Latino, Black Churches Plan Union of Cultures

When the Rev. Marcelo Alvarado went courting to the predominantly African American Pasadena Church of God, he definitely had marriage on his mind.

Alvarado, pastor at the largely Latino Iglesia Misionera Hispano Americana, was looking for a life partner, a permanent church home for his flock of 150. Forced to leave space he had leased from a Korean church, Alvarado approached the Pasadena church’s pastor, the Rev. M. Tyrone Cushman, with a unique proposal.

“I felt that it was time to join together to become one church,” said Alvarado, “to be an example to the community.”

Alvarado was seeking a union of the two culturally diverse houses of worship--not space sharing or an occasional joint service but an actual merger. That proposal, issued in September, began a courtship that culminated Sunday, with an engagement party of sorts--a festival to celebrate the intention of the two groups to become one.

In many churches across the Southland, homogeneity has given way to pluralism as neighborhoods that were once all one ethnicity have evolved into an eclectic mix of Latinos, African Americans, Asians and Anglos. But Cushman, Alvarado and others who survey the changing cultural landscape say they are unaware of any other situation where the face of the church changed due specifically to multicultural momentum rather than changing demographics.

“We do not know of any other situation like this,” said Grace Dyrness, associate director of the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture, which studies the effectiveness of churches in dealing with community problems. “It’s incredible. . . . It’s an exciting venture. It’s exactly the kind of thing we need to see more of.”

Before Alvarado came calling, Cushman had been preaching to his congregation of 200-plus about racial unity and increasing diversity.

“I spoke about the pains and scars and prejudice that we all hold,” said Cushman, pastor of the independent Pasadena church for nearly 20 years. “That Tuesday, Pastor Alvarado knocked on our door.”

A touch of that pain and prejudice still lingers within some members of both groups.

*

At a candid pre-merger discussion among members of the Pasadena Church of God, one member in particular spoke in heartfelt terms of her past problems with Latinos. The discussion, Cushman said, was frank and helpful.

Likewise, when Alvarado broached this subject with his church leaders, fully half wanted to wait and see how a space-sharing arrangement fared before making any permanent commitment.

But in the end, both Cushman’s church and Alvarado’s flock, also an independent congregation, enthusiastically supported moving ahead with the merger.

“We hope that this becomes a model for the community . . . a model of racial reconciliation,” Cushman said. “We think this is pretty unusual.”

Clearly there will be challenges, chief among them, communications. Alvarado, a native of Peru, said about 30% of the members of his nondenominational church speak little or no English.

Cushman, who admitted he flunked high school Spanish, said the church will attempt to secure headsets to provide translations during services.

Also, to make the Spanish-speaking members more comfortable, Cushman said, the church may hold a service during the week in Spanish.

Meanwhile, Alvarado said, many leaders of Cushman’s church have expressed an interest in learning Spanish. Already, the combined choir has learned to harmonize in Spanish.

Members of the two churches have been getting to know one another informally over the past several weeks. Alvarado’s church has been holding services in the sanctuary at 404 E. Washington Blvd. since leaving its leased space.

Now, in order to form a more perfect union, members of the two congregations will spend the next several months learning to relate to one another not as tenants in the same building, but as members of the same church family.

That includes learning more about one another’s culture. The combined church will celebrate Latino culture during African American History month, and weave elements of black history into celebrations such as Cinco de Mayo.

Church celebrations, such as the recent “engagement party,” will feature tamales and Mexican pastries alongside greens and fried chicken.

“We will celebrate our cultural differences and not be afraid of them,” Cushman said.

He said the hope is that over the next several months “we will be blending, slowly, into one service. Around March we will begin to worship together as one. That is the plan.”

In the coming months, there will be legal issues to be worked out including property rights (Pasadena Church of God owns its sanctuary) and separate bank accounts to merge.

Other issues yet to be decided include how, or even whether, the name of the church will be changed and whether there will be one pastor or co-pastors.

“Everything is still open,” Cushman said. “Whatever makes us one is what we want to do.”

Neither Cushman nor Alvarado sees any of the hurdles ahead as insurmountable.

“In Christ we can live together,” Alvarado said, “and we can cross any kind of barrier.”

The Rev. J. M. Lawson Jr. of Holman United Methodist Church in Los Angeles said he sees moves like the proposed merger as an antidote to some of the larger ills afflicting the nation.

“I’m definitely on the side of the church trying to become more multicultural in a creative fashion as an answer to some of the national racism,” Lawson said.

Cushman said he sees racism, or at least racial separation, as one of the most prevalent problems facing churches nationwide.

“The most racist hour of the week is 11 o’clock on Sunday morning,” Cushman said, “We’re doing something about that.”