TV Shows, Films Compete for Awards

Episodes of the television series “Touched by an Angel” and “Seventh Heaven” are among six finalists for a top money prize at the 5th annual Movieguide Awards ceremony that will be hosted by Pat Boone on March 19 at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

The growing awards show, which honors films and television shows “for their redeeming social and spiritual values,” is run by Ted Baehr, who is editor-publisher of Movieguide magazine, a publication with radio and television versions aimed at a largely evangelical and Pentecostal audience.

Two $25,000 “Epiphany” prizes, for the winning film and TV program creators, were provided by investor-philanthropist John Templeton, whose foundation also awards the annual Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion.

Boone, a longtime member of the Church on the Way in Van Nuys, saw his television program pulled from Trinity Broadcasting Network recently in response to complaints by supporters of that Christian network. At the same time, Baehr and other evangelical groups expressed confidence that Boone’s mellow renditions of heavy metal music on a recent album and the accompanying publicity gimmicks did not signal any change in his religious outlook.

Other television nominees for the $25,000 prize include an episode of “Walker, Texas Ranger”; Hallmark Productions’ “Harvest of Fire”; CBS’ “Timepiece”; and PBS’ “Adventures From the Book of Virtues.”

Movieguide also will announce its 10 top film choices in family and mature categories. Five finalists for the other Templeton prize will soon be chosen from those 20 movies, a spokesman said.

MEDIA

The Rev. Robert H. Schuller, widely seen on his “Hour of Power” TV program from the Crystal Cathedral and author of the just-published “If It’s Going to Be, It’s Got to Be Me,” will be honored along with his wife, Arvella, in Los Angeles on Thursday for their “psychologically sensitive and dynamic ministries.” The Schullers will be cited by Hollywood Presbyterian Church’s Munger Center for Psychological Services, a professional counseling center founded in 1974 by Edith Munger. The $125-a-plate dinner will be at the Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel. (213) 465-6020.

* Writer-producer Michael Warren (“Step by Step,” “Family Matters”); screenwriters Lee Batchler and Janet Scott Batchler (“Batman Forever”) and producer Ken Wales (“Christy”) will be among the speakers next Saturday at the 2nd annual Christians and Media Conference at Biola University in La Mirada. Topics include comedy, music, journalism and religious media. $50 ($15 students). (310) 903-4728.

CONFERENCE

Leading U.S.-based teachers of Buddhism from the three major traditions--Mahayana, Teravada and Vajrayana (Tibetan)--will speak next Saturday during a one-day conference at the Hsi Lai Temple in Hacienda Heights. Sponsored by the Buddhist Sangha Council of Southern California, the “Buddhism Across Cultures” conference, starting at 9 a.m., will attempt to reach a consensus on the best ways to present the 2,500-year-old religion to Western culture. Ananda W.P. Guruge, former Sri Lankan ambassador to the United States, will give the keynote speech. (213) 739-1270.

HOLIDAY

Eastern Orthodox Christians will begin observing Lent on Monday in preparation for Easter, to be celebrated this year on April 27. (Catholic and Protestant churches are observing Easter on March 30.) Orthodox Christians of Greek, Russian, Serbian, Antiochian and other ethnic heritages will also celebrate the Sunday of Orthodoxy on March 16. The observances commemorate the restoration of icons to the Eastern churches in the 9th century after more than a century of prohibition by the Byzantine rulers.

DATES

Jack Miles, Pulizter Prize-winning author of “God: A Biography,” will lecture twice Monday at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks--on “Criticism, Imagination and the Sacred” at 10 a.m. in Samuelson Chapel and on “The Place of Imagination in Biography” at 8 p.m. in the Preus-Brandt Forum on campus. Admission is free. (805) 493-3151.

Miles, director of the Humanities Center at Claremont Graduate School and a former Los Angeles Times book editor, will also lecture at 8:15 p.m. on March 20 at the University of Judaism in the Sepulveda Pass, on the question “Does God Exist?” $10 admission. (310) 476-9777, Ext. 246.

* Muzammil Siddiqi, director of the Islamic Society of Orange County, will describe the beliefs of Islam and the faith’s connections to Judaism at a Reform synagogue in Irvine, Shir Ha-Ma’alot, during its 8 p.m. service. Born in India, Siddiqi holds a doctorate in comparative religion from Harvard University and is an adjunct professor at Cal State Fullerton. (714) 857-2226.

* The 2,400-member Bethany Lutheran Church in Long Beach will celebrate the completion of a $2.3-million renovation on Sunday at its 8 a.m. and 10:45 a.m. services as well as in a dedication service at 4 p.m. The Rev. Loren Kramer, president of the Pacific Southwest District of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, will speak at the dedication. “The redesigned sanctuary allows the congregation to be closer to the baptismal font, pulpit and altar,” said the senior pastor, the Rev. Nathan Loesch. (310) 421-4711.

* The 10,000-seat FaithDome of Crenshaw Christian Center in Los Angeles will host a women’s convention next week led by Betty R. Price, wife of the Rev. Frederick K.C. Price, pastor of the large, predominantly African American congregation. The four-day event at the church complex at 7901 S. Vermont Ave. will open at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday. No admission charge. (213) 758-3777.

* Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Curry of Santa Barbara, who received his ordination at a Dublin seminary, will be the principal celebrant Sunday in Los Angeles of a Mass commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Irish famine. The 3 p.m. Mass will be at St. Brendan’s Catholic Church, 310 S. Van Ness Ave. in the Hancock Park area.

* The future of Christianity in China will be discussed at 11 a.m. Wednesday at Claremont’s Pilgrim Place retirement center by Methodist minister-scholar Peter K.H. Lee, who teaches at the Lutheran School of Theology in his native Hong Kong. In the current academic year, he is a professor of world Christianity at Princeton Theological Seminary. (909) 399-9931. On Tuesday, Lee will talk at 4:10 p.m. on “Can One Meet the Cosmic Christ in I-Ching Cosmology?” at Claremont School of Theology’s Davis Community Center. (909) 621-5330.

FINALLY

A fourth assembly hall for Southern California’s estimated 100,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses--built in Mira Loma near the intersection of the Ontario and Pomona freeways--is relieving pressure on the sectarian religious group for space to hold regional meetings.

The 4,017-seat Mira Loma Assembly Hall, completed last October, is one of the largest of about 50 regional assembly halls for the Witnesses in the country, said William Gillette, a spokesman for the Witnesses’ San Gabriel Valley circuit, which will use the warehouse-like facility next Saturday in a meeting open to the public.

Other assembly halls serving Southern California, western Arizona and Las Vegas are located in Norco, Escondido and Woodland Hills. Officials of the San Fernando Valley facility, a former theater-in-the-round, had planned a few years ago to sell the 2,500-seat structure and build a larger one in Santa Clarita, but failed in attempts to acquire property there.

CONFERENCES

Politicians are known to show up at religious and ethnic events in order to please various constituencies in Southern California.

But Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove), who won her seat in Congress from incumbent Robert Dornan in November, impressed leaders of the Federation of Hindu Assns. late last month when she took part in a Hindu ritual in Diamond Bar--and dressed for the occasion.

The congresswoman, who is Catholic, wore a purple sari and typical Indian gold ornaments, and used dye to impress a bindi, a small round dot, on her forehead. The bindi traditionally declares that one is married and following Hindu philosophy. But some young, single women of Indian heritage wear it today for fashion reasons, said Prithvi Raj Singh, president of the Hindu federation.

At the ceremony, attended by nearly 200 people, Sanchez performed an aarti, a ritual in which one moves a silver plate with burning candles around the image of the goddess Durga, who represents the destruction of evil, Singh said.

A legislative aide to Sanchez said that the congresswoman has paid her respects to various religious communities, most recently accepting an invitation Thursday night to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council dinner and speech of Mormon Church President Gordon B. Hinckley.