian pastor, will talk on “From Joshua to Jesus: Getting Our Ethical Bearings.” The Rev. Charlotte Cleghorn, rector of St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, 311 W. South St., will speak the next Wednesday evening on “Prayer and Our Bodies.” $3 per meal. (714) 535-2176.

* Yolanda King, daughter of the late the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., has been added to the program of the Religious Education Congress, which began Friday at the Anaheim Convention Center. King will address the Catholic conference at 10 a.m. Sunday.

* A one-day conference Sunday on “Physics, Fossils and Faith” sponsored by Westwood Kehilla Synagogue will feature two physicists from Israel--Nathan Aviezer, author of “In the Beginning,” and Gerald Schroeder, author of “Genesis and the Big Bang.” The conference, which will start at 8:30 a.m., will be at the Westside Jewish Community Center, 5870 W. Olympic Blvd. $35.

* Humanities scholar David L. Miller of Syracuse University will lecture at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Cal State San Bernardino on “Eggs & Apples: Paradox in Religious Dialogue/Dialogue in Religious Paradox.” The free lecture will be at the Yasuda Center for Extended Education. (909) 880-5981.

* Muslims Hassan Hathout and Hahmoud Ezzeldine will host the monthly meeting of the small, but long-running, Unity and Diversity World Council, at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Islamc Center of Southern California, 434 S. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles. The interfaith group’s customary candle-lighting ceremony will include students from the mosque’s parochial school, New Horizons, in Pasadena. The meeting will have Buddhist, Hindu, Mormon, Religious Science and Jewish participants.

FINALLY

An evangelical online computer network that calls itself the world’s largest Christian World Wide Web site on the Internet reports that it had more than 13 million “hits,” or electronic accesses by users, in January.

Launched in April 1995 by the Michigan-based Gospel Films Inc., the Gospel Communications Network has signed up more than 75 Christian organizations, of which more than 50 are currently online. “We allow no fund-raising and no political agenda,” a spokeswoman said.

One of the network’s coordinators is communications professor Quentin Schultze of Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Mich., author of “Internet for Christians.”

Schultze and representatives of about 40 of the network-aligned organizations will hold a closed meeting Thursday through Saturday at the Bay Club in San Diego. The network can be reached at https://www.gospelcom.net.

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PEOPLE

Two ex-Methodist clergy who found a liberal theological home in Unitarian Universalism will be formally installed at 4 p.m. Sunday as co-ministers of Pacific Unitarian Church in Rancho Palos Verdes.

The Rev. Jane Bechle, who served United Methodist churches in New Jersey for 20 years, and the Rev. Bob Klein, who ministered in Colorado and Montana, met in 1989 in Oakland at the Creation Spirituality center of theologian Matthew Fox. The couple, both with children from previous marriages, soon married and entered the Unitarian Universalist ministry.

The couple served as interim and consulting ministers in Unitarian churches in New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania before coming in August to Pacific Unitarian.

* The Rev. Hartshorn Murphy, 48, who has supervised since 1988 the development of 40 Episcopal mission congregations in the six-county Diocese of Los Angeles, became the rector this month of St. Augustine-by-the-Sea Church in Santa Monica. Murphy, who was also rector of St. Philip the Evangelist parish in South-Central Los Angeles from 1980 to 1988, succeeds the Rev. Fred Fenton, who left in 1994 for a post in Louisiana.