Anglo, Ethnic Congregations Coexist : Churches Open Doors to Immigrant Groups

The growth of non-English-speaking ethnic groups has brought Sunday services in many languages to Glendale churches.

Glendale Presbyterian Church on East Harvard Street conducts services in English, Korean and Spanish, and an adult Sunday school in Portuguese. A couple of blocks away, at Holy Family Roman Catholic Church, Masses are in English and Spanish. And, in La Canada Flintridge, there is a Methodist service in Gujarati, one of the languages of India.

Some long-established churches have welcomed immigrants by holding services in foreign languages and incorporating them into the main body of regular church members. More often, ethnic groups form separate congregations and rent space from existing churches during times when the churches are vacant.

“The number of churches in Glendale has doubled in the last five years as a result of the ethnic churches,” said the Rev. Eugene Golay, former executive director of the Verdugo Hills Council of Churches, which includes Glendale.

Many From the Orient

Golay attributes that growth mainly to the increased number of Asians moving to Glendale. He said the Latino population also has been increasing, but that most of the Spanish-speakers are Roman Catholics who join Catholic churches in the area, rather than start their own.

“Ten years ago we didn’t have very many Orientals in Glendale, but today, a significant part of the population is from the Orient. We have scores of people from Korea, the Philippines, Japan, Vietnam, and China,” he said. “Most of these people, because of language, start ethnic churches.”

The Glendale area has had a handful of ethnic-oriented churches for many years. The Japanese Free Methodist Church was formed in 1938 and an Armenian Apostolic church was established in the early 1970s.

But, for the most part, bilingualism in mainstream Christian churches has developed over the past decade.

Holy Family Roman Catholic Church began holding two weekend Masses in Spanish 12 years ago and their popularity continues to increase, said Msgr. Arthur Lirette, the pastor. He estimates that 40% of the 9,800 registered members of the congregation are Latinos, contrasted with to 30% just 10 years ago. Many more Latinos attend Mass but do not register with the church because they are illegal aliens who fear having their names on lists, he said.

Census Information

According to the 1980 U. S. census, Asians made up 6% of Glendale’s population, Latinos 17% and whites 75%, contrasted with the 1970 census when Asians made up 1%, Latinos 10.3% and whites 87.9%. Glendale continues to have an extremely small percentage of blacks, less than 1%.

The city planning office does not keep updated demographic studies, but the percentage of minorities is thought to have risen in the past six years.

The Glendale Unified School District conducts a yearly census. The most recent figures available, from 1984, show an ethnic breakdown among public school children of 13.5% Asian (including Pacific Islanders), 25.7% Latino, and 59.9% whites, an increase in ethnic groups since 1980, when 68% of the children were white, 9.4% Asian, and 22% Hispanic.

Most church officials agree that the effect of such changes will continue to grow. “The growth in the Methodist church is in minority groups,” said the Rev. W. Murray Gibbons, pastor of North Glendale United Methodist Church, which has been renting its facilities to a Korean church for the past nine months. “Ultimately these churches will become a vital part of the United Methodist Conference.”

On a recent Sunday at United Methodist, members of the Korean choir, dressed in their robes, filed into the Central Avenue church to begin practicing music for the next service. The English-speaking congregation had finished its service 20 minutes before. Some members were still socializing in the church hall.

As in most churches that have ethnically different congregations sharing the same facilities, there was little interaction between the two groups. Officials there and at other churches say language barriers prevent close association between ethnic groups, although there is no hostility.

“The problem with ethnic groupings is they tend to be very parochial. It is almost impossible to bring Spanish, English, Korean and Portuguese together,” said the Rev. Jack Chisholm, pastor of Glendale Presbyterian Church, which sponsors church groups for all those cultures.

Chisholm said there has been little resistance from English-speaking members. “A more appropriate term would be nervousness on how to most appropriately relate to the ethnic communities,” he said.

Children Study Together

Methodist pastor Gibbons said that, although the language barriers hinder interaction between adults, Korean and Anglo children attend Sunday school together. “The (Korean) children are bilingual and it works great. With kids, it’s such a two-way experience,” he said.

Gibbons said he is looking forward to “doing more things” with the Korean adult congregation. Musical programs and working together on repairs around the church are particularly good ways to bring people together, he said.

Sometimes, an established church and a recently arrived ethnic group are a good match because the older church needs new members or cash and the ethnic group cannot afford its own building.

Gibbons said his congregation has dwindled from 2,000 people 20 years ago to 550 members, many of whom are elderly. “We have room for somebody else to use the facilities,” he said of the rental arrangement with the Koreans.

But Glendale Presbyterian pastor Chisholm said his congregation is large, with 1,400 members. So revitalizing the congregation was not the motive behind inviting ethnic groups to the church, he said. Rather, he said, his church serves as a “nesting” ground until ethnic groups are strong enough to form their own congregations and move into their own church. Meanwhile, they do not pay rent and are considered members of the main congregation.

“We saw it as part of our mission outreach. There is a large Hispanic community in Glendale and a large Oriental community. We kind of stumbled onto the Portuguese-speaking community,” Chisholm said. He estimated that the Korean congregation had been at the church for 15 years and the Spanish ministry for seven.

Portuguese Group

The Portuguese group began meeting in November, with about 25 participants. The founder of the group, the Rev. Ehud Garcia, expects that number to grow until the group can build its own church.

“There are many, many Brazilian people here in Glendale and Burbank,” who speak Portuguese, Garcia said. “I started this fellowship to evangelize the Portuguese-speaking people. People feel much more comfortable with their own language.”

In La Canada, a ministry with about 30 members from India has been renting La Canada United Methodist Church for more than nine years. The service, in Gujarati, one of the major languages of India, is held only once a month because the members come from different areas and most also have joined the churches in their area.

The Indian group, however, has no plans to establish its own church. “We would like to have them become a member of an Anglo congregation,” said the Rev. Ramesh Dass, pastor of the Indian ministry.

“If we live in America, we should be like Americans.”