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It’s a business: the influence of Christianity on the streets of Skid Row

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It’s a business: the influence of Christianity on the streets of Skid Row

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Content IT’S A BUSINESS: THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
ON THE STREETS OF SKID ROW

by

Marie Frances Cunningham

A Professional Project Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(PRINT JOURNALISM)

December 2009

Copyright 2009 Marie Frances Cunningham

ii
Table of Contents
Abstract iii
Welcome to the Los Angeles Mission 1
Jesus is Good 3
My Way 6
Generous Pockets 8
Faith-Based vs. Secular 11
Different Spirit 13
Destination Skid Row 15
Life of Chaos 17
Man’s World? 18
Escape 21

iii
Abstract
The Los Angeles Mission is a privately funded, faith-based organization in Skid Row – a
50-block area east of downtown L.A. with the largest concentration of homelessness in
the nation. At no cost to the city, the Mission provides food, clothing and shelter to
thousands of individuals every year. Simultaneously, it strives to advance a Christian
agenda through its charity.

1
Welcome to the Los Angeles Mission
The first Saturday of every month, nearly 100 people make their way to the Los
Angeles Mission – a shelter in L.A.’s Skid Row – for a morning volunteer orientation.
The earliest arrivals are awarded Mission T-shirts; the rest unlimited coffee, bottled
water, Danishes and muffins. The attendees sign in and then fill out a questionnaire that
asks “Why are you volunteering?” “Are you presently attending a church?” and “Have
you named Los Angeles Mission in your will or retirement?”

Volunteers then take a seat to watch an orientation video narrated by Pat Sajak of “Wheel
of Fortune” fame. The Mission prides itself on the big (and not so big) Hollywood names
that its charity attracts. Kirk Douglas and Cindy Crawford are two notable donors, and
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa sometimes serves meals in the cafeteria. This Saturday
found Donald Faison of ABC's “Scrubs” handing out new footwear donated by name-
brand companies like Asics and Columbia. A winding line of takers filled the Mission’s
gated parking lot.

Prayer circles abound, the video stresses the religious emphasis the shelter places on all
aspects of life. “We believe it is the scripture with the Lord Jesus Christ that will bring
healing,” says one employee to the camera. “We don’t enter anything of significance
without praying first,” says another.

The Los Angeles Mission is a privately funded Christian organization with emergency

2
services and in-house rehabilitation. It is one of 19 shelters in Skid Row – a 50-block
area east of downtown where some 8,000-to-11,000 men, women and children are
homeless.

Skid Row is home to the most concentrated pocket of homelessness in the nation, yet
according to the Los Angeles Economic Roundtable, a non-profit social research group,
L.A. spends a paltry $58 million on its homeless population citywide (by comparison,
New York City spends $708 million and San Francisco $200 million). The result is a
shortage in social services, and reliance on privately funded shelters, like the Mission,
that offer not just sandwiches, but Salvation.

Last year alone the Mission provided more than 500,000 meals, 125,000 nights of shelter,
and 200,000 articles of clothing to Skid Row residents. But inescapable from its charity
is a propensity to proselytize and promulgate the teachings of the Bible – while
successfully picking up scores of converts along the way.

Some recoil in disdain at the thought of a religious organization infiltrating the lives of
downtrodden individuals weakened by hunger and homelessness. Americans themselves
are steadily losing their religion. The 2009 American Religious Identification Survey
found that the number of those claiming no religious affiliation has nearly doubled since
1990, rising from 8 to 15 percent.

3
Still, places like the Los Angeles Mission are far removed from the earliest examples of
what the Christian mission once symbolized in this country – a band of religious zealots
trying to push the Trinity onto vulnerable populations (Native Americans, for example)
that had no cultural foundation for such drastic shifts in their traditional belief systems.

The Los Angeles Mission makes no apologies for its intent to recruit an army of
believers. And those who happen upon its doorsteps know what they’re in for: an all-
inclusive package with food, clothing, shelter and Jesus. And that’s exactly why many
choose to stay.

Jesus is Good
Back at the volunteer orientation, Shelia Mowetta, the Mission’s volunteer
coordinator, takes a moment to lecture the group about proper conduct. She tells of one
elderly volunteer who was continuously swindled for vending machine change by an
overbearing shelter guest, and explains that manipulation is one of the first lessons
learned on the streets.

Another tip is especially for the ladies. Many of the male rehabilitation residents have
little interaction with women while focusing on their recovery, and Mowetta warns that
even something like a tight skirt or revealing top may instigate unwanted attention.
“Don’t start with it because then you won’t have to deal with it,” she says, adding that
women should “leave their purse in the trunk.”

4

Mowetta then takes the group on a tour of the facility. Some volunteers have already
been put to work making popcorn in the front lobby. The smell of unwashed bodies and
freshly popped kernels hangs in the air. The room is full of mostly African-American
and Latino men seated in rows of wooden benches. One man sporting a football jersey
and Bluetooth slowly walks the aisles while bouncing an infant girl in his arms.

Many eyes are fixated on the donated, flat-panel television mounted in one corner of the
room; others sit with blank stares waiting to eat. Soon the group will file into the
Mission’s remodeled and spacious, 400-seat, dome-ceiling chapel for Devotions – the
thrice daily sermon that takes place before breakfast, lunch and dinner. No Devotions, no
food. Visitors are welcome to sleep through the service, so long as they’re in the chapel
during worship. There is also a separate, smaller chapel for Spanish-language services.

Outside the lobby, dozens of people are camped out with their belongings in the
building's front entryway. The faint smell of marijuana hangs in the air but there is no
obvious source. An unkempt and aged white man sits with his possessions. Lined out
next to him are three large, nearly empty prescription bottles, two brown bananas and a
tube of toothpaste.

The Mission has just under 200 emergency beds that are for men only. They get a ticket
for five nights in, after which they must spend the next five elsewhere. “We don’t want to

5
become enablers,” Mowetta says while snaking a clumsy line of volunteers between rows
of metal bunks. “There are those who are just going to work the system.”

The number of shelter guests is always down in the beginning of the month when
government checks like Social Security and Welfare come in. "By the end of the month,
we’ll be full again because the money’s run out,” says Mowetta.

She hints that by providing overnight shelter services, the Mission hopes to recruit
students for its in-house, Bible-based rehabilitation program, saying, “You get the best of
the best if you want to stay – [students] get a lot more of the privileges.” Such privileges
include dorm-like sleeping quarters with four-to-six beds, as opposed to the army-style
barracks setup that shelter guests inhabit.

The group then heads down to the basement. Student guards man all doors and stairwells
to make sure people aren’t where they shouldn’t be. Others who have been assigned
laundry duty are moving the day’s 100 loads between six washers and six dryers. One
man sits and listens to an old Discman while waiting for a buzzer to go off so he can
switch loads and fold.

Next to the laundry room is the men’s clothing room (the women’s clothing room is next
door in separate facilities). There are sections designated for T-shirts, button-up shirts,
jeans, sweaters, jackets, trousers, ties and shoes. The men go through 10,000 pieces of

6
clothing a month. The clothes are far from trendy – faded Fila and K-Swiss threads – but
now and then there are quality donations from movie sets, TV shows, and law firms that
hold “Suit Drives.” Sometimes the occasional Armani two-piece even makes its way
through. “The best of our donations are saved for our students,” Mowetta says.

The tour ends in the basement, past a mini weight room and a racquet-ball-court-turned-
workstation. Volunteers filter out an exit that takes them through the building’s
underground parking garage. They all walk past a bumper sticker on the wall that reads,
“Jesus is Good. Read the Bible.”

My Way
“You do it your way and I’ll do it mine,” says Herb Smith, president and CEO of
the Los Angeles Mission. Smith is lofty and robust with a full head of silver hair and
wire-rimmed glasses. His face is round and his cheeks are rosy. He stands out amongst
the haggard-looking African American and Latino men who make up majority of the
Mission’s regulars in a dark suit, white collared shirt and brightly colored tie.

“We can introduce you to who Jesus is, you can choose to believe that or not,” he says of
the Mission’s Christian agenda. Smith himself is an ordained minister with a business
background. “We’re not here to force you to believe that. We’re out here to make an
introduction. That’s kind of how we do it.”

7
Though eligible to receive government grants and contracts though the latter Bush
Administration’s “Faith-Based Initiative,” (an initiative still in existence under President
Barack Obama), the closest the Mission comes to accepting government money is
through charitable donations made by organizations that then deduct the amount given
from their annual income and in turn receive a tax break. One such big-name donor is
Wells Fargo Bank.

Still, the Mission accepts no government funds, Smith says, “because of the faith
component that we do and the inability, generally for our purposes, to segregate our
programs in a way that would make it easy to do that. We couldn’t require a student to
go to chapel if we were taking federal funds for that student.”

Smith's “students” are participants in the Mission’s residential rehabilitation programs.
The first is Jump Start, a thirty-day course during which a person gets clean, takes care of
health and psychological issues, and is introduced to a chaplain who will be his or her
spiritual mentor. Those who make it the whole month with passing drug tests and a
demonstrated ability to participate in a long-term residential rehab program get to stay for
Fresh Start. About two-thirds make the progression: 15-20 men and 2-3 women at a
time, about every three months. (For the men, there are 60 Jump Start beds and 135
Fresh Start beds; women students of both programs have 30 beds to work with.)

Room, board and schooling are all-inclusive for the 13-month Fresh Start program.

8
Students can earn their High School Diploma or GED from Belmont, the Los Angeles
Unified School District’s adult education provider. The “Learning Center” in the
basement has some 40 computers that were donated by AT&T. Students can take online
courses, or life skills and job training classes. But mandatory for all rehabilitation
participants is Bible study, scripture memorization and prayer. There is a compulsory
class on the Book of Romans, for example. They must also attend Devotions every day,
and venture to an off-site church on Sundays.

“Some people might see it as too religious,” Smith says of Fresh Start and Jump Start. “I
think some people would self-select out on that. They don’t think they need that
component.”

Smith says most anyone is welcome at the Mission, so long as “they’re willing to go by
the rules of the house and so forth.”

Generous Pockets
With a $14 million yearly budget and no government assistance, the Mission is
completely reliant upon private donations to stay in business. The majority of the
Mission’s funds come from “mid-level” donors, which is anyone who can cut a one-time
check for $2,000 or less.

9
“Our average gift is $35 a month. Seventy-four percent of income comes from $35 a
month,” says Eddie Santiago, the man in charge of attracting, keeping and reconnecting
with contributors. Over the last two years, 600,000 active donors gave money to the
Mission. “Seventy-two cents of every dollar goes directly to services. Which is a great
percentage.”

Eddie is sitting in a small meeting room down the hall from Herb Smith’s corner office.
He's wearing a long-sleeved, gray button-up shirt and matching gray pants. On his left
hand is a gold wedding band; on the right a gold ring with an oversized blue gem. A
clunky, silver bracelet hangs loosely from his wrist.

Like Smith, Eddie in on board with avoiding government money when it comes to doing
the Mission’s work. “We’re not there yet were we might need these funds,” he says.
“We’re people oriented, and government’s not a people. If we’ve got a space in the
Mission for [someone] to sleep, we’ll find a place for them. We don’t need the
government to do that.”

Eddie’s eyes are large, brown and sincere. He says the Mission is “the best place I’ve
ever worked.” People are drawn to his friendly disposition, and he greets everybody in
the building by his or her first name. Though he’s never used the Mission’s services
himself, his personal struggle with drug abuse and homelessness, along with his strong
Christian conviction, makes him a perfect fit for the work he does.

10

A white-collar professional for more than 20 years, Eddie lost it all – wife, kid, job and
house – because of a crack cocaine addiction. “I was a lost person. Very confused. And
a drug addicted person,” he says as the bottom of his eyes pool with wetness. “It takes
over, you can’t control it. And eventually you can’t keep that facade, the charade, the lie.
It wears on you. It wears on your family.”

“I ended up leaving home. I’m homeless, but by choice. I can’t smoke at home. Can’t
drink at home. My wife and kid aren’t into that,” Eddie continues. After getting caught
by police twice for stealing, he was sent to prison. While there, his wife, a nurse of 25
years, was unable to cover the mortgage alone and lost the family home.

“I found myself in prison, three years with individuals that I thought I had nothing in
common with. But then I found out I had everything in common with [them] for the low
that I had sunk,” he says, adding that prison is “the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Prison is where Eddie turned to Christianity. “I’m sleeping on the bunk in the two-man
cell – murderer below me who was mad at the world and I said, ‘Lord help me.’ He
heard my cry,” he says. “Once I cried out to the Lord, that was it. No more remorse.
Hope entered. Forgiving. ‘Let’s go to work, we’ve got work to do.’”

11
Eddie moved into a halfway house and crossed the picket line for work during the
Ralph’s Supermarket strike of 2003. He earned enough money to move into a sober-
living home. There he met a Mission employee, who got him a job when the strikers
settled. A firm believer in the Christian agenda, Eddie attributes his successful
rehabilitation to his faith.

“Take Christ out of my life, I’d be in trouble,” he says. “I got my wife back, I got my
daughter back. We’ve been together for five years now, but still it’s not daddy, it’s
Eddie. But we work through those things.”

To naysayers of the Christ-charity combo, Eddie says, “We’re not the only store in
town.”

“The way we do it, this works,” he says of faith-based rehabilitation. “There are many,
many success stories here. Is it the only way? I don’t know. It worked for me.

Faith-Based vs. Secular
There is no conclusive evidence that faith-based organizations are any better, or any
worse, as a social service provider than their secular counterparts. The 2007 University
of Southern California study titled “Outcomes Evaluation in Faith-Based Social Services:
Are We Evaluating Faith Accurately?” notes that “considerable evidence reveals that
religious commitment can enhance favorable outcomes in clients, including increased

12
levels of well-being, emotional adjustment, and academic attainment,” but adds that the
evidence favoring the association between religious involvement and positive outcomes
is empirical, with faith being treated as a contextual factor. The effectiveness of faith
itself as a means for success in social programs is not explicitly defined or measured in
many studies, according to the study’s authors.

“I think it’s impossible to say that a religious provider – whatever the religious character
of that provider is and whatever the service area – is better than a secular provider. And
vice versa,” said Robert Tuttle, the co-director of the Legal Tracking Project of the
Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy, a faith-based social services
watchdog that is funded through a PEW grant. A tenured professor at the George
Washington University Law School, Tuttle has been to seminary and has a Ph.D. in
religious ethics. “You can’t make a comparison at that level of generality.”

For example, an FBO could be successful because it is well funded with strong
leadership, not because there is an inherent religious component within the organization.
“There’s a big difference between saying that religion makes something better and that a
particular program works better than others,” Tuttle said. “Its very hard to tell which of
the factors are contributing to something being successful and which are not.”

Tuttle warns not to be swayed by self-reported data, “particularly in the substance abuse
context.”

13

“You see stories where religious providers are proven to be better. There’s a lot of self-
reported data about success rates,” he said. (At the Los Angeles Mission, the reported
success rate of graduation for men in Fresh Start is 84 percent.) “It’s very hard to figure
out what those claims mean…When we’re dealing with programs for human beings, and
we’re looking at what it means to evaluate life outcomes for human beings, it’s very hard
to say, systematically, that one kind of approach is better.”

Different Spirit
When given the choice between faith-based and secular rehabilitation, Cedric
Harris tried both. He used to frequent the Midnight Mission, a social services provider
with a 95-year history in Skid Row. There are no sermons, no prayers and no chaplains
with offices in the lobby at Midnight. But when Harris made the choice to attend in-
house rehab after more than 20 years of drug use, he went to the Los Angeles Mission
because there he “always could feel the love.”

“You can feel a different spirit when you come here,” Cedric says. It was his second day
in Jump Start. Once before he had made it nine months into Fresh Start until he found his
way back onto the streets and into drugs.

Cedric is a 42-year-old African-American, but looks closer to 30. He wears a long-
sleeve, white T-shirt, black jeans and black Air Jordan basketball shoes. He grew up in

14
Gardenia and starting gangbanging with the Shotgun Crips as a youth. When he was 21,
his mom moved him away from the gang and to Victorville – about 80 miles northeast of
Los Angeles – where he met a girl. She got pregnant, and they had a son. All three
moved back to Gardena when Cedric was in his mid-twenties, but he was quickly
confronted with the choice between his family and his gang. “Me being hardcore, I said,
‘the gang.’ And she went her way and I went back to the gang,” he admits.

At 30-years-old, Cedric went to prison for gang-related activities. But rather than
rehabilitate him out of that lifestyle, “prison kind of made it worse.” Behind bars, the
racial tensions that exist between Latinos, African-Americans and whites in California’s
correctional system forced Cedric to maintain his gang affiliation.

“I got out and later, I just went haywire. Got out here, said I wasn’t going home, and I
went right down here on 5
th
[street] and hung out, started getting high, started smoking
drugs,” he says, adding that “here you can gangbang and be who you want to be. I got
used to that and started doing my thing, every day. I was gangbanging and using drugs.
Coming to missions, eating. Come in, get clothes. Working around the streets.”

Cedric went to prison again in 2004 for Grand Theft Auto. “I got out and I could see I’m
going in the same circle,” he says. After his 16-year-old daughter threatened to cut
contact with him if his drug use continued, he came back to the Mission for a second time
because he “knew its got God in it. And I needed the Lord on my life.”

15

“It keeps me at peace and away from the cussing and trying to be hard,” he says of the
Mission’s Christian influence. He was finishing up his break from security duty. A
sticker badge identified him by name and position. “Here you get a better understanding.
You can talk to people, look them in the eye. Talk and weigh it out instead of going
around and [acting] fierce. Or pull a knife and all that. You know.”

Destination Skid Row
Skid Row, also known as Central City East, has historical roots as a destination
for transient and homeless populations. When railroads made their way to Southern
California in the 1870’s, Central City East became Los Angeles’ industrial core – where
packing and shipping took place – and a popular drop-off point for railroad workers and
seasonal labors. Most were men and most were single. This itinerant workforce gave
rise to the need for temporary housing, leading to the development of cheap, single-room
occupancy hotels, called SROs.

The discovery of SoCal petroleum and the growth of the automobile industry during the
turn of the century attracted more migrants to the area. Most new arrivals came by train,
and most stopped first at Central City East, attracted to the availability of low-rent, short-
term housing at the hotels. The Depression of the 1930’s brought even more newcomers
to the area – L.A. was a railhead and the end of the road for big dreamers seeking fortune
in the West.

16

By the time World War II came around, Los Angeles was a destination for the country’s
war-machine workers and the soldiers, seamen and Marines making their way to the
Pacific. More missions and social service centers sprouted up to take care of the military
men based in the area. By the time the war was over, Central City East’s hotels were a
place for individuals seeking cheap housing located near the hub of the city’s social
programs. Further, the demographic shifts in SoCal in the 1940’s saw an influx of
African-Americans to the area – Skid Row was one of the few acceptable places for this
demographic to live in a still-segregated society. Today, more than 60 percent of Skid
Row’s homeless population consists of African-American men.

People with enough money to move out of downtown left for the suburbs at the end of
WWII, leaving behind and attracting those who depended on low-income housing and the
area’s significant network of social services. The result was a shift from a transient but
working population to one that was living at the lowest level of income and affordability,
facing unsteady employment, alcohol and drug dependency problems, mental instability
issues, and so on.

The decline of Skid Row quickened with the deterioration of the area’s aging
infrastructure. Throughout the ‘60s and 70’s, many buildings were condemned as
uninhabitable, reducing the number of available, affordable residential units from 15,000
to about 7,500. This loss of housing displaced many and increased the need for homeless

17
shelters and social care services in Central City East.

A decade later in the 1980’s, it was the arrival of crack cocaine and HIV/AIDS cases that
kept social service providers busy. Skid Row’s image continued to decline into the ‘90s
and new millennium, becoming infamous as a “tent city” where cardboard boxes and
makeshift shelters lined the sidewalks. More than 40 percent of the homeless here suffer
from mental illness, and half abuse alcohol or drugs. Every day dealers set up shop on
the corners and make narcotics sales in broad daylight.

Life of Chaos
Sergio Salcedo was once a homeless Skid Row drug dealer, slinging on the streets
to support his own addictions. Every one of his 48 years shows on his rough, tawny skin.
He is of medium height and stocky build. Faded black tattoos cover his thick neck and
run down his arms to the insides of his wrists. But a gold necklace with a pendant of
hands clasped in prayer suggests his conversion and newfound lifestyle.

“I was the worst of the society. I used to sell drugs in downtown. I used to sleep on the
streets a lot of times. My life was chaos. My life had no meaning,” Salcedo says while
sitting in the Mission’s Spanish-language chapel. Dressed in T-shirt and jeans, he talked
knowingly to employees, mentioning to some that he’s having difficulty finding a job.

During his teens and twenties, Salcedo ran with Latino gangs in Boyle Heights. In his

18
thirties he was selling drugs on the streets to support his daily narcotics habit, living on
and off in Skid Row for years. An assault charge landed him in prison, and when he got
out, he rebuked somebody for suggesting he go to “rehabilitation” at the Los Angeles
Mission. But after a brief relapse into drugs, Salcedo relented.

“You not only get addicted to drugs, but you get addicted to the drama that comes from
the streets. You get addicted to the violence, you get addicted to the thrill of committing
crimes,” Salcedo says of the lure of a Skid Row existence. “My life was destroyed…and
L.A. Mission allowed me to get what I needed. Not only as far as food and as far as a
place to stay, but allowed me to encounter myself with my God, with my Creator, which
is what allows me to move on in society and do something productive now.”

Salcedo graduated salutatorian with the class of October 19, 2007. While training to be a
drug councilor, he is also studying criminal delinquency “to help the youth.” Salcedo
hasn’t seen his own children in 18 years, but says “when that time comes, I’m going to be
able to encounter them as a new person.”

Man’s World?
Men like Cedric Harris and Sergio Salcedo outnumber women four-to-one on the
streets of Skid Row, and much of the social service infrastructure here is geared towards
the overwhelmingly male population. There are no emergency beds for women at the
Mission, though they can come in for showers, clothing, and necessities like feminine

19
hygiene products, diapers and baby formula.

But 1992, after a successful $25 million capital campaign, the Mission opened its new
building on 5
th
and Wall streets, which included – for the first time – additional facilities
so that women could join Jump Start and Fresh Start.

“It was not really in the original plan,” says Rev. Tina Babcock, the executive director of
the Anne Douglas Center – the women's quarters of the Mission. She notes that her
colleagues “really didn’t think it would ever be full.”

Yet the Anne Douglas Center fills up fast and usually has a waiting list. According to the
Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count, an independent census conducted by the Los
Angeles Homeless Services Authority, Skid Row’s homeless female population is on the
rise, having doubled in the two years from 2005 to 2007.

“It’s a very unstable population,” Babcock says of the women she assists. With long
blond hairs always pulled halfway up in a single barrette, Babcock visually fulfills the
role of Mission mother in her blouses, knee-length skirts and flats. “So we can have a
really large waitlist, but by the time we have a bed open, many of them have fallen off the
list.”

The success rate of those who make it through rehabilitation at the Anne Douglas Center

20
– named for the philanthropy of Kirk Douglas’ wife, who helped to conceive and fund the
facility – is quite high. Over a six-year period, 80 percent of the women who graduated
Fresh Start remained stable. That means off the streets and off the drugs, cigarettes and
alcohol.

“It’s pretty solid,” Babcock says of the success rate. She admits that within that 80
percent, some may have a brief relapse, but they are able to overcome the setback on their
own rather than fall into old habits. “They have a really good foundation,” she adds.

Still, some 50 percent of the women taken in for Jump Start leave within the first ten
days. But Babcock has noticed more participants are sticking with the program as of late.

“In the last year we’ve added more one on one contact with the new ones coming in, and
been using Rick Warren’s book, “The Purpose Driven Life,” Babcock says. “It seems to
have had a tremendous impact on the women. The retention rate skyrocketed.”

Of Warren’s book, she says, “It helps us to get to the underlying issues that created the
drug or alcohol problem in the first place much more quickly. It helps them to realize it’s
really not about using drugs or alcohol… They’ve been self medicating. It’s just a
symptom of something else.”

Babcock came to the Los Angeles Mission in 1997. With a bachelor’s degree in

21
psychology, she was going for her masters in marriage and family therapy. But her
experience working in SoCal women’s shelters, along with twenty years teaching Bible
study, led Babcock to apply for a position with the Mission’s women’s recovery program.

“I was so impressed with the Mission. It was such a sane place…it was clear that people
were treated with dignity,” Babcock says. She took the job, and within the first week
began the process of becoming an ordained, licensed reverend in a program offered
through the Mission. It took two years for her to get the title.

“One of the things that I enjoy communicating with our volunteers and our donors about
the work that we do is that the spiritual component is fundamental and central,” Babcock
says. She explained that women are asked to try it the Mission's way and see how it
works. They need not make a profession of faith, but they must embrace all aspects of
the program, such as scripture memorization, Chapel attendance, and basic principles like
forgiveness and sexual modesty. “Our approach is, we believe that god gave us an
owners manual. It’s called the Bible.”

Escape
The Bible plan worked for Shannon Schumaker, 38, from Harbor City, CA.
Schumaker came to the Anne Douglas Center on April 1, 2008. She had been addicted to
methamphetamines for 23 years, and made her way to Jump Start through the Compton
Drug Court system. Once in Fresh Start, she became a star student, completing every

22
elective offered through the Learning Center and taking additional courses online.

Schumaker graduated as valedictorian with the class of June 19, 2009. There are about
three such commencement ceremonies a year, each treated with as much pomp and
circumstance as the next. Students wear a royal blue cap and gown with a yellow tassel.
Along with family and friends, they enjoy a dinner of steak, twice-baked potato and
vegetables in the Missions spacious and clean dinning room (on one window an “A”
rating from the city’s health department is proudly displayed). The grads sit together at a
head table – their plates allotted a celebratory serving of battered shrimp.

After dinner, students and their guests fill the building’s main chapel. The graduates take
a seat in the first two rows. Various Bible verses cover the walls. One is from Matthew
11:28: Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

The ceremony begins with a modified version of The Pledge of Allegiance that ends with
the lines “God bless America and America bless God.” After the Pledge, the graduates
make their way to the front of the chapel where each recites his or her favorite Bible
verse for the audience. Some struggle their way through the words, others speak with
strong conviction. A few deliver their lines in Spanish. Everyone is applauded by the
gregarious audience.

After some brief commentary from Mission administrators and board members, and a

23
lively guest sermon, the valedictorian rises to give his or her commencement speech to
the crowded room. Schumaker’s time has come, and with each word she exemplifies the
effectiveness of the Mission’s well-oiled machine. She has indeed crossed over.

“The Los Angles Mission can make you realize that if you work hard enough there will
be things you can do tomorrow that you can’t do today,” Schumaker says while standing
at the lectern on the chapel’s stage, her long blond hair sitting neatly beneath her blue
graduation cap, bangs swooped loosely to the left side of her forehead. Matte silver high-
heels add at least three inches to her short stature. Silver crosses dangle from her ears,
matching the cross that hangs on a long silver chain around her neck.

“God has given us the spirit to empower us, His words to strengthen us and His son to
catch us when we fall,” Schumaker continues. She wore a gold sash with “Valedictorian”
imprinted on it in black letters. The Mission, she says, “taught me and showed me how
to quit the old life and live the new life according to Christ.”

Schumaker then refers to Ephesians 17-24, “The New Life,” to send a message to the
hundreds who sit before her:

In this scripture Paul orders us to stop living like stupid godless people. That we can no
longer be stubborn and ignorant and miss out on a life that comes from God. We have no
one to blame but ourselves when we choose to sin, and no one to thank but our Creator
when He chooses to save us from our sins again and again trough His grace and mercy. I
challenge you to accept Christ and appeal for a new morality, living as children f the
light. Set goals for yourself. Trust and listen to the lord. He will superexceed [sic] your

24
expectations. He did mine. My goal was just to graduate with honors. Now I stand here
as valedictorian.

Upon reading those last words, a voice yells out from the audience, “You go girl!” At the
end of her speech, Schumaker descends the stage, having been handed a bouquet of three
roses, three tulips and a bundle of baby’s breath. She takes a seat in the front row of the
chapel and smiles broadly as a hired photographer snaps her picture.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract The Los Angeles Mission is a privately funded, faith-based organization in Skid Row – a 50-block area east of downtown L.A. with the largest concentration of homelessness in the nation. At no cost to the city, the Mission provides food, clothing and shelter to thousands of individuals every year. Simultaneously, it strives to advance a Christian agenda through its charity.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Cunningham, Marie Frances (author)

Core Title It’s a business: the influence of Christianity on the streets of Skid Row

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Journalism (Print Journalism)

Publication Date 09/09/2009

Defense Date 08/23/2009

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Bible,FBO,homeless,Jesús,Los Angeles,OAI-PMH Harvest,Skid row

Place Name Los Angeles (counties)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Mittelstaet, Alan (committee chair), Cowan, Geoffrey (committee member), Kotler, Jonathan (committee member)

Creator Email mariefc@gmail.com,mariefc@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m2593

Unique identifier UC1292127

Identifier etd-Cunningham-3243 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-253976 (legacy record id),usctheses-m2593 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Cunningham-3243.pdf

Dmrecord 253976

Document Type Project

Rights Cunningham, Marie Frances

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu