Organizers of two of Southern California’s longest-running...

Organizers of two of Southern California’s longest-running events--the Easter sunrise services at Mt. Rubidoux and the Hollywood Bowl--have announced their programs for April 19.

Riverside’s Mt. Rubidoux service, a tradition since 1909, will hear a sermon from Bill Bright, who directs the worldwide Campus Crusade evangelistic organization from his home and headquarters at Arrowhead Springs.

Singers and a brass ensemble from the Seventh-day Adventist-run Loma Linda University will also participate in the service.

The 67th Hollywood Bowl Easter Sunrise Service, whose sponsors earlier announced a first-ever public solicitation to overcome heavy debts and increased costs, has divided speaking duties among four clergymen. The main speakers will be the Rev. H. D. Hornaday of Founder’s Church of Religious Science and Father George Venetos of St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Church.

Speaking in supporting roles, a spokesman said, will be the Rev. William Boggs of Wilshire United Methodist Church and Brig. James R. Watt of the Salvation Army.

Excerpts from the Easter message of Pope John Paul II, delivered hours earlier in Rome, will also be read.

Actors Robert Guillaume and Shirley Jones and the International Children’s Choir will sing “Let There Be Peace on Earth.”

HOLIDAY

Japanese Buddhists, who observe Gautama Buddha’s birthday on April 8, will celebrate the Hanamatsuri events this weekend and next. The Los Angeles Buddhist Church Federation is sponsoring a “battle” of taiko drummers from Japan and San Jose at 1 and 4 p.m. Sunday at the Japan America Theatre in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo. Members of the audience will be given miniature hand-held drums, such as were seen in the movie “The Karate Kid II,” in case they want to join the drumming, a spokesman said. Hanamatsuri family services will be held at 10 a.m. April 12 at the seven member-temples of the Buddhist federation.

CONGREGATIONS

Rabbi Harold Schulweis was to have launched a series of sermons Friday night at Valley Beth Shalom in Encino on “the best of” six organizational branches of Judaism--Orthodox, Reform, Conservative (Schulweis’ affiliation), Reconstructionist and two varieties of Hasidism. The services, accompanied by the music of those movements, were intended to contrast with recent infighting between liberal and orthodox religious leaders. The series might come off well if the experience of a Seventh-day Adventist TV series is any indication. Host George Vandeman of the nationally distributed “It is Written,” produced in Newbury Park, spoke on “What I Like About. . . .” and described seven other Christian denominations. A spokesman said each program received an average of 3,100 calls, double the usual response, when the series finished its run in March.

DATES

Ancient manuscripts, papyruses and sealing stones and high-tech methods to “puzzle out the past” will be on exhibit at Wilshire Boulevard Temple starting Monday at 10 a.m. USC Religion Prof. Bruce Zuckerman, who uses computer-aided techniques to decipher texts, was the key organizer of the exhibit.

PEOPLE

The Los Angeles bishop of a Pentecostal denomination not known for advocacy on moral-political issues has joined 15 other regional religious leaders in signing a statement opposing the Reagan Administration’s policies toward South Africa and Central America. He is Bishop Charles E. Blake, who leads the First Southern California district of the Church of God in Christ. The statement says the U.S. “betrayal of human dignity and justice” in those regions demonstrates the need for “a spiritual revolution” much like the late Martin Luther King Jr. called for in a speech April 4, 1967. King was assassinated exactly a year later.

Other signers included Bishop Oliver B. Garver Jr., interim Episcopal bishop of Los Angeles; United Methodist Bishop Jack Tuell; the Rev. Frederick Beebe, Southern California synod executive for the Presbyterian Church (USA), and Bishop H. H. Brookins of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. The statement’s sponsor, the April 4th Coalition, is climaxing two weeks of teach-ins in the Los Angeles area with a program 7:30 p.m. today at Los Angeles’ St. Vincent Catholic Church featuring, among others, the Rev. James M. Lawson, a veteran civil rights leader and Methodist pastor, and Father Luis Olivares of Our Lady Queen of Angels Catholic Church.