Angelus Temple Will Keep Historic Interior

With the surprise announcement Sunday that the two pastors at the Echo Park temple started by revivalist Aimee Semple McPherson have resigned, a bitter fight to save the building’s historic interior appears to be over.

Pastors Ed and Ivy Stanton are leaving after two years marked by bitter squabbles over the future of Angelus Temple, a building with national historic landmark status that serves as the headquarters for the International Foursquare Gospel denomination.

In an uncommon move, the two will be replaced by 27-year-old pastor Matthew Barnett, who runs a nearby church but is from the Assembly of God, another evangelical denomination.

The Stantons came to Angelus Temple from Portland, Ore., promising to help the struggling Echo Park church grow by using a contemporary style to attract young followers. They also wanted to remodel the church to make it more suitable acoustically and visually.

But many longtime congregants felt plans to rip out a Kimball pipe organ, cover a 40-foot mural of Jesus and build a flat ceiling obscuring the temple’s massive dome are an insult to McPherson’s legacy. A divorcee from Canada, McPherson became one of the early 20th century’s most successful evangelists, a preacher who used Hollywood stage props and movie-star flamboyance to draw thousands to her church, particularly during the Depression.

On Sunday morning, McPherson’s church, founded in 1923, was a shadow of what it once was.

The Stantons, who soon after arriving closed the main part of the temple and moved the bulk of the services to a room at the Pasadena Doubletree Hotel, addressed a small crowd full of elderly parishioners in the temple’s annex.

“Sometimes we will not experience the promise that God has given us. Sometimes we just run out of time,” said Ed Stanton, who only briefly addressed his resignation. “God will finish what we started,” he said.

After the sermon, Cliff Hanes, vice president of the Foursquare denomination, read a statement thanking Stanton and his wife, Ivy, who co-pastored at Angelus Temple. He said the two, who will officially leave Nov. 1, would be reassigned to another church, possibly in another part of the country.

Hanes added that church renovations would continue, but that none of the disputed historical elements would be covered or removed. “Everything of historical value has been set aside, the mural and everything else, it will all be there,” he said.

That was good news for Ana Crist, a longtime parishioner instrumental in the fight to preserve the church’s historic look. “Overjoyed, that’s how I feel about everything that’s happening this weekend,” said Crist. “Sister Aimee had a vision for our church and we felt like that vision was not being respected.”

Crist stopped going after the Stantons arrived. She said she and other longtime members were relieved that the couple is leaving. Characterizing the two as insensitive, she said their resignation was a response from God because they “didn’t seem to care” about longtime parishioners, even some who had been there since McPherson’s day.

Neil McClaflin, who also fought for remodeling that included preservation, hoped longtime members who left the church would now come back. He chided the Stantons for wanting to throw out “the grandparents” who built the church.

Many at the services Sunday disagreed, praising the Stantons and expressing disappointment that they were leaving.

“They have tried their best and I believe they have been wonderful for this church,” said Ritchie Alejandria, a younger member who recently came to the church after moving to Los Angeles from North Carolina. Alejandria praised the Stantons for a personal touch, recalling when she came to church looking somber one Sunday and how the Stantons called her at work Monday, to cheer her up.

Supporters and critics of the Stantons seemed to agree that the church was taking a positive, bold step by bringing in Barnett.

“I have seen Pastor Barnett in person and I like what he will bring us,” said parishioner and Echo Park resident Lilian Williamson. “He has a special energy.”

Barnett, who in 1994 established an evangelical church just miles away from Angelus Temple, has a national reputation in the evangelical movement.

His Los Angeles International Church, known as the Dream Center and in a former Echo Park hospital overlooking the Hollywood Freeway, has grown from a few worshipers to thousands.

The church, touted as an example of faith-based social action by President Bush, runs a treatment center, provides a home for ex-convicts and works with children threatened by gangs.

Barnett still will run the Dream Center, but will move services to Angelus Temple in March or April.

The temple and Dream Center’s congregations will become one.

Speaking before at least 500 energetic congregants at the Dream Center on Sunday--many of them young and wearing earrings and spiky, gel-tussled hair--Barnett said he would revive the spirit of McPherson, vowing to bring the “power of the Dream Center” to a struggling place “that hasn’t been filled since the 1920s.”