As Many as 5,000 Join March for Jesus in Santa Clarita : Religion: Ex-gang members and charismatic Christians alike unite in the local celebration.

Ruben Urquiza raised his fist in what looked for all the world like a gang salute. Except it wasn’t.

“Oh yeah, Jesus!” the 23-year-old cried, waving his fist in a circle at a crowd of mostly white suburbanites who spilled into three lanes and over the curb along Valencia Street in Santa Clarita on Saturday.

They were participating in a worldwide event called the March for Jesus. Organized by evangelical and charismatic Christians but open to other groups, marches took place in 350 cities and 45 countries, including one in Nashville, Tenn., that was led by country music stars Naomi Judd and Ricky Skaggs. In Southern California, marches were held in Pasadena, Bell Gardens, Long Beach and San Diego.

“The basic idea with the March for Jesus is to take the joy and positive things about being a Christian out of the four walls of the church and into the streets,” said Tom Pelton, the Austin, Tex.-based U.S. director of the March For Jesus.

Typically, he said, groups such as the ones participating in the marches, because of their generally conservative political beliefs, are viewed in terms of what they are opposed to politically. Saturday’s events, he said, were to show “what we’re for,” and the positive feelings stirred by worship.

Between 2,500 and 5,000 people turned out for the march in Santa Clarita, according to police estimates, and Pelton claimed that “at least a million” participated worldwide.

He said that 4,000 people marched in Pasadena, although police estimated the crowd as between 1,000 and 1,500. He said 5,000 turned out in Long Beach, a number police there said they could not confirm.

Although police did not estimate the crowd in San Diego, Pelton said 20,000 people marched. He said there were 4,000 marchers in San Jose, along with 5,000 in Sacramento and 40,000 in Pittsburgh, Pa. He said he had not yet tallied the total turnout, but was expecting about a million people worldwide.

Urquiza--who marched with others who said they were reformed drug addicts and criminals from a Pacoima-based ministry called Set Free--still looks like a gang member.

He wears baggy clothes and his head is nearly shaved, save for a knot of hair at the back of his head. It’s the attire favored by the notorious Blythe Street Dukes, his gang family since the age of 15.

But on Saturday, Urquiza was out, songbook in hand, warbling Godspell-inspired religious melodies.

“Before, I thought, let’s have fun--let’s jump a guy,” he said. A moment later, he ran over to help a little girl who had fallen out of a cart her parents were pulling along the march route.

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The March for Jesus began in England in 1987, and was organized by evangelical leader Graham Kendrick.

The marches came to the U.S. in 1990, as Pelton and others heard about Kendrick’s approach and decided to try it here.

But the idea of public displays of passionate Christianity is not new to the United States.

In the 1850s, the entire city of New York regularly shut down at lunchtime as workers held prayer meetings and rallies, said Howard Happ, a professor of religious studies at Cal State Northridge.

Before the 1850s, he said, 85% of Americans belonged to charismatic and evangelical groups. Today, he said, a third of Americans belong to such churches.

“The charismatic movement is the fastest growing movement in Christianity,” Happ said. Typically associated with non-denominational Protestantism, it is winning adherents not only in the United States, but around the world--particularly in Latin America and South America.

Typically, he said, evangelicals downplay denominational differences between groups, which helps explain the open nature of March for Jesus.

According to its organizers, the events attract members of charismatic branches of many mainstream Protestant denominations, as well as some Catholics.

A handful of black worshipers participated in the Santa Clarita march, as well as a contingent of Latinos who carried signs proclaiming “Cristo Vive” and quoting passages from the New Testament book of Juan.

Bringing up the rear, a half-dozen burly, tattooed motorcyclists, wearing black leather vests emblazoned with the slogan, “Born to die--Jesus,” roared around in a circle.

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Pelton and other organizers insisted that the March for Jesus was to be a nonpolitical event, and for the most part overt politics were kept out.

Still, some reminders of the conservative nature of modern evangelical movements showed through: the Catholic Newspaper Tidings advertised a March for Jesus in Torrance on Saturday as “sponsored by the South Bay Pro-Life Community.” In Santa Clarita, a woman in the march wore a pro-life T-shirt, despite the event’s ban on pro-life banners and signs.

Politics also was implicit in the remarks of several speakers during the rally.

“People talk about minorities and other groups making a lot of noise,” one speaker said. “Well, the church is a sleeping giant--and we are waking up.”

The group prayed that President Clinton and Vice President Gore would “come to the Lord” and lead the country according to Christian beliefs.

Interestingly, before this century, most charismatic and evangelical churches were not conservative at all, according to Happ. Instead, they were extremely progressive, fighting for the abolition of slavery and equal rights for women. But by the 1920s, he said, many had swung to the right, eschewing the short skirts and wild living of the flapper movement.

By the 1960s, many had assumed much quieter roles in society, keeping their churches separate from the mainstream and taking a less visible role in politics.

That changed in the 1970s and 1980s, partly with the rise in visibility of fundamentalists and groups like the Moral Majority.

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Cathy Love, who organized the Santa Clarita march, belongs to Haven House Church of the Foursquare Gospel in Santa Clarita, a descendant of the charismatic church founded by Aimee Semple McPherson in Los Angeles in 1927.

The marchers, she said, wanted to tell society to “come along and join us.”

She explained that evangelism--telling other people about her religious beliefs and encouraging them to adopt the same or similar ones--was an important part of her group’s philosophy.

“It’s like when you have a recipe that you like and you want to tell everybody about it because it’s the greatest recipe you’ve ever tasted,” she said. “That’s how we feel about our faith.”

Urquiza, who’s just been out of his gang for two months, said he has already begun to proselytize to his former comrades.

Religion “took me out of gangs--and I was a hard person,” he said. All told, it took Set Free missionaries five years to finally bring Urquiza around.

“They helped me,” he said. “And I can help other people.”