Hope Grows as Church Struggles to Let Go of Past, Embrace Future

The first thing that hits you is the voice. That deep, raspy voice flowing from the nave of the church at the corner of 28th Street and Stanford Avenue, slipping through the morning shadows of South-Central Los Angeles.

The voice drowns out the barks of those two dogs fighting on the red steps outside, mutes the motor of a passing car and silences stray curses coming from the street.

The voice resonates from this woman with light brown skin that gleams against her white vestments and stole of kente cloth. Standing at the altar in St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, the Rev. Altagracia Perez preaches with strength, reverence and sass.

Other voices, too, come from this little church. Deep, soulful strains of a Negro spiritual, then Spanish voices singing the classic hymn “Alabare.”

But harmony has not come to this congregation without notes of discord and pain.

St. Philip’s is a sacred part of South-Central’s past, a place where black Episcopalians overcame oppression and built a church with rough-hewn wood and bricks and cemented them together with their own sweat. It offers a story of the future--of a congregation whose changes reflect those emerging across Southern California, and of a fiery woman priest who pushed two vastly different communities to come together in one house.

As a bilingual, black Latina, the fast-talking, cigarette-smoking Perez embodies both cultures in her congregation. How she brought blacks and Latinos together at St. Philip’s shows the way God lives and moves in the inner city.

Founded in 1907, St. Philip’s became the second black Episcopal church west of the Mississippi and formed a home for black Episcopalians in Los Angeles when they had no other. With time, those founders passed from this life to the next and their descendants became proud grandparents who are now the pillars of the church.

“All my life, St. Philip’s has always been there for me--even when I didn’t know it,” said Catherine Holmes, 63, who has been with the church since she was baptized.

In the 1980s, that generation was faced with a wave of immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean that washed into South-Central and arrived unannounced in their church. Conflicts and tension erupted between two peoples separated not only by race and language, but by age and class.

There were loud fights about music and money. There were nasty arguments about crying kids and letting Latinos attend church coffee hours.

Sitting in her office now, Perez remembers the infighting and strife. “A lot of people thought it was a racist thing. But I think it was a class issue. All their lives, the members of St. Philip’s had fought to be proper black people. Then all of a sudden, they’re dealing with these poor people in their middle-class church, and they didn’t know what to do.”

The coming together still doesn’t have a happy ending. In fact, the new scenario still doesn’t sit right with a few of the elder members of the congregation.

But nobody’s giving up.

“We just keep on keepin’ on,” said Roger “Bill” Terry, 78, one of the Tuskegee Airmen and a longtime church member.

A Long Tradition of Formality

From its beginnings, St. Philip’s was a high church, reflecting the disciplined ritual and ceremony of classic Anglicanism. As the organ pipes exhaled hymns adagio through the sacristy, well-to-do black families gathered in the pews without a peep and looked straight ahead, all eyes on the cross for prayer.

During communion, the bass chords swelled dramatically and congregants walked up the aisles in formal procession, then knelt at the altar rails in respect for the Eucharist. LaRue Shepard, a tall, handsome, silver-haired man known as the unofficial church historian, still carries that same dignity in his strut.

Back in the 1930s, after Sunday services, Shepard and the other teenagers often gathered in the church hall and learned the proper etiquette for sipping tea.

“Oh, it was all very dignified,” said Shepard, now 80. “We never talked, never laughed. We didn’t sing spirituals. Everything was set, back then, and we stuck to it.

“I wouldn’t want to go back to that,” Shepard said with a laugh. “But, I did like it. The cadence was different, like classical music, slow and solemn.”

The congregation took on a more somber tone in the mid-1980s. Several members--black professionals who had been active in the civil rights movement--began moving out of South-Central and into the suburbs, finding new churches.

The congregants who remained faithful to St. Philip’s were getting older and grayer and carrying the financial burden of the church on their backs. Our church is dying, they thought.

As black lawyers and teachers moved out of those grand old houses with tall columns that dominate Adams Boulevard, working-class Latino immigrants moved in, often crowding two and three families into the aging but still noble homes.

Searching for a spiritual refuge, newcomers from Mexico, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Belize began attending St. Philip’s--some not even realizing the church was Episcopalian, not Roman Catholic.

For Sylvia McLymont, choir director and a leader at St. Philip’s since 1947, the change happened too fast.

“All of a sudden, it seemed like we were invaded,” she said. “It didn’t happen in a nice way, at first.”

Added Bill Terry, the former Tuskegee Airman: “You shouldn’t lay claim to something that’s not yours. You don’t do that.”

To make matters worse, in 1986 the pastor at the time, the Rev. Harthsorn Murphy, made the decision to start a Latino ministry by saying: “It is time to plant the seeds of the replacement congregation.”

All signs led members of the black congregation to one conclusion: Their church was being taken away.

Latino members of St. Philip’s vividly remember the tension of that time. Some recall being told they could not attend the church coffee hour. One woman remembers being reprimanded because her children were making too much noise during services.

“The beginning was hard,” said Maria Perez, a native of Nicaragua. “I kept hearing some of the older members say things like: ‘You have to teach those people.’ ”

For the traditional members, the solemnity of the old days was gone. Reverent silence was replaced by the strange and unfamiliar sounds of nervous Spanish voices trying to find their place.

Resentment grew as longtime members noticed that many of the Latino immigrants weren’t contributing as much money to St. Philip’s as the black congregation.

And why can’t they learn English? others asked. Then, in an unrelated event that seemed to complicate the entire situation, their pastor at the time was removed from the church and charged with sexual misconduct for allegedly committing adultery with the parish secretary.

“It was a church in tremendous transition. It was going through a crisis of self-identity,” said the Rev. Mike Henrickson, interim pastor at St. Philip’s for 16 months in the early 1990s.

“You have to understand that the whole reason St. Philip’s exists is that black people had no other place to go. The church was founded in slavery and oppression. So when the Latinos began moving in the neighborhood, there was a sense they were being excluded all over again.”

When in 1994 the church needed to find a new pastor, members of the congregation’s policy-making vestry faced a crucial decision. Which way to turn? After much soul searching, they decided to look for a bilingual priest who would take a job in South-Central. They called Altagracia Perez.

“They made the decision that their vision must include the Latino community,” said Henrickson. “That decision alone is a tremendous tribute to them. They found a way to close the door on the past and open the door to the future.”

Not the Usual Image of a Priest

Think of a priest and certain images come to mind. Older man perhaps, black suit, sedate manner, boring sermons, and please, no talk of sex. Spend some time with Perez and all that becomes laughable.

At just over 5 feet with a dark head of curls, she presides over her church like a bowling ball rumbling down the lane, slamming pins out of her way. She is 38, with a round face and an uproarious laugh that bounces off people around her.

Raised in the South Bronx, half Puerto Rican and half Dominican, she speaks with a New York accent at hyper speed. The pace picks up when she gets excited. Or speaks Spanish. Or both.

Her fire is felt in the no-nonsense, in-your-face attitude that she wears with her white collar. Since she came to St. Philip’s in 1994, she has preached unabashedly about racism, sexism, immigration, masturbation, birth control and homosexuality. Instead of sleeping during sermons, people spend their time shaking their heads, whispering in the pews or letting out an occasional, “Mmmhmph. That’s right!”

“The church is too sanitized. It’s like a country club where everybody came with their nice clothes to feel good,” Perez said. “Here we are, holding these high ideals while people are starving outside the church. Well, that’s not what church is about. That’s not what my theology is about.”

Perez was ordained in 1993, continuing an Episcopal tradition of ordaining women that began a quarter of a century ago. She quickly became a national figure noted for her pioneering work as an AIDS educator for black and Latino youths in Chicago. That much, the leaders of St. Philip’s knew. The rest of the “Altagracia” package came as a surprise.

She’s an outspoken radical, a fierce labor advocate whose protests on behalf of food and housing service workers at nearby USC have led to her being arrested twice. As community leader for the neighborhood improvement group Coalition L.A., she will knock on doors of members who miss meetings to demand: “Why do you think we elected you? To be cute?”

And squeezed in among all the purple ink in her appointment book, she is also wife of Carlos Rafael Alvarado, deputy to Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas; mother of two daughters, Immanuel, 4, and Veronica, 2; keeper of her Country Club Park home and mother of her South-Central church.

St. Philip’s includes about 150 families, 70% black, 30% Latino. At its peak in the 1940s, the church packed more than 400 families into its pews.

“For me, most priests were bureaucrats,” said Angelica Garza, who works with Perez in Coalition L.A. and asked her to perform her wedding ceremony. “With Altagracia, you don’t get that. Jesus was an activist, and she embodies that role in everything she does.”

Perez puts it plainly: “I am a priest. That’s different from a community leader and that’s different from an organizer. If the world is wrong, it’s wrong. I worry about what’s right. I don’t have to worry about what’s practical. My standard is the Bible. So rich people don’t come to my church. So what?”

For Perez, activism comes easy. It was the challenge she faced at St. Philip’s that tested her abilities as a priest and her patience as a person.

Getting to Know Each Other

When Mother Perez became pastor of St. Philip’s on Easter 1994, she didn’t receive an open-arms welcome from every member of the congregation. A small group, which included the powerful voice of Bill Terry, even began a process to declare her election illegal. So for the first two years, Perez led services and made no major changes, letting the congregation become used to her.

“I think it was a grieving thing,” she said. “In a way, I was a symbol the Hispanics had won. They felt they didn’t get a black priest. So, that was the first thing. I had to explain I am black.”

As with many Latinos, Perez’s roots lie in the Caribbean, where Africans were transported and sold into slavery. Colonialism meant that descendants from those islands contained a mixture of Indian, European and African characteristics and blood. In fact, many of the families that have recently settled in South-Central are black Latinos from places such as Cuba, Panama, Belize and Costa Rica.

When relations between the blacks and Latinos at St. Philip’s failed to improve over time, Perez asked the vestry a crucial question. Did they want to end the Latino ministry and go back to being a black church? There was much discussion about the South-Central community and the church’s future.

“I was tired of it,” Perez said. “Vestry meeting after vestry meeting, they spent all their time trashing the Latinos: ‘They come here. They use our church. They don’t give us any money. We have to pay for everything. They don’t know how to take care of anything. They don’t know how to act. They don’t become members.’ Month after month after month of this nonsense.

“I was serious. I told them I don’t think it’s right for a church to be at war with itself.”

She told the vestry members: “I would be perfectly happy being your pastor. Just tell me what you want to do.”

Church leaders decided unanimously that the Latino community should remain a part of St. Philip’s. The moment became a turning point. By forcing the vestry to take a public stand, Perez created an opening for the two groups to communicate.

Soon after, Perez began working closely with Latinos, seeing that they became official members and assigning them responsibilities at St. Philip’s. Eventually, the vestry, which has historically been all black, elected three Spanish-speaking members, a monumental achievement for St. Philip’s. Soon, the entire congregation began brainstorming ways to boost income. For St. Philip’s, like many inner-city churches, the main source of support is Sunday donations.

Other changes came as well. Spirituals eased their way into the service, pleasing some, disturbing others. The church kitchen, long the domain of the black elders, became a mutual zone for all members of the church.

For many Latino members, a truce came last summer when Ana Maria Gonzalez and Luis Martinez got married. The couple had been members of the church for about five years and decided to begin a life together at St. Philip’s. Gonzalez invited the entire congregation to the service and reception afterward at the church hall. Nearly all the black members attended bearing gifts. Amid the singing and dancing, many felt a healing of past wounds.

“It felt like this was my church,” said Gonzalez. “This was a place that I wanted in my life. This was a church that would save my kids from the streets.”

But not all tensions have disappeared, says Catherine Holmes, who runs the church food bank and is one of the black leaders who has worked with Perez to include Latinos on committees and events.

“A lot of people . . . still say the Hispanics don’t carry their own weight. Well, so what? They don’t make enough money, so we have to carry the weight for them. ‘Mind your own business,’ I tell them.

“We need new blood, and Hispanics are the new blood,” Holmes added. “But some people just don’t want to accept it. If anything, [Latinos are] tolerated in our church when they should really be embraced.”

And so, when Scripture gives her the chance, Perez still shouts to her congregation about taking the lessons of St. Philip’s out to the world that is wrestling with the same problems the church has faced.

“How can you love God and not love the people around you?” she asked the congregation during a recent Sunday sermon. “You don’t like what someone is doing, you need to deal with it, ‘cause it’s not your business. God’s in charge.

“If you wanna serve God, look around you. There he is. This is the body of Christ.”

Sunday Services Accommodate All

Enter St. Philip’s and the names on the stained-glass windows shine with the sun’s rays, evoking memories: Nattie Baker. Donald Pillow Williams. Mrs. Mattie Mucker. The Mosley Family. Dr. John W. and Leonora V. Buggs.

There are now three Sunday services. At 8 a.m., the more traditional Episcopalians gather for a high service marked by soft music from the hymnal known as the Blue Book. At 9 a.m., Latino congregants, some wearing dress clothes and others wearing shorts and sandals, gather for the Spanish service. At 10:30 a.m., the beauty of St. Philip’s is on display. Radiant black women in their Sunday best, wearing hats and pearls, reign as the mighty queens of the church. Dashing black men saunter into the pews in suits and ties. Smiling young Latino families spill inside, just happy to be there. They all gather to worship together.

By hiring a bilingual rector in Perez, St. Philip’s solved one of the main problems facing Latino ministry within the Episcopal Church. Several Episcopal congregations view their Spanish-speaking members as outsiders and often segregate them from the main church body. In some extreme cases, Latinos are relegated to a basement or back room and not allowed to worship in the main church.

“At St. Philip’s, we no longer talk about two congregations. There are no two congregations. This is one parish. We are one multicultural, bilingual church,” Perez said.

“My church is like every other mainline Protestant church in the country today. We’re all going through the same kind of struggle. This is part of the struggle L.A. is going through. How are we going to live with all these cultures? These things are not impossible to address. I think it’s whether there is the bilingual leadership that can do it.”

Last year, in an attempt to pave a path for the church’s future, a multiracial children’s community choir was formed, an offshoot of the church’s after-school program.

At Sunday services, the choir of about 15 children alternates between songs in English and Spanish, offering the soundtrack of reconciliation.

Sept. 19 was homecoming Sunday, and Mother Perez’s 38th birthday. It was one of the rare Sundays when one single, bilingual service was held for the entire congregation to come together as one.

The children’s choir gathered at the altar after the sermon and sang a jittery rendition of the hymn “Make Me a Blessing,” led by little Vilona Nicks. Their sweet voices rang out high and mightily. Some were off key, others sang out of turn. But it didn’t matter. LaRue Shepard nodded his head to the beat. And as Mother Perez listened, she began to cry.

“It’s kind of funny, because they were really awful at first,” she said later of the children’s choir. “But they’ve come a long way. Just like us.”