Oxnard Church Services Reflect Cultural Mix

It’s often said that Los Angeles is the most multicultural city on Earth.

That being true, there’s a much smaller city north of Los Angeles that can lay claim to being at least the most multicultural in Ventura County: Oxnard.

And no single address in Oxnard reflects that diversity more than 1800 S. C Street, the site of St. Paul’s United Methodist Church.

In St. Paul’s multilingual services Sunday, members will wish each other “Happy New Year” as well as “Manigong Bagong Taon” (Filipino Tagalog) and “Feliz Ano Nuevo” (Spanish). The Rev. Haruyoshi Fujimoto will wish his congregants “Shin nen omedeto gozaimasu” (Japanese).

Services are conducted each week in English, Spanish and Japanese. Occasionally, services are held in Tagalog. A group of Korean Americans, a “nesting” congregation like the Tagalog group, also regularly uses the church facilities for services conducted in Korean.

“There’s not another church in Oxnard this multicultural,” said lay leader Sue Odgers. “We also have Chinese Americans in our congregation and even some Hawaiian Americans, I think. At times, we have Samoan American members.”

The Rev. Al Gorsline agrees that St. Paul’s is the area’s melting-pot church, and he produces the evidence--the church’s Rainbow Heritage Cookbook, filled with members’ recipes from a dozen countries.

“Our potlucks and our cookbook reflect who we are,” he said.

He’s right. Miso soup, mess o’ greens soup, sopa Mexicana, Mandela’s Favorite Curried Chicken, Lumpiang ubod (hearts of palm spring rolls), Hawaiian sweet potatoes and South African yellow rice are a typical smattering of covered dishes served at a typical church potluck.

Marilynne Parker, an African American who heads the Rainbow Team that published the unusual cookbook, said the church’s membership, which numbers around 500, is 10% African American.

Longtime members Tom and Connie Sugino believe the congenial blending of so many cultures under one steeple got its start in 1963, when the Japanese Nisei Methodist Church merged with St. Paul’s United Methodist. Over the years, the church has had African American and Filipino American pastors.

But even when Oxnard was a town of only 36,000 in 1957, it was as culturally diverse as it is today with 150,000 residents, Odgers said. “Farm work and the military installations have always brought immigrants to Oxnard.”

Although the Methodist faith is practiced worldwide, it is not so common in the primarily Catholic Philippines, according to trustee Rose Tamase, who grew up there and speaks fluent Tagalog with other church members.

Nor, said the Suginos, is the Methodist faith widely practiced in Japan.

The Sunday services in English, Tagalog and Japanese are conducted along similar lines, Gorsline said.

“But the Spanish-language service is much more enthusiastic or charismatic--more spirit filled.” The Rev. Carlos Saavedra agreed.

“However, we’re all Methodists, all mainstream Protestants,” Gorsline said.

The Methodist Church was founded in England in the mid-18th century by John Wesley, an Anglican priest who wanted to reach out to poorer people than he believed the Anglican, or High Church, did.

Because those who immigrated to the United States from England were generally less well off, the Methodist Church immigrated with them.

Gorsline thinks Methodists who choose St. Paul’s do so because its diversity enriches the religious, or churchgoing, experience, he said.

“It shows what a church can do in a community like this. That’s why God created us all.”