Carol L. Scott, 50; activist pastor led hip-hop church

The Rev. Carol L. Scott, an Inglewood minister who was known for her Friday night hip-hop church and her campaign to bring peace to violent neighborhoods, which included a symbolic burial of guns, died Sept. 25 of lymphoma at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center. She was 50.

At Holy Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church, where she was an associate pastor, Scott practiced an activist in-the-streets form of theology. She insisted that Christians needed to take off the veil of “elitism.”

She wanted Christians to “roll our sleeves up and get some grass-roots work going so we can actually do what the gospel has called us to do,” Scott told a reporter for the Columbia News Service last year.

For Scott, answering the call meant not only tending to the spiritual needs of those in the congregation but also reaching out to some of the most troubled populations and places, including the now-defunct Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital, where she volunteered as a chaplain.

After the riots of 1992, she began working with New City Parish, an organization composed of seven Lutheran churches in Los Angeles County that offers tutoring, food distribution, small-business loans and other services to the community.

In 2004, after learning that an elderly member of Holy Trinity had been duped into becoming a “poster girl” for Wal-Mart in its bid to build a store in Inglewood, Scott became a vocal opponent, rallying the church and the community.

“Here’s one of my seniors being used, and I’m angry,” Scott said in an LA Weekly article published that year. “I see this as a church issue, and I’m going to take the gospel out to the people.”

In recent years, Scott participated with other activists in an annual mock funeral procession to bring attention to the high rate of homicide in some local communities. The event features a multi-car funeral procession that includes hearses and participants with bullhorns calling the community to action. Afterward, a mock burial is held in a park. Handguns are placed in a coffin, symbolizing the death of violence. Scott presided over the mock burial.

During a 2005 prayer at the event, Scott called on “advocates and peacemakers to raise the consciousness of our community and show solidarity with families and friends who’ve lost sons and daughters in this continuing war against urban terrorism,” according to a 2005 BlackAmericaWeb.com article.

Scott was born in Los Angeles and raised in Compton and Inglewood. Her father, Loyd Webb, sat on the Inglewood school board for more than a decade. The call to the ministry came early in Scott’s life.

“She started preaching in the backyard when she was a little girl, 9 years old,” said Scott’s mother, Lois Webb. “I’d go out there and say, ‘What are you out here yelling for?’ She’d say, ‘I’m preaching the gospel.’ ”

Life first took her down other paths: college, marriage and motherhood.

In addition to her mother, Scott is survived by daughters Portia Thurmond, a medical student at Brown University in Rhode Island, and Lauren Thurmond, 17, of Inglewood; son Asa Scott, 9, of Inglewood; sisters Sylvia Webb of Lawndale and Sherri Webb of Colton; and a brother, George Webb, of New Boston, Texas.

After graduating from Morningside High School in Inglewood in 1974, Scott studied at Pepperdine University and Immaculate Heart College. In 2002 she received a certificate in theological education for emerging ministries from Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley and was ordained at Holy Trinity.

Hip-hop church, which meets the first Friday of every month, was created because “her passion was to preach to this new generation,” said Kenneth Henderson, who worked closely with Scott.

“As far as hip-hop culture, she acknowledged it as a culture,” said Henderson, also known as Kenney Z.

“She expressed to me that the needs weren’t being met in the traditional church. She wanted to broaden the church to receive the younger generation, so she started on this quest to minister,” he said.

Scott had witnessed the senseless loss of young lives, particularly young black men, and her aim was to save them -- body and soul.

At the church, hip-hop is the draw, but the gospel of Christ is its heart. It offers poetry, dance, music and artists such as hip-hop pioneer Kurtis Blow. Scott preached sermons of uplift and encouragement, urging young people to pursue education and high aims.

Since Scott’s death, many of the youths from hip-hop church have called her mother, including one young man who was in tears, asking, “What will I do now?”

“I told him, ‘The best way you can remember her is to remember the things she told you, and do them,’ ” Webb said. “He said, ‘I will.’ ”

A memorial service will be held during hip-hop church on Nov. 2 at 7:30 p.m. at Holy Trinity. Memorial donations may be sent to Holy Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church, 9300 S. Crenshaw Blvd., Inglewood, CA 90305.

jocelyn.stewart@latimes.com