To Live and Pray in L.A.

Koreatown, with its ethnic markets and mini-malls, shares 3rd Street with a Korean Buddhist temple. Los Angeles is home to a Sikh gurdwara, or temple, whose golden dome rises above Vermont Avenue in a neighborhood as diverse as any in Los Angeles. Middle Easterners, Armenians and Latin Americans all have their own congregations as well, in neighborhoods from the Westside to East Los Angeles.

During the last several years, Donald Miller, a USC religion professor, and Jerry Berndt, a freelance photojournalist he often works with, have taken cameras and tape recorders into such neighborhoods to create “On Common Ground, Los Angeles as a Microcosm of the World’s Religions.”

“On Common Ground” is part photo exhibition, part social science project, with the larger goal of documenting L.A.’s first-generation immigrants and the role that religion plays in helping them adjust to their new home. Miller also is working on a book about the subject.

Having visited more than 50 such congregations across the county, he estimates that there are at least 1,500, but getting an exact count is almost impossible. Some meet in storefronts, others use converted motels or apartment complexes.

“Many of these communities don’t even have a phone listing,” Miller said.

From the 1,000 or more photographs Berndt has taken, 100 are on view at USC along with quotes from religious leaders, many taken from Miller’s taped interviews: “Every breath you have, you try to help as many people as you can,” said Alice Callaghan, an Episcopal priest and director of Las Familias, a Skid Row day-care center.

Pastor Cecil Murray of First AME Church in L.A. relates immigrants’ religious communities to the essential job of all Christian congregations.

“The church itself was born in a struggle for social liberties,” he said. “That is the heritage of the church.”

Some of the images in the USC exhibition show temples, mosques or churches, but the lesson here is about religion without walls.

“We tried to reach beyond the mainline Christian churches that a person might associate with religion,” said Miller, executive director of USC’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture. “We also tried to be sensitive to the role religion plays for new immigrants, as well as religion’s role in affecting the local community.”

For example, he said, immigrant congregations “preserve the culture of the homeland and do the traditional things for immigrants that churches have always done.” They help people find jobs, provide emergency social services and offer English language classes.

Visitors to the show said they now have a better idea of who lives in this city.

“We hear that Los Angeles is the new melting pot, the test tube,” said Peter Spoto of Los Angeles, a USC doctoral student in religion who is in his 30s. “Those words were like sound bites, but to see photographs of a Sikh temple, a farmers market managed by members of the Nation of Islam and so many images of young people from diverse cultures, worshiping--all of this really wowed me.”

The number of images made the show’s impact that much stronger.

“When sacred moments are captured and put together in such a concentrated manner, it’s very powerful,’ Spoto said.

Miller said his work has taught him that older ideas about how immigrants should blend into American society have changed.

“It used to be that by the third generation, an immigrant family was barely recognizable,” he said. “Today, people want to preserve their cultural identity.”

In fact, to be noticeably multicultural is more common than ever before, said Robert Bellah, a religion sociologist at UC Berkeley.

“Being an Asian American or an Hispanic is a way of being American,” he said. “Religion plays a role in allowing people to maintain that identity and engage with the larger culture at the same time.”

The commitment to making a difference in their new home also impressed Miller about the congregations he studied.

“Every community tackles the problem of affecting the neighborhood differently,” he said. “In Latino churches, it’s at an informal level. People offer food to someone who runs short . . . or they might help someone get a job.

“The Nation of Islam is highly structured in serving the neighborhood,” he said of the African American Muslim community in Los Angeles. Members of Muhammad Mosque No. 27 operate a farmers market in South Los Angeles on Sunday mornings, selling fruit and vegetables at cost.

“These religious communities are hope-givers,” Miller said. “They give a vision of hope to their members.”

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“On Common Ground” is on view at USC’s Lindhurst Gallery through Tuesday. Robert Bellah will be at the exhibition at 3:30 p.m. that day to discuss religious diversity.