Righteous (but Restrained) Indignation

I’ve seen this setting before. It usually means: Let’s get ready to rumble.

As the Cypress City Council is ready to meet, all 100 seats in the chambers are filled. Behind them, a phalanx of people stands against the wall, ringing the room from side to side. The fire marshal has to clear some people out before the meeting can start. Just outside, another 150 to 200 people stand a dozen deep, some with their noses nearly pressed against the window pane. Down the outdoor stairs and across a walkway, dozens of others stand or sit in the corridor of another City Hall building.

The congregation of Cottonwood Christian Center--or what seems a goodly chunk of it--is out in force.

They’re here on this chilly, foggy Monday night to fight the latest in 225 years of battles in America between church and state.

More to the point, they smell a rat.

Over the past two years, Cottonwood has put up $13 million to buy 18 acres at the northwest corner of Katella Avenue and Walker Street. The move would transplant the congregation from its nondescript building on Sausalito Street in Los Alamitos to the prime Cypress intersection.

Because it’s so prime, the city also has an eye on that corner as part of its redevelopment plans. Cottonwood knew that but wasn’t told a new church would be an automatic nonstarter at the site.

Now, Cottonwood officials say, they’re getting the hint: The city doesn’t want a church on that property and has a long-range plan of acquiring it through eminent domain.

On this night, the council is voting to extend for 10 1/2 months a moratorium on all development in the area. The crowd is convinced the action is aimed at Cottonwood.

That usually can translate to tension in the air. Other city councils have found themselves hooted at or talked over.

This crowd, however, is almost eerie in its quietness.

I compliment a congregant on the crowd’s equanimity, especially considering it’s now pushing two hours since the meeting began and the council has yet to take up the Cottonwood issue.

“We’re God’s children,” Elaine Gies says with a smile. “We have to be good. Our Daddy’s watching.”

‘His Will’

I ask what the crowd wants. “We just want what’s fair,” she says. “We think God showed us this property and it’s his will and plan for us to be on this property and to help the people in Cypress.”

Big turnout, I say. “We are showing support for pastor and his vision,” she says, then pauses and asks, “Do you want to know what his vision is?”

Just then, the council brings the Cottonwood issue to the table.

City officials take pains to say the moratorium affects all property owners in the redevelopment area. They say they only want time to assess the overall redevelopment plan. They may not need the full 10 1/2 months to decide.

When a man yells in from the outside “We don’t need 10 months!” he is shushed by those around him.

Pastor Bayless Conley, the dynamic, 45-year-old Cottonwood pastor who turned Bible study in his home in the early 1980s to a 4,000-member church, speaks first and doesn’t mince words.

He says Cottonwood has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars planning the new church and believes the city is doing a bureaucratic end-run around it.

Everyone knows, he says, the hang-up is having a church on the same site as a proposed tax-producing commercial center. He says private property rights should be respected and that “our forefathers would be turning over in their graves” at the way the city is treating the church, which he says is “wrong, morally wrong.”

As if the crowd size is lost on the council, he reminds members that 400 families in Cypress belong to the church. An attorney for the church says the council has violated state and federal law by declaring the moratorium. Another speaker says there are hundreds of voters on his block and hundreds more on the next block over. He says he knows most of them personally.

Conley says the church doesn’t want to fight. “You guys can be heroes,” he tells the council. “You can bring this city together.”

For two hours, a succession of speakers echo him. A little after 11 p.m., however, the council votes 4 to 0 to extend the moratorium.

By Tuesday afternoon, the church’s project manager says he hopes something can be worked out. “Our new home is the hopes and dreams of our congregation,” Mike Wilson says, reiterating that the church leadership thinks city officials “are setting us up for what they want.”

That’s usually enough to rile a crowd, I suggest.

“I think the congregation is disappointed in the council,” he says. “But they were polite because that’s the way the word of God says to be.”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com.