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Sacred places in transition: congregation and deliberation in 3 Los Angeles churches

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Sacred places in transition: congregation and deliberation in 3 Los Angeles churches

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SACRED PLACES IN TRANSITION:
CONGREGATION AND DELIBERATION IN
3 LOS ANGELES CHURCHES

by
Addison Michael Shockley

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
In COMMUNICATION

December 2018 Addison Michael Shockley

i

TABLE OF CONTENTS
DEDICATION II
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS III
ABSTRACT V
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 37
CHAPTER 3: SECOND BAPTIST CHURCH 56
CHAPTER 4: CENTRAL AVENUE CHURCH 86
CHAPTER 5: BETHANY PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 122
CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION 148
APPENDIX 1 171
APPENDIX 2 174
WORKS CITED 176

ii

DEDICATION
For Lydia—we crafted a beautiful chapter of our story together in Los Angeles.
That is the true accomplishment. I dedicate this dissertation to you, to our shared
experience in Los Angeles, and to the memories we made. Thanks for making me apply
to USC to begin with, for sharing this journey with me, and for your sacrifice and
support. Without you, there would have been no dissertation—and more importantly, no
adventure, wonder, or romance along the way.

iii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First, I want to thank Dr. Goodnight, my advisor, for his counsel and guidance as
I worked on the dissertation. It was an honor to have his help in the process of inventing
and revising it. I also want to thank Dr. Lake and Dr. Winston, my other committee
members, for their help during different stages. Working with these three scholars has
taught me so much that I will carry with me for the rest of my career.
Many others gave advice, encouragement and support during my graduate school
years. I want to thank Elizabeth Chin, James Floyd, Jack Rogers, Karen Bradley, Sam
Cox, Marty Medhurst, Dave Tell, Lawrence Frey, Calvin Troup, Ryan Gillespie, Scott
Garrels, Miles Coleman, Joshua Holeman-Miller, Thomas Benson, Mark Williams,
Jimmy Milner, Jamie Roach, Rebecca McSparran, Emma Bloomfield, Stephen O’Leary,
Danielle Endres, Timothy Keel, Lorn Foster, Paul Von Blum, Lucas and Amber Miranda,
David Crippens, Judah Powers, Kathryn Olson, Jason Waldo, David Zarefsky, Bob
Scheer, Shane Jones, Susan Thomas, Sara Saylor, and Ronald Arnett. Thanks to you all,
so, so much.
I also want to acknowledge the scholars in the Works Cited list (many who do
work in rhetorical studies, congregational studies, and deliberation inquiry)—without
your prior research, this project could not have been possible. Your work has fascinated
me, given me inspiration, and helped form traditions of inquiry that I can now take fuller
part in as I move forward in my career.
Finally, thanks to my family. I want to thank my brothers, Maxwell and Caleb, for
encouraging remarks that boosted my confidence when I needed it, and my parents,
Michael and Mary Shockley, for supporting my curiosity with love and support from day
iv

one. Lastly, I want to thank God my Father, Jesus my Brother, and the Counselor of
Peace—for making and remaking me, for guiding me to walk on a path that leads to
fullness of life, surpassing peace, and deep joy.

v

ABSTRACT
This dissertation is about the future of sacred spaces in cities. It develops a
rhetorical method for studying the discourses of local congregations. Such inquiries
critically work to identify topics, norms of decorum, and principles of authority.
Discourses are assembled that express church missions, historical narratives, and feelings
for past foundations, present exigencies, and future alternatives. The study explores
rhetorical situations that invite, call, and provoke address concerning problems of space
and place that face contemporary American churches. Scholarship on local deliberation is
extended through analyzing how everyday citizens discuss the futures of a valued place—
its prospects for conversion, demolition, repair, and renewal. Thus, interrelations among
rhetoric, space, and memory are addressed in the context of sacred places. A case study
approach is developed for in situ inquiry into three churches in Los Angeles, each taking
up questions of material and community transition in different ways. The cases are
compared in the interest of contributing a model of deliberation and church change.

1

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
The modern American city is a product of American ingenuity, planning, and
building. It is also a historical space that grows through aggregation, development, decay
and renewal. Cities include civic spaces for governance along with gardens, parks,
libraries, and museums. Monuments, buildings and grounds grace town squares,
boulevards, and streets. Cities are material structures whose populations circulate and
change over time. Questions of change invite deliberations about whether to preserve a
traditional structure as it stands or to renovate it in ways that may change its fundamental
qualities. The city church was a central feature to the building of the American city. Its
fate is the subject of this dissertation.
More specifically, this dissertation is concerned with the particular cultural and
rhetorical problem of discussion and debate over the future of churches in the United
States. The scope of the subject is broad. In the United States and elsewhere, religious
institutions are under pressure. Demographic changes, cultural shifts, aging buildings,
and decreasing budgets are forcing religious groups to make tough decisions about the
future.
1
Of course, not all churches are under pressure; there is a spectrum along which

1
Jaeger and Cohen, Sacred Places at Risk: New Evidence on How Endangered
Older Churches and Synagogues Serve Communities; Tugend, “Donations to Religious
Institutions Fall as Values Change”; Pew Research Center, “U.S. Public Becoming Less
Religious”; Morisset, Noppen, and Coomans, Quel Avenir Pour Quelles Églises ?; Barna,
“The Aging of America’s Pastors.” Membership issues are compounded by the fact that
since the 1960s, when religious practice seems to have declined sharply all around the
world (Morisset, Noppen, & Coomans, 2006, p. 19), the average age of clergy and laity
has increased. "The aging of pastors represents a substantial crisis for Protestant
churches. . . . there are now more full-time senior pastors who are over the age 65 than
under the age of 40. It is urgent that denominations, networks and independent churches
determine how to best motivate, mobilize, resource and deploy more younger pastors. . . .
2

many religious groups are “undersubscribed and likely to abandon their properties,”
while others “seek to expand beyond their existing facilities.”
2
Mainline denominations
are notably struggling. For instance, the Presbyterian Church in America has had a rate of
decline so steep that by 2033, if it continues at the current rate, there will be zero
members left,
3
and an economist recently warned the United Methodists that, unless
something changes to alter its declining trajectory, its denominational structure will soon
collapse.
4

Church finances also frame the issue. Donations to congregations in the United
States have gone down dramatically since 1990. Fifty percent of all charitable donations,
back in 1990, went to religious communities such as churches and synagogues; in 2015,
this number had dropped to 32 percent.
5
Of those who still give to local congregations,
“the average giving remains at or below 3 percent of income. . . . [C]hurches are playing
a losing game—they seem unable to develop the giving potential of their clientele.”
6

Financially challenged, religious communities are increasingly putting up buildings for
sale. In December 2017, for instance, 1,015 sacred structures went up for sale in the

In 1968, 55 percent of all Protestant clergy were under the age of 46. . . . In 2017, just 22
percent are under 45" (n.p.). Aging congregations and pastors corresponds with the rise
of the religiously unaffiliated in America, especially among millennials who prefer to
identify as “spiritual,” not “religious.” More and more young people are disaffiliating
with traditional churches.

2
Tomlan, “Placing Greater Faith in Religion,” 314.
3
“2016 Summaries of Statistics,” n.p.

4
Hahn, “Economist: Church in Crisis but Hope Remains,” para. 4.

5
Tugend, “Donations to Religious Institutions Fall as Values Change,” n.p.

6
Galindo, The Hidden Lives of Congregations, 16.
3

United States, one-third of which were “distressed properties,” meaning at risk of
foreclosure. Many other congregations who have not sold their properties yet lack the
funds to repair and maintain them.
The sheer number and expense of building issues facing urban churches is
startling. One third of historic sacred structures in cities have roof and gutter repair needs
that can lead to intractable problems such as chronic water penetration; another fifth have
structural issues like cracks in walls or roof beams separating.
7
The need for maintenance
and repair of sacred places is often beyond what a local congregation can afford.
Shrinking congregations, declining donations, and deferred maintenance foretell an
uncomfortable scenario for congregations that must deliberate the future of their property
and community.
The development of a broad topic of inquiry benefits from specification of a range
of local choices that occasion individual and community assessment and judgment.
Congregations can plan for the future, adapt to the present, and sometimes find
themselves in dire straits due to unanticipated changes. When a community fails to adapt
and survive, church buildings may be repurposed, leased, or sold. Presently, in the United
States, a century of churches stands in need of repair, adaptation, or replacement. The
dissertation develops an orientation to inquiry that adapts broadly rhetorical inquiry to the
question of deliberation over futures of sacred/secular spaces. Specifically, it combines in
situ rhetorical fieldwork and textual analysis to analyze the rhetoric of deliberations over

7
Jaeger and Cohen, Sacred Places at Risk: New Evidence on How Endangered
Older Churches and Synagogues Serve Communities, 31.

4

the future of three churches in Los Angeles. The work initiates deliberative modeling
through designing a strategy of inquiry. Church and congregational structures due vary,
of course. The contribution of the dissertation, while not developing a one-size-fits-all
planning model, does read the situation in specified Los Angeles churches within and
against the contextual information about types and styles of U.S. churches. Context
provides a backdrop to in-situ cases.
If the rate of one sacred space per congregation is assumed, there may be around
350,000 sacred spaces in the United States today.
8
Churches are the most common sacred
space in America, and they come in different architectural styles and sizes.
9
As churches
were built at different points of city development in U.S. history, different styles of
church architecture predominated.
10
Many Romanesque and colonial-style churches that

8
Brauer, “How Many Congregations Are There?”

9
Some churches have extensive campuses, grounds, and lots, while others have
single small buildings and yards. “Family-size” churches have 10-50 members, “pastoral-
size” have 50-150, “program-size” 150-350, “corporation-size” 350-500, and
“megachurches” 2000 or more. Rothauge, “Sizing up a Congregation for New Member
Ministry”; Galindo, The Hidden Lives of Congregations, 79; “The Definition of a
Megachurch,” para. 1.

10
Architectural historian Lewis Nelson argues that the history of U.S. church
construction occurred in three waves, or chapters. The first happened during the last third
of the nineteenth century when a huge number of Romanesque churches were built. For
instance, the Methodists built 4,974 churches between 1865 and 1874, with Romanesque
style-buildings being the most popular. Romanesque churches tend to have “low, stocky,
central towers, steeply pitched roofs, and sequences of arcades enclosing large,
comfortable auditorium interiors.” The second wave of church construction happened in
the 1950s, in the wake of WWII, with colonial-style architecture being most popular.
Colonial style churches have brick, white columns, porticos, and steeples based on New
England meetinghouses. The buildings appeared during an era of hyper-religious
American nationalism that linked symbols of Christianity and capitalism in an aggressive
defense against atheism and communism. Colonial churches were associated with images
of “tightly bound communities sharing democratic values and a sure and steady faith in
5

were built between the late nineteenth century and the middle of the twentieth need
serious repairs, restoration work, and modernization.
Debates over urban transformation are complicated. New surroundings, new
populations, and different neighborhoods furnish the moving environments of capital
cities and urban centers. Cultural preferences and material needs evolve. Values conflict
and cooperate. Churches are places where sacred and secular space meets, places where
religious and secular goals conflict and overlap. The future of these spaces matters not
only to congregations, the “most vital and enduring of all institutions engaged in civic
activities, community organizing, and community development in U.S. cities,”
11
but also
to non-religious citizens, heritage advocates, and church neighbors. An important feature
of landscapes often centrally located in cities, church buildings are “the single most
pervasive public gathering places in American society”
12
and “virtually essential to
bestowing ontological status on a place.”
13
Churches provide a tangible economic benefit

God.” The third wave of church construction in the U.S. began in the 21
st
century with
the modern megachurch-style predominating. Often located in suburbs, these buildings
tend to blend in with the architectural style of office parks and shopping malls, and they
often have extensive facilities with things like indoor bookstores, coffee shops, and
jumbotron screens.

11
Ramsay, “Redeeming the City,” 598.
12
Nancy Ammerman, Congregation and Community. (New Brunswick, NJ:
Rutgers University Press, 1996), 1.
13
Williams, “How to Read a Church,” 1.

6

to cities and towns.
14
Though not always,
15
churches function as spaces where social
capital is formed, social solidarity is increased, and moral imagination is often shaped.
16

14
Cnaan et al., “If You Do Not Count It, It Does Not Count”; Cnaan and Boddie,
The Invisible Caring Hand; Cnaan, Boddie, and Yancey, “Bowling Alone but Serving
Together: The Congregational Norm of Community Involvement.”

15
Ammerman et al (1998) acknowledge that “congregations can often contribute
as much to divisions within society as to their healing,” and they can be exclusive and
non-diverse, “reinforcing the mutual suspicions and prejudice and the already high walls
between racial communities” (p. 8); and second, Numrich and Wedam (2015)
recognizing similarly that though congregations can be a force for more livable cities,
sometimes they are divisive and ambivalent (p. 282). Ammerman et al., Studying
Congregations, 8; Numrich and Wedam, Religion and Community in the New Urban
America, 282.

16
Since congregations inhabit, worship, and work out of sacred structures for the
most part, sacred structures are critical in facilitating many congregational contributions
to society. Much of the work that praises congregations’ benefits to society implicitly
affirms the value of sacred structures since they are pertinent to manifesting the worship
and work of congregations. Emile Durkheim (1997) suggested that corporations (of
which congregations are a prime example) are “indispensable” because they “correspond
to deep and lasting needs” and “constitute a moral force capable of curbing individual
egoism” (xxxix-lii). Putnam (2000) describes how congregations generate “bonding” and
“bridging” forms of social capital, generating trust among citizens, which as Anne Baier
(1980) notes is crucial for democracies. Greve (2006) suggests congregations ameliorate
feelings of anomie and moral limbo in modern cities dominated by the spirit of homo
economicus and the structures of neoliberal capitalism. Ammerman et al. (1998)
describes how “in every community, congregations of every shape and color provide
spaces of sociability, laboratories for civic participation, places of moral guidance and
nurture, and points of contact with transcendent powers (p. 3). Sacred structures are
places where “individuals can give voice to their discontents,” organize for social justice,
experience beautiful architecture and stained glass that “call[s] people beyond
themselves,” and teachings that “transmit knowledge of the faith tradition . . . but also
transmit values that promote community solidarity and continuity” (p. 8). Scharen (2004)
notes a “growing consensus of liturgists and ethicists that Christian worship shapes
people and communities committed to the broader public good, to acts of justice and
peace in the world” (p. 10). Durkheim and Halls, The Division of Labor in Society,
xxxix–lii; Putnam, Bowling Alone; Greve, “Civic Cohesion, and Sanctuaries for Coming
to Terms with Modernity”; Ammerman et al., Studying Congregations, 3, 8; Scharen,
Public Worship and Public Work, 10.

7

As central urban sites, important for their cultural heritage value, economic contribution,
and religious education, debates about the future of churches are more complicated and
significant than one might imagine.
Congregations, denominations, developers, preservationists, officials, and
everyday citizens might participate in a deliberation over the future of a church. The fate
of sacred structures matters for different fundamental reasons to different groups. For
instance, some churches have “Friends” groups who advocate for their preservation due
to the perceived cultural heritage value of the building. A congregation has an ongoing
religious vocation, and as a result, they may value their church for its ability to support
their religious vocation. People who buy churches for sale often value them for their
potential to be converted for new uses (personal, business, or community), envisioning
potential for profit, a place to live, or a way to further the common good of society.
These competing interests frequently make churches places that gather
controversy when different groups argue for different outcomes (e.g. preservation,
conversion, or transformation). Those who advocate certain options might work with, or
against, others, merging interests or not, integrating rationales or not, finding solutions
acceptable or not to different groups. The future of sacred spaces is increasingly about the
future of central spaces in cities and communities whose former religious use has come to
an end (or may be coming to an end soon); and hence, about potential new uses that
individuals and groups propose, debate, and ultimately decide; and where religious
motives form only part of the picture.
That said, most deliberations over the future of churches still happen within
congregations/denominations that own and inhabit them, which is not surprising given
8

that 84% of Americans still claim affiliation with a faith community.
17
Freedom of
religion remains a cornerstone of American public life, and people exercise that right
every week all over America in a variety of churches, synagogues, mosques, and other
houses of worship. Houses of worship remain important places for millions of
Americans, who form and build community, worship, serve, develop spiritual identities,
and care for others in these spaces.
18
Religious communities themselves are deciding, for
the most part, what to do with their sacred spaces in the days ahead, so it is within local
congregations that deliberations are mostly occurring over the future of sacred spaces
and, hence, where scholars must go to study them.
What is involved in deliberating church futures? Quite a bit, especially because a
house of worship maintains a dual identity as a sacred and secular space. Multiple
generations of people debate a mix of topics, including spiritual and economic goals, and
community and preservationist concerns. All debates about preservation, repair and
redevelopment are complicated; but, debates over changing a church are especially
fraught—because a house of worship and its grounds are (at one and the same time)
expressions of secular and sacred space.
Over time, congregations develop a mix of spiritual values and material needs.
Typically, congregations value their church as a place for gathering, worshipping, and
serving. Others may be less involved religiously, but those who identify as community
members value the space, still, for its history of intimate personal and family rituals.

17
Hinderaker and Garner, “Speaking Up on My Way Out the Door,” 21.

18
Wuthnow, Learning to Care.

9

Baptisms, dedications, weddings, and funerals punctuate life in community. More secular
still, preservationists value church buildings for their historic architectural style or
cultural heritage characteristics; developers, for their potential to generate commerce
after conversion or redevelopment. The dissertation investigates the area where abstract
spiritual values and concrete material values are brought into contest by the necessity to
commit to a church future.
Deliberation arises when a church (or other sacred structure) appears to require
change, restoration, replacement, relocation, or conversion. These options generate
alternative choices, and with such judgments comes controversy. This dissertation
articulates a strategy of inquiry within which deliberative engagements about church
futures are to be tracked, mapped and analyzed. Two basic research questions frame
rhetorical investigation:
1) What are the situated topics of debate and the proofs of authority, emotion, and
story shaping the deliberation of secular/sacred space?
19

2) What does a comparative case inquiry of rhetoric in situ offer in learning to
appreciate the material and spiritual entanglements of deliberation?
20

19
The first part of this question—“What are the situated topics of debate”—is
answered in this chapter. The second part—about how authority, emotions, and stories
shape deliberations over sacred/secular spaces—is taken up in Chapter 2 where I
correlate classical rhetorical concepts of ethos, pathos, and logos with these ideas to build
a rhetorical perspective that underwrites inquiry into cases. In other words, the first
research question is answered in Chapters 1 and 2.

20
I answer this question at the end of the dissertation, where I tie together and
interpret the significance of my case studies for understanding the material and religious
entanglements of deliberation.

10

In answering these questions, this dissertation contributes to six traditions of
scholarship: 1) rhetorical studies of place, 2) rhetorical studies of religion, 3) rhetorical
studies of deliberation, 4) in situ rhetorical inquiry (a methodological contribution), 5) the
Project on the Rhetoric of Inquiry, and 6) congregational studies literature.
Over the past fifteen years, rhetorical scholars have become increasingly
interested in place. From Carol Blair, Greg Dickinson, and Brian Ott’s explorations of the
various workings of rhetoric, place, and memory in Places of Public Memory, to Candice
Rai’s “topical approach” to rhetoric in/of local places described in Democracy’s Lot:
Rhetoric, Publics, and the Places of Invention,
21
scholars have generated a
complimentary set of studies that explore rhetoric and place using the help of concepts
from the rhetorical tradition and other fields. My dissertation contributes to this growing
body of literature on rhetoric and place. It extends the literature by providing inquiry into
local rhetoric about formally sacred spaces, that is, built religious structures as opposed
to, for instance, “sacred spaces” whose “sacredness” is of another kind.
22

21
Rai, Democracy’s Lot; Dickinson, Blair, and Ott, Places of Public Memory;
Rice, Distant Publics.

22
Linenthal, Sacred Ground; See also Spielvogel, Interpreting Sacred Ground. In
Linenthal and Spielvogel, sacred space means space made sacred through patriotic blood
shed for the nation. Other studies discuss “sacred civic space,” or the “sacred space” of
shrines, but not formally religious, built sacred structures such as churches and
synagogues, whose sacredness is tied to traditional religious perspectives and
architecture. See Hadley, “Sacred Civic Space in Langley Park”; Collins and Opie,
“When Places Have Agency”; Lee, “The ‘Sacred’ Standing for the ‘Fallen’ Spirits.”

11

Rhetoric scholars have studied many famous religious rhetors,
23
religious
documents,
24
and religious letters.
25
However, they have studied few religious spaces.
Church buildings are an important public space with sacred and secular dimensions, and
an important feature of U.S. landscapes, yet rhetorical scholars have seldom paid
attention to them.
26
When rhetorical scholars do analyze spaces (religious or otherwise),
they often focus mainly on the material or visual rhetoric of the space; for example,
rhetorical scholars examining museums consider how they are laid out to shape visitors’

23
Appel, “The Tragic-Symbol Preaching of the Rev. Dr. Wallace E. Fisher”;
Ofori, “The Papal Visit and the Rhetoric of Conciliation”; Spencer, “Bishop Leontine
Turpeau Current Kelly”; Minifee, “Converting Slaves to Citizens: Prophetic Ethos in
Sermons of Bishop James W. Hood.”; Timmerman, “Christian Pacifism and the
Prophetic Voice: Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Peace Address”; Zagacki, “Pope John Paul II and
the Crusade against Communism”; House, “Crying for Justice.”

24
See, for instance, Shaver, “Women’s Deathbed Pulpits”; and Jablonski,
“Aggiornamento and the American Catholic Bishops.”

25
See, for instance, the chain of articles dealing with Catholic pastoral letters:
Hogan, “Managing Dissent in the Catholic Church”; Ritter, “Public Witness”; Lynch,
“Institution and Imprimatur.”

26
A few exceptions exist, but none of the following studies explore deliberation
over formally sacred structures: Haskins, “Russia’s Postcommunist Past”; Crosby, “Civil
Religion, Nativist Rhetoric, and the Washington National Cathedral”; Dickinson,
“Worshipping the Good Life: Megachurches and the Making of the Suburban Moral
Landscape.” Goodnight and Olson’s study, and Endres’s separate study, both explore
local deliberation but not over formally sacred built structures: Goodnight, “Ingenium--
Speaking in Community: The Case of the Prince William County Zoning Hearings on
Disney’s America”; Endres, “Sacred Land or National Sacrifice Zone.” Three studies
have been done on religious museums: Lynch, “Prepare to Believe”; Kelly and Hoerl,
“Genesis in Hyperreality”; and Bloomfield, “Ark Encounter as Material Apocalyptic
Rhetoric.” For a rhetorical study of the national controversy that erupted over the possible
construction of an Islamic community center near Ground Zero after 9/11, see Pierce, “A
Rhetoric of Traumatic Nationalism in the Ground Zero Mosque Controversy.” None of
these studies look at local deliberations over the future of existing, formally sacred built
structures.

12

experiences and how the spaces and messages work together to constitute certain subject
positions in a museum. My study appreciates this dimension but focuses largely on the
processes rather than the products of spatial deliberation. Whereas museums, memorials,
and monuments typically focus on the products of spatial deliberation (in the sense that
some people somewhere had to deliberate how to construct and design them), my study
examines the processes of deliberation that lead to spaces being changed. In other words,
I examine the deliberative rhetoric that settles how and why an existing space will be
transformed or preserved. Though studies of museums, for instance, might discuss
decision-making over the original design, my study focuses on this dimension to explore
the ongoing evolution of places after being constructed.
27
We know already many
examples of how discourse functions to transform “space” into “place,”
28
but we know
much less about how discourse functions to renew or transform existing places.
The Project on Rhetoric of Inquiry (POROI) is a project developed at the
University of Iowa. POROI scholars look at not just the rhetoric of academic disciplines,
but also professional discourses more generally (which include technical, disciplinary,
field-dependent, and otherwise professional discourses) and how they are deployed and
received in particular communities. Scholars contributing to this project examine how
people use words to build movements, institutions, and disciplines. The Rhetoric of
Inquiry has not yet addressed how deliberations that mix secular and sacred questions
come into play. A contribution of this dissertation is to build such a perspective. My

27
Blair, Dickinson, and Ott, “Introduction: Rhetoric/Memory/Place,” 31.

28
Poirot and Watson, “Memories of Freedom and White Resilience,” 100.

13

dissertation adds to the Rhetoric of Inquiry project the first examination of the topics,
cultural dynamics, tensions, and issues debated in local congregations and communities
over the future of church buildings.
Finally, this dissertation contributes to the scholarly literature on deliberation. My
cases reveal that church deliberations are similar to, and different from, other kinds of
deliberation in ways that can illuminate deliberation in general. Scholars from numerous
fields study deliberation in different ways, but few scholars have explored how
congregations deliberate. Congregational scholarship is an interdisciplinary effort to
better understand congregations and the role they play in societies. The website where
scholars have begun to compile and organize this interdisciplinary body of work
29

discusses different areas of inquiry into congregations, one of which is congregational
“process,” which includes how congregations make decisions. This study adds to that
small but growing body of literature by exploring how congregations decide the futures
of their sacred structures using a rhetorical perspective for inquiry. With alternatives for
the future, people deliberate, and deliberation is rhetorical because “where there are
options, there is rhetoric.”
30

Rhetoric unfolds through language use generally; two of its more popular public
forms are discussion and debate. Such speech activities bring to public attention bundles
of questions. Topics are things to talk and to write about. To analyze debates over

29
“Process Frame.”

30
The German rhetorician, Hans Blumenberg, said this. Bolz, “Das Gesicht Der
Welt. Hans Blumnbergs Aufhebung Der Philosophie in Rhetorik.,” 95.

14

churches (sacred / secular spaces), the range of topics should be assembled. In what
follows, (1) I explain the importance of topics in rhetorical theory and history. I then (2)
share a framework of topics that frequently appear in deliberations over church futures,
divided into topics marking congregational deliberations versus those that mark public
deliberations.
31
These selections are developed to (3) speak to and justify case selections.
The first chapter concludes by (4) clarifying the dissertation’s limitations and intent—
before transitioning into Chapter 2 where the methods of in situ inquiry and rhetorical
case studies are explained.
1.1 Topics in Rhetorical Inquiry
People who deliberate invent, connect, and deploy topics. A topical focus enables
rhetorical scholars to locate what people center their debates on in cases of controversy.
32

Topics are important in the history of rhetorical practice and scholarship. Aristotle
originally distinguished between general and special topics, where ‘special’ pertained to
“a particular species or class of things”
33
and ‘general’ to all contexts and things.
Aristotle’s list is repeated throughout the history of the humanities, but contemporary
scholars often disagree as to what topics are and how they function.
34

Carolyn Miller’s

31
There may be some overlap in these topics, but overall, they are fairly distinct
sets.

32
Miller, “Aristotle’s ‘Special Topics’ in Rhetorical Practice and Pedagogy.”
Miller provides a good overview of the criticisms. These criticisms boil down to saying
the topics became rote, mechanical, and pedantic over time and lost their practical value.
33
Aristotle, Rhetoric, I.2.1358a.
34
For a short but solid history of topics, see Jasinski, Sourcebook on Rhetoric,
578–82.
15

outlook is useful.
35
Miller strives to “recover the spirit in which Aristotle first delineated
the concept of special topics,” which leads “our attention outside the academy to rhetoric
as it occurs naturally in human societies.”
36
I agree with Miller’s view and have sought to
apply it in this dissertation. I made the topical framework for church deliberations that
follows below, after careful analysis of rhetoric occurring in popular religious texts and
observing what topics were recurring in my case studies in situ.
Carolyn Miller describes Michael Leff’s distinction between two main
perspectives on rhetoric: “The inferential perspective treats rhetoric as a distinct art of
persuasion, separate from the substantive issues it addresses; the materialist perspective
treats rhetoric as an art enmeshed in varying particular circumstances and issues that
determine the nature of persuasion.”
37
Scholars can explore concrete examples of rhetoric
in the real world by first mapping the topics that mark discourses within particular
communities and persuasive contexts.
According to Miller, special topics reveal “purposes, methods, interests, and
attitudes” of particular communities, fields, or disciplines.
38
Special topics come in three
main categories: “[1] conventional expectations in rhetorical situations, [2] knowledge
and issues available in the institutions and organizations in which those situations occur,

35
Miller and Selzer, “Special Topics of Argument in Engineering Reports”;
Miller, “Aristotle’s ‘Special Topics’ in Rhetorical Practice and Pedagogy.”
36
Carolyn R. Miller, “Aristotle’s ‘Special Topics’ in Rhetorical Practice and
Pedagogy,” 61.
37
Miller, 63.
38
Miller and Selzer, “Special Topics of Argument in Engineering Reports,” 327.
16

and [3] concepts available in specific networks of knowledge.”
39
These conventions,
concepts, and issues shape the content and style of communication in particular fields. To
analyze debates over sacred/secular spaces, one must first understand the range of topics
people may address in such debates.
One way to uncover the range of topics is to perform “a detailed comparison of
many documents produced by [that field or community].”
40
Carolyn Miller and Jack
Selzer note how special topics “recur in many kinds of writing for many different
purposes” in a community or field,
41
so one must examine examples of rhetoric from a
field or community to ascertain its special topics. Accordingly, church transition should
be analyzed by collecting popular Christian texts pertaining to sacred structures and
congregational futures.
42
Attention needs to be accorded to the things people bring up.
Some topics are general, others texture cases in a singular fashion (whether during
interviews or in church publications). Close reading of Christian texts and in situ
observations result in approaching contemporary topics in the context of debate. Many
are set forth as places of stasis (pro and con argument) about options for change in
congregations.

39
Miller, “Aristotle’s ‘Special Topics’ in Rhetorical Practice and Pedagogy,” 67.
40
Miller and Selzer, “Special Topics of Argument in Engineering Reports,” 327.
41
Miller and Selzer, 327.
42
See the Appendix for a list of the popular Christian texts I consulted to find
recurring congregational topics pertaining to church building futures.
17

1.2 Topics and Decorum in Congregational Deliberations Over Church Buildings
Though this dissertation focuses on church buildings (falling under the facilities
topic below), other topics are important to lay out because they may chain out in
deliberations, as my cases show in later chapters. Typically, multiple topics are
simultaneously in play during congregational deliberations over the future of their sacred
structures. Below are the topics that recur in both select Christian texts (largely from the
popular press) and those put into play by the congregations studied in Los Angeles.
Generally, congregations reckon with the following topics when deliberating the future of
their sacred structures: (1) facilities and technology; (2) personnel, programs, and events;
and (3) social welfare activities. Moreover, there appears to be a “master topic” in
“vocation”—meaning that a congregation’s sense of vocation may structure its approach
to all topics.
43
Topics bundle issues or concerns that can be supported or opposed in the
overall positing of a case for change and support of a future.
Facilities and Technology
Church “facilities” include the following: grounds, parking, yards, cemeteries,
main buildings and secondary structures (dedicated for instance, to religious education,
social welfare, or fellowship). There may also be auxiliary structures off-site (e.g. church
retreat center). Partners for Sacred Spaces—a non-profit organization dedicated to
helping preserve America’s historic sacred structures—writes that congregations’
facilities are their “greatest asset for worship, outreach, and other activities that form the

43
One congregational scholar found if a congregation reaffirms—or changes—its
idea of vocation, the “entire journey of change” may change for a congregation that is
changing. Vandergrift, “The Dance of a Changing Church,” 171.
18

core of [their vocations]”
44
because they “permit congregations to meet for daily and
weekly services and [to] reach out to the community with vital ministries.”
45
Facilities are
both “inspirational and functional, focusing worshippers on higher things while also
containing necessary rooms like offices, classrooms, fellowship halls, kitchens, and rest
rooms.”
46
All buildings need regular maintenance, but many churches have not received
it throughout the years; as a result, many now require “extensive renovation.”
47

The issues related to facilities are numerous, and finances constrain a
congregation’s options and timetables for action. Choices include: whether to spend the
money required to make needed repairs, or to defer this maintenance; whether to rent out
part of the church to an organization during the week to generate income; whether to sell
assets such as parsonages or retreat centers to generate income. Sometimes congregations
must decide under great pressure and emotional tension whether to move or stay put—
whether to invest in the current place or abandon it. If a congregation stays, questions
arise about what to change or keep the same—aesthetics, decorations, furniture, religious
symbolism, spatial arrangement, artifacts, equipment, and other adornments. If it moves,
questions become, for instance: Where to go? What kind of new space to inhabit? What
size, location, liturgical design, and aesthetics?

44
“Repair & Maintenance Guide,” para. 1.
45
“Repair & Maintenance Guide,” para. 1.
46
“Repair & Maintenance Guide,” para. 2.
47
“Repair & Maintenance Guide,” para. 2.
19

Denominations with portfolios of buildings to steward face more complicated
choices than congregations with only one church to think about. A denomination may
have to consider the financial viability of an entire portfolio of churches at once. A
denomination might sell or lease a single church to support other congregations and
buildings in its region, or it may combine congregations that have dwindled. Two
churches might become one. One church is sold, while the other is used to house both
congregations now merged. In denominations that own all of the member-congregations’
buildings, if the denominational structures falter, the member churches are put in
jeopardy too.
Churches in a digital age reckon with questions of technology, communication,
and online platforms. Communication strategies influence a church’s ability to expand
membership, which in turn affects the church’s budget and ability to maintain/transform
its meeting space. Congregations must decide questions of how to communicate amongst
themselves and whether and how to use social media and the Internet to build a presence
online. These topics are linked to questions of creating/updating a website, having social
media accounts, using apps
48
, podcasting sermon audio, or live-streaming services.
Deciding not to cultivate an online presence whatsoever, or to employ only some
communication technologies, are options being deliberated as well.

48
For example, Realm is an app many congregations use to facilitate intra-
congregational communication. User can "connect with and share what’s going on at
[their] church anytime, “contact their small groups, coordinate group activities, RSVP to
church events and meetings, manage their giving, update their information, and more."
See “Realm.”
20

There are also questions related to communication technology during worship
services and community events. For instance, a church could encourage its members to
use Bible apps instead of reading physical Bibles to follow along during sermons; or a
church could incorporate communication technologies into its services, for instance,
using projector screens to display song lyrics, videos, and images during public worship
or community events; or allowing parishioners to text-in questions during sermons, which
are answered at the end by the pastor.
Personnel, Programming, and Events
The topic of personnel involves decisions about what paid and volunteer positions
are necessary and who should fill them. This includes questions of pastoral succession,
choosing new leaders and volunteers to serve on committees and boards, as well as hiring
new people for administrative positions (or letting them go). The issue of personnel may
not be pressing in some congregations, depending upon the local situation.
49
The amount
of money available in the budget influences who can be hired, what labor will have to be
volunteered, and what resources can be devoted to facilities change and general
maintenance.
The topic of programs relates to choices about whether to change religious
worship styles (e.g., styles of music and preaching), ritual practices (e.g., how and
whether to perform rituals like communion or infant baptism), or education activities
(e.g., nature of Sunday school classes). The activities of community are stressed when
adding, dropping, or altering religious programming during the week, such as youth

21

groups, Bible studies, and prayer meetings.
50
In this way, the topic of programming is
about what is done to facilitate fellowship, learning, and worship.
Deliberations also discuss, at times, whether to quit, continue, or start hosting
public events at the church. Such community events include everything from concerts
and screenings to workshops and visiting speakers, to a bazaar featuring food, fellowship,
and sociality. Public events require volunteers to plan and run, but they may be worth
these costs because they have the potential to draw non-members into the sacred space
and possibly increase the congregation’s membership, or finances through donations.
These days, some churches put their facilities to wider public use through tourism.
If a church is historic, or architecturally significant, church volunteers can be recruited to
provide tours of the structure.
51
Pino Rauti, a leading member of the Council of Europe’s
Committee on Culture and Education, notes how tourism is already a "major factor" in
helping to preserve many churches across Europe, and "not an inconsiderable amount of
financial support is given by tourists in the form of donations" (p. 35). This practice is
already common in Europe, and it is likely to increase in Canada and the United States.
For instance, Abyssinian Baptist Church, the oldest still-existing African American

50
Edwards, The Elusive Dream, 21. She writes, “In nearly every American
Christian church (96%), worship services include two segments, congregational singing
and a sermon or homily. However, once we move beyond this foundational worship
structure, styles begin to diverge,” such as “whether or not a choir sings or the length of
the services,” among countless other things (21). Moreover, “given that American
Christianity is largely racially segregated, worship style and racial composition often go
hand in hand” (21).
51
Rauti, “Redundant Religious Buildings.”
22

congregation in New York City, has taken up this strategy to increase its income and
membership through enhancing public awareness of the church.
A tension may arise when and if a church feels tourism is incompatible with its
primary purpose or vocation. Attracting “church tourists” often requires marketing a
church building as an object of cultural heritage, but “the needs of religious groups run up
against the needs of heritage.”
52
Churches want to fulfill present-day ministries,
contemporary worship and work; they want people to join their communities and share in
the vocation today; but heritage is about the past, about preserving distinguishing
characteristics of a building from a former era. As one Anglican put it,
[T]he majority of church buildings [today] are woefully unsuitable and ill-
equipped to serve as ‘local centers of worship and mission.’. . . [Christians]
attempt to address God in the language of today amidst the debris of yesterday’s
church and the preservationist constraints imposed by those who have no
understanding of the Christian vocation. They are hampered and hindered as no
previous generation ever was by the buildings erected to serve them but which
now subdue them. . . . Lamentably, comparatively few of our church buildings
have yet been refurbished and re-equipped with these needs in mind. Local
Christian communities are only now beginning to face up to these new building
requirements of missionary Church, and the temptation to withdraw into a
heritage cocoon is very great.
53

Though conflict can “rage” over religious versus heritage uses of church buildings,
54
it
does not have to. If a congregation thinks tourism can somehow further its ministry today
(for instance, by attracting new members or garnering donations), it may view touristic
initiatives as compatible with its present-day ministry.

52
Morisset, Noppen, and Coomans, “L’angelisme n’est plus de Mise/No More
Angelism,” 28.

53
Giles, Re-Pitching the Tent, 5.

54
Morisset, Noppen, and Coomans, “L’angelisme n’est plus de Mise/No More
Angelism,” 28.
23

Social Welfare Activities
Nearly all congregations attempt to serve non-members in some way or another.
55

Indeed, most congregations assume it is necessary “to face outwards as well as
inwards,”
56
or to provide both “intrinsic and extrinsic benefactions.”
57
A congregation’s
social welfare activities come in two types: formal and informal. A congregation’s
informal welfare activities include “less ‘organized’ types of welfare such as mutual aid,
social integration, and various kinds of informal care.”
58
On the other hand are “formal
welfare projects,” which “compete for resources with a range of other important
congregational activities; their continuity may be dependent upon the enthusiasm and
personal circumstances of just one or two committed people; and untrained, unsupported
volunteers may be faced with complex social problems.”
59
Congregational scholar Chris

55
Roozen, McKinney, and Carroll, Varieties of Religious Presence; Mulder and
Jonason, “White Evangelical Congregations in Cities and Suburbs”; Cnaan, Boddie, and
Yancey, “Bowling Alone but Serving Together: The Congregational Norm of
Community Involvement”; Ammerman, Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes. Roozen et al.
found that some congregations, which they called “sanctuary” congregations, focused
only on their own members' needs. However, Mulder and Jonason (2017), Ram Cnaan
(2003), and Ammerman (2014) all observe that sanctuary congregations are rare
exceptions to the rule that congregations serve members and non-members alike. Cnaan
et al. (2003, p. 19) note, it has become “normative for most congregations that they be
involved in social and community service provision” (19). Ammerman (2014) claims
“doing good for people in need is part of what congregations and their members are
expected to do” (225).
56
Harris, Organizing God’s Work, 75, emphasis in original.
57
Lohmann, The Commons, 61.

58
Harris, Organizing God’s Work, 168–69; Wuthnow, Acts of Compassion
Wuthnow (1990) describes informal social welfare as caring and giving, which occurs
through informal relationships within congregations.

59
Harris, Organizing God’s Work, 169.

24

Scharen describes these “formal” social welfare efforts as the “public work” of
congregations, that is, the work they do to manifest “concern for others who share in
common present place and time.”
60
It is these “formal” types of social welfare that often
attract congregational deliberation and debate, more so than any informal ones.
Formal social welfare deliberations involve choices about who to serve, where to
serve them
61
and which services to provide. It also involves choices about maintaining,
discontinuing, or beginning donations to other organizations; and whether to allow
outside agencies to operate in the church’s buildings (whether main or secondary
facilities) to provide services in ways the congregation itself cannot. Like the other
topics, the issue of social welfare activities is often connected to other topics in
deliberations.
When deliberating their futures, congregations consider interconnected topics.
These include facilities, technology, personnel, programs, events, social welfare
activities, and vocation. Congregations address these everyday organizational and
material concerns as they make pragmatic decisions that must be justified in ways that do
not violate the congregation’s teachings, religious values, or sense of vocation. Balancing
and coordinating these two planes—organizational maintenance and survival, on one

60
Scharen, Public Worship and Public Work, 220. To serve a local public well,
Scharen notes, strong leadership is also needed “to facilitate good use of the skills
members offer” (p. 224).

61
While using church buildings as a space to serve people in need is common, not
all congregations use buildings for this purpose; some go to the streets, or use other
spaces, to serve. Some might believe that serving people in need is a priority over
maintaining their space of worship, to the extent that they might opt for a nontraditional,
lower-cost space in order to have more money for serving people.
25

hand, and organizational fulfillment of a vocation, religious principles, on the other—is a
challenge that can be navigated rhetorically through decorum.
Decorum in Congregations
Decorum is a central concept in the tradition of rhetoric.
62
In order to be most
persuasive, speakers need to be aware of and meet the expectations of decorum. Decorum
has been defined in different ways by scholars.
63
A case assumes particular features of
decorum, which may be mapped in its “adjustment[s] of thought and style to context and
circumstance.”
64
Decorum always depends upon context and culture.

62
Bitzer, “The Rhetorical Situation.”

63
Decorum is also referred to as propriety, or appropriateness. James Jasinski
(2001) noted that Cicero and Aristotle gave treatments of decorum, and scholars since
have distinguished two types of decorum—external and internal. In his articulation of
“the rhetorical situation,” Lloyd Bitzer (1968) notes how rhetoric serves as a “fitting
response” to situations. We can imagine “fit” as partly being a matter of decorum.
Wesley Trimpi (1983) developed Aristotle’s three aspects of decorum: 1) appropriateness
with respect to audience and occasion; 2) appropriateness with respect to subject matter;
3) and appropriateness with respect to the rhetor’s character or ethos. Eugene Garver
(1987) noted an important dilemma of decorum related to another key rhetorical term,
prudence: “One of the perennial problems of prudence is figuring out how to distinguish .
. . a virtuous adaptability to circumstances from sophistic accommodation” (p. 7).
Rhetoricians generally agree that universal artistic guidelines for achieving decorum are
impossible to give because decorum depends upon culture and context. Leff (1987)
articulates this when he says the concept “is incapable of being formulated in terms of
abstract artistic precepts” (p. 7). That said, Jasinski (2001) suggests some questions to ask
to think about decorum in particular contexts, such as, What style, idiom, or rhetorical
strategies are appropriate in this culture/medium/context? What person is most
appropriate to deliver a message? What degree of emotionality is appropriate to a certain
subject? (pp. 148-150). Jasinski, Sourcebook on Rhetoric; Trimpi, Muses of One Mind;
Garver, Machiavelli and the History of Prudence; Leff, “The Habitation of Rhetoric”;
Bitzer, “The Rhetorical Situation.”

64
Fantham, “Orator 69–74,” 124.

26

Churches have “features similar to what one would expect in a traditional
business such as hierarchy, power/control relationships, and division of labor,” allowing
us to “observe these features at the juxtaposition of sacred and secular influences.”
65
In a
congregation, decorum with respect to decision-making and justification may require
speakers to coordinate sacred (or spiritual) and secular (or material) concerns. Sociologist
Margaret Harris in her book Organizing God’s Work suggested the following:
One universal concern within congregations seems to be the dilemma of how to
reconcile religious teaching with practical, organizational considerations; to build
institutions which are capable of responding to, and surviving in, contemporary
society but which, nevertheless, remain a ‘true’ reflection of religious principles. .
. . There may be perceptions of incompatibility between ‘authentic’ (that is,
religious) goals on the one hand, and ‘inappropriate’ goals concerning
organizational maintenance and survival, on the other hand.
66

In other words, Harris suggested congregations must reconcile seemingly incompatible
dimensions of, on one hand, practical choices aimed at organizational maintenance or
survival; and on the other, religious goals and principles. I argue this means, by
implication, that congregations face the dilemma of rhetorically justifying organizational
maintenance, adaptation, and survival choices in a way that does not violate their
religious principles (or sense of vocation).
67
Reasons for change—or

65
Hinderaker and Garner, “Speaking Up on My Way Out the Door,” 21.

66
Harris, Organizing God’s Work, 5, 33.

67
The terms “sacred” and “secular” are paired and variously related. In this
dissertation, they are defined, thusly. First, I use “religious” and “sacred”
interchangeably. As Danièle Hervieu-Léger has shown, these terms are notoriously
difficult to define and distinguish. Moreover, for a religious community, the distinction
between sacred and secular is often not useful, since they may view the entire world and
every place as sacred, that is, everything through a religious lens (such that even
apparently secular action, spaces, and goals—like organizational maintenance and
survival—are understood as sacred or religiously important). “Secular,” on the other
hand, as I use it in this dissertation, refers to perspectives and attitudes that have no basis
27

inaction/continuity—may feel more or less appropriate, given how well they seem to fit a
congregation’s religious principles or sense of vocation. I argue this is a challenge of
decorum. In this dissertation, I assume that all congregations face this “dilemma of
decorum,” and I sought to understand how congregations work out this rhetorical
dilemma in practice—in specific cases.
Congregations have their own challenges of decorum and unique topics to
consider when deliberating the future of their buildings. However, congregationally-
vacant (that is, empty) churches are different animals. When churches are sold or leased,
stakeholders such as developers, private citizens, heritage advocates, and community
groups get involved. They debate topics using secular reasoning as they come together in
public settings to deliberate the possible futures of vacant churches. The topics differ
from those in congregations. Different expectations of decorum also mark these debates. I
turn next to cover the decorum-oriented expectations of public meetings as well as the
topics that mark urban planning controversies over church redevelopment.
1.3 Topics and Decorum in Public Deliberations Over Vacant Churches

in religion. A “secular” space would be “secular” for any group of people looking upon
it, using it, or discussing it without a religious point of view or attitude toward the space.
A “sacred” space would be “sacred” because either A) its architecture is formally sacred,
or else B) it is “sacred” for any group of people looking upon it, using it, or discussing it
with a religious world view or attitude. In the latter sense, any ordinary space (such as a
coffee shop, bookstore, or university) can be “sacred space” in the eyes of a religious
group who views all space as equally sacred, all space as God’s creation, including the
inner space of human beings. See Hervieu-Léger, Religion as a Chain of Memory, for his
discussion of the challenges of distinguishing "sacred" from "religious.”

28

Vacant sacred structures are increasing around the world and in the United
States.
68
Non-congregational stakeholders become interested in the future of redundant
church buildings. Non-religious actors get involved whenever a denomination or
congregation sells or leases a sacred space. City governments, private developers,
community groups, ordinary individuals, and heritage advocates participate in and affect
deliberations over the future of worship spaces, in addition to religious owners.
Some sacred spaces are demolished, yet when “the future of a religious property
does not lend itself to further use for worship, the prudent course may be to convert it to
another use, at least in the short term.”
69
When a sacred space is converted for a new use,
someone first leases or purchases it from the religious owner. When leasing, often the
developer makes a contract with the owner about what new or alternate uses will be
acceptable. Once purchase/lease and agreement has been made, the developer proposes
designs/plans to convert it for another use.
Decorum in Public Meetings
Government officials approve or deny a developer’s plans, after they hear input
from citizens and experts in public hearings. Public meetings are discursive sites existing
within decisional contexts. Public meetings’ general topics (i.e. conventions and
expectations for speaking) affect deliberations over church futures. Tracy and Dimock
describe how public meetings have “strictly enforced topical requirements, speaking time

68
Morisset, Noppen, and Coomans, Quel Avenir Pour Quelles Églises ? This
volume has information on the characteristics and statistics of vacant churches in various
countries.

69
Tomlan, “Placing Greater Faith in Religion,” 339.
29

limitations, and limited opportunities for certain parties to do follow-up.”
70
As a result,
they “face rather different communicative challenges than organizational meetings.”
71

(For instance, anyone can come to a public meeting, and as a result, many people may
attend; however, in organizational meetings, attendance tends to be smaller and more
selective.) Unity and division are two basic general topics manifested in the discourse of
any public meeting. Individuals “must negotiate the tension between unity, tying them to
a public good and community values, and their own legitimate individual interests.”
72

In addition, public meetings involve expectations about the unequal roles of
citizens and officials in the process. There are, on the one hand, “ordinary citizens who
take the time to show up at a meeting, and those responsible for listening to the public
and making the final decisions”; these two groups “are by no means equal. The former
have professional expertise and/or political legitimacy, and it is they who will be praised
or blamed for the content of a decision,” whereas the citizens “have expressive rights
about a meeting’s issue, with the accompanying moral expectation that their expression
will be heard and treated seriously.”
73
Though these roles are unequal, it is “arguably
right and fitting that certain parties in public meetings have more say over what happens
than others do [because] strict equality in participation and authority does not seem

70
Dimock and Tracy, “Meetings: Discursive Sites for Building and Fragmenting
Community,” 131.
71
Dimock and Tracy, 131.

72
Dimock and Tracy, “Meetings: Discursive Sites for Building and Fragmenting
Community.”

73
Dimock and Tracy, 154.
30

appropriate in many cases.”
74
Government officials have a difficult task in “[juggling]
political fairness to all segments of a community, professional and technical expertise,
financial feasibility, and responsiveness to the public that expresses itself on any
particular decision.”
75

In analyzing public debates, it is important to note key terms that signify
decorum. Civility is the expectation that citizens and officials will do things such as treat
one another with respect, remain calm, and participate in an orderly manner. Democracy-
appealing partisanship is a second conventional expectation of decorum for how citizens
will argue in public meetings. It happens when speakers use democratic principles to
defend themselves, criticize opponents, and advocate positions.
76
Since American public
meetings implicitly are built upon democratic principles, using democracy-appealing
partisanship is a way to argue for one’s position in a decorous way during public
meetings.
Topics in Urban Planning
Urban planning meetings address certain special topics. These topics include, but
are not limited to, (1) gentrification, (2) zoning regulations, (3) fit with area,
77
(4)

74
Dimock and Tracy, 154.
75
Dimock and Tracy, 154.
76
Tracy and Hughes, “Democracy-Appealing Partisanship.”

77
Howard-Grenville, Metzger, and Meyer, “Rekindling the Flame,” 115.
“Communities, like organizations, exhibit distinctive characteristics” that become
“encoded in labels.” In analyzing the rhetoric about “fit,” one should pay attention to
labels that frame an area’s character and arguments why a conversion is compatible or
not. The idea is that, the controversy over converting a space can become about the larger
31

perceived benefits (e.g. economic, social, heritage), (5) and developer reputation (e.g.
trustworthiness, competence). With church buildings, heritage is often a main issue. The
heritage perspective seeks a way to balance “sensitive new development, change and
adaptation” with “conservation and preservation.”
78
There are general commitments
heritage advocates often embrace. Heritage advocates believe in the protection of original
religious referents in architecture and artwork and that adaptations of sacred buildings
should be “compatible with the [original] spirit and character of the buildings.”
79
In
keeping with original purpose/spirit of church buildings, they believe new uses should
support “civic and community purposes.”
80
Hazards are considered because some
conversions alter the space irreversibly, leading to “heritage lost forever.”
81
Importantly,
“even when buildings are recycled and the objects relocated, the intangible heritage
vanishes rapidly and the place loses its meaning and identity”; thus, the “coherence and
inter-relationship between . . . tangible and intangible heritage . . . is pulverized.”
82
As a
result, heritage advocates believe the future of churches should be based on

issue of the future of its surrounding community, neighborhood, or city; that is, how a
converted space might suit the existing identity of the area or work against it.
78
Church Heritage Forum, “A Future for Church Buildings,” 33, emphasis added.
79
Rauti, “Redundant Religious Buildings,” 40; See also Tomlan, “Placing Greater
Faith in Religion,” 339. Tomlan explains how religious groups vary in what they will
allow to happen to their former worship spaces (what possible new uses they will accept
as worthy and appropriate).
80
Rauti, 41.
81
Rauti, “Redundant Religious Buildings,” 16.
82
Coomans and Grootswagers, “Developing a European Network for the Future
of Religious Heritage,” 223.

32

social/cultural criteria (not just economic). In other words, conversions should be “a real
investment in the spiritual and social development of the community.”
83

Heritage advocates are often pleased when historic sacred structures are converted
to schools, libraries, centers for the disabled, and places for art or theatre. “Unworthy”
uses include conversion to discotheques,
84
stores, and prisons.
85
Examples like the
historic-church-turned-nightclub in New York City (called the Limelight, which served
as the city’s rave scene center from 1983 and 2007) or the church-turned-pizza-parlor in
Times Square called John’s Pizzeria
86
do not tend to make a heritage advocate happy.
87

The topics frequently considered in public debates include the heritage concerns
listed above, economic potential, neighborhood fit, social benefits, developer reputation,
and zoning regulations. These topics and decorum-expectations of public deliberations
are different from those considered by congregations. Whereas public deliberations must
use rationales linked to public, secular values and democratic principles, congregational
deliberations must integrate spiritual and material projects with rationales that, even if

83
For an exposition of these concerns, see Rauti, “Redundant Religious
Buildings,” 7.
84
Rauti, 25.
85
Rauti, 6.
86
“Our History,” para. 1. The website describes how the pizzeria began: “After
stumbling upon an abandoned church on West 44th Street, where the homeless squatted
and spray painted gang signs were apart of the décor, Madeline instantly saw the beauty
of this old Gospel Tabernacle Church. During her initial tour of this location, the
perfectly intact stained glass ceiling caught her attention. It was made up of 8 parts, all
equal in size, just like a pizza pie. It was then that Madeline Castellotti knew this would
be home to her dream, the most unique pizzeria in the world.”

87
“Limelight Nightclub.”

33

essentially expedient and pragmatic, also must feel connected to religious principles or
vocation (or, at least, not seem to violate them).
Cities are the places of vast experiments in communication. We have already
developed a framework of topics and discussed norms of decorum that characterize
deliberations over church futures. In what follows, I share my cases and why I selected
them—two churches still used for worship (congregational case studies), and one vacant
church (a public deliberation case).
1.4 Selection of Case Studies
To appreciate this rhetoric in situ, three local cases were chosen. Within cities,
congregations and communities experience the stresses of change continually. Los
Angeles is a city whose ratio of sacred structures to people is high—one of the highest in
the country.
88
Most of LA’s sacred structures are churches, even though the city has a
large variety of sacred structures and religions. Ownership arrangements for church
buildings vary.
89
Like most cities, Los Angeles participates in the question of church
conversion, repair, and transformation, and there are many churches that invite
examination.

88
There are roughly 1,725 parcels of religious use in the city, and 5,411 religious
parcels in the county (Mary Raphael, real estate agent in conversation with the author,
September 2017). For every 2,195 residents of the city, and for every 1,873 residents of
the county, there is one religious parcel.

89
Some denominations own the buildings that congregations use, such as the
Presbyterian Church of America which maintains ownership at the presbytery level; other
denominations enable congregations to own the building, such as Southern Baptists; and
non-denominational congregations typically own their church buildings.
34

Three were selected for inquiry. Each exhibits its own features of address.
Together, they display similarities and differences that advance appreciation of a broad
range of deliberation strategies and stresses in play. The cases chosen include the Second
Baptist Church, the Bethany Presbyterian Church, and the Central Avenue Church—all
cases that feature the rhetorical struggle against entropy (the tendency to run down).
Entropy requires available rhetorical energy to be directed and purposed. The cases are
all churches that have lost energy in some way, to the point where decision-making over
what to do in the future became urgent. Of course, these cases neither represent all
possibilities for how churches are under pressure, nor show all solutions that might be
deliberated. Nevertheless, they reveal distinct configurations of problem, cause, and
solution; topics and decorum challenges; and relations among sacred and secular choices.
They represent the distinct judgments that justified restoring (Second Baptist),
transforming (Central Avenue), or converting (Bethany Presbyterian) a Los Angeles
church.
The first case, considered in Chapter 3, is Second Baptist Church. It is the city’s
oldest remaining African American congregation. It has a rich history; however, over
time it lost its power and prestige. Issues with the building, neighborhood change, and
aging believers led the congregation to emotionally difficult deliberations. This chapter
explores the situation, exigence, and response: a choice the congregation made to restore
its building, revitalize and grow its membership, and fulfill ongoing desires to serve its
surrounding neighborhood.
The second case—Central Avenue Church in Glendale, CA—is unique because,
unlike Second Baptist, which found consensus, this congregation blew up in conflict. The
35

case features conflict over material change. Conflict eventually gives way to consensus
around transforming the congregation’s sense of vocation and facilities. As the
congregation transforms its building, it also changes vocation, theological understanding,
and ritual practice.
The third case—Bethany Presbyterian in Silver Lake—shifts focus away from
congregations toward public deliberation over the future of a vacant church. This is a
case of secular conflict, whereas the others were cases of congregational conflict (Central
Avenue) and consensus (Second Baptist). After a denomination decided to lease its
redundant church building to a developer, who proposed to convert it into a boutique
hotel, the local neighborhood erupted in controversy. Debates ensued over the
appropriateness of this conversion idea for the location but also its potential prospects for
the city. Public officials listened to politicians, experts, and everyday citizens before
deciding whether to approve or deny the plans for its conversion.
1.5 Dissertation Limitations and Intent
The practical orientation of rhetoric does restrict inquiry. Doctrinal, theological,
or philosophical identification of the status of secular and sacred spaces are not made.
Rhetorical questions are featured of how decisions about these spaces and how
sacred/secular relations become constituted for varied communities. The choice of three
churches does not aspire to be a random draw of examples or a choice among
paradigmatic cases. The three are put together as a matter of access and interest, yet the
set was chosen to learn from similarities and differences among cases. The comparative
approach opens rhetoric to questions that are not pre-fabricated information-grabs or
autonomously-normed to suit theories. The inquiry is hermeneutic, interpretative. While
36

general traditions are set out to construct background/context, particular cases of address
under stress sustain the gravity of inquiry and dignity of the subject.
The study accords respect to the difficulties of change for a core spatial place of
public life and civil society, the church. I offer a distinct line of inquiry that seeks to
uncover the particularity of a space/place in debate and controversy. The dissertation
does not subordinate itself to a programmatic critique of knowledge hierarchy or
institutions. Thus, important questions of power relationships are not taken up by the
inquiry. Ethicists posit ideal norms for deliberation. This study does not aspire to essay
any ideal standards for debate; rather, it orients inquiry into the commons that have about
them the messy process of local deliberations.
Conclusion
Congregations and sacred structures are important, traditional features of the
American public sphere and landscape, but these emblematic markers of community are
under pressure, changing, and changing hands. Rhetoric is a practical art enacted in
episodes where options are contingent, needs urgent, opinions divided, evidence
uncertain, and outcomes yet-to-be-determined. This dissertation takes up words and
things in relation to deliberations over what to do about church buildings that are
simultaneously expressions of secular and sacred space. In this chapter, a rhetoric of
inquiry was developed to assemble topics and needs of decorum. Case selections were
explained, and research questions were posited. In the following chapter, a method is
developed for conducting in situ rhetorical inquiry and mapping cases.

37

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY
We need to continue to refine our ways of capturing the full range of symbolic, social,
material, and political economic realities that animate places where rhetoric emerges,
circulates, and is experienced by real people.
—Peter Simonson, “Our Places in a Rhetorical Century”
90

A rhetorical inquiry visits the local, the particular, the somewhat singular case
where the relation of words and things, talk and deeds are contingent, urgent, and offer
occasions for discussion and debate over time. To engage the process of making address,
in situ rhetorical inquiry was selected as an orientation to this study. This chapter
develops this analytical schema and then extends its assumptions as a model for the three
cases with questions of the sacred and secular at issue. The schema is comprised of the
terms ethos/authority, pathos/emotion, and logos/vocation—which are situated as an
orientation to inquiry for exploring sacred/secular rhetoric in church deliberations. People
engage in topical deliberations over the future of churches in which emotion, authority,
and story affect debates and create religious and/or secular tensions among individuals
and groups. But how do they do so, with different energies of dignity and gravity? This is
the question within which the special qualities of the particular may be uncovered.
2.1 In Situ Rhetorical Case Studies
In this section, I explain the nature of the in situ research I performed for this
dissertation research. For rhetorical scholars, the field is "where rhetoric is produced,

90
Simonson, “Our Places in a Rhetorical Century.”
38

where it is enacted, where it circulates, and, consequently, where it is audienced."
91

Rhetorical scholars are increasingly using qualitative methods to access rhetoric in/of the
field, and many are increasingly integrating field methods with rhetorical criticism.
92
In
situ oriented scholars align criticism with the goals and aspirations of critical
ethnographers who seek to give voice to marginalized communities. In situ inquiry
advocates for and with disadvantaged or enclaved people.
93
This study borrows the goal
of critical empathy but eschews advocacy. Rather than aligning my voice with the groups
I studied, I explored actions put up for debate in local cases. I sought to discover how
local debates unfold. Inter-discourse comparisons develop a learning curve from which
criticism achieves contact with local practices. The study’s goal is to generate critical
insight about sacred/secular spaces and how decision-making works in local communities
undergoing the stresses of change.
In situ rhetorics matter and are worthy of study,
94
though they different in scope
and purpose from traditional ethnography. Instead of seeking “a general account of

91
McKinnon et al., Text + Field, loc. 161.
92
Recent examples include Endres et al., “In situ Rhetoric”; Middleton et al.,
“Contemplating the Participatory Turn in Rhetorical Criticism”; Middleton, Senda-Cook,
and Endres, “Articulating Rhetorical Field Methods”; McKinnon et al., Text + Field;
Middleton et al., Participatory Critical Rhetoric.
93
Aaron Hess describes, for instance, his model of “critical rhetorical
ethnography” that takes advocacy alongside those being studied as the goal of the critic.
See Hess, A. “Critical-Rhetorical Ethnography.”

94
See Rigsby, “African American Rhetoric and the ‘Profession,’” 517; Endres et
al., “In situ Rhetoric,” 517; McKinnon et al., Text + Field, loc. 4325. Rigsby argued over
twenty-five years ago now, that everyday people’s experiences were being ignored and
had been ignored for most of rhetorical studies' history. The discipline neglected
“rhetorical energies . . . in local communities” (194). The stories of everyday people were
“[awaiting] discovery” (197). Endres et al. state that rhetorical fieldwork enables scholars
39

cultural practices,” I seek to account for “the power of discursive systems in reflecting,
engaging with, and (re)making worlds.”
95
This is why my study is not an ethnographic
inquiry under the sociology of religion umbrella. Rather, I conduct rhetorical inquiry to
explore discourses that articulate options, changes, and decisions. In situ rhetorical
research conducted as rhetorical fieldwork enables scholars to describe the strategic,
persuasive, and civic forces of discourses in everyday settings.
96

Alongside calls for field methods have been calls for studies of local rhetoric.
97

Both seek to move “the matter of rhetoric [from] the grander political realms of the

to “access those everyday rhetorics that would otherwise go unnoticed, undocumented,
and unexamined” (517). Mckinnon et al. suggest “contemporary rhetorical scholars fall
prey to the logic that everything that matters to public culture has been--or will be--
documented,” (loc. 4,325). Rhetorical scholars employ field methods “when the stories
they believe or know to exist cannot be found through already established documents at
the library, online, or through other archives” (loc. 4325).
95
Endres et al., “In situ Rhetoric,” 514.

96
McKinnon et al., Text + Field. In the introduction, the authors note how field
methods can make otherwise inaccessible texts accessible. These include recordings of
local governing and policymaking bodies, which do not transcribe hearings, unlike, for
instance, the U.S. Government Printing Office that transcribes congressional hearings.
Scholars interested in the rhetoric of local hearings must head into the field to collect
materials to analyze. Another example of otherwise inaccessible texts are any kind of
local, vernacular, or marginal discourses that have not been collected or catalogued in
any databases or archives.
97
For some representative examples, see Flower, “Difference-Driven Inquiry”;
Riley, “Rhetorical Leadership and the Black Church”; Hauser, Vernacular Voices;
Goldzwig and Sullivan, “Narrative and Counternarrative in Print-Mediated Coverage of
Milwaukee Alderman Michael Mcgee”; McCormick, “Arguments from Analogy and
Beyond.” Flower (2016) calls “local publics” the “generative rhetorical space” of
democracy (320). These local publics are the place where “the process of change [is set]
in motion” (320) and thus call for more scholarly attention. McCormick (2014) argues
rhetoricians should supplement their abiding interest in “national and international
forums of public address” with studies of “local American civic life" (206, 187). Riley
(2016) argues local rhetoric mattes because it influences wider-scale issues, movements,
and controversies. “Local rhetoric, especially of churches, can be an incredibly important
40

Classical world, where the study of rhetoric began, into everyday life.”
98
This dissertation
extends in situ rhetorical inquiry to the topic of deliberation over sacred/secular spaces.
To study local cases, I employed the qualitative techniques of interviewing, site
visits, and participant-observation to help discover, gather, and generate texts to build
cases with.
99
Collection in these cases requires gathering documents found in churches’
archives, interviews (and their transcriptions), and site visits with field notes (such as
those notes hand-written during or immediately after attending services of churches).
Moreover, I used rhetorical theories (the rhetorical situation, decorum, ethos, pathos,
logos, etc.), adapted to focus on sacred/secular tensions in deliberation, to help me
discern the workings of rhetoric in local cases.
100

means of mobilizing the masses who may not hear every word the American or NAACP
presidents say, but likely hear every word of their local pastors on Sunday. In many
cases, those are the words, those are the voices that effect change” (307). Goldzwig and
Sullivan (2000) simply write of the need for “a richer picture of discourse in local
communities” (228).
98
Carrithers, “Why Anthropologists Should Study Rhetoric,” 578.
99
McKinnon et al., Text + Field. As illustrated in the volume, field methods
include a wide range of possible activities including interviews, focus groups,
observations made and written in field notes, photographs, recordings of informal
conversations, personal narratives based on the critic’s experiences in the field, full-
blown ethnography, autoethnography, oral history interviews, performance, iterative
analysis, grounded theory, and many other types of data collection and analysis. “Using
field methods, the critic typically creates a set of diverse but complexly interrelated
‘texts.’ . . . In some cases they provide contextual material to better understand other
documents. In other cases these documents are the ‘texts.’ In both cases the bright lines
between texts and between text and context become blurred” (loc. 253).
100
Because I studied three different “communities,” my approach varied by
community. For instance, for the historic African American Second Baptist church, I
gained access to interview people through a key informant—Lorn S. Foster—whose
reputation in that community was already well-established and could vouch for me.
Foster invited me to attend church and sit next to him, and I was introduced before the
congregation as his friend. Foster also photocopied for me key documents related to the
41

Rhetorical case studies require reconstructive work. In the field of rhetoric, all
case studies “examine how and how well people deployed rhetorical resources in a
historical moment that called for them.”
101
Traditional rhetorical case studies involve
“close reading of [a] text and careful grounding of [it] in its historical context.”
102

Similarly, in situ rhetorical case studies require close reading of texts and careful
grounding of those texts in historical contexts. Yet, traditional case studies do not use
field methods to access, gather, or create texts to analyze. They focus on existing texts,
often famous ones about which much historical work has already been written to aid in
establishing historical context. For this dissertation, building cases involved interviewing
people who knew about certain local churches that I wanted to study (and recording those
interviews, which I later transcribed so that I could analyze them), as well as reading and
analyzing materials found in local church archives, as well as participant-observations,
sites visits, and field notes. Each case started with basic fieldwork—visiting the churches,
making observations, talking to people who knew about the congregations or buildings—

church’s future, that I would otherwise not have known existed. In the emerging Central
Avenue Church, with whom I was already culturally more similar, I was able to ask
people for interviews directly, and all of them agreed. I attended their church, as I did
Second Baptist, to learn the culture of the community first-hand. For more details on the
way I studied each of these churches, see the content chapter footnotes. For the case of
Bethany Presbyterian, I interviewed neighbors of the church who were at first skeptical of
my intentions, but who eventually came to trust me and open up; and since a large part of
that chapter deals with the city planning hearings over the church’s possible conversion,
my rhetorical in situ approach required that I enter the field to obtain a recording of the
hearings so that I could transcribe them as well as documents related to the case kept in a
file at City Hall in Los Angeles.
101
Zarefsky, 10.

102
Zarefsky, “Reflections on Making the Case,” 10.

42

which led me to documents and more people I could interview, which helped me get a
grasp on what happened at each church, how the deliberations played out, and what
records existed that I could access to study the rhetorical situations of each in depth.
2.2 Sacred / Secular Rhetorical Perspective
Lloyd Bitzer defined a “rhetorical situation” as “a natural context of persons,
events, objects, relations, and an exigence which strongly invites utterance.”
103
Any
rhetorical situation begins with an exigence, “a defect, obstacle, something waiting to be
done.”
104
A speaker in a rhetorical situation proposes a way to remove the exigence
before an audience who has power to take action.
105
Deliberations over the future of
churches involve exigencies and audiences, recurring topics and issues of decorum. A
few final rhetorical concepts are useful to have in the analytical toolbox for analyzing
church debates. These are authority, emotion, and story, which I correlate with the
classical rhetorical notions of ethos, pathos, and logos.

103
Bitzer, “The Rhetorical Situation,” 5; In rhetorical studies, scholars have
criticized Bitzer’s ideas, specifically the notion that a rhetorical situation is an “objective”
phenomenon. I assume rhetorical situations are both a matter of framing and of objective
conditions. For criticisms of Bitzer’s theory, see Vatz, “The Myth of the Rhetorical
Situation”; Miller, “Rhetorical Exigence”; Hunsaker and Smith, “The Nature of Issues”;
Consigny, “Rhetoric and Its Situations”; Brinton, “Situation in the Theory of Rhetoric.”
104
Bitzer, “The Rhetorical Situation,” 6.
105
Situations and exigencies may be disputed. It is even possible for multiple
interpretations of a rhetorical situation to exist within a single congregation or
community—competing factions, groups, or individuals might pose different situations as
real and requiring action, or deny the reality or urgency of others. Groups and sub-groups
might emphasize different things that need to change or stay the same.
43

Ethos / Authority
The concept of authority is seldom discussed in classical rhetorical theory. The
concept that comes closest is “ethos.” Classically understood, ethos comprises what a
speaker says to build his credibility during a speech: all statements that assure an
audience of the speaker’s character, trustworthiness, or goodwill. Thomas Farrell notes
that “authority may be considered as a variation of ethos, a grounded entitlement to offer
a perspective on appearances based on some claim to a constituency.”
106
Often “rulers,
prophets, priests, teachers . . . [do not] need to supply reasons for their pronouncements to
be effective.”
107

All decision-making bodies deal with issues of authority, including churches.
Different Christian traditions are “controlled and legitimized by different types of
authority.”
108
In churches, pastors often possess great authority. They are seen as having
“an authority that is different in quality and derivation from that attributed to secular
organizational roles”; in Christian theological language, they have “divine inspiration.”
109

In Max Weber’s terms, they have “charismatic” authority instead of “rational-legal”
authority.
110
Ministers may “direct and control lay people” and “interpret the overall

106
Farrell, Norms of Rhetorical Culture, 290.
107
Kennedy, Comparative Rhetoric, 42.
108
Nelson, “Authority, Organization, and Societal Context in Multinational
Churches,” 658.
109
Harris, Organizing God’s Work, 183.
110
Weber, Economy and Society.
44

purposes and values of the congregation.”
111
This is not to say laity always listen.
Authority can be “challenged, disputed, and even disobeyed”
112
in any organization,
secular or religious. However, it is rare for church members to engage in open conflict
with their pastor.
113
To the degree that members view their pastor as an “interpreter of
God’s will,” “organizational decisions and procedures” that he leads are “certainly not
open to dispute.”
114

Beyond official structures of authority, there is “informal authority,” which
accounts for the possibility of members in a congregation having uneven levels of
influence, credibility, or status, despite official arrangements of power. Hence,
understanding how leaders and laity within congregations make decisions requires an
awareness of both formal and informal authority, official and unofficial credibility.
As faith-based organizations, congregations have “two different systems of
authority” running in parallel simultaneously. In Weber’s terminology, these are “the
traditional or charismatic” and “the rational-legal” types of authority. “Since the two
systems run in parallel, ongoing disputes between clergy and laity about who has
authority over whom are endemic” to congregations,
115
though these are rare due to the

111
Harris, Organizing God’s Work, 184.
112
Thomas Farrell noted this in his discussion of the “conditions” and “grounds”
of authority in modern society. Farrell, Norms of Rhetorical Culture, 291.
113
Hinderaker and Garner, “Speaking Up on My Way Out the Door.”

114
Harris, Organizing God’s Work, 104.
115
Harris, Organizing God’s Work, 184.
45

“strong norms against open conflict” in congregations.
116
Usually, something must be
very important to someone for them to openly disagree about it in a congregation. That
said, there can be a “wide range of views about the relative authority of ministers and lay
people which can exist within the same congregation; views which may be rooted not
only in religious perspectives but also in opinions about organizational appropriateness or
in fear of change.”
117

Pathos / Emotion
In addition to authority/ethos, emotions and the associated rhetorical proof,
pathos, have been key to rhetorical thought for millennia. The history of rhetoric is
replete with examples of, and full of theories about, how emotional appeals work.
118

Though scholars have long disagreed about the strength of the connection and the nature
of the relationship between emotion and reason, they have increasingly come to agree
that the relationship is complex and that emotions are partly the result of cognitive
processes.
119

Beginning with Aristotle, there is a tradition that interprets “pathos” as a type of
proof or discourse that awakens, intensifies, and/or diffuses people’s emotions
120
to serve
a speaker or writer’s persuasive end. This tradition treats emotions as resources or

116
Harris, 77.
117
Harris, 105.
118
For an overview of the concept, see Jasinski, Sourcebook on Rhetoric.
119
Jasinski, 423.
120
Kennedy, Comparative Rhetoric, 6, 14.
46

constraints in discrete episodes of persuasion. Emotions are productive or
counterproductive for persuasion. However, just as ethos pairs with authority, so pathos
pairs with what Martha Nussbaum calls “background emotion.” Background emotions
“persist through situations of numerous kinds” and are different from episodic emotions
that “arise in the context of some particular situation.”
121
Background emotions “are
closely associated with a whole network of beliefs and expectations”
122
and “explain
patterns of action.”
123
For example, “One loves one’s parents, children, spouse, friends,
continuously over time, even when no specific incident gives rise to an awareness of the
love. . . . One may also have background joy—for example, when one’s work is going
well, when one’s children are flourishing, when an important relationship is going
smoothly.”
124
Background emotions can be conscious or unconscious but are most often
unconscious; episodic emotions can be either conscious or unconscious but are most
often conscious. In general, it appears that most people are usually unaware of how their
background emotions shape emotional responses to situations. For instance, “grief at the
death of a parent is often shaped, rendered more terrible, by the background fear of one’s
own death,”
125
a fear of which one is unaware.
126
The main point of the distinction

121
Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought, 69–70.
122
Nussbaum, 75.
123
Nussbaum, 70.
124
Nussbaum, 70.
125
Nussbaum, 71.
126
Nussbaum discusses in detail how background emotions are linked to
situations. Situational emotions arise when a background emotion gets linked to a
specific object in a concrete context (73). The distinction between situational and
47

between episodic and background emotions is that one’s attachments and values shape
“the geography of one’s emotional life, setting one up . . . for the contributions of
chance.”
127
Background emotions persist across situations and contexts. They affect
members of congregations and communities deliberating change.
In congregations, emotions rise in response to “tensions, fears, and challenges,”
128

and “the affective domain . . . facilitates things like devotion . . . commitment, and
loyalty.”
129
Strong emotions sometimes arise from “a lack of faith, times of threats from
within and from outside, and times when a lack of resources may have deferred a dream
or impeded a plan.”
130
For example, if a congregation decides to sell its building, “the
whole emotional process of faith groups going through the decision-making process is
extremely gut wrenching and very difficult” (Robert Pajot, church preservation expert, in
conversation with author, November 2016). And where financial resources are low, those
in charge of budgets might blame the situation on a lack of commitment from members
who should be more dedicated, volunteer more, and tithe more.
131
Those who lead and

background emotions is not always maintainable: emotions can sometimes be understood
as a combination of “persisting attachment and a situational component” (74). Nussbaum,
Upheavals of Thought.
127
Nussbaum, 74.
128
Galindo, The Hidden Lives of Congregations, 156.
129
Galindo, 97.
130
Galindo, 156.
131
Harris, Organizing God’s Work, 87.
48

run churches perceive situations of need, oftentimes, as “more complex than just lack of
resources.”
132

When proposals for change occur, episodic conflicts may erupt as background
emotions rise to the surface. Church members may disagree about the appropriateness of
certain emotions to discrete situations, and conflicts may occur over whether certain
expressions of feelings contribute reasonably to discussion over a situation. They may
also disagree about which emotions are useful in removing the exigence and which are
counterproductive. Emotional clashes can occur as congregations discuss questions of
how to prioritize spiritual, financial, material, and community wishes.
Some members fear change because they feel a loss of personal meaning, an
uprooting of cultural values, or a discarding of the sacred. Others invite transformation
because it feels necessary in order for the church to keep performing God’s mission, and
they feel that emotional attachment should not hold back needed changes.
133
At the same
time, some people desire change for cultural reasons. Indeed, much current thinking
about “what the contemporary congregation should be is an expression of a religious
stance driven by cultural values and mores—so much so that is may be more accurate to
think of a congregation as . . . shaped more by culture than by theology. What constitutes
a congregation may be found more in the attachment or affiliation style . . . than in belief,

132
Harris, 85.
133
Anglican Robert Maguire exemplifies the latter attitude: “[O]ur beloved
church buildings . . . are a millstone around our neck so far as the real work of the Church
is concerned, for reasons as much or more to do with our emotional involvement with
them as for the often burdensome cost of upkeep.” Giles, Re-Pitching the Tent, 8.
49

doctrine, theology, or even tradition.”
134
Church deliberations, therefore, might involve
religious principles and ideas as justifications that layer with cultural values and personal
emotional attachments.
Background emotions tied to glory days, cherished memories, and the stability the
worship community has provided lead people to “resent and fear change.”
135
“People
become emotionally attached to symbols and rituals, patterns of relationships, and
positions of assumed power or prestige. Congregational members develop attachments to
values, heroes, rituals, ceremonies, stories, gossips, storytellers, and other cultural
players.”
136
When communities change and pressures mount on the congregations, older
and younger members may fall into conflict over changes. Younger members may not
share or appreciate some of the attachments older members have developed over time. At
other times, the issue is not generational disagreement but congregational energy.
If church leaders can cultivate the will, energy, and dedication of their church’s
members, a congregation under survival pressure may be able to support its spiritual
enterprise by increasing the rate at which current members volunteer, give, and serve.
Congregations are essentially volunteer organizations that depend upon members to lend
time, money, and energy to run the spiritual enterprise, put sacred space to use, and
maintain programs and services.

134
Galindo, The Hidden Lives of Congregations, 24.

135
Zersen and Potente, Shaping Worship Space, 50.
136
Galindo, The Hidden Lives of Congregations, 150.
50

Sometimes “limited resources rather than a lack of interest or desire” prevents a
congregation from meeting its goals; as important as dedication and other spiritual and
emotional traits are, they are not enough.
137
A congregation must have material, financial,
and physical resources as well. Leaders can cultivate dedication, commitment, and
enthusiasm in a congregation, which are the equivalent of background emotions that
supply energy for responding to exigencies, individually and corporately. Church
ministers and leaders feel a responsibility to inspire spiritual commitment and to rouse
their flock to action. As congregational studies scholar Israel Galindo puts it:
The leadership function [in congregations] . . . includes the need to move people
with a compelling vision of their purpose for being. Influential leaders get people
excited about the congregation’s common mission. They help the members catch
the fire in their eyes, whose source is a passion for responding to God’s call to
minister to and through the Church, because they understand that what people
value most deeply is what moves them to carry out their ministries in the world
most faithfully.
138

For the passions to be put into play requires a narrative within which individual and
common activities achieve purpose.
Logos / Story
Logos is a problematic word. Traditionally, it is associated with practical
arguments aimed to persuade. However, the concept is not reducible to that of logical
reasoning, because well-constructed reasoning in the interest of judgment also involves
situating an audience within a compelling story. We give reasons for things, but those

137
Edwards, The Elusive Dream, 42.
138
Galindo, The Hidden Lives of Congregations, 160.
51

reasons make sense only within larger storied frameworks.
139
Whereas ethos and pathos
are correlated with authority and emotion, I correlate logos in questions of sacred/secular
spaces with story, or more particularly for congregations, “vocation.” In other words, this
study operationally narrows logos to narratives of vocation, a move that is appropriate
given the logics that provide meaning when pursuing religious vocations.
Vocations are storied life narratives. Vocations structure and reveal the identity,
values, and purposes of individual members and the life of a congregation. Vocations can
be understood as compact versions of the story within which a congregational identity is
given meaning (calling) as well as purpose (calling to). A congregation’s vocation is what
“most people will say when you ask about the church,” reiterated in things like sermons,
mission statements, and bulletins.
140
A vocation encapsulates the story of a particular
congregation insofar as it may be understood as a voicing of the congregation’s identity,
purpose, and values. Church vocations “give voice to” the story being lived out,
expressed in narratives, purposes, and values. A vocation “calls” the congregation what it
is—names it—as well as calls it forward or outward—to a mission to fulfill in time or to
values that might be manifested.

139
Fisher, 5; see also Smith, Moral, Believing Animals. Smith argues humans are
animals whose morals and beliefs are inextricably tied to narratives. “We cannot live
without stories, big stories finally, to tell us what is real and significant, to know who we
are, where we are, what we are doing, and why” (67); “[C]ulture and motivation are
generated and sustained by various narrative constitutions of what for moral, believing
animals is real, significant, and good. The normative is thus organized by the narrative”
(80-81); “The sacred at the heart of any social order is always embedded in and arising
from its collective narratives. It is the story that constructs the ideal. It is the narrative that
defines the sacred” (77).
140
Vandergrift, 170.
52

Indeed, a congregation’s vocation may center on certain values, or “ultimate
terms,” to borrow an idea from Richard Weaver. Weaver distinguished between two
types of ultimate terms—God terms and devil terms. God terms are essentially positively-
charged words whose office is to sanction, justify, or inspire action. In a Christian
community, God terms might include “God,” “Jesus,” or “the Spirit,” literally divine
beings—but also words such as faith, love, or service that justify proposals and inspire
actions. Whatever words people pay “the highest respect to” in a culture are its ultimate
terms.
141
Congregations may feel it is part of their calling to embody certain ultimate
terms.
A congregation’s sense of vocation is rooted in scripture and tradition, which is to
say memory. Congregations feel called to participate in an ongoing Christian narrative,
one starting with early, foundations events (such as the life and death of Christ and early
church events). Living out a vocation is how a congregation steps into and keeps the
Christian story going. Since many Christians believe that God is alive and actively
guiding their congregations through His Spirit, congregations may change their sense of
vocation in response to a felt call from God to shift focus and do something different in
their community. In that sense, vocation is a durable, but flexible, sense of identity, core
values, and mission.
As noted earlier when discussing congregational special topics, a congregation
might choose to reflect on and change its sense of vocation.
142
On the one hand, new

141
Foss, Foss, and Trapp, Contemporary Perspectives on Rhetoric, 170.

142
The term “ecclesiology” could have been used in place of “religious vocation.”
Ecclesiology is a congregation’s definition of what it means to be church. See, for
53

churches must invent a vocation as part of their forming. They must decide upon what
scriptures and traditions will shape their identity, values, and mission. However, some
churches already have an established sense of vocation. They might choose to reflect on
their vocation, reaffirm it, or change it in some way.
Congregations can look to local congregational history or the history of the
“Church Universal” for ideas, stories, memories, and religious value terms around which
changes in vocational understanding can be oriented. That is, a congregation can draw on
the local story of its own people in the neighborhood, remembering who it has been from
the beginning and what it has valued from the start, or it can draw ideas from “the sacred
deposit” of scriptures, creeds, liturgies, hymns, songs, and writings from Christians
throughout time for inspiration to change.
143
A congregation can look to this wider
heritage to find “expressions of that heritage, currently neglected” in the congregation
itself, and reclaim them as part of a renewed, re-envisioned, re-articulated sense of
vocation.
The work of inventing and adapting an organizational sense of vocation (or lived
story) is rhetorical. Church leaders develop identity narratives and core values for the first
time to start up a congregation, and they adjust these narratives to adapt standing groups
to new circumstances and to meet new challenges. In both cases, rhetoric takes place in

instance, Vosko, “Ecclesiology and Church Design: A Balancing Act in Times of
Transition,” para. 27: “ecclesiology affects the worship experience of the congregation,
and everything else in that faith community, including its place of worship. Ecclesiology
is the way a religion defines and then structures itself.”
143
Carroll, Dudley, and McKinney, Handbook for Congregational Studies, 25–
26.
54

the form of “organizational identity work.”
144
In congregations, pastors are typically the
people who engage in this work and share its results. In doing so, pastors aim to “provide
a sense of consistency with the past while reflecting and incorporating emerging,
contemporary interests.”
145
To maintain a religious operation that is both feasible and
faithful, spiritual and solvent, they must maintain a balance between integrity and
opportunity, tradition and innovation, permanence and change.
Conclusion
The dissertation posits a general rhetoric of topics, layered with factors of
decorum, authority, emotion, and story that influence deliberations over secular / sacred
spaces. In individual case studies, the mix of factors, topics, and issues are to be mapped
and differences (and similarities) analyzed.
Chapter 2 established the topic (local deliberations over church futures) and built
a perspective for inquiry rooted in a topical understanding of rhetoric. Topics frequently
addressed in these deliberations were assembled and broken into two types
(congregational and public). Deliberation challenges were explained of maintaining
decorum in different contexts (congregations versus public meetings). Finally, a goal of
inquiry was established to learn how people integrate (or differentiate) religious and
secular motives in deliberation, as well as religious and pragmatic rationales for/against
action.

144
Golant et al., “Rhetoric of Stability and Change.”

145
Golant et al., 608.
55

The local case generates a singular mix of motives due to the timing and mix of
stresses on transition. When congregations’ pocketbooks and buildings are emptying out,
arguments arise that must somehow interrelate pragmatic concerns and sacred
commitments. (In)compatibilities among the spiritual and the utilitarian, the sacred and
the secular, and religiously-principled and the organizationally-expedient are revealed in
local cases that require in situ engagement to access. In situ engagement allows us to
access debates in places that would otherwise go unnoticed.
The study is constructed with the expectation that comparative analysis of cases
pushes toward a better understanding of local congregational deliberation and public
debates over sacred/secular spaces. By embarking on this study, the situated uncertainties
of deliberation over churches can begin to be appraised—and interrelations among sacred
and secular articulated. At the end of the dissertation, I will share what has been learned
from comparative case inquiry. In the chapters that follow, three cases of local church
deliberations are analyzed. Now we turn to the first case—Second Baptist Church—the
oldest still-existing African American church in Los Angeles.

56

CHAPTER 3: SECOND BAPTIST CHURCH
There is a mystery about the rebuilding of an old familiar building that defies
explanation. The days and years that you have lived with it have given it a sort of
personal quality. And though you would like not to tamper with it, you are convinced that
survival means renewal.
—Pastor Thomas Kilgore of Second Baptist Church of Los Angeles
146

In some urban areas, such as South Central Los Angeles, churches and liquor
stores are among the few neighborhood institutions that remain.
147
“[U]rban restructuring
has emptied the inner cities of almost all viable neighborhood institutions save the
church.”
148
In many deprived urban communities today, a “building owned by a faith
group is often the only tangible resource.”
149
However, the reality that “the church is the
most stable institution in low-income neighborhoods” may have changed, or soon change
in some areas, due to urban church decline. The future of urban churches is not just a
question of the future of congregations, but of the future of their surrounding
communities in dire need.
In this chapter, the deliberations of the Second Baptist Church (SBC) serve as an
initial case study. The church has a renowned past but an uncertain future. The
photographs in the church’s basement reveal glimpses of a congregation whose efforts
shaped the history of Los Angeles, whose network included powerful actors in Los

146
Kilgore, “Of Termites and the Kitchen Stove,” 2.

147
Sonenshein, “The Battle over Liquor Stores in South Central Los Angeles: The
Management of an Interminority Conflict.”

148
Ramsay, “Redeeming the City,” 621.

149
Church Heritage Forum, “A Future for Church Buildings,” 44.
57

Angeles and beyond, and whose sanctuary served as a center of religious and civic
activity in the city. Despite this celebrated history, in the last few decades, the church has
declined. Building issues, neighborhood change, and spiritual fatigue discouraged the
congregation and made clear that its prestigious role in the city may be forever over.
History and Memory of SBC
In this section, I begin with a factual overview of SBC/s history. This is followed
by an overview of ways the church has remembered itself, imagined its congregational
identity, and defined its vocation over time.
History of SBC
Second Baptist Church is one of the oldest remaining African American Baptist
congregations in the whole of Southern California.
150
Four decades after California
became part of the United States, in 1885, three black pioneers—Reverend Pierce, the
first pastor, and two others—started Second Baptist Church above an animal stable on
Requina Street, in old downtown Los Angeles. They met for two years, increasing to
twenty-two members, when they moved in 1887, bought land and built a proper church
building on 8
th
Street, still in downtown Los Angeles.
151
Five years later, in 1892, the
congregation was larger and expanded its worship facilities by adding a two-story
structure at the front of the church. There they stayed until, in 1925, the congregation had

151
“Second Baptist’s 118th.” This building was “a rough frame wood building
built by the men of the church on the back of lots surrounded with fields of barley on
Maple, a narrow unpaved road at the time between what is now known as Seventh and
Eighth Streets” (p. 9).

58

grown so large (and was continuing to grow), that it decided to move again and build an
even larger church at Griffith Avenue and 24
th
Street. Each time the church’s numbers
increased, it moved to create the space needed for its membership. However, this last
time it moved—to 24
th
street—it would create a drastically larger space than it ever had
before.
The pastor at the time, Revered Thomas L. Griffith, worked with African
American architect, Paul Williams, and structural engineer, Norman Walsh, to design the
space.
152
Once built, it had seating for over 10% of Los Angeles’ black population at the
time (2,000 people), and it became the premiere gathering place for African Americans in
the city.
153
In 1926, the congregation moved into the building, where it has remained ever
since, and it became the most popular Baptist church for middle-class African Americans
in the city. Powerful people would become members in the years to come, such as the
Chief of Staff for Mayor Tom Bradley, William Elkins; Johnnie Cochran, who defended
O. J. Simpson; Charlotta Bass, who published The California Eagle; Judge Albert D.

152

Pastor Griffith sketched ideas for the structure, which he gave to Norman F.
Marsh, who developed the structural plans and interior drawings, and to Paul R.
Williams, who developed the Italian Lombardy Romanseque gold-brick design for the
exterior. “Gallery: Second Baptist Church, Los Angeles, CA.”

153
Since whites did not allow African Americans in their gathering spaces at the
time, Reverend Griffith envisioned the church to be not only a church, but also a
premiere event space for black Angelenos. Hence, the building was meant to be a sacred
and civic space, one where African Americans could not only worship, but also socialize,
network, and mobilize. The church was would be a primary place where black
Angelenos’ spiritual, social, and political needs could be met.

59

Matthews, a pioneer black judge in the city; and Vassie Wright, whose book club
initiated Negro History Week in Los Angeles.
Two years after it moved into its new space—in 1928, the same year City Hall
opened—the church hosted the first NAACP convention on the west coast. The church
was already heavily involved in working for civil rights, both nationally and locally.
Pastor Griffith’s son, Griffith Jr., would serve as the president of the Los Angeles chapter
of the NAACP from 1932 to 1948. In 1954, the congregation raised $1,500 to print the
NAACP Legal Defense Fund briefs used in arguments before the Supreme Court in
Brown vs. Board of Education.
154
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. considered Second Baptist
his church home in Los Angeles and his “West Coast pulpit.”
155

As African Americans continued to pour into Los Angeles from the South, having
migrated from a region of the country where they no doubt experienced intense racism,
many hoped for a better future but knew it would not be perfect in the West, where the
struggle would continue. The Los Angeles Times noted how the church “embraced the
civil rights movement as an essential element of its spiritual mission. Church members
supported . . . local campaigns to fight discrimination against blacks at public pools in
Brookside Park in Pasadena and at Santa Monica Beach, as well as to overturn racially
restrictive housing covenants in California.”
156
As the membership kept growing between

155
Pastor Kilgore was friends with Martin Luther King Sr., who introduced him
to his son. Kilgore would mentor King and help him organize the March on Washington.
He can be seen standing behind him, to the right, during King’s “I Have a Dream”
speech.

156
Anderson, “Only the Walls Will Change,” n.p.

60

1940 and 1970, the congregation’s reputation as a civil rights hub continued to expand in
the city and around the country, growing in confidence and hope that progress would
continue to be made.
According to pastor Kilgore, who succeeded Pastor Griffith as the pastor of
Second Baptist Church, during these years, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, “there
was a growing awareness of what it meant to be black and what it meant to work for
freedom and liberation.”
157
As a result, middle-aged and young black adults and
teenagers joined the church, viewing the church itself as a symbol of the civil rights
struggle. Like many African American churches during this time, SBC was actively
involved in the civil rights movement.
158
Scholars Jackson Carroll, Carl Dudley, and
William McKinney describe activist congregations as those that “speak out on issues and
engage in corporate action, working for social change and transformation towards a more
just and loving society.”
159
Second Baptist took a prominent place among powerhouse
churches working for civil rights during this historical moment.

157
“Black Leadership,” n.p.

158
As one interviewee put it, “Social justice is probably a bigger deal in a lot of
African American churches than it is, say, in an Evangelical white church. . . . They want
to see their belief turn into social progress. I think that is one of the reasons why the black
church—I mean historically that it’s been a place where they could meet and talk and
learn and develop consensus and strategies for addressing social issues. . . . I wonder if
this old church building that’ still there, if it says something to the power of tenacity. . . .
If we’re looking at groups of people, victims of sex trafficking, victims of discrimination,
victims of . . . wage, housing, anything, we’re looking at social justice. This is where it
happened. Maybe this is where it can continue to happen, the dialogue, the work for
social justice of any and all kinds.” (Teresa Rogers, expert on Second Baptist Church and
librarian at UCLA, interview with author, 10/19/2016).

159
Carroll, Dudley, and McKinney, Handbook for Congregational Studies, 29.

61

In 1978, the church became a recognized Los Angeles local cultural monument
for two reasons: first, for having been “the hub of the cultural life in the Black
community from its inception in 1885” and second, for constituting “a good example of
the Lombard Romanesque architectural style of the 1920s.”
160
Later, in 2009, it was
placed on the National Register of Historic Places for being “associated with events that
have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our [nation’s] history.”
161

The church’s civil rights struggles were such an important part of its vocation that state
officials recognized them as having made a “significant contribution” to national history.
SBC’s history is now part of American history. The church serves as an example
of how a “private/religious” site may also be a “public/secular” site, an expression of
sacred and secular space. By engaging with and influencing public policy and culture,
and by serving as a hub for the African American community in LA, and by constituting
an important specimen of Romanesque architecture, the church functioned as a sacred
and secular space, important for many different reasons—which is what Pastor Griffith
wanted it to be when he sketched plans for the church in the 1920s.
Beyond its architectural significance, its role in the civil rights movement, and its
central place in the African American community—which the local and national historic
registers highlight as being important—the church’s own archives (held currently at the
USC library) reveal other things about the congregation. In the next section, I discuss

160
Dentzel, “Cultural Heritage Monument Certification” The church was eligible
for being placed on the National Register of Historic Places because it met Criterion A.

161
Grimes and Chiang, National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet:
Second Baptist Church of Los Angeles (1024-0018), secs. 8–9, p. 3.

62

how internal church publications, particularly commemorative documents, found in the
archives reveal how the congregation remembers itself. These memories reveal the
congregation’s self-understanding and sense of vocation at key moments in its history,
revealing how the church remembers itself and understands its ongoing vocation as an
organization.
Remembering SBC
The congregation of Second Baptist Church remembers its history and speaks
about its vocation in particular ways. In this section, I discuss how the church thinks
about its past and uses memory to construct an ongoing sense of vocation. I will reveal
how the church has used key terms in its commemorations and anniversaries to describe
what it has done, valued, and been in the past, which reveal its religious principles that it
wishes to maintain. These religious commitments include faith, hope, and service.
In 1975, the pastor at the time, Reverend Kilgore, recalled during the
congregation’s 90
th
anniversary that “Second Baptist Church has lived by faith” for 90
years.
162
In 2003, pastor Epps (who remains the pastor today) addressed the congregation
for its 118
th
anniversary, saying
Let us gather and lay hold of the heritage and legacy that is ours as we continue to
be faithful to the purpose for which we came into existence. Those who began
with faith have given unto us a faith worth having. Let that faith lead us to build a
community where life is worth living.
163

162
Kilgore, “Second Baptist’s 90th,” n.p.

163
“Second Baptist’s 118th,” 1.

63

Here we see the pastor articulating a legacy to carry on—a legacy of faith—since the
church began with Christians who then passed down the legacy of faith, from generation
to generation, which the congregation today has received and exists to carry on. This
“carrying on” of tradition from generation to generation reflects what Danièle Hervieu-
Léger calls the “chain of memory” that is the essence of religion.
164

Faith is important to the identity of the congregation, but so is hope, which has
been handed down as well. The congregation recalls that hope enabled the congregation
to face problems along the way, without ever giving up. Pastor Kilgore said during the
90
th
anniversary, “in spite of troubles, set-backs and, at times, almost calamities, Second
Baptist stayed alive.”
165
In the face of challenges, the congregation kept hope. They got
through. In remembering this, they reassure themselves they can again, and again, no
matter what happens.
The congregation has this “heritage of faith” and “legacy of hope” but also carries
on a “heritage of service.”
166
Members describe the congregation as having been a
“servant church” for its whole history.
167
Their calling has always been “servanthood
under Christ,”
168
or put otherwise—“serving in righteousness, integrity, and truth.”
169

164
Hervieu-Léger, Religion as a Chain of Memory.

165
Kilgore, “Second Baptist’s 90th,” n.p.

166
“Centennial Convocation,” 1.

167
Dailey, “Editorially Speaking,” 2.

168
Kilgore, “Second Baptist’s 90th,” n.p.

169
“Second Baptist’s 118th,” n.p.

64

Their motto, which pastor Epps coined in 1987 and the congregation has on their website
today, reflects this ongoing commitment to service: “Service is the price you pay for the
space you occupy.”
170
Service meant serving both members and non-members. It took the
form, historically, of things like affordable housing programs, education programs, and
food programs. Before government-run social welfare programs ever existed, the church
provided weekly sick and death benefits to its members through a “Good Samaritan
Benevolent Society.”
171
During the 115
th
anniversary, an internal church publication
suggested, “it requires the efforts of everyone working together to make our church, our
community, and our nation all that they can become.”
172
Such an attitude made serving a
collaborative effort involving the church, community partners, and even businesses.
SBC is a church of importance to the city and nation. The vocation of Second
Baptist Church—told in archival documents, relayed in sermons, and reminisced among
members—is a story about a congregation formed in faith, sustained through hope, and
animated through service. However, not even a church with such a story is immune to the
challenge of adapting to contemporary life without losing integrity of identity, the
struggle of affording aging facilities, and responding to neighborhood/demographic
change.

170
“About Us,” n.p.

171
Foster, “First Churches Los Angeles Project,” 63.

172
Second Baptist’s 115th, n.p.

65

A Formidable Exigence Mounts
Within the last few decades, Second Baptist has struggled to adapt to a changing
society. Shifting demographics in the neighborhood around the church began to challenge
the congregation in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. The Federal Fair Housing
Law, which passed in 1968, banned restrictive housing covenants in America.
173
This
freed up many members of the church to move to other places in Los Angeles.
Meanwhile, Hispanic and Latino immigrants moved into the neighborhood. Between
1970 and 2010, the neighborhood around the church evolved from being mostly African
American to mostly Hispanic,
174
such that ninety percent of the neighborhood is now
Hispanic.
175
The overwhelming majority of members today live scattered around
different parts of Los Angeles County and commute to and from services on Sundays.
They travel from distances ranging between ten to thirty miles, while others are unable to
attend due to “age-related transportation problems” (Henry Purnell, church deacon,
interview with author, October 8, 2016). Many members can only listen to the services on
radio, sitting at home.
Not only did the neighborhood become increasingly Hispanic, but also the
membership’s average age increased over the last few decades markedly. What is more, a
serious internal conflict divided the congregation in 1987, when Pastor Thomas Kilgore

173
Hesburgh, “Understanding Fair Housing,” 1.

174
Terriquez and Carter, “Celebrating the Legacy, Embracing the Future: A
Neighborhood Study for Second Baptist Church.”

175
Terriquez and Carter, 4.
66

retired. This created a personnel issue. Many members left because of conflicting views
over who should succeed him as the next pastor.
The younger elements of the congregation wanted the assistant pastor, who was
acting as the interim, to be named senior pastor. The ‘powers that be’ within the
church chose Epps, and thus, a significant split occurred. . . . It took about 12
years to overcome the impact of the split—membership and financially. (David
Crippens, former church trustee, interview with author, October 4
th
, 2017).
This split challenged the congregation. Some members left when Pastor William S. Epps
was chosen as the next pastor. The membership dropped, including some lay leaders, and
donations fell. New lay leaders had to be chosen and groomed. To this day, it remains
difficult to attract young people to the congregation. “Most of our people are past 50, and
I’m 93,” Deacon Judge Matthews remarked in an interview: “We do not seem to attract
young adults. I can imagine 10 years from now, we’ll be down to 100 people” (interview
with author, October 6
th
, 2016).
176

Along with demographic changes, a personnel issue that split the church, and the
aging membership, during the 1980s and 1990s facilities issues mounted. The church
building had endured earthquakes that contributed to its problems. In the 1980s, the city
put an ordinance into effect that required churches that had unreinforced walls to be
retrofitted to avoid associated hazards. In the 1990s, the church retrofitted their building’s
walls to meet the city’s requirements, but the building needed more work. (The church
did not have the money to install optional seismic components on the roof and
connections between the roof and walls, which would have cost over a million dollars

176
Had the split of 1987 not happened, perhaps there would be more young
people there today. However, it is hard to say, given that cultural forces (such as
increasing secularization, the rise of “spiritual but not religious” persons, and
generational differences worship style preferences) may still have affected the
congregation and led to the ongoing decline of young people in the church.
67

and made the building even more secure.) The congregation deferred dealing with its
building issues. Decades passed. John A. Martin & Associates, a structural engineering
firm, told the congregation in 2001 that it had “exterior concrete stair and stair wall
cracks, deteriorated and cracked brick mortar joints, loose brick, lack of water proofing at
iron framed skylights, loose clay tile at the roof,” and other issues.
177
The church was still
using its original electrical, HVAC, and sound systems. The church lacked ramps and
disability accommodations in restrooms. Most surfaces needed refinishing. The mural
behind the stage needed retouching. The stained-glass windows needed repairs and
reinforcements.
The church had become an island of African Americans in a sea of Hispanics,
with facilities desperately needing repair. With an aging African American membership
and structure in need of repair, the church struggled to envision how it might adapt to its
increasingly Hispanic neighborhood, restore its building, and revitalize its ministry. How
could it effectively serve once again? How might it renew itself to continue embodying
the vocation and carry forward the legacy of faith, hope, and service?
After recovering from the split in 1987, the congregation was able to address its
facilities problems and social welfare activity goals. It attracted new members in the
1990s who were able to eventually carry the weight of the church’s problems. They took
steps to address the building issues. They finally had enough members to take on a
“sizable debt load to accomplish this large task” (David Crippens, former church trustee,
interview with author, October 9
th
, 2017). During the early 2000s, they created plans to

177
Martin, “Report on Structural Due Diligence,” 5.
68

restore the building, which they hoped would inspire renewal in the congregation and
help to improve the surrounding neighborhood which they felt obligated to serve.
Restoring the Building, Congregation, and Community
Under the leadership of pastor Epps, the church put together numerous
committees to address the congregation’s problems. Volunteer personnel made up a
building restoration committee, membership growth committee, and other committees.
Epps led the congregation with a vision to restore the building, grow the membership,
and reinvigorate the spiritual life of the congregation. The trustee board, led by David and
Eloise Crippens, is where the day to day, nitty gritty work was done to bring the building
restoration to fruition. It researched, networked, deliberated, calculated, strategized, and
decided how to move forward with the building preservation project.
To help begin the building restoration project, personnel from the trustee board
started by securing a $75,000 “Preserve L.A.” grant in December 2000 from the J. Paul
Getty Trust Grant Program. This grant covered costs of analyzing the building’s
conditions to determine repair needs, recommendations for solutions, and how to
preserve the structure sensitively. The Getty’s press release stated, “the sanctuary remains
the foundation of economic, cultural, and religious life for the surrounding community.
The Getty funds will be used to research, document, and identify the conservation needs
of the structure and preserve its landmark 1920s Romanesque Revival architecture.”
178

178
Brown, “‘Preserve L.A.’ Grants: Getty’s Preserve L.A. Grant Program Seeks
New Applications by August 20, 2001 and Funds Support Conservation of Historical,
Cultural Sites Throughout L.A. County,” para. 5.

69

Studies funded by the “Preserve L.A.” Grant confirmed facility needs were
numerous and would be expensive to meet. The studies came in with quotes for different
categories of repair work. These included the categories discussed above—structural
repairs, sound upgrades, HVAC system replacement, aesthetic touch ups, glass
restorations, ADA code upgrades—as well as a quote for an elevator that could hold a
casket. The Chair of the Construction Committee, William Carlisle, presented a report
estimating that the maintenance, repairs, and upgrades would cost altogether over $5.5
million.
179
The trustee board tried to secure other grants, donations, and support from the
government, organizations, and private benefactors but was unable to find any. Raising
money for repairs would be the responsibility of the congregation alone.
Paid and volunteer personnel including Pastor Epps, the trustee board, deacons,
and other members agreed the church should go forward with the expensive renovations.
Some members initially questioned the choice to restore the existing facilities. A few
people thought that the congregation should move elsewhere and invest in a new
structure instead of restoring the building. Others responded that property was hard to
find in Los Angeles, and prices for land were too steep to afford. Moreover, they said,
restoring the building might attract new members, which the church was in need of, and it
would preserve the space, which many members had feelings and memories attached to
as well as pride in the historic designation as a city monument (David Crippens,
interview with author, January 22
nd
, 2018).

179
Carlisle, “Update on Spiritual Growth Campaign and Remodeling of Building:
Renovation Priorities for Second Baptist Church.”

70

Moreover, strategically speaking, the congregation realized that the neighborhood
was poised to gentrify in the years ahead, with downtown moving closer, the Staples
Center being built, and USC expanding. A rising tide lifts all boats—and the church saw
an economic tide coming its way. Those who initially questioned restoring the existing
facilities either “came around” and changed their minds, or they decided opposition was
not worth the time; since the pastor and other key personnel leaned towards it. When it
came to a vote, the decision was approved unanimously. The church would be restored.
The congregation knew, since people were staying, that the church’s facilities
required restoration as soon as possible. If supports were not put in place, “the building
could possibly fall down around us. Remember, no major work, except for earthquake
repairs, had been done since it was built in the 1920’s” (David Crippens, interview with
author, January 14
th
, 2018). The decision to restore the building entailed an understanding
that the congregation would need to engage in an extensive, church-wide capital
campaign.
In view of this, the trustee board sought out a consultant named Herman Norman
from Generis, a church fundraising firm. Norman helped them not only devise a capital
campaign to begin in May 2004, but also to link the spiritual and the financial elements
of the project. Since the church wanted to continue its longstanding vocation of service in
the city—not just restore the building—the congregation’s leaders decided to name the
campaign “The Spiritual Growth Campaign” with the subtitle “Embracing the Future . . .
Now. ‘Fulfilling Our Destiny Seeking the Peace of the City.’ (Jeremiah 29:7).” In other
words, they embedded the fundraiser in a larger “spiritual growth” campaign, which
71

included interrelated efforts to restore the building, increase giving, increase the
membership, and increase the volunteerism of current members.
The spiritual growth framework enabled the congregation to integrate spiritual,
material, and financial aspects of their project—in other words, linked ideas of vocation
to the capital campaign to restore the building. Norman provided theological links
between spiritual values and financial needs. In a presentation before the congregation, he
cited scripture to establish the importance of generosity in the church and how sacrificial
giving marks people of spiritual maturity. Because the congregation relied on passages of
scripture to justify the fundraiser, the spiritual growth campaign increased spiritual
commitment and channeled that commitment into raising funds. As one member noted,
all capital campaigns are conducted to raise money, and the church’s campaign was no
different, except “it had an overlay of spirituality. The project had lofty goals, but it still
was a capital fundraiser” (David Crippens, interview with author, January 16
th
, 2018).
The campaign began in 2004 with “a huge number of church members [spending]
almost one year in planning, organizing, and providing the structure and foundation for
an effective and successful spiritual growth campaign,” guided by Norman.
180
The
practical steps required researching giving capacity, goal setting, and “determination of
the various ways money can be given and received—cash, property, bonds, stock,
bequeaths, insurance policies,” etc. (David Crippens, interview with author, January 16th,
2018). Norman also instructed the congregation to divide into teams that would help

180
Purnell, “Report of the Spiritual Growth Campaign Follow-up Team,” para. 2.
72

build awareness of the spiritual growth campaign. The teams would also seek input from
the church community members.
On March 21, 2004, the congregation gathered for an event celebrated as the
“Great Day of Fellowship.” Small groups of believers gathered throughout the city to get
to know one another better, watch a video about the spiritual growth campaign, and hear
a leader share the future vision for the church. This vision entailed restoring the facilities
and renewing the sense of vocation, through which the congregation would “maintain
[its] relevance and viability as a fellowship of faith.”
181
A special edition newsletter was
distributed to the congregation in early April, 2004, with a message from the pastor. He
discussed the “Great Day of Fellowship” and how people gathered, got to know one
another even better, and discussed “our vision as a congregation to serve this present
society of which we are a part.” He then previewed what was to come. In April there
would be a program at the church called the “lifestyle stewardship Bible Study,” which
he connected to the Spiritual Growth Campaign in the following way:
King David said, ‘I will not offer a sacrifice to the Lord that cost me nothing’ (II
Samuel 24:24). Lifestyle stewardship is derived from the commitment David
made. So each of you will be asked to consider what your sacrifice will cost you.
We are not expecting equal giving but equal sacrifice. Let me share with you how
my family arrived at the cost of our sacrifice. We had decided that when we were
able, after getting the children through school without any debt, that we would
double up on the mortgage payment in order to pay it off early. As we reassessed
our lifestyle we decided to readjust our priorities and reallocate those resources
to the campaign.
Many members read this newsletter and attended the Bible Study, which was based on
materials provided by Herman Norman.

181
Epps, “Introduction to the Spiritual Growth Campaign Report,” 3.
73

During a special Sunday program on April 11, 2004, Pastor Epps announced the
amount he would give personally to the campaign. This began to signal what authorities
like the pastor and other key personnel in the church were willing to sacrifice for the
project, whose examples would be significant to the congregation. His public
announcement committed a significant amount of funds. Two days later, other key
leaders announced heft gifts as well. The idea of these initiatives was to start a spiral
where the congregation’s members and families would also consider parting with funds.
After the pastor and other leaders announced pledge amounts, the congregation was
counseled to spend a few weeks praying and thinking about how much they would be
able to give. The return day was May 2, “Commitment Sunday.” Requested was that each
member present 10% of their pledge in hand to give if possible. The other 90% would be
given gradually over the next three years (on top of normal giving). From May 2004 to its
conclusion in May 2007, the three-year effort rose a total of $1,816,435.
182

The leaders of SBC also hired a consultant, Alison Jefferson, in May 2006 toward
the middle of the campaign. As a historic preservation consultant, she was asked to
advise the church on how it could use preservation to help revitalize the neighborhood—
an expression of its ongoing felt call to serve. She argued that by preserving the facilities
of SBC—and putting them to new use through new programming and events—the church
could not only save their beloved structure, but also bring income into the church to help
ensure its long-term viability and carry on the congregation’s sense of vocation as a

182
The congregation kept on giving past the official end date of the campaign, so
that by December 2010, it had given a total of $2,246,147.

74

“servant church” in the neighborhood. The leaders considered Jefferson’s suggestions
carefully. Her report suggested, “the remarkable heritage of this congregation [should be]
capitalized on in future spiritual and community service and real estate development
plans.”
183
Overall, she suggested turning the church into a “center of activity” to attract
spiritual audiences, tourists, and those seeking help.
Her strategy was one of “extended use,” increasingly common for churches,
which involves “coexistence of community, cultural and worship uses of a building.”
184

She suggested a new mix of programming at the church be invented: “In addition to
spiritual programs, the church in partnership with other community groups could feature
ongoing, regularly scheduled and long-term cultural tourism and community service
programming.”
185
This would establish “a stronger image for the site as a spiritual,
cultural, and educational center,”
186
and as a result, attract more people’s support. Some
people might commit time and resources to the church’s social welfare services; others
might join the congregation, begin worshipping there, and tithing.

183
Jefferson, “Second Baptist Church: Building on the Past to Sustain the Future,”
6.

184
Coomans and Grootswagers, “Developing a European Network for the Future
of Religious Heritage,” 228.

185
Jefferson, “Second Baptist Church: Building on the Past to Sustain the Future,”
11.

186
Jefferson, “Second Baptist Church: Building on the Past to Sustain the Future,”
11.

75

Jefferson’s suggestion to renew the use of SBC facilities through looping sacred
and secular activity could help the congregation stay afloat by providing extra income
and exposure. This would also, she said, help the neighborhood and city:
[U]rban regeneration, economic growth, and cultural development are inter-
related. . . . Extended use can give an opportunity to link religious heritage, which
carries meaning and identity also for non-faith communities, with the secular
mindset of our time. A benefit of extended use is a broader constituency of
support for the building: bringing more people, resources and organizations to its
aid.
187

To accomplish such a vision, Jefferson maintained, the church must build “sustainable
program partnerships” with people and organizations that could help facilitate events and
services that the church might provide.
188
The church, for instance, might partner with the
Los Angeles Conservancy to promote itself as a site of cultural heritage in the Central
Avenue Corridor. Together, it might arrange “docent-led and self-guided tours” and
develop “various types of exhibits and education activities . . . to showcase different
aspects of the Second Baptist heritage.”
189
The congregation could partner with USC or
another university to make the church’s archive available so that “parishioners,
community members and scholars could examine [the documents] for research.”
190
The
congregation could partner with various social welfare organizations to provide more
community services in the building such as parenting classes, computer classes, ESL

187
Coomans and Grootswagers, “Developing a European Network for the Future
of Religious Heritage,” 228.

188
Jefferson, “Second Baptist Church: Building on the Past to Sustain the Future,”
12.
189
Jefferson, 10.

190
Jefferson, 10.

76

classes, tutoring and other programs for children, youth, and families. The congregation
could partner with artists, musicians, thinkers, activists, and filmmakers who want to use
the space for programs and events such as concerts, films, lectures, community
discussions, and meetings.
191

The pastor and other personnel listened to Jefferson’s suggestions with interest,
but they put them on the back burner. Their first order of business was to restore and
modernize the building’s facilities, technology and amenities. The Spiritual Growth
Campaign ended in June 2007, and by September 2007, the congregation had moved to
an alternative, temporary site in Inglewood-- Faithful Central’s Living Room. Work
began on the historic church. The congregation was out of their building from September
2007 to May 2009. During this time the pastor gave regular updates and estimates on how
construction was going, the status of financial obligations and resources, and updates on
when congregation could move back.
Multiple members reported to me in interviews that, during this time, it was not
hard to motivate the congregation to stay together. The core group had grown close
through significant events that had prepared them for changes. As a result of
fellowshipping during special events—such as the Great Day of Fellowship, prayer
vigils, and other assemblies of the congregation—the church body was stitched together
tightly. The people were excited, on board with the project, and committed to staying

191
Jefferson, 12. The building has a history of hosting community discussions.
For example, after MLK was assassinated, pastor Kilgore hosted a group of local black
panthers in the building to discuss the assassination and their plans to react in violence,
and this talk-out prevented some of the violence that might have occurred in Los Angeles
because it gave people an outlet to express rage, talk things out, and decide not to get
violent.
77

together even if displaced, for the time being, from its historic structure. Reflecting on
this time, Pastor Epps (201) wrote to “you,” the faithful:
I am thankful for your sacrifice during the campaign and most especially at your
patience, perseverance and persistence while we were dislocated. You did not
waver in your commitment, devotion and generosity. You met every challenge
with confidence, every delay with determination, every development with
dedication, every hindrance with hope, every limitation with longsuffering, every
problem with patience, every perplexity with prudence, and every set back with
sagacity. . . . Thank you for your commitment to this congregation of believers in
Christ which is evidence of your love of the Lord. Thank you for honoring the
legacy of those who have preceded you by preserving and modernizing the sacred
space they gave to you. Thank you for what you bequeath as your legacy to those
generations yet to follow.
192

The Pastor congratulated the congregation for its commitment, dedication, and sacrifice
during the time of dislocation. Henry Purnell, the main leader of the Spiritual Growth
Follow-up Team, also wrote in 2012, “We thank God for His blessings that made our
Spiritual Growth Campaign possible. With His grace and mercy, we shall continue to
provide a prophetic witness to the Los Angeles community, state and nation. ‘Our best
years are yet to come!’”
193

The congregation moved back to its facility in May 2009, modernized and
restored to its former glory. The congregation, elated to be back, celebrated the return
with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. However, shortly after the congregation returned, new
troubles arose. These included the collapse of Second Baptist’s Credit Union under the
leadership of Norman Bullock, a key member at Second. The Great Recession was in full
force at this time, but some members were convinced Bullock contributed to the credit
union’s demise through personal mismanagement and malfeasance. People in the church

192
Epps, “Introduction to the Spiritual Growth Campaign Report,” 4.

193
Purnell, “The Spiritual Growth Campaign,” 5.
78

lost money and questioned why it happened. Simultaneously, suspicions arose concerning
the sale of one of Second’s auxiliary properties that Bullock was also involved with—in
particular, the fate some of the money that was obtained by the sale remained unclear.
People became suspicious of Bullock and wanted leaders to address what happened and
how it was going to be addressed. Key personalities in the congregation clashed over the
issue and how to handle it. About 33% of the congregation ended up leaving, unsatisfied
with the answers to the questions they had, and unhappy with the explanations they were
given (David Crippens, interview with author, January 18, 2018).
The result? Just after the congregation returned to the building, restored in glory,
a substantial portion of the membership left, entirely due to these unrelated issues.
Approximately 1/4 or 300 members exited the church, bring the congregation down from
1,200 to around 900 members. Among those who left were key individuals that had
helped provide leadership during the Spiritual Growth Campaign and restoration.
Inevitably, this stalled the congregation’s progress. Those who stayed were unable to
focus on “anything outside of survival” during this period (David Crippens, former
member, interview with author, January 18, 2018). They shifted away from imagining
how to best use the restored building—and focused on survival.
The Ongoing Exigence at SBC
The split of 2009 hit the congregation hard. Its budget and capability suffered.
Many members left, including a significant number in their 30s and 40s. The building
stood restored and ready for renewed use, but the loss of members, well-connected
volunteers, and wealthy givers meant the congregation had fewer resources than before.
Some people who had been involved in the plans to expand the building’s programming,
79

events, and service efforts left. This gap in volunteer personnel needed to be filled by
others who were distracted by the split and less informed about the church’s potential.
Having met, remarkably, the “challenges of maintaining grand old houses of
worship,” as Katie Day calls it,
194
the congregation’s split came at an unfortunate time.
Yet, around the same time, the church got a fortuitously-timed grant to study how it
might best live out its vocation to serve its changed neighborhood. This grant funded a
study of the neighborhood and provided information about how the church could address
its needs. It involved a collaboration between the Center for the Study of Immigrant
Integration (CSII) at USC and the Esperanza Community Housing Corporation (ECHC)
in Los Angeles. The study’s report was called, “Celebrating the Legacy, Embracing the
Future: A Neighborhood Study for Second Baptist Church.”
195
It provided insight into
how the church could fulfill part of its vocation.
The report notes how the church has an opportunity “to participate in
collaborative efforts to advocate and provide services for its surrounding
neighborhood,”
196
and by doing so “take action consistent with the church’s social justice
history.”
197
As a community whose vocation has included “[struggling] for social justice
in South Los Angeles,” the church might partner with organizations that are mobilizing
and advocating for health and human rights in the area. These organizations include the

194
Day, Faith on the Avenue, 42.

195
Terriquez and Carter, “Celebrating the Legacy, Embracing the Future: A
Neighborhood Study for Second Baptist Church.”

196
Terriquez and Carter, 13.

197
Terriquez and Carter, 13.
80

South Los Angeles Building Healthy Communities coalition, the L.A. Community Action
Network, USC’s Program for Environmental and Regional Equity, Strategic Action for a
Just Economy, and First Five Los Angeles. The church could network with these
organizations “in a meaningful way, as a landowner, a social service provider, and a
faith-based institution.”
198

A regional and neighborhood-level network was growing. The first ever South
Los Angeles Conference on Health and Human Rights was hosted in June 2009. The
“South Los Angeles Declaration of Health and Human Rights” was signed in December
2009. Could an institution, repaired but under stress, take advantage of the “fortuitous”
opportunity for service extension through engagement? Jefferson suggested speakers
from these movements be invited “to address and engage the congregation,” as the
“human rights frame provides great opportunity for linkage and engagement.”
199

Lastly, the report suggested some of the same things that Alison Rose Jefferson
suggested back in 2006 during the Spiritual Growth Campaign.
200
These innovations
include different ways the church could serve South Central and become a center of
activity to provide new social welfare programming and events in the immediate
neighborhood. Almost all the actions require the church to partner with exogenous
groups, or alternative organization(s), particularly since the community lacked youthful,
congregational volunteers to host events on a sustainable schedule. Partnerships included

198
Terriquez and Carter, 12.

199
Terriquez and Carter, 14.

200
Jefferson, “Second Baptist Church: Building on the Past to Sustain the Future.”
81

such things as (1) building affordable housing through connections with local real estate
development organizations; (2) expanding availability of affordable child-care in the area
through partnering with USC’s Early Childhood Development Center, the Pacific Asian
Consortium for Employment (PACE), or other organizations; and (3) hosting events and
running various programs in the church building through partnerships with organizations
such as the Community Development Technologies Center (CD Tech), Esperanza
Community Housing, and All People’s Christian Center to provide after school and
summer activities for youth, and ESL and computer classes for adults. (The church would
not have to run any of these programs, but merely allow other organizations to use the
church’s space. Such partnerships could even bring needed income to the congregation.)
Nearly a decade has passed since the congregation got this report; yet, not much
has happened to bring its suggestions about. The Spiritual Growth Campaign sought to
restore the building and the people, but the problems that existed before the building was
restored remain. Some have gotten worse. Finances remains a challenge. The housing
crisis of 2008 and the 2009 split created a firestorm in the church’s finances. To create
stability again, the church had to engage in some “fiscal restructuring,” such as
refinancing the loan it took on for restoration work (Lorn S. Foster, interview with
author, June 27
th
, 2017). Though the congregation is financially stable today (Lorn S.
Foster, interview with author, June 27
th
, 2017), how long will that last?
One key issue is that of ongoing income. An aging congregation made up of a
large proportion of women cannot sustain an operation like Second Baptist Church for
long. Women serve as the social and economic base of black churches everywhere and
82

continue to outnumber men in black congregations,
201
but gender inequality affects how
much they can give. Forty-six percent of all single black women have zero or negative
wealth,
202
yet they are relied upon to help pay for black church’s missions, including
Second Baptist’s.
Another related issue that plagues the congregation still is its lack of youth
participation. More people continue to die than join. The building was restored, but
people hoped that by restoring the building and making it a center of activity, young
people would visit and become members. But the church has not become a center of
activity, and the church has not attracted young people. The average member is now over
sixty, and the pastor and lay leaders are in their seventies and eighties. Deacon Henry
Purnell shared his theory of the situation with me:
The programs that we have now are not necessarily attractive to young people. . . .
We are going to have to have creative programs to attract and hold the generations
coming after us. They don’t necessarily appreciate the same things that we did
years ago. . . . My best barometer is my own daughters. We do things in an
‘antiquated way,’ we don’t do things ‘proficiently,’ they say. We are not on to the
new technology of the generation. . . . If we don’t adapt to those things that appeal
to this generation, we’re going to get further out-of-sync with what’s going to be
required to attract them to our church. (Henry Purnell, current deacon, interview
with author, 10-8-2016)

Deacon Purnell argued, essentially, that young people won’t come to the church until it
begins to implement new programs and technology, but he admitted not knowing where
to start with this. However, to implement change, such as bringing in new technology and

201
Walker, “The Black Church next: Challenges and Opportunities Facing
African American Congregations in 21st Century Los Angeles.”

202
Walker.
83

starting new programs, requires a community of volunteers who are willing to work for
change.
In 2012, roughly three years after the split, Pastor Epps and the elders of the
congregation put together a document called “Vision: 2020,”
203
in which changes were
imagined that would lead in a positive direction. Forty members, including the pastor,
deacons, and others, met three times over the course of many months and developed
goals for the congregation such as developing community partnerships, co-locating with
community partners in new and existing facilities, maximizing the use of existing
facilities, and strengthening the congregation’s ministries.
204
In one meeting when these
goals were discussed, someone said,
If we think about it, Second Baptist has a lot of people who come on Sunday but
do not do anything else during the week. Just on Sunday. That is the underlying
problem. That wasn’t the SB of old. . . . We don’t have members who are
workers. Need discipline to be a member. Pastor has to ask. Revival is not
working. . . . We have to encourage one another to work. . . . Being a Christian is
not a one day affair.
205

The problem was not a lack of vision, some claimed. It was lack of “implementation and
follow-through. No impact or actions.”
206
The congregation has identified that it will take
work to bring change, but many in the congregation are unmotivated or too tired to
implement change. Based on my interviews, some of the members are indeed open to
change. However, the congregation as a whole seems ambivalent. Inertia reigns. The

203
“Vision 2020.”

204
“Vision 2020,” 14.

205
“Vision 2020,” 10.

206
“Vision 2020,” 9.
84

congregation has a vision, which includes change, but little has happened in the last five
years to bring new changes about. As one person put it, reflecting on the Vision 2020
document, “You have to have more than a paper document” (Lorn S. Foster, interview
with author, June 21
st
, 2017).
Conclusion
Second Baptist Church is a historic, sacred and civic space that grew up with the
city. Facing challenges of personnel conflict, facilities issues, and neighborhood
demographic change, the church decided to restore its building and develop its people
spiritually through a “Spiritual Growth Campaign.” The campaign aimed at increasing
member’s generosity, which would provide key funds for restoring the building and add a
vocational priority for the congregation in general. In this way, the congregation linked
practical organizational considerations—the building’s need for restoration—with
religious principle and spiritual vocation. Scripture supported a commitment to
generosity, which was embraced as part of their Christian heritage. The congregation
listened to leaders talk about the future of the church and how financial sacrifices would
be required of every member if the spiritual growth campaign was to succeed. The
congregation raised $1.8 million and took out a loan for $4 million (approximately)
which were combined to pay for the restoration project, which was completed in 2009.
Deliberations can yield success—a restored building is quite an
accomplishment—but congregations never finish deliberating. There are always going to
be challenges. The congregation had also hoped its membership would grow and existing
members would serve more as a result of the spiritual growth campaign. Despite a
successful building restoration, the congregation still struggles with an aging and
85

relatively inactive membership, which mostly commutes in from various places in the
city and, due to factors such as distance and member disability, is not contributing
resources as much as it could if members lived closer, were more inspired, or were not
disabled. Manifesting the vocation to serve, give generously, and reach out to others is
easier said than done for the congregation today. Despite good intentions to fulfill the
vocation, something is not quite working.
Deliberation within a community is an ongoing requirement. Congregations must
adapt somewhat to changing times and circumstances to fulfill vocations, maintain
facilities, and host programs and events that resonate with people. They must discern
what needs to change or stay the same, and they cannot change too much at once.
Consultants can provide suggestions, studies can be done, but ultimate decisions are not
for outsiders to make. Congregations must follow trusted authorities while navigating
their own tricky emotional terrain related to nostalgia, loss of prestige, and declining
memberships. The continuity of an institution depends upon creating an attractive space
for both aging members and a new generation, plans to accommodate change in the
environment and plans to reach out to new neighbors, as well as seizing opportunities
when they come available—should the energy be there to confront future necessity and
set aside past disappointment.

86

CHAPTER 4: CENTRAL AVENUE CHURCH
Change in congregations is difficult because it alters cultural forms that give meaning to
congregations and to the various groups that make up the faith community.
—Israel Galindo, Scholar of Congregations
207

In the last chapter, we saw a congregation struggling but finally agreeing on a
plan of action. Under the leadership of its pastor, the congregation decided to embody a
flexible vocation by generously restoring its building. They would fulfill an ongoing
vocation and satisfy an organizational urgency simultaneously. Followers followed, and
leaders led. By following the pastor and not challenging his vision, the congregation
legitimized his authority. In this chapter, we encounter a congregation in which
challenges to authority and conflict, rather than obedience to authority and consensus,
marked deliberations over the future of a church.
In most churches there is a norm against open conflict.
208
In addition, in some
churches, there is a perception that you can either agree with the leadership, or exit.
209
At
Central Avenue Church, what we will in this chapter is that the norm of avoiding conflict

207
Galindo, The Hidden Lives of Congregations, 150.

208
Harris, Organizing God’s Work. Harris notes how in her case studies of four
local congregations, two of them had “individuals—including some in leadership
positions—who had doubts about key manifest purposes of the congregation. . . . Yet
these people never made their views explicit within their congregations and did not
intend to do so. The appearance of consensus was maintained. The choice was seen as
being between ‘exit’ and ‘loyalty’; ‘voice’ in relation to broad mission goals, was not
seen as an option in any of the congregations. Within this general consensus about broad
purposes, issues arose as choices had to be made about ‘operational’ goals: the means
through which broad purposes were to be achieved” (p. 73).

209
Hinderaker and Garner, “Speaking Up on My Way Out the Door.”
87

was broken many times as members engaged in open conflict and challenged the pastor’s
authority. This raises the question of what emotions, events, or circumstances could lead
people to violate two common congregational norms—against conflict, and against
challenging the pastor’s authority? This chapter explores these questions along with the
question of how a church rhetorically justifies material and vocational change.
In situ inquiry requires exploratory research but also somewhat active
participation in the case. I attended an event held at Central Avenue Church on June 1st,
2015. “Executing the Undead God: Faith, Fundamentalism and Radical Theology” was
its title. I showed up as the sun began to set, though it was still light enough outside to see
murals painted on the sides of the church. The murals were done in a street-art style,
which made an impression. I walked inside and found my seat. Sitting in an old pew near
the middle of the sanctuary, I exchanged greetings with a few strangers around me before
the event started with Pastor Aaron Van Voorhis taking the stage. He introduced Peter
Rollins, the speaker for the evening—who then spoke for an hour.
I listened, but my thoughts kept returning to the artwork I had seen outside and
the striking interior of the building. The inside of the building exhibited a mixture of old
and new elements, such as stained-glass windows and digital screens, pews and photos of
Los Angeles and Hollywood. This mixture of new technology and old pews, edgy street
art on the building with traditional elements inside, piqued my curiosity about the
congregation. What did these aesthetic figures represent? What kind of church was this,
and who were the faithful that convened here?
I reached out to Pastor Van Voorhis to learn more about the facilities. Built in
1952 with colonial-style architecture, traditional white columns and a red brick facade, it
88

was originally the First Baptist Church of Glendale (we’ll discuss the name change later
to Central Avenue Church). It was formed as a Southern Baptist congregation after
WWII, when churches were built during the building boom all over Southern California
(and the rest of the United States). When I eventually saw and studied the old
membership directories and group photographs, I learned it was once a thriving
congregation in the 1950s and 1960s, full of middle-class white folks, aged toddler to
octogenarian.
By the early 2000s, the congregation had dwindled significantly. By 2009, only
around twenty people were attending on Sundays, a far cry from its early days when the
pews were full. It had dwindled down to just five families, whom Pastor Van Voorhis
described as “parents” in their nineties, people who helped start the church, and their
“children” and “grandchildren” (between fifty and seventy years old).
Personnel conflicts had been occurring, back-to-back, for the last two decades or
so with new pastors being hired and fired every few years. Numerous Southern Baptist
pastors served the congregation in the 1990s and 2000s. It hired and fired a handful of
them, unsatisfied with their leadership and the lack of results they had in bringing in new
people. The congregation knew it had to do something, however, so it hired a different
sort of pastor: no more from the Southern Baptist Convention, the hiring committee
thought. They would cut ties with the Southern Baptist Convention and seek someone
unaffiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention to initiate major changes. Pastor Van
Voorhis explained the “grandchildren” in their fifties led this decision. They wanted to
hire a preacher fresh out of seminary who would shake things up and hopefully draw in a
younger crowd.
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Pastor Van Voorhis applied for the job, and the congregation hired him in 2009. It
was not able to pay him very much to start, but he could live in the parsonage for free,
and if the congregation grew, his salary would increase. Once he got things going, he
could hire other personnel to help lead the church. Six months into the job, he brought on
an intern to help with music on Sunday mornings named Max Wedel. Wedel was a
student at Fuller Theological Seminary at the time, who needed an internship as part of
his degree. Eight years later, he is still the music director at the church, and Van Voorhis
remains the pastor.
In the past eight years, everything has changed. All the members who were there
in 2009—and who helped hire Van Voorhis—left. Whereas the congregation used to be
almost exclusively Caucasian, now only two-thirds are Caucasian. The other third of the
current members are made up of African Americans, Asians, and Hispanics/Latinx
people. Today the congregation is roughly 80% millennial, with the average member in
their early thirties. Fifteen percent of its current members are LGBT, whereas none were
in 2009 when Van Voorhis was hired. The vocation of the congregation has shifted. The
building aesthetics have changed. In a word, the congregation transformed, and its
building transformed with it.
This chapter tells the story of how First Baptist Church became Central Avenue
Church—the story of vocational and facilities transformation. It tells the story of conflict
over change, the story of disagreement over what church is and what it should be, how it
should look and what it should reflect. It tells the story of vocational change and material
change, and how those adjustments are (and are not) related. It tells the story of conflict,
confusion, and pain within a congregation that is coming to terms with difference. The
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chapter proceeds (1) to sketch the facilities changes that occurred within the first year and
the conflicts of that erupted as a result (2009-2010). (2) It examines the spiral of events
that followed and how older members began to leave, material changes kept coming, and
younger people started to join (2010-2012). (3) It covers the facilities changes that
continued while a new understanding of vocation developed (2012-2015); (4) I observe
how the material and spiritual transformations were related and draw implications for the
study of sacred/secular deliberation.
Arrival of the New Pastor and Subsequent Conflicts Over Change
In 2009, Aaron Van Voorhis arrived at First Baptist of Glendale as the new head
pastor. He decided early on, “I’m going to take it extremely slow, I want people to get to
know me. I want to get to know them, and I want there to be some kind of trust built
before we start making a lot of changes” (interview with author, September 2, 2016). He
maintained the congregation’s usual programming and preached in a style that the
congregation found comfortable. He affirmed “a lot of doctrinal conservatism” (interview
with author, September 2, 2016). At first, he did not change the vocation of the church a
great deal, though he did make “intellectual honesty” an important aspect of the
congregation (which, for him, essentially meant embracing evolution and science). In
addition, he did not monkey with the building’s looks and try to alter the aesthetics very
much when he first arrived. Within the first week, though, he made two major material
changes inside the building. First, he moved the trophy case out of the foyer into storage,
and second, he took the American flag off the stage. These facilities changes led to some
serious conflict among older members and Pastor Aaron.

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Where’s the Trophy Case?!?!
The first week, Pastor Aaron looked around and thought the church facility’s
aesthetics were “extremely off-putting in some ways” (interview with author, September
2, 2016). There was a case in the foyer with bowling and softball trophies that former
members had won. The display was five feet tall by three feet wide. Aaron took the
trophy case down as well as “a really old, murky board in the foyer that we took off the
wall.” The following Sunday, the oldest person in the church, a WWII veteran and
founding member, then 92 years old, “came in with his wife, noticed that the trophy case
was gone, and lost it.” He looked around for Aaron. When he found him, he exclaimed,
‘Where’s the trophy case?!’ I’m like, ‘Well, we took that down, and we threw it
out, and we put the trophies in storage downstairs.’ He was extremely upset.
Because in his mind, that was something that made the church relevant; it was
something that told people when they walked into the church, ‘Hey, this church
does stuff.’ I felt that the trophy case was just, just awful, obnoxious and said all
of the wrong things. It basically did the opposite of what he wanted it to, it was
ironic. He felt it was a symbol of relevancy, but now it’s a symbol of irrelevancy
and makes you look ridiculous.
This was only the first disagreement. In the small, remaindered congregation there were
not that many people whose memories were invested in bygone leagues and few to
disagree with the rearrangement of space. However, certain key older members did not
like change, and they let pastor know about it.
Where is the Flag?!?!
Though Aaron tried to be slow about changing programs, facilities, and events, he
made one other significant alteration during the first week. He removed the American
flag from the stage. He thought it was problematic to mix Christianity and nationalism, so
he put it in storage. The action was not noticed until six months later on the fourth of
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July, 2010, which fell on a Sunday that year. “The same guy . . . who lost it about the
trophy case, lost it about the American flag” (interview with author, September 2, 2016).
He comes up to me. I’m in the front row pew. During the music he stands in front
of me and says, ‘Where is the flag?’ confrontationally, face-to-face. I’m facing
the stage, he’s facing me. So everybody can see [this man] who’s in the pews—
they can see him facing me, and I was facing forward. So [he’s] facing me and
says, ‘Where’s the flag?’ and I say, ‘It’s up in the attic,’ and he says to me:
‘You’re going to go up and get it right now, and bring it down’” (interview with
author, September 2, 2016).
This member breaks rank and commands the pastor to act. This is indecorous behavior in
a congregation. Aaron explained to me that this member was not only a WWII vet, and
therefore patriotic, but he also “basically founded that church and ran it for years. . . . He
was never the pastor, but a major member, a deacon and trustee.” Having helped found
the church in the 1950s and having been a leader ever since with informal authority
across the congregation, the veteran initiates a rhetorical situation:
At that point, I said, ‘You need to follow me up to the foyer so we can talk about
this. I’m not going to have this debate in front of everybody.’ So we got to the
foyer, and basically no sooner than we got to the foyer, he yells at me and says, ‘I
want you to resign,’ and he had been instrumental in firing like four pastors in his
tenure. He just was a heavy-handed ‘my way or the highway’ kind of guy, a
powerful member, but I didn’t think he had the power anymore to do whatever he
wanted anymore. Even his own children kind of rolled their eyes, and were like,
‘Okay, Dad, no we’re not doing it the way you want.’
Pastor Aaron replied, “I’m going to preach today, and the service is going to continue
without the American flag present,” to which the man replied, “I’m not going to let this
service continue.” Aaron went back into the service thinking, he’s going to shout me
down at some point. The man ended up permitting the service to continue without
disturbance. His daughters who were there—who were part of the group that hired Pastor
Aaron—helped “keep [their dad] under wraps” (interview with author, September 2,
2016).
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Pastor Aaron did not change much when he started his tenure as the new pastor.
Rhetoric begins slowly, sometimes, and awaits a moment to ripen. For the first six
months, he essentially kept everything the same as it had been. Former pastors wore a
suit and tie, so he did too. They worshipped as they always had with a “guy playing an
organ, and someone standing up front holding an open hymn book” (interview with
author, July 23, 2015). When new personnel began to sprout as Pastor Aaron hired Max
Wedel in 2010, Max brought suggestions for innovating religious programming. For
instance, he brought an electric guitar and helped the congregation adopt a contemporary
music style. Even then, the congregation remained “pretty conservative,” as Pastor Aaron
put it.
Why Don’t We Just Sell the Guitar?!?!
Max got caught in an argument with an older member after he arrived. This story
of conflict occurred over selling hand bells to make some money for the church. Max
tells the story:
There were hand bells that we got rid of—actually we sold—because we were
very tight on finances. They had been sitting covered in three inches of dust in
some back closet for years. And we could sell them for a couple thousand dollars,
but they were like, ‘No, that was a gift.’ And it was like, ‘True, and we totally get
that, but are you going to use them, like now? What are you going to do with
them?’ ‘Nothing, I want to leave them where they are,’ tucked away in this back
closet, covered in dust, no one sees them or uses them (Max Wedel, interview
with author, August 1, 2016).
One of the older members who was “pretty combative” quipped, “Well, why don’t we
just sell the guitar instead?” Pastor Aaron explained that it was Max’s guitar, not the
church’s, so it could not sell it. Moreover, Max used it constantly, unlike the hand bells
which had not been used for years and were just sitting in a closet gathering dust.
According to the meeting minutes, when people voted on January 16
th
, 2011, ten people
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were in favor of selling, two opposed, and three abstained. So in early 2011, there was
still strong resistance to change by some people, but an openness to it in others. In church
settings, old gifts from old friends are not reducible to disposable commodities.
Max said this event was typical of the conflicts that happened among older and
younger members of the congregation in those days. They went through the facilities and
picked up artifacts, “piece by piece, identifying things that had long passed their
usefulness and their meaning. Yet people felt such a connection to them. It was trying to
navigate those waters. And it was saying, ‘We need to be able to get past this and decide,
piece by piece” (interview with author, August 1, 2016). The creation of a series of small
exigencies, each individual, all incremental, may accumulate and build into a new way of
doing things. The processes of change stage the setting for confrontation. Feelings,
doubts, questions of authority gather.
Do You Know Why We Put the Carpet In?!
About a year after Max arrived, the leadership decided to make another major
facility change: removing the red shaggy carpet in the sanctuary and the foyer to reveal
the hardwood floor beneath.
Everyone was like, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s beautiful,’ one of the people who had been
there the longest who was like early 90s, he was upset about it, which was
regrettable, but he sort of said to us, ‘Do you know why we put the carpet in?’ I’m
like, ‘Why?’ He’s like, ‘because the kids keep dropping their marbles, and they
roll all the way down to the front.’ And I think I said, ‘Well, I hope we don’t have
that problem anymore.’ I couldn’t think of what to say. . . . Clearly, they had a
problem like back in probably the 50s or 60s when kids were playing with
marbles.
This interaction bothered Max a little bit. “That is just a snapshot of fundamentalism,
right? Not that we don’t adjust, but the idea that fifty years later they can’t recognize they
don’t have any kids here anymore?! You don’t have anyone under the age of fifty that
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goes here anymore. So why are you holding onto this so tightly?” (interview with author,
August 1, 2016). I asked him why he thought the existing members were uncomfortable
with the removal of the carpet.
One of my professors said that people don’t resist change, they resist loss. When
something changes, you lose the familiar, you lose the control and the power that
you once had over whatever thing it is, and you have to learn something new.
Especially in church transitions, a lot of times people don’t resist the change, they
resist the loss that comes with it” (Max Wedel, interview with author, August 1,
2016).
Scholars of congregations have found what this case confirms: church change is difficult
for parishioners who have been around a long time.
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There is a “love many worshipping people come to feel for their church
building.”
211
This “love” is a background emotion that works against proposals for
change. Emotions like this can operate under the surface of rhetorical situations.
Resistance to removing a trophy case, as in the case above, reminds me that there is
indeed “a felt need to preserve artifacts of any kind” in many churches and a caution
about modifying the original interior of church facilities, particularly among older
congregants.
212
At Central Avenue Church during its disputes, no one gave theological
reasons against change. This seems to confirm what Margaret Harris found was true of
the congregations she studied that were going through change: “the values which inhibit

210
See, for instance, Martin, “Transforming a Local Church Congregation
through Action Research,” 266.

211
Church Heritage Forum, “A Future for Church Buildings,” 34.
212
Zersen and Potente, Shaping Worship Space, 51.
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change may be traditional and cultural rather than theological, yet they are no less
powerful in their impact.”
213

Older Members Leave as Change Continues
A name change is only a word. Nevertheless, the change of a name is no small
matter, particularly when the alteration swings from an affiliation with a larger group to a
commitment to a more open future. In November 2010, the congregation gathered to vote
on changing the name of the church from First Southern Baptist Church of Glendale to
Central Avenue Church. Fourteen people voted in favor, four opposed, and three
abstained. The motion was approved, so the church became Central Avenue Church of
Glendale. Max Wedel recalled one reason for changing the name:
We would have people visit who said they had lived there for a long time and had
visited this church and had an awful experience before. They said they interacted
with people from the church, and they were awful. . . . This church had been there
for 60 years—so it already had a relationship with the community, which was
already in a lot of people’s minds, so every time they saw this church, it
communicated something to them (interview with author, August 1, 2016).
Around the same time the congregation changed the name, Pastor Aaron said, “We began
to make more and more changes to the aesthetics of the building. We got ourselves to a
point where we were comfortable with doing a grand opening of Central Avenue Church
and that happened in 2012” (interview with author, July 23, 2015). The liturgical style
shifted. The congregation tossed the hymnals, ceased using the organ, and brought in
guitars and drums. They fixed many building issues—for instance, one estimate I found
in the archive was for $17,078 for plumbing repairs in 2011—and aesthetic changes were

213
Harris, Organizing God’s Work, 38.
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coming fast. The congregation was finally comfortable enough with the state of the
facilities and culture to advertise its transformations to the public, but there were more
changes to make, things to fix, and perspectives to develop for the vocation in the years
to come.
Despite all of the changes, the membership only grew slightly from twenty-five to
forty-five members from 2009 to 2012 (Pastor Aaron, interview with author, July 23,
2015). The older members began to trickle away during this period, discouraged by slow
growth and bothered by changes. “I was constantly trying to adjust expectations, but
when we went from only 30 members to 45 in three years, they got discouraged”
(interview with author, July 23, 2015). The oldest members in their eighties and nineties
left first due to feeling they had lost their church, followed by their children in their fifties
and sixties.
Everything was voted on. But when I came in and started changing things, the
church slowly started getting younger and younger members such that we began
to displace the older crowd. The fifty-somethings that hired me started losing
power because the model was congregational, which meant that all of the new
members were gaining power as we started getting a voting block of twenty-
somethings that were taking over the church. So in a way, the model came back to
bite them, such that they lost control of the church as a result of the government.
(Pastor Aaron, interview with author, July 23, 2015)
Max reflected on the gradual exodus of the older members this way:
It’s a mixed emotion sort of thing because early on, very much, we didn’t want to
be the guys who came in and just forced all the old people out, but moving along
over the next several years, it became clear that that would just be a part of the
unfortunate side effects and consequences for what we decided as church
congregations. It’s a congregational church, so any changes, big changes had to
be voted on by the congregation. Even if we wanted to, it’s not like we could go
in there and start changing things left and right. Each step of the way, there were
enough people in the church that wanted to move in this direction, even if there
was a small minority of people who didn’t. So I think over the years, the small
minority became smaller and smaller until it dwindled to the point where the
people who didn’t like what was going on just left. (interview with author, August
1, 2016).
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He understood the reasons why older members “resisted” changes and why change was
hard for them. However, he explained, the congregation was in survival mode. “Some of
those decisions—like if we don’t do this, we’re not going to have enough funding next
month and we will close. It got to that point” (interview with author, August 1, 2016).
Meanwhile, as older members began to lose power and leave, additional changes
to the facilities were in the offing. Between 2011 and 2012, the congregation hosted an
ongoing conversation about how to fix up and renew the building.
We talked about how to get the building to a place where we're comfortable with
it aesthetically, because there was a litany of things we wanted to change. We
went from the children's ministry rooms in the basement, to the sanctuary, to the
foyer, to the exterior of the building, the landscaping. You know, there were so
many things we had to change, and update, and fix. We have an older building.
That's a never-ending project. There's constant things to fix, things to paint, things
to repair, things to replace. (Interview with author, September 2, 2016)
Though the younger leaders led many changes, they did not want to change everything.
They thought the space had some attractive aspects to preserve:
We were uncomfortable and comfortable with the building. We wanted to keep
certain aspects of the old look. There's something pretty about the brick, there's
something pretty about the high vaulted ceiling of the sanctuary, there's
something pretty about the hard-laid floors, you know that we really like. I don’t
love the columns up front, but whatever I'm not going to tear them down. One of
the big things was, the interior of the sanctuary was so white, the walls were all
white, the windows were like a pink color, it just screamed ‘Protestant,’ old
Protestant, kind of feel, so we wanted to darken things. (Interview with author,
September 2, 2016)
As Max recalls, “It was a process in terms of what we changed when. We added different
shades of paint so the whole backdrop behind the stage is now gray. We pulled out the
choir loft pews, which flattened the stage. We removed the pulpit on the stage” (interview
with author, August 1, 2016). The congregation also added new colors to the windows,
which had been pink before, to give them a stained-glass look. Instead of standing behind
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the old wooden pulpit on stage, Pastor Aaron began carrying out a modern-looking stand
for his sermon notes, and he preached on ground-level.
Beyond these artifactual / facilities changes, changes to the church’s use of
technology ensued. An online presence was uploaded. The congregation joined Yelp! and
made a Facebook page. Someone changed the website. Digital screens were brought in to
the sanctuary. Beyond that, administrative arrangements were modified. New Articles of
Incorporation were drafted, by-laws redrafted. It was an enormous process of
transforming the church, including legal, nominal, material, digital, and cultural aspects
of vocation and identity.
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The incremental changes contributed to, but did not in themselves, comprise a
story of renewal. A new chapter in the life of a church requires a narrative that fires the
imagination of a vital place, welcoming, warm, and tempered to the times. The church
had changed its inner aesthetics, its procedures, and its heart, but not its soul. How would
it appeal to the outside world, to the neighborhood, to potential new members? The
members wanted to convey that a new congregation was here now, one that was different
from the one that had worshipped here for the last 60+ years. Pastor Aaron invented a
rhetorical gambit. In 2012, after the congregation had already made many changes to the
inside of the building, he proposed another change, this time to the outside of the
building, a public-facing change. He would use the public-facing sides of the building to
charge the imagination, signaling and coloring the mysteries that promised to unfold
inside.

214
Central Avenue Church, “About Us.”
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“Tattooing” the Building
In 2012, Head Pastor Aaron and Worship Pastor Max along with volunteer
personnel considered more possible aesthetic changes they could make to the facilities.
Max thought the church building itself communicated “traditionalism, fundamentalism,
those sort of things, so it became clear to us—how do we change the outside to
communicate there’s something different in here than what the building makes it look?”
(interview with author, August 1, 2016). As Aaron put it, “I felt like the building had a
certain message. Just the aesthetics of the exterior was a message. That message was,
unfortunately, like, ‘We are irrelevant, this is old school, never mind us’” (interview with
author, July 23, 2015). Then it began to dawn on them, Max recalled. “We have this big
brick wall, and that’s what most people see coming down Central. It’s the most visible
part, so what can we do to that wall?” (Max Wedel, interview with author, August 1,
2016). At one point, Pastor Aaron presented the idea that the church could use street art
frescos to restyle and mash-up the building.
The church leaders found a graffiti artist that seemed promising. There is a rich
history of graffiti and street art in Los Angeles, whose story continues to unfold.
215
The
church found a local artist going by the nome-de-plume “Viral,” whose website describes
himself simply as an artist from Southern California.
216
In Los Angeles, graffiti and street

215
For an overview of street art and graffiti in Los Angeles, see Senn, “The
Cement Sanctuary,” 6–15; On the nature of street art in Los Angeles and the difference
between “street art” and “graffiti,” see Droney, “The Business of ‘Getting Up,’” 98–99;
On varieties of street art in Los Angeles, see Romotsky and Romotsky, “L. A. Human
Scale,” 656–61; On gangs and graffiti in Los Angeles, see Phillips, Wallbangin’.

216
“Who Is Viral?,” para. 1. As is common among street artists, Viral conceals his
identity and uses an anonymous, creative signature instead.
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art aficionados increasingly respect Viral’s work. The church liked his samples on his
website, so Aaron contacted him. After talking with Pastor Aaron, Viral produced a
mock-up of what he could do. Aaron called a meeting with the elder board. “I just
showed it to them, and we talked through the details. It was a pretty easy decision. As
soon as I proposed it, they all started nodding. There was no real pushback” (interview
with author, September 2, 2016). Max recalled the decision-making process: “Part of
what we talked about is that we find ourselves in an urban area. We’re pretty much in
downtown Glendale, and we felt like this white-washed church didn’t really
communicate that. We wanted it to be more integrated into our urban environment, so we
went the street art route” (interview with author, August 1, 2016). Aaron recalled that one
person worried about the permanent nature of putting street art on the building, like a
tattoo. “Often,” he recalled this member saying, “with folks who get tattoos in their
twenties, later in their forties they say, ‘Why did I get this?’” However, Aaron recalled,
he wasn't against it. He just voiced this as a concern but ultimately voted for it. “The only
real concern people had was, ‘What’s the design going to look like? Is it going to
represent us well?’” (Aaron Van Voorhis, interview with author, September 2, 2016).
The church leaders settled on a design involving two parts: one for the north side
of the building (Figure 1) and one for the south side (Figure 2). The north side depicts
eerie branches that twist and spin upwards. A few branches stretch around the corner of
the building, appearing on the front wall of the church as well. Drooping from the
branches, nine green leaves pop out on the wall, and within each leaf is a black-painted

102

word. The words are love, joy, peace, compassion, grace, hope, mercy, doubt, and
mystery. Their font and color makes them appear somewhat like veins within the leaves,
but it is easy to read them as words when up close.

Figure 1: North Side Wall, Photo by Author
On the south wall, Viral painted a second piece—a gritty version of
Michaelangelo’s famous painting on the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling, “God Creates Adam.”
“The hands are in that sort of street art format, so they’re gritty, they’re dark. They have
jagged edges. It’s all spray paint, and it has drips. It’s one of those things that you’re like,
‘Is that a tag, or is that intentional?’ And we really like that” (Max Wedel, interview with
author, August 1, 2016).
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Figure 2: South Wall Artwork, Photo by Author
Viral’s art is a form of visual rhetoric layered onto the facilities’ exterior.
217
It
attracts attention. It makes a statement on a building. It counteracts or calls into question
the default message the edifice was speaking already. Painting a dark version of
Michaelangelo’s “God Creates Adam” on the building creates questions about what kind
of congregation inhabits it. It generates interest through being (un)common, familiar yet
alien, readable but not dismissible. Graffiti on a southern Baptist Church attracts
attention; it generates “perspective by incongruity.”
218
This visual rhetoric leads people to

217
See Irwin, Jacqueline, “The Pedagogy of Visual Discourse,” for a good
overview of visual rhetoric explained in terms of aesthetic and design theory combined
with analytical criticism from rhetoric.

218
Burke, Permanence and Change.
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ponder the sight/site and wonder what kind of congregation might be there as opposed to
a typical Southern Baptist one. (This is exactly what the congregation wants).
Graffiti and street artists often do illegal work (e.g. painting surfaces they don’t
own without permission). Viral’s work at Central Avenue was different. The church paid
him to “tag” their building. He had permission from the city, whose planners examined
and approved the design. He painted during the day. In this case, graffiti helped express a
church’s own message, rather than the artist’s. Various church members shared with me
that the graffiti hopefully communicated to onlookers that the church was not a
traditional or typical church. One person claimed it made a statement “that we are not
your traditional church, despite the architecture” (anonymous survey response, October
16, 2016).
219
Someone else claimed, “There is no way that the older members of [my
mother’s church] would approve of something like this. To them it would be defacing
religious property and sending the wrong message. But I think it gives off a feeling of
young openness” (anonymous survey response, October 16, 2016). A third member
shared,
We all know what message you get in the cute Baptist church with the white
steeple. I like the art because I think it says, ‘This may be more than you expect it
to be. There might be something here that you don’t anticipate.’ Whether people
actually make decisions based off of cool graffiti, I have no idea. But I do think, if
people judge books by covers, it helps put a new cover on the book to say, ‘Our
story is different.’ (Anonymous survey response, October 16, 2016)
With a transformed interior—and tagged exterior—the congregation’s worship space was
now very different than before. The congregation hoped that these changes a) would
attract more people to join, particularly younger people; b) improve the church’s

219
I created an online survey to allow members to answer some questions I had
about the church anonymously. The survey questions are listed in Appendix 2.
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reputation in the neighborhood; c) and distinguish the church from its prior, less-
happening, congregation. The congregation was changing the image of its facilities on the
outside and the inside, but what about its sense of vocation?
Transforming the Sense of Vocation
In early 2013, something significant happened to Pastor Aaron. “Max and I were
just hanging out one night, and he asked me if I'd ever heard of Peter Rollins. I said no.
He showed me a couple of videos on Youtube of Pete talking, and it hit me like lightning.
I was just like, ‘Oh my gosh, this guy is saying everything I've been trying to articulate!’”
(interview with author, September 2, 2016). Ever since, Aaron has “become very much
influenced by [Rollins’] ideas . . . the church has really become, in its ideological values,
what it is as a result of the influence of Peter Rollins” (interview with author, July 23,
2015). More than that, Peter Rollins was like “a kind of a gateway drug that led me to
John Caputo's work, that led me into Bonhoeffer's later work, that led me to start
analyzing my own approach to theology as a preacher” (Aaron Van Voorhis, interview
with author, September 2, 2016). Though Peter Rollins’ work was instrumental in
shaping Aaron’s thinking, it is not exclusively the reason why the church’s vocation
shifted. There are plenty of other authors that have shaped Central’s sense of vocation
including the work of Rob Bell, Barry Taylor, and Greg Boyd
220
—as well as personal
experiences, relationships, and conversations.
Nevertheless, Rollins’ work shaped Aaron’s vocational thinking dramatically.
How has the congregation’s sense of vocation altered since Pastor Aaron encountered

220
See for instance, Boyd, The Myth of a Christian Nation; Bell, What Is the
Bible?; Taylor, Entertainment Theology.
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Rollins’ work in 2013? When I was interviewing him in 2015 and 2016, he was working
on a book that captured the shift. He let me read a draft manuscript of the book in
September 2016, the final version before it went to press as A Survival Guide for Heretics
in December 2016.
221
In what follows, I analyze portions of that book, as well as survey
material from anonymous members, and snippets of interviews from Aaron and Max to
convey how the congregation’s vocation shifted over time, the reasons behind the shift,
and how the vocational changes related to the material changes the congregation was
making.
Part A: From Fundamentalism to Mysticism
The overall shift in vocation that Central Avenue Church has gone through
involves a new understanding of religion. To explain this new understanding of religion,
Pastor Van Voorhis uses a narrative originally posited by Christian psychiatrist Morgan
Scott Peck, who essentially divides religion into two stories: mysticism and
fundamentalism. Following Peck, Van Voorhis argues that religious journeys happen in
stages.
222
People develop spiritually as they move through a trajectory of logos in
development. The typical religious journey moves from stage one, a sense of existential
chaos or crisis, to religious fundamentalism, stage two. The sense of existential chaos is
part of the human condition that leads people to faith. Fundamentalist faith seeks to
resolve the chaos of existence into something manageable. After being in fundamentalist
faith for awhile, oftentimes people detect incompatibilities in their beliefs. This causes

221
Voorhis, A Survival Guide for Heretics.

222
Peck, The Different Drum; Peck, Further Along the Road Less Traveled.
107

them to doubt (stage #3) and to waver on fundamentalist commitments. As a result,
people either quit faith permanently, or move to mysticism (stage #4).
Those who find a way to continue embracing their faith, but in an altered form,
are the mystics in Peck’s model. Whereas fundamentalism embraces quasi-positivist
thinking and tries to be the final stage (warning people not to doubt and move on),
mysticism embraces postmodern thinking and invites people to keep on going. Mysticism
is the last stage in Peck’s system, but it is not a terminal stage: mystics continue to
expand their understanding so that mysticism is never about arriving, but always about
continuing the journey. Mystics learn to live in the tension of not knowing, are
comfortable with uncertainty, and realize that true faith does not preclude doubt but
embraces it.
In following Peck, Van Voorhis dissociates “religion” into two kinds:
fundamentalism (first, problematic kind) and mysticism (later, ideal kind). Dissociation is
an argument strategy that rearranges a narrative. It works by responding to and resolving
a perceived incompatibility in a system of belief. James Jasinski notes that dissociation
works through “redefining and reconstructing, rather than simply dividing
phenomena.”
223
In other words, dissociation takes a singular concept and breaks it down
into two concepts, but it does so in a special way. In breaking down a concept—in this
case, religion—it restructures the narrative surrounding that concept “in its totality.”
224

This means that, not only does dissociation divide a concept and make one of the

223
Jasinski, Sourcebook on Rhetoric, 176.

224
Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric, 412.

108

resulting pair preferable, but it also revises our understanding of a narrative situation so
that it is differently understood as a whole. Not only do we have two concepts instead of
one; we get a new plot.
Mystical faith is the religious vocation Van Voorhis sees as ideal. Moreover, it is
compatible with the type of theology that Peter Rollins espouses, called “radical” or
“pyro-” theology. Radical theology, in Pastor Van Voorhis’s words, is “a movement or
conversation within the church that is grounded in Western postmodern philosophy and
its critique of religion.”
225
This is in contrast with “confessional theology,” a theological
impulse to have the “right beliefs.” Radical theology “haunts” all confessional theology;
it is not a new kind of confessional theology. The congregation of First Baptist Church
that existed in the building before, embraced Southern Baptist confessional theology in a
fundamentalist culture. The congregation inhabiting the building today, known as the
Central Avenue Church, embraces radical theology in a mystical posture.
226

The metaphor of addiction and rehab helps people at Central Avenue Church
understand how their congregation’s sense of vocation has changed to become more
mystical. As Aaron puts it, Central Avenue Church “functions as rehab. My church and
myself, we are recovering fundamentalists. The reason Central has been successful in the
sense of grown and thriving is because it’s full of recovering fundamentalists” (interview
with author, July 23, 2015). Following Rollins, who claims that fundamentalist

225
Voorhis, A Survival Guide for Heretics, 2.

226
In my conversations with him, Pastor Aaron described the kind of Christianity
he was distancing himself from variously, as “fundamentalist Christianity,” or
“conservative Christianity,” or “confessional Christianity.”
109

Christianity is like a drug,
227
Van Voorhis understands his congregation as Christians
recovering from fundamentalist religion.
Fundamentalist religion is a kind of escapism, but to be honest, I wouldn’t tell
someone not to do that, just like going to a bar and escaping to get drunk once in
awhile with your friends is not always bad. But when it becomes an addiction, it
becomes a huge problem. It can take over your life and destroy your life, right? In
the same way, so can conservative religion. (Interview with author, July 23, 2015)
Pastor Aaron unpacks fundamentalism. Speaking more concretely, he says
fundamentalism involves narratives such as, “If I do A, God must do B in my life, career,
relationships, finances, etc.”
228
Moreover, it generates a comforting feeling that people
“are right and others are wrong”
229
by promising “some set of beliefs and practices that is
the true Christianity.”
230
In fundamentalism the Bible is infallible, and Christians will
have “divine assistance and heavenly rewards” if only they “jump through the right
hoops.”
231
It is made up of “so-called beliefs” that are really just “stories we tell ourselves
about ourselves to cover up our doubt and unknowing.”
232
All these beliefs are addictive,
Aaron believes, explaining affinities to sacred space rhetorically as inducements of
addictive secular circumstances.

227
Rollins, The Idolatry of God.

228
Voorhis, A Survival Guide for Heretics, 33.

229
Voorhis, 90.

230
Voorhis, 36.

231
Voorhis, 93.

232
Voorhis, 83.

110

The problem with fundamentalism as a paradigm of religious vocation is that,
according to Pastor Aaron, it “depends on tribalism, fear, and anxiety” and tends to breed
“hypocrisy, selfishness and bigotry.”
233
For those who see the problems with
fundamentalism, there is hope if they move toward a mystical calling. Mystical
congregations maintain intellectual coherence by keeping questions alive, embracing
science, and welcoming different views. Mystical churches are, in Aaron’s semi-ultimate
terms, places of “life, love and justice.”
234
The church’s website claims the congregation
is “a community of believers and skeptics from different backgrounds, ethnicities,
orientations, ages, and denominations who believe that following Christ is about a way of
living in the world, not about having a correct belief system. We seek to be agents of love,
peace, justice, and hope in our community and in the world.”
235
Pathos trumps logos in
this rhetoric, and the outcome is a resolution to be at peace with a non-specified, floating
transcendent agentic ethos.
The mystical approach to faith enables the church to be “an intellectually honest
community that questions and doubts but also focuses on justice and inclusion.”
236

Mystics “perceive the divine and transcendent in all things.”
237
For this reason, the
congregation is able to blend, integrate, and include both secular and religious thinkers,

233
Voorhis, 93; 73.

234
Voorhis, 73.

235
“About.”

236
Voorhis, A Survival Guide for Heretics, 101.

237
Voorhis, 9.

111

practices, and aesthetics in its space. Pastor Aaron cites thinkers from a variety of
disciplines, religions, and atheisms in his sermons and other religious education events.
The congregation incorporates ancient rituals and modern technologies, creating an
“ancient future” feel within the space.
238
Secular-urban and traditional-religious
aesthetics layer together in (and on) the building.
This blurring of sacred and secular is common among emerging, post-evangelical
churches like Central Avenue.
239
Central Avenue Church self-identifies as a non-
denominational, post-evangelical, emerging Church. Scholars have noted how emerging
churches resist the modern separation of sacred and secular. As Ryan Bolger and Eddie
Gibbs put it, “Secularization, far from undermining religion with its denial of the
transcendent and its insistence on verification through the senses and the application of
cold logic, has created a spiritual vacuum and a deep desire for integration.”
240
As they
note, “the clarion call of the emerging church is Psalm 24:1: ‘The earth is the LORD’s,
and everything in it’ (NIV)”; and emerging churches embody a “desire to remove secular
space. For these communities, there are no nonspiritual domains of reality.”
241
Elsewhere,
scholars Gerardo Marti and Gladys Ganiel note, “Emerging Christians’ conviction [is]

238
Webber, Ancient-Future Faith.

239
Bielo, Emerging Evangelicals; Marti and Ganiel, The Deconstructed Church;
Packard, The Emerging Church.

240
Gibbs and Bolger, Emerging Churches, 65.

241
Gibbs and Bolger, 67.

112

that there is no distinction between secular and sacred spheres of life—for them
everything, including the mundane world of work—is sacred.”
242

James Bielo notes how the academic framework of “lived religion”
243
is
compatible with Emerging Christians’ posture toward sacred and secular distinctions.
“Lived religion” assumes “religious experience cannot be reduced to a belief system, a
formal creed, a set of rituals, or regular engagement with spaces deemed sacred. . . .
Lived religion prioritizes the unceasing efforts of religious adherents to map meaning
onto the details of the life-worlds they inhabit.”
244
This interpretive framework “also
refuses a distinction that has been part of sociological thinking at least since Durkheim’s
sacred-profane separation. . . . The vantage of lived religion disintegrates sacred/profane,
religious/secular, and physical/metaphysical distinctions in the experience of
adherents.”
245
For many religious practitioners—not just Emerging Christians—the
sacred and secular blur everywhere and at all times. Pastor Van Voorhis said regarding
the material changes,
I did not then—nor now—distinguish between a secular and sacred rationale in
those decisions. The purpose of those decisions was to reach more people and
grow the church. While the decisions were practical and physical, the purpose was
spiritual. . . . We blur lines between secular and sacred. The secular is sacred for
me, and to many of us. God is found just as much in our liturgy and Sunday
service as he is in a meal with a friend or the simple gestures of love and grace.
(email communication with author, January 11, 2018)

242
Marti and Ganiel, The Deconstructed Church, 134.

243
Hall, Lived Religion in America.

244
Bielo, Emerging Evangelicals, 101.

245
Bielo, 101.

113

While key leaders made decisions about facilities changes, they also led the congregation
to increasingly embrace a “mystical” vocation, an overall shift that entailed several sub-
shifts in the congregation’s narrative. These vocational shifts included the movement
from focusing on right beliefs to right actions; the movement from exclusivity to
inclusivity, and the movement from a lighter to a darker affective spirituality.
From Right Beliefs to Right Actions
Mysticism is “a way of living in the world,” not “a set of emotive beliefs.”
246

Fundamentalists are concerned about believing the right things more than doing the right
things. As Van Voorhis puts it, fundamentalists “think of belief as ideas and concepts we
hold in our heads about God,” but “if we really want to know what we believe we must
simply examine our actions. . . . This is more than just about how faith without works is
dead, this is to say that faith is works.”
247
Later he writes, “Actions don't just speak
louder than words—actions are words,” and “how you believe what you believe is what
you believe.”
248

These assumptions led the congregation to opt for no common confession. It
celebrates intellectual diversity and foregrounds practices of love, justice, and empathy
over creedal beliefs and theological correctness. “For us, a church is a group of people

246
Voorhis, A Survival Guide for Heretics, 76.

247
Voorhis, 59.

248
Voorhis, 83. Note: Van Voorhis also argues fundamentalists demonstrate they
“have no idea what belief is” (p. 59) because they distinguish between action and belief.
He claims “no meaningful distinction exists between our beliefs and our actions” (p. 38).
Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1969) note how a new definition may seem “so firmly
based that a failure to take it into consideration will be regarded as a logical error, as a
fallacy” (p. 414).
114

gathered in a building or any outdoor area. It doesn’t have to be a building. The church is
the body of Christ that chooses to come together and live out the way of Christ,” (Max
Wedel, interview with author, August 1, 2016, emphasis added). Thus, the church’s
vocation is not to believe certain things; it is to gather and to live out “the way of Christ.”
For Max, understanding the church as a people who live in a certain way collided with
the perspective of older members. Back when material changes were happening in 2010-
2013, Max theorized what caused some of the conflict:
I think the church building at the height of American Christendom became an
idol. The things we filled them with became idols too. The building became
people’s security—it was what we found our comfort in, our peace and security
in, and then all the little trinkets in it kind of combined into it. I think these things
became things to cling to. In reality, even if we get the people to admit, like, ‘Is
this all that church means to you?’ like, ‘church is this building with the items in
it, in these places, and that’s what church is?’ I think for a lot of people the
answer is, ‘yes.’ (Interview with author, August 1, 2016)
For Central Avenue today, living out “the way of Christ” is the sense of vocation it
embraces mystically. It is not interested in policing beliefs, sacralizing the building,
setting it apart from everyday life as more holy than other spaces, or preserving its
artifacts. If actions are people’s true beliefs, then there is no need for a doctrinal
statement. When the church was discussing how to redesign its website, Max recalled
saying at the time, ‘We can’t have a statement of faith, especially for church websites,
because it becomes a litmus test. People will log on before they visit a church and be like,
‘Let me make sure these people believe all the same things I believe.’ I react against that”
(interview with author, August 1, 2016). In this way, Central Avenue Church is like other
emerging churches that resist doctrinal statements.
249

249
Marti and Ganiel, The Deconstructed Church.

115

Summing this dimension up, Van Voorhis writes, “Jesus didn't launch a new
religion. He launched a new way of living in the world.”
250
In his view, Christians should
focus on getting their living right, not their beliefs right. He claims, “Jesus's religion is a
kind of mystical religion grounded in love and righteous action rather than tribalism and
ritualism.”
251
Indeed, beliefs are no longer the core and center of what holds the
congregation together. That would not work, given that many members self-identify
today as “agnostic Christians with an existential leaning” (Aaron Van Voorhis, interview
with author, July 23, 2015).
From Exclusive to Inclusive
In 2013, the congregation became fully accepting of homosexuals, which is still a
key part of its vocation today. “We became open and affirming when I came out as open
and affirming,” pastor Aaron said. “That was sort of a big moment in the church when I
preached a sermon and I said, ‘Look, here’s my stance. This church is going to be a safe
place for the gay community. They can be full members here. They can be in leadership
here’” (interview with author, July 23, 2015). However, not everyone in the congregation
agrees with Aaron’s position, which he describes as “Side A,” a term he borrowed from
the Gay Christian Network.
252

We have those folks that are kind of like, on the fence still, which is fine. I don’t
want to have this kind of homogenous church where everybody has to think the
same way, but I won’t tolerate what’s known as a side X position. Side X says,
‘You’re evil, you’re bad, get out of here.’ Side B says, ‘You have to stay

250
Voorhis, A Survival Guide for Heretics, 53.

251
Voorhis, 56.

252
Website. has hosted a speaker from the organization at the church before and
attends their conferences regularly.
116

celibate.’ Side A says, ‘You can be in a homosexual relationship and a leader in
the church at the same time.’ (Interview with author, July 23, 2015)
The move from exclusive to inclusive also means accepting diverse viewpoints. As
Worship Pastor Max put it, “If you lined up five people from our congregation, you’d get
five different answers on doctrinal statement-of-faith stuff, and we want to embrace that.
That’s not what we think church is about” (interview with author, August 1, 2016). He
tells the story of how, when they repaved the parking lot, “there was a brass metal plate
installed in the asphalt that said, basically, ‘We maintain the right to revoke permission of
entry to anyone who comes.’ And that was the first thing you saw when you came into
the parking lot. And it just sounded like, ‘Welcome to the church’—I guess? (interview
with author, August 1, 2016). They removed the plate, which he keeps as a memento
displayed in his office. The vocational shift is captured in the memory that the brass plate
signifies.
The congregation also embodies this shift in a variety of its programs and events
today. For instance, at one point, Aaron scheduled a sermon series featuring the
viewpoints of religious leaders from other faith traditions. Each Sunday during the series,
a new faith leader from another tradition or religion would speak at the church. Another
example is that there is a period at the end of every sermon when the pastor opens the
floor to questions. People can send in text messages during the sermon, and he engages
with them after the sermon. If the person who asked the question has follow-up
comments or questions, then a brief conversation might ensue, and if the pastor doesn’t
know the answer, which is not that uncommon, he may cede the floor to someone in the
pews who does have a response.

117

From “Happy-Clappy” to “Dark-and-Gritty”
The congregation’s spirituality has become darker and grittier. Max said you
won’t find people singing “happy-clappy” songs there (interview with author, August 1,
2016). The congregation feels called to embrace uncertainty, discuss suffering, and
address what feels like God’s absence at times. Sometimes people leave feeling worse
than when they showed up. As one member put it, “Central is a place where it's safe to
ask questions and doubt, and that's helpful for me, and quite honestly, often depressing. I
never feel pumped up when I leave” (anonymous member survey, October 16, 2016).
Instead of emmanuel, meaning “God with us,” Van Voorhis talks about God’s absence.
He calls God’s absence “the perverse core of Christianity.”
253
People go to church “to
escape the horror of the cross,” but “the place we are following Jesus to is that place
where we too will cry out, 'My God, my God why have you forsaken me?'”
254
Stories of
salvation and obedience to authority is one narrative; The new vocation of the church
calls members to share in the doubts of Gethsemane and the sufferings of the cross.
When I asked how facilities changes related to this darker sense of spiritual
calling, Pastor Aaron said the congregation altered the space in accordance with it, in
other words, to make it the space more compatible with a gritty spirituality. He shared the
following example:
The gray paint in the foyer, in the sanctuary, was a way of creating sort of a
modern feel, and also adding some colors, and some darkness to the church,
because we are kind of dark in our theology. The actual pictures are very urban

253
Voorhis, 69.

254
Voorhis, 24.

118

pictures—of Los Angeles, Hollywood, LA. They’re black and white. They are
dark but have an aesthetic appeal. (Interview with author, September 2, 2016)
Max gave the example of the street art. “We really like the grittiness of it. And the way
we do church very much, I would say, is a gritty kind of way of doing church” (interview
with author, August 1, 2016). He said the artwork was not simply chosen to reflect their
gritty spirituality—the congregation’s elders just “liked it” and thought it might serve to
attract new members. And yet, he said,
it helps us to communicate—especially since it’s in the street art format—that this
is not a place where you’re going to come in and have what we call ‘happy
clappy’ songs and be told that everything you’re doing is alright and God’s going
to save you every day from everything you’ll ever have a problem with. That’s
part of why it’s dark too, it has some darker colors, some black drips and swirls.
The congregation’s spirituality shifted. This change in mood and emotion is evident in
their congregational discussions of suffering, God’s absence, and epistemic uncertainty.
As the congregation fixed up its building, it also changed its vocation. This is evident in
the radical religious narrative Aaron tells in sermons and the affective focus on pain and
suffering, unknowing and struggle.
In line with these adjustments to vocation, the congregation has embraced a new
commitment to serve those in need. New programs and events have changed to
incorporate a variety of community services. For instance, it now supports three social
welfare organizations—Ascencia, which serves the homeless in their city; Second
Families, which serves refugee families in San Diego; and Art & Abolition, which serves
Kenyan girls that have survived sexual abuse.
255
In addition, it regularly gathers to pick

255
“Mission & History of Ascencia”; “Second Families: Connecting
Communities & Easing Refugee Transition”; “About Art and Abolition.”

119

up trash. The members walk around the neighborhood and pick up trash wherever they
see it.
Moreover, the congregation has embraced a calling to live a life of community
and examine secular discourses and creations to learn from them. The congregation offers
an assortment of activities to cultivate relationships such as bi-monthly game nights and
mid-week gatherings. To stimulate ideas, the congregation ends all sermons with Q & A,
discusses new books every six weeks as a part of their book club, and hosts a
“Filmosophy” event every two months where it watches and discusses a film. The overall
purpose of these activities, of “serving the marginalized in our community, investing in
relationships, and gathering for special events,” is to help the congregation “live what it
means to follow Christ.”
256

Conclusion
Intra-church disagreement can be painful, but it can give way to significant
transformation of a church. Central Avenue Church has become a haven for “post-
evangelicals,” skeptics, and LGBT Christians. It has grown to around 150 members,
mostly single Caucasian adults in their early-thirties. The church presents no unifying
doctrine but rather creates space for questions, for belonging, and for exploring both the
dark and light sides of faith and doubt.
An early, painful set of conflicts led an older generation to leave. After they were
gone, consensus around change became the norm. Material changes kept coming in line
with cultural preferences for an “ancient-future” space—a space united in some ways but

256
Central Avenue Church, “About Us,” para. 1.
120

divided from the past in others. A space where troubling aspects of faith could be left
behind, yet “vintage” parts brought forward to complement a modern aesthetic.
The church’s relationship to the past, to Christian tradition, to the chain of
religious memory is complicated and evolving. Through “tattooing” the building with
graffiti—an artistic style associated with defacing property and defying authority—the
church sends a message (“This is not your traditional Baptist church”) without really
signaling any allegiance (I guess we should Google the church and see what they are
about). Its Yelp! page, Facebook page, and website talk about a church for people with
questions, gathered around not religious doctrine but aspirations to live as Christ lived.
Which takes us back to the church’s relationship to the past—every church has an
interpretation of Christianity’s foundational events, who Christ was, what he did, what he
said, and what that means for the life and vocation of the church. At Central Avenue,
Pastor Aaron puts forth tentative interpretations but never relates them to the material or
aesthetic changes made at the church. “We liked it better,” or “we thought it was time to
modernize the space,” or “the thing was broken, so we had to fix it,” or “the church
needed money, we were hurting financially—so we sold the hand bells,” were the sort of
reasons people gave for change—not religious principles, but cultural preferences and
survival-oriented reasons. This leads me to think the vocational changes were essentially
unrelated to the material changes.
It may be more complicated than that, though. People said they hoped more
people would come to the church if it was different—materially, yes, but also
theologically and culturally: if it was more inclusive, more intellectually open-minded,
more creative. If more people came, the logic went, then more people might have their
121

lives improved by participating in the community. Now, this raises the question: is this
“religiously principled” reasoning, or “organizational survival” reasoning? At Central
Avenue Church, both vocational and facilities transformation occurred, but the
relationship between these changes remains difficult to discern. When I pressed church
members, they were able to link material changes to religious principles, but it seemed
like quite a stretch. Pastor Aaron said material changes to the building mattered because
people might not come inside if they thought the building indicated an out-of-touch
congregation. With intriguing art on the sides of the building, it might attract people to
visit and possibly expand the membership—the number of people embodying the
vocation.

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CHAPTER 5: BETHANY PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Any building, whether secular or ecclesiastical, is best maintained and protected for the
future if it is cared for, used, and valued by its owners: it is those with no obvious use
which cease to be viable and become impossible financial burdens.
—A Future for Church Buildings
257

In this chapter, a new thread comes into play. Whereas the last two chapters
explored congregations deliberating the future of their facilities and congregations, this
chapter centers on a vacant church facility: the case of Bethany Presbyterian Church in
Silver Lake, which provides us with an opportunity to study secular deliberations over the
future of a church space. The topics in such deliberations shift from congregational to
public: i.e., from things like vocation and religious programming to issues such as
developer reputation, project fit with adjacent structures, and benefits to city and
neighborhood.
Rhetorical scholars have looked at public hearings in a variety of contexts. Robert
Asen and Karen Tracy conduct independent but complimentary work on school board
meetings. Danielle Endres observes public participation in environmental decision-
making. G. Thomas Goodnight and Kathryn Olson critique zoning hearing deliberations
such as those over Disney America.
258
As discussed in the introduction to this

257
Church Heritage Forum, “A Future for Church Buildings,” 33.

258
Asen, Robert. Democracy, Deliberation, and Education; Endres, Danielle.
“Sacred Land or National Sacrifice Zone: The Role of Values in the Yucca Mountain
Participation Process;” Goodnight, G.T., and Kathryn M. Olson. “Ingenium—Speaking
in Community: The Case of the Prince William County Zoning Hearings on Disney’s
America”; Tracy, Karen. Challenges of Ordinary Democracy: A Case Study in
Deliberation and Dissent.
123

dissertation, scholars have yet to look at the rhetoric of local public deliberation over
sacred/secular spaces (such as churches, synagogues, and mosques). One commonality
between my study and inquiry into public hearings is that they all focus upon how
ordinary citizens build and sustain a vision for a community and its future through
encountering the stress of decision making as a community. Public discussions over the
future of a sacred/secular space uniquely directs attention to deliberations at the
intersections of sacred and secular decisions. As I show later in the chapter, a religious
owner may support a secular conversion of a vacant church. If it is leased and converted,
the secular conversion can generate funding to support a religious mission of a
denomination by channeling that money into other churches in the network. Moreover,
urban planning controversies such as the one in this chapter allow us to see how ordinary
citizens argue for particular public space futures, but also how they marshal and elaborate
local place identities, community priorities, and competing frameworks of values—
including economic, heritage, and spiritual values. As scholars continue to turn toward
local deliberative scenes to learn from (and perhaps speak for) more cases of in situ
rhetorical inquiry, this study adds to the growing body of literature on “the local” by
addressing the intertwined fate of sacred spaces and cities.
Bethany Presbyterian is located across the city from Second Baptist Church. Both
churches’ neighborhoods changed drastically over the years. The area around Second
Baptist—once a thriving community with African American social, commercial, and

124

entertainment venues—is today one of the city’s poorest Hispanic neighborhoods. Silver
Lake’s story reverses the pattern, in a way. Formerly blighted, the area of Silver Lake is
now one of “America’s most hip hipster neighborhoods.”
259
As Second Baptist’s
neighborhood declined, Bethany’s gentrified.
In this chapter, we cover what happens after the regional body of the Presbyterian
Church, the Presbytery of the Pacific, leases one of its vacant churches to Dana Hollister
(a local well-known developer) so that the denomination can earn money from the lease
for supporting its vocation by channeling it into other churches in its care. However, as
we will see, plans for redevelopment meet resistance. Neighborhood residents cry out
against the project. The focus of this case study centers on a secular urban planning
controversy over the future of the church building. The chapter illuminates how secular
decision-making happens over the future of a surplus church building.
The chapter provides historical background generally, then specifies settings
where the controversy took place, beginning with an uproar in neighborhood council
meetings. Key public meetings are explored, where decisions are made over whether to
allow the church to be converted into a hotel. Debates are reconstructed with an eye to
stresses placed on maintaining decorum to suit the broader, interactive questions of
gravity and dignity for the community.

259
Romero, “Silver Lake Is ‘America’s Hippest Hipster Neighborhood.’”
125

History and Context
The Presbytery of the Pacific—a regional body of the Presbyterian Church of
America
260
—owns 51 church facilities, most of which are in and around Los Angeles.
One of these churches is Bethany Presbyterian Church (BPC).
261
At the time of this
writing, BPC was the only vacant one in the Presbytery. The Romanesque structure
watched its neighborhood evolve around it since 1932 when it was built a block from
Sunset Blvd. The neighborhood used to be inhabited by white middle-class folk, in the
1930s, but by the 1950s and ‘60s, the area was home to a Hispanic middle-class
community whose breadwinners mostly worked in the then-bustling manufacturing hub
of downtown Los Angeles. In the 1970s, when outsourcing caused many of these jobs to
disappear, the neighborhood declined. Poverty, prostitution, and other issues plagued the
neighborhood. In the late 1990s, the neighborhood began to gentrify again. Its evolution
was so thorough that it was voted “America’s Hippest Hipster Neighborhood” in 2012 by
Forbes magazine.
262
New hipster hangouts, expensive stores, and fancy eateries began to

260
According to Steve Smith, a priest and administrator at the Presbytery of the
Pacific, there are 171 presbyteries in this denomination in the country, seven of which are
in southern California. Prior to 1968, there was only one presbytery in Southern
California; but in 1968, the denomination split this sole presbytery (the Presbytery of Los
Angeles) into seven distinct presbyteries that would serve all of southern California.
261
This church building is sometimes also called Pilgrim Korean Church, after the
last congregation who inhabited it before it became vacant. Since the building was
originally called Bethany Presbyterian Church, after the congregation which originally
inhabited it, this chapter refers to the building as Bethany Presbyterian hereafter.
262
Romero, “Silver Lake Is ‘America’s Hippest Hipster Neighborhood.’”
126

populate the streets near the church, whose 6,900 square foot, stucco and wood-framed
structure was beginning to show serious signs of wear and tear.
263

No congregation has used the building for public worship for nearly two decades.
After sitting vacant for a long time, finally in 2011, a real estate developer named Dana
Hollister made an agreement with the Presbytery to lease the church. Hollister is a real
estate mogul well-known in the city. She moved to Los Angeles in 1985, “fresh out of the
Art Institute” in Chicago, and settled in Silver Lake, “this forgotten part of town that was
so beautiful, so cool,”
264
in her words. She spent years developing the neighborhood,
engaging in what she called “gentle gentrification.”
265
As one journalist remarked, she
could see “what [the city] was and what it could be,”
266
and she played a “key role in
transforming Silver Lake” by buying local “architectural gems and transforming them
into neighborhoods hangouts” such as The One-Eyed Gypsy, Villian’s Tavern, and The
Cliff’s Edge.

263
A Korean Presbyterian congregation had inhabited the church before the
Presbytery asked them to leave in early 2000s. The presbytery had asked the church
group to leave because it realized the congregation had switched denominations, but it
was still using the building. Though it is outside of the scope of this chapter to go into
detail, there was a court case in which the congregation and the Presbytery battled over
whether the Presbytery could kick them out or not. They could, and did.

264
Okey, “Q&A: Dana Hollister on Her Brite Spot Revamp, Silver Lake’s
Official Hipsterdom,” para. 13.

265
Lynell, “Dana Hollister,” paras. 5, 29.

266
Lynell, para. 6.

127

Hollister announced plans to convert the church into a “boutique hotel”
267
through
her press representative in April 2011. After this, reporters started covering the story.
Curbed L.A. and The Eastsider posted articles online that attracted commentary from
citizens.
268
These outlets requested civility, a key democratic norm, but pungent opinions
kept coming. For example, the Eastsider admonished: “Please keep your comments civil
and on topic and refrain from personal attacks,” but the online argumentation was harsh,
derisive, and overall cynical. People said things anonymously that would never be
appropriate in public meetings. For instance, one person said, “Dana Hollister has been
the horror story of Silver Lake. She has done nothing but lead to the destruction of the
area’s inherent culture with false lip service about pleasing the locals,” to which another
person mocked, “[t]hese solid ad hominem arguments have me convinced. This Dana
Hollister sounds like a real monster. . . . [L]et’s burn her at the stake and get something
that the neighbors might really want; like a pillow factory or a nursing-shoe store. Those
are nice and quiet.”
269
Others blended reason-giving with disparagement:
Something has to happen at that church. It’s a target for all sorts of unpleasant
activity as it stands. . . . The real estate in that neighborhood is now valuable. . . .
If you’re for a sensible and tasteful development project in this location, you

267
Broverman, “Hotel Plans in the Works for Blighted Silver Lake Church?,”
para. 1.

268
I read the online news coverage by Curbed LA and The Eastsider LA, local
news outlets that covered the story of the church conversion controversy between April
2011 and September 2014. These two outlets together posted around fifteen articles on
the topic during this period (seven in Curbed, three in Eastsider). Citizens interested in
the story could post comments at the bottom of each article. Most chose to do so
anonymously, with an average of thirty-four comments per article.

269
“Silver Lake Church-to-Hotel Conversion Seeks City Approval.”

128

should go and voice your opinion, and counter the rabid hysteria of the
NIMBYs.
270

Other comments “foretold a parking, traffic, and booze-filled apocalypse.”
271
Some
zoned in on the immorality of converting a church into a boutique hotel which some
feared would function like a night club rather than a quiet hotel. One person said,
“Turning a former church into a place with multiple bars strikes me as just a bit immoral,
ya know?” An interlocutor replied, “No, it’s just a building.” A third person chimed that
“U guys are stupid. A church isn’t a hotel, it’s gods house [sic].”
272
These discussions
foreshadowed later arguments that would ensue over the space’s potential heritage,
economic, and spiritual values being in cooperation or conflict.
Neighborhood Council Meetings
The online debates were entertaining, yet they lacked substance. The online
“debates” yielded little more than insults eclipsing debate. Fortunately, the controversy
was taken up in public meetings where citizens were held accountable for their words.
Between February 2013 and August 2013, there were four neighborhood council
meetings in Silver Lake to discuss the issue.
273
Neighborhood Councils in Los Angeles

270
“Neighbors Withhold Blessing to Turn Silver Lake Church into a Hotel.”

271
Broverman, “Hotel Plans in the Works for Blighted Silver Lake Church?”

272
Bachrach, “Does Silver Lake Church-to-Hotel Project Have Too Many Bars?”

273
At the first meeting, the developer presented her plans, followed by Q&A
feedback. Since no audio was made of this meeting or the others that followed—and
since the minutes from all of these meetings were abbreviated and unclear—it was not
possible to analyze what people said in them. However, I was able to interview some
neighbors who attended and the chair of the committee who facilitated them. This
allowed me to get a basic understanding of what occurred.

129

furnish deliberative opportunities for residents of an area.
274
These councils are “city-
certified local groups made up of people who live, work, own property or have some
other connection to a neighborhood.”
275
The city gives neighborhood councils advance
notice of projects and issues. This allows them to “understand, discuss, and voice the
opinions of the neighborhood to the City before final decisions are made.”
276

Neighborhoods elect representatives to neighborhood council committees, who facilitate
the neighborhood meetings. They share the voice of the neighborhood to the city, which
is considered as “advice” to the city.
277
This means decision-makers at City Hall must
only “consider” neighborhood opinions before they make their decisions.
The council system renders local deliberations significant but not determinative of
actions. In Silver Lake meetings are held monthly. When the discussion topic is a
development project, the developer presents a case explaining and advocating for the
project. The committee members and public visitors can ask questions and comment. If a
case is particularly controversial, the committee may ask the developer to adjust his or
her plans, based on concerns expressed by the public and re-present at the next meeting.

274
The Los Angeles system was set up in 1999 as the centerpiece of a new Los
Angeles City Charter. As a result, there are now ninety-six neighborhood councils in Los
Angeles forming a citywide network of independent, advisory councils. Box, “About
Neighborhood Councils,” para. 11.

275
Box, para. 7.

276
Box, para. 10.

277
Wallace, “Rhetoric and Advising.” Karl Wallace’s 1964 article talked about
the way in which advisory communication is rhetorical.

130

In the case of the church conversion project, Hollister presented the concept
formally for the first time in February 2013. She called it a “boutique hotel,” which
would have full alcohol service, live music, a rooftop patio, and regular public events,
such as weddings and parties. The neighbors expressed concern about how the project did
not fit well in the neighborhood. The developer was invited to revise her plans and re-
present them. She re-presented, the neighbors expressed dissatisfaction with some
remaining issue. This happened three times, with neighbors arguing that she was not
satisfactorily addressing their concerns but rather presenting essentially the same
problematic plans each time.
278

Hollister’s promises to mitigate the neighbors’ concerns—which were over
“parking, alcohol, and the impact on the . . . neighborhood”
279
—failed to convince
neighbors to support the project each time. At the fourth and last neighborhood council
meeting in August 2013, the neighborhood council voted to withhold support for the
project. Lawrence Lacombe, a resident who spoke out against the project, recalled the
intensely emotional meetings: “They didn’t approve [the project], but I’m telling you, we
were all in the room when they were ready to do it, and it was screaming and yelling that

278
For instance, Hollister promised to find an off-site parking lot, where patrons
could park, because neighbors were concerned with where patrons would park. She said
this would save the neighborhood’s parking for local residents, and valet service would
shuttle guests to and from the hotel to this off-site lot. However, the neighbors did not
believe her. They figured available parking lots are very hard to find, and they suspected
she would never find one within a reasonable distance. At each meeting, they continued
to press her to document what lot she was going to use. The neighbors felt her answer
remained unsatisfying.

279

Ibid.

131

stopped it. It was not any deliberative process” (interview with author, November 14,
2016). John Lee, a neighbor within 500 feet of the church, noted how he was raised in a
Christian home and had not cussed for thirty years, but began “cussing like a sailor” due
to the public meetings over the building’s future (interview with author, November 16,
2016). What was at stake for Lee and others was not just the church building’s future, but
more importantly, the neighborhood’s future. Scott Plante, the chair of the Urban Design
and Preservation Committee, who facilitated the meetings, explained that he had never
seen such continued opposition to a project from the community (interview with author,
September 15, 2016).
Development promises meant to quell opposition appeared to generate distrust.
This lack of approval at the neighborhood level became a major problem for Hollister.
Lacking neighborhood support meant that the Zoning Administrator would receive a
letter from the neighborhood council recommending that he not approve the project.
Since Hollister was passionate about the project, she would have to generate support from
outside the neighborhood council system. She needed to generate a level of enthusiasm
from powerful actors who had equal or greater authority than the neighborhood council.
Hollister and her colleagues spread the word.
Meanwhile, Hollister requested official permission to convert the church into a
hotel from the zoning administration in Los Angeles by filing for a conditional use
permit. In Los Angeles, zoning administrators decide conditional use permits. That is,
they have the authority to decide the conditional uses of properties—uses that diverge
from their original intended use. In deciding such permits, zoning administrators rely on
general principles, for example, the site should be “proper in relation to adjacent uses”
132

and not “materially detrimental to the character of the development.”
280
Jim Tokunaga
was the zoning administrator who reviewed Hollister’s application.
Beginning March 2013, people bombarded Tokunaga with letters. He would
decide whether to grant a conditional use permit after considering these letters
281
and
reviewing Hollister’s application, which contained her detailed plans and drawings for
the conversion. In June 2014, after reviewing the project plans and reading many letters,
Tokunaga decided to approve the project in general, but he denied its alcohol and events
components—essentially forbidding the sale of alcohol and the hosting of public events.
He reasoned: alcohol and events would draw too many people, and the neighborhood was
not prepared to handle the ruckus that might be created (nor should it have to).
Hollister appealed the verdict on the grounds that, without alcohol and events, the
project could not succeed. An appeals hearing was scheduled for November 2014 to
decide this appeal and another appeal from Lawrence Lacombe, a resident who felt the
project should have been denied in full, on the grounds that this converted use, even
without alcohol and events, would still be problematic for the neighborhood.

280
Faraci, “The Authority of the Zoning Administrator,” para. 23.

281
To get copies of these letters, I visited Los Angeles City Hall. I went to the
Department of City Planning, where I accessed a file that contained materials relating to
the case (project plans, letters, reports, etc.). I photocopied all the letters, nearly one
hundred in all. The letters split support and opposition with around 50% advocating for
the project and 50% against. The letters contained emotional stories and varieties of
reasons to support or opposed the project. Each letter’s content—whether in support or
opposition—was presented in defense of a common good with respect to the author’s
preferred future for the building. Because these letters essentially argued the same kinds
of things that came up in the public appeals hearing, which I analyze in detail in this
chapter, I decided not to include any in-depth analysis of these letters in this chapter.
Doing so would only bloat the chapter without adding any critical insight.

133

This section has described the events, mistrust, and concerns that citizens and
residents had leading up to a final public deliberation to settle the issue of BLC’s
conversion. I reviewed what happened in the neighborhood council meetings, noted the
mid-term zoning administration verdict (partial approval, partial denial), and described
how appeals to this verdict deferred the decision to a higher level of authority. In the next
section, I reconstruct and analyze the arguments given before that authority, a panel of
city commissioners charged to hear the case and make a decision.
Settling the Issue: The East Los Angeles Area Planning Commission Deliberation
On November 12, 2014, five city commissioners gathered in East Los Angeles to
decide the appeals.
282
To begin with, the commissioners called the meeting to order. Then
Eddie Navarette, Dana Hollister’s representative, spoke for ten minutes to explain why
she appealed the case. Following this, Lawrence Lacombe, the other appellant, spoke and
shared his reasons for appealing. Citizens then spoke during a public comments portion
of the hearing. (Each citizen had two minutes to speak and had to stay on topic.)
Following this, a representative from the Presbytery of the Pacific spoke, then multiple
representatives from law enforcement and government addressed the commissioners. In
this section, I reconstruct the arguments given before the city commissioners, after which
I reveal the planning commissioners’ verdict.

282
Normal Public Hearing, § The East Los Angeles Area Planning Committee
(2014). http://planning.lacity.org/InternetCalendar/pdf.aspx?Id=48438.

134

Opening Arguments
Eddie Navarrete stood to speak and began by addressing the ways in which the
project would preserve heritage values of the site. “What we have here is an opportunity
to sustain and functionalize a beautiful structure historic to its community.”
283
He
described the church as a “recognized public resource . . . locally eligible for historic
designation,” and if the project is not approved, with alcohol and events included,
[t]he alternative will be the demolishing of this building for some modern-design
mixed-use retail building—up for more neighborhood debate, or a crazy enough
tenant willing to take on the financial hardship, or restoration, of this antique
structure. The reality is, a denial of our appeal will lead to a further vacancy of
this structure for several years.
284

In essence, he argued, the commissioners should approve the project because not doing
so would certainly lead to either “irreparable” consequences
285
or the vacancy of the
building for years to come.
Navarette also highlighted how the project would economically benefit Silver
Lake. It would create 70 construction jobs and 50 permanent jobs, increase tax revenues
for the city, and meet an area need since there are few hotels in the Sunset Junction area.
He also addressed the technical aspects of city planning zoning code regulations and how
the project met requirements. “The modern zoning code was designed to accommodate
adaptive reuse, so the project does not trigger any new required parking.”
286
However,

284
Normal Public Hearing, § The East Los Angeles Area Planning Committee
(2014). http://planning.lacity.org/InternetCalendar/pdf.aspx?Id=48438.

285
Cox, “The Die Is Cast.”

286

Appeal document prepared by Navarette, submitted before the November 2014
ELAAPC hearing to the commissioners.

135

despite not being required to provide additional parking, he noted the applicant would
provide “what would be code-required if this project were built new today,” or 65
parking spaces off-site.
287
This, he claimed, showed Hollister was not only satisfying
code requirements, but also working to satisfy neighbors’ concerns (building up the
developer’s reputation in the eyes of the commissioners). He pointed out how the project
incorporated over seventy voluntary conditions to mitigate neighbors’ concerns—for
instance, voluntarily limiting “the number of musicians, the type of musicians, and the
hours of musicians.”
288

In his concluding remarks, Navarette said,
Dana [Hollister] and I are not going to get into it; I don't want to get emotional on
this. . . . Rather than debate a lot of the items that have been brought up and
[create] a more argumentative discussion, I'd like to just kind of be a little more
progressive and talk about the way that our land use process is set up. Anyone can
come here and they can say whatever they want, whether it's legitimate, not
legitimate, distrustful, dehumanizing, it doesn't really matter. But, when it comes
down to what happens outside of these walls and how these people are impacted,
and the way that we can mitigate that best, is by people communicating in being
good neighbors [sic].”
289

Concluding in this way, Navarette underscored values of neighborly communication and
civility. He suggested others may say illegitimate, distrustful, and dehumanizing things

287
Normal Public Hearing, § The East Los Angeles Area Planning Committee
(2014). http://planning.lacity.org/InternetCalendar/pdf.aspx?Id=48438.

288

Normal Public Hearing, § The East Los Angeles Area Planning Committee
(2014). http://planning.lacity.org/InternetCalendar/pdf.aspx?Id=48438. Live
entertainment was reduced to “five non-amplified musicians at any one time”; it
precluded “raves, a dance club, or other similar events” and would occur only in the main
restaurant lounge, not on the rooftop. Some neighbors suspected, at least early on, that
calling the project a “boutique hotel” was misleading, since the plans early on left an
ambiguous impression, leading some to interpret the project as creating a venue that
would function more like a nightclub.

289

Ibid.
136

about the project and the developer, but such “emotional” and “argumentative”
statements would not help. Instead, he urged the commissioners to consider how the
developer was civil, forthright, and respectful throughout the process. He frames the
applicant as caring about the neighbors’ concerns and being willing to mitigate the effects
of the project on them with seventy-plus voluntary conditions.
Lawrence Lacombe spoke next. He was one of the most outspoken critics of the
project, rejecting the ideas put forth by Navarrete that framed the site as having
significant heritage value. His appeal sought the project be denied fully, not just allowed
though without alcohol and events. Despite what Hollister’s representative said, Lacombe
argued the building was not historic, worthy of preservation, or even special.
290
He
argued it would be better to tear it down and erect something else. He cited two
documents to support his conclusion. The first, a “Building, Structure, and Object
Record” published about the property by the State of California Resources Agency, found
the property was not eligible for listing on any local, state, or national register.
291
The
second was a study done by an expert that the applicant paid to research the site for its
historic qualifications, which found the building was only eligible for local listing. Even
that is not the same as being listed, which requires application, review, and decision by
the Cultural Heritage Commission at the Los Angeles Office of Historic Resources.

290
Unlike Lacombe, some neighbors who opposed the project agreed with the
developer that the building was historic and worth preserving. They agreed the building
was worth preserving, but just not this way—alternate options for adaptive reuse were
preferable.

291
These are the L.A. Historic Cultural Monument list, the California Register,
and the National Register.

137

Using these studies as evidence, Lacombe described the church as a “pachydermatous
structure” with no features to justify its preservation.
292
“The Applicant attempts to cast
this structure as 'landmark' and 'historic' and proposes to 'maintain the character of the
area' as if the sight of the church building is more important than the planning chaos that
would surround it if this project should be approved.”
293
Indeed, he argues, “Our
neighborhood character exists despite the presence of this superannuated structure.”
294
In
place of the “derelict, obsolete” church, which is not a “visual amenity from any
angle,”
295
he pleaded, why not erect something else that meets community needs without
harming neighbors’ lives? After delegitimizing the community narrative, he proposed
taking down the church and erecting a mixed-use structure, with commercial below and
affordable residential above.
Lacombe also pointed out concerns with the developer’s actions that appeared to
violate democratic principles. He expressed concern over how Hispanic residents were
excluded from participating in the deliberations over the church’s future:
There is a large percentage of Spanish-speaking residents here, some of whom
attended the June 25
th
hearing in an attempt to glean some sense of what is going
on. There has been no Spanish language outreach, leaving 40 percent of the
population of Silver Lake completely out of the discussion.
296

292

Lawrence Lacombe’s appeal document, submitted before the November 2014
ELAAPC hearing to the commissioners, p. 14.

293

Lacombe appeal, p. 4.

294

Ibid, p. 10.

295

Ibid, p. 4.

296

Ibid, n.p.

138

Moreover, he cited Thomas Paine's Rights of Men to remind the commissioners of their
democratic responsibility to use power to serve the people:
The duty of men is . . . plain and simple and consists of but two points. His duty
to God, which every man must feel, and with respect to his neighbor, to do as he
would be done by. If those to whom power is delegated do well they will be
respected. If not they will be despised.
297

Lacombe led discursive objecting to the project. He focused on ways in which the
building was not worthy of preservation. For good measure, he added complaints against
the process which he alleged had violated democratic principles.. The city commissioners
could redeem the process by recalling their duty to use power well and do “as [they]
would be done by.” Whereas Hollister’s representative argued the project would save an
important historic structure, functionalize an unused building, and benefit the economy,
Lacombe attempted to undermine these points. He tried to paint the project as illegitimate
and without benefit.
Everyday Citizens and Government Representatives Comment on the Project
After Lacombe and Navarette spoke, the commissioners invited other speakers to
share. City council member, Mitchell O'Farrell, and Mayor Eric Garcetti (who was
formerly the city council member for the area) both sent representatives to lend support to
the project. Each claimed the project would add “vitality” to Sunset Junction. The project
would not only fit, but also further, the area’s identity and economy. These leaders could
think in expansive ways and trumpeted how the project would bring benefits to Sunset

297

Lacombe's testimony during the hearing.
139

Junction. Moreover, the LAPD also sent a representative to lend their support. This
suggested that public safety was not going to be an issue if the project was approved with
alcohol and events.
Next, six citizens spoke in favor of the project, and they each had two minutes to
speak. Mostly, they reiterated themes present in arguments shared with the zoning
administrator earlier in the year. For instance, Peter Thomas, a Silver Lake resident,
affirmed the developer’s character:
[Dana is] kind and thoughtful—ask Tara the flower lady, who sells us peas at the
store in the market right by the church. Tara was having trouble finding
somewhere to grow her flowers. Dana let her use the Paramour Grounds [her
private mansion in Silver Lake] at no charge. . . . [K]nowing Dana is kind and
thoughtful means you can be sure that if any problems arise, they will be dealt
with sensibly.
298

Renee Nahum and Sara Adele described how the church conversion proposal fit with the
surrounding area. In Nahum’s words, it would help keep “the character of Silver Lake
special,” and in Adele’s words,“be the final piece of the [Sunset] Junction’s puzzle,”
complimenting and “[solidifying] the village that is the junction.” Jason McCabe shared
why he moved to Silver Lake in the 1990s; it was because “it was up and coming, and I
think that’s crucial.” He argued that Silver Lake is a neighborhood still “bustling and up
and coming,” and this project can further it (not to mention “it would be really great for

140

my mother who is deacon in the Presbyterian Church to stay in an old Presbyterian
church.”)
A couple of citizens also addressed, specifically, why alcohol was necessary to
the project’s success. Jason McCabe gave a personal example, “My parents like to come
and visit. . . . My dad is retired now and at the end of the day he likes to have a cocktail.
He will not stay in a hotel that doesn’t offer him a cocktail, period.” Another citizen, Paul
Norman, said not allowing alcohol and events would be a “project killer,” and reiterated
the “likely alternatives if this project doesn’t go forward” including further vacancy
and/or being demolished. Clint Lucans added that the business Pine and Crane recently
had an alcohol license issued to them despite there being a saturation of alcohol licenses
in the area already; therefore, this project should not be forbidden alcohol service because
it’s just “an addition” to the business and necessary to its success. Moreover, “tenants in
businesses with liquor licenses tend to be higher value. They’re worth more, therefore,
the owners and the tenants take better care of them. Please, please consider.”
Five citizens took a stand against the proposal. Just like the supporters, they each
had two minutes to speak. Benjamin Mayer spoke first and described the efforts of Eddie
Navarette to convince them to approve the project with alcohol and events as “[attacking]
your responsibility to use regulations to safeguard the quality of life of the residents
surrounding this project in favor of a creative, money-making venture that is simply not
compatible with the residential area that it will be placed in.” He argued, there are at least
four families with children living directly across from the church, but “there aren’t any
findings that refute the law that says there is no alcohol to be served within 100’ of
residential areas, and with residents all around I don’t see how this appeal could be
141

permitted.” He argued along the lines of democratic responsibility, suggesting that
approving this project would violate the responsibility of officials to uphold the law.
The next citizen, Veronica Ramos, argued the project was a poor fit for the area
because of existing parking conditions that would be made worse if the project was
approved with alcohol and events:
I don’t see how alcohol will benefit the community in that neighborhood. I know
that Mr. Tokunaga was tired of hearing about the parking problem we already
have, but it is something that really affects us. Especially in my case, yesterday I
came back in the middle of the night, and I had to sleep in my car because I
cannot find parking. I go around the block, 1, 2, 3 times; I cannot find parking.
It’s been two times already that I slept in my car. . . . I also don’t think it’s fair
that people that live further from our area from our neighborhood support the
project because they are not going to be affected by it.
The third speaker in opposition, Bill Bell, also worried about how the project would
influence parking and traffic in the neighborhood: “The traffic on Lucio is unbelievable.
In the morning it’s going one direction, and in the evening it’s going the other direction. .
. . Cars are just stuck bumper-to-bumper from Sunset Blvd. all the way up to Griffith
Park, such that people have trouble getting out of their driveways in the morning.” He
also mentioned how “there are four restaurants with liquor licenses in the same block”
already, so it is unnecessary to have another. Jeff Wayne, who lived across from the
church, talked about the developer’s track record. He mentioned “one of [her] businesses
got shut down for not paying their taxes, and [another] one has some kind of collection
hold on it [right now].” A project that could fit the neighborhood well would bring little
traffic to the area, they reasoned, but a successful project needs many people to visit it.
The last speaker, Lacy Bass, addressed problems of fit as well, sharing many
common concerns about the neighborhood’s parking problems and drunken patrons of
businesses that bother the lives of residents:
142

I’m going to address, once again, the big bugger boo that no one seems to sink in
which is parking [sic]. My house was built almost 100 years ago before everyone
had a car. The first twenty years I lived there I never once had a parking problem.
I would come home, park on the streets, climb my stairs. Well, those days are
gone. Now, if I leave my own home I don’t dare come back before 10:30pm,
11pm on a weekday. And if they open yet another club on the weekends it will be
2 O’clock. Okay, how much grocery shopping can I do and then drag it for
blocks? Because right now, before this is opened, there is no parking. It ain’t
there. . . . And then people leave the bars and yeeaahhh everyone works hard.
They don’t realize that they’re screaming and passing out in my front yard or
maybe taking a leak and climbing my stairs for a quickie, and I find used
condoms on my property. I’m not a prude but God come on!
The public comments wrapped up—rather anti-climactically—with these stated worries
about condoms, groceries, and parking. Debate advances or it stultifies. The opposition
reiterated its attacks without advancing counter-alternatives, that were imagined as
options but not delivered as projects.
Planning Commissioners’ Verdict
After the commissioners received the testimony from all the different parties, they
closed the hearing. They deliberated in front of everyone, discussing the issues casually
but seriously. The commissioners spent a few minutes before the public on the
microphones, discussing the case, then reached their decision. They decided to approve
the project with alcohol and events, giving Hollister permission to do everything the
Zoning Administrator had forbidden (in other words, her project as originally envisioned
with alcohol and events). The reasons they gave for making this decision included the
fact that the police department lent support, suggesting that traffic and safety concerns
could be managed, and secondly, that the applicant would mitigate potential concerns
with voluntary conditions such as valet parking, limited hours, and reduced sound—
addressing all concerns with fit that kept coming up in public comments.
143

A Twist of Events
Despite having approval, Hollister never converted the church. One plausible
explanation is that, around the same time she got approval, she devoted her attention to
another sacred space in the city. It is now part of the public record that Hollister tried to
buy a former convent in Los Feliz, overlooking downtown Los Angeles, around the same
time she got approval to convert BLC. She arranged to buy it from two nuns who used to
live there, but—long story short—they did not have the legal right to sell it to her. The
Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese was already in the process of selling it to someone
(none other than the pop music star, Katy Perry). When they found out Hollister was
trying to purchase it from the nuns, they took her to court.
One of the nuns explained that she was aware of the Archdiocese’s plans to sell it
to Perry, but she “wasn't happy with any of it”
299
because she found Perry’s music videos
online and didn’t like them—didn’t think it was inappropriate to sell the convent to her.
The nuns also thought they had the legal right to sell it, so in April 2015, Hollister filed a
Purchase Agreement with the city that the nuns signed.
The legal battles bankrupted Hollister. In March 2017, the court ruled not only
that the nuns did not have any authority to sell the property to Hollister,
300
but worse (for

299
Lopez, “Nuns Fight Plan to Sell Hollywood Convent to Katy Perry,” para. 23.

300
Bowick, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Los Angeles et al. Vs. Dana Hollister.
“Neither the religious order known as the Sisters of the Most Holy and Immaculate Heart
of the Blessed Virgin Mary (‘IHM’), nor any Sister of the IHM (‘IHM Sister’), either
individually or collectively, has or at any relevant time had any authority to sell, lease,
encumber, convey, exchange, transfer or otherwise dispose of all or any part of the
Waverly Property. . . . The Archbishop of Los Angeles . . . has and at all relevant times
had authority [to do so]” (p. 4).

144

Hollister, at least): another trial was set to determine if Hollister had acted illegally at any
point in the process of trying to buy it from the nuns. (The court considered the nuns
innocent, but evidence showed Hollister may have known better.) Eight months later,
Hollister was convicted. The court said she acted with “oppression, fraud and/or
malice,”
301
through “slander of title, interference with contract, and interference with
prospective economic advantage.”
302
For this she owed damages of $10.15 million to the
Church, and $5.2 million to Katy Perry, essentially draining her net worth overnight.
303

Presumably, this crisis delayed (or crushed) her plans to convert BPC into a hotel.
The future of BLC is now in question again. Very little has happened to the space. Since
2014, Hollister only subleased it to some designers who use it for a work space. As one
neighbor put it, “I can’t imagine that Dana is getting enough in rent to cover a
$30k/month lease, so the presbytery must be letting her slide or something. I’m sure the
last chapter has not been written yet.”
304
No one knows what else will happen from here.

301
Bowick, at 3.

302
Bowick, at 3.

303
A 2014 loan application made by Hollister revealed her net worth to be
approximately $16 million at the time. Solis, “Convent Dispute Nets Katy Perry, Church
$10M in Punitives.” A 2014 loan application made by Hollister revealed her net worth at
approximately $16 million. “Juror Raphael Avina said the jury considered Hollister’s net
worth when they decided on the $10 million [in punitive damages]” (para. 4). (The other
damages were compensatory and totaled around $6 million, making the total in damages
approximately the amount of Hollister’s net worth).

304
Benjamin Pohlmeier, church neighbor, email correspondence with author,
September 20, 2017).

145

Meanwhile, Katy Perry decorates her new home, the former convert-turned-celebrity pad,
overlooking the city of angels.
Conclusion
In this chapter, we examined local public deliberation over the future of a vacant
church building. We tracked deliberation diachronically as it travelled across fora (both
offline and online) and through time, beginning with the comments sections of online
newspapers to neighborhood council meetings and the desk of a zoning administrator;
from his desk to a public hearing where, ultimately, officials gave Hollister permission to
convert the church—after considering the input of everyday citizens and representatives
of the presbytery, mayor’s office, LAPD, and city council members.
This chapter shows that the future of church buildings is linked explicitly to the
future of cities. The stakes and potential benefits were high for Los Angeles itself,
apparently—the mayor sent a representative to weigh in on the matter.
305
The stakes were
also high for the neighborhood, that is, residents living near the church building. “When
ordinary citizens marshal themselves to speak in public meetings,” as Tracy puts it, “it is
because they care deeply about a disputed issue.”
306
In this case, an issue that motivated
some people to speak was their fear of their neighborhood changing for the worse if the
project was approved. In other words, their lived experience would take a hit. For others,

305
One of the lawyers who advised Lawrence Lacombe, who appealed the
original decision of the ZA to partially approve the project, said that—in all of his years
advising clients in similar cases, he never saw the mayor lend his explicit support for a
project in a hearing.

306
Tracy, “"Reasonable Hostility”: Its Usefulness and Limitation as a Norm for
Public Hearings,” 172.

146

the issue was a matter of what the city needed. Essentially, the city needed more
interesting sites that could attract people to visit, increase tax revenue, and provide jobs.
Others argued that people needed history, to protect the site for its architectural
exemplarity and embodiment of local heritage. City officials decided to approve the
project after considering multiple different values and perspectives.
Though some people believe decisions over the future of churches “should not be
decided solely according to economic criteria” but rather take into account also “spiritual
and social development,” it remains true that a realistic financial approach is needed in
each case.
307
Old churches are expensive to fix up and transform. Because converting a
sacred structure may be enormously expensive and there are no public funds for
restoring/converting churches in America available today,
308
private contributions are
needed to pour in money and imagine new uses. Unless entrepreneurs are willing to
prioritize social and spiritual development over economic criteria when converting
redundant churches, it is likely that more commercial uses will be found for churches in
the U.S. than social, community, or spiritual uses in the days ahead.
That said, if an unwieldy amount of church buildings become vacant in the days
ahead—a real possibility in America
309
—then public authorities might reconsider

307
Rauti, “Redundant Religious Buildings,” 7.

308
Rauti, “Redundant Religious Buildings,” 7.

309
This may become a major policy issue to be addressed in 21
st
century America.
See, for instance, Lieberman and Bennett, “Foreword.” If entire denominations crumble,
which some have indicated is a real possibility within the next few decades, thousands
upon thousands of church buildings in America will have uncertain futures. See for
instance, Hahn, “Economist: Church in Crisis but Hope Remains,” for a discussion of the
near future collapse of the Methodist denominational structure. Since church buildings
147

whether public funds should be spent on churches, either to support the social welfare
work of congregations that are unable to pay for their facilities any longer alone, or to
support new social purposes of adaptively-reused structures.
Sometimes churches become unbearable burdens to a community. Spaces that sit
vacant are not free. Upkeep and security alone are expensive. A denomination like the
Presbyterian Church of America has limited resources. Denominations have to think
about networks of sacred spaces, so leasing or selling some spaces could be used to
channel earned income into other churches. A denomination’s choices are similar to a
local congregation’s, in that both must address organizational-maintenance and survival
considerations, while ultimately working toward religious goals. By cutting off branches
that do not bear spiritual fruit—by selling/leasing spaces that are merely draining
financial resources while adding nothing spiritually—a denomination can support its
other branches.

have served public, social, and community functions in local communities since they
were first built all across America, will our governments decide to fund new uses with tax
dollars or support congregations that are struggling financially to maintain/repair their
space but which nonetheless provide crucial social services in some of America’s poorest
urban neighborhoods?
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CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION
There will have to be far greater reflection on the civilizing possibilities of the city and
the greater opportunity it may offer for community, or social, humanization and cultural
meaning. This implies that the aesthetic and moral potential of cities will take over from
economic or other functionalist purposes.
—Philip Sheldrake, Spaces for the Sacred: Place, Memory, and Identity
310

The future of sacred structures and congregations in the United States is continent
and uncertain.
311
Many traditional sacred structures such as churches and synagogues
require significant repair, modernization, or transformation. While many aging
congregations struggle to maintain their spiritual operations and church buildings, some
young congregations are inventing new ways to practice and place their faith. This
dissertation examined three local cases of how religious and secular groups deliberate the
future of sacred structures in Los Angeles.
Reprising the Dissertation’s Method and Perspective
The aim of rhetorical studies is to investigate how communities come to, express,
and resolve contingent choices under conditions of stress. A rhetoric of religion finds
stress located in decisions over what to do with sacred spaces that once served a
community, but now are problematic—by virtue of material problems and community

310
Sheldrake, Spaces for the Sacred, 163.

311
Taylor, A Secular Age. In Taylor’s words, a secular age is one where religion
has become an option rather than a default mode, and though secularity was predicted to
eclipse religion, it ended up an option as well. Religion and secularity have become
“mutually fragilating” viewpoints in secular societies; both calling the legitimacy of the
other into question (implicitly at least, sometimes explicitly).

149

prospects. Secular and sacred spaces feature into this in a variety of ways. Church
buildings are special liminal places to start with, both sacred and secular. When the site
of the sacred becomes transient, disposable, or transitional due to altered circumstances,
its mysteries deepen. Rhetoric takes on unique urgencies of principle, meaning, and
place. This section reviews the method by which I explored such exigencies in this
dissertation.
The process of putting together my inquiry was not linear, from hypothesis to
sampling to conclusion. Rather, in non-linear fashion, I performed a hermeneutic buildup
of inquiry through reading general literature and localizing topics within cases (as
discussed in Chapter 1). This enabled me to first investigate general journalist and
academic narratives of church and change literature (Appendix 1). I organized and
deployed my reading, thereby creating a basis for constructing topics that would ground
initial questions of specific Los Angeles church debates. The arrangement of questions
was developed as I took themes and topics of journalist and scholarly discourse and fitted
them to rhetorical categories of inquiry—adapting the specific resource to what I had
found preliminarily to be urban church exigencies. After analysis, I borrowed from
human inquiries of anthropology, ethnography and in situ rhetorical inquiry to construct
the narratives of church debates. I did not deploy rhetorical categories in a mechanistic
fashion; however, they did guide me in gathering evidence, assembling discourse, and
reading the events and deliberations of each case.
A rhetorical approach borrows from modern anthropological orientations. Like an
anthropologist, I assembled a method to create contact with the local. Unlike a classical
anthropologist, I did not search out the sacred and secular dwelling in a far-flung place.
150

Rather, I examined local urban examples facing transition. Instead of ethnography, which
examines forms of cultural exchange in detail, I constructed a mix of written,
participatory, and oral discourses as my objects of study. Instead of in situ efforts where a
scholar might advocate alongside a group to give it a louder or more effective voice, I
conducted in situ listening to draw distinctly voiced events together and construct a
learning curve among local expressions of contingency, disagreement, change and
resolution. Finally, and unique to rhetorical inquiry, I investigated the search for actions
that were meaningful within and across generations of participants. Rhetorical inquiry
accords standing of dignity and gravity to people, young and old, who are drawn from
different points in life into contingent matters, invited to judge, and faced with a decision.
In situ rhetorical fieldwork offers a rhetorical methodology growing in popularity,
which furnished inspiration but not cookie-cutter instruction for my methodology. Rather
than aspiring to advocate on behalf of the local groups I studied, I took the goal of critical
understanding and insight—to engage in participant observation, not participant
advocacy—as I engaged my case study communities. Rather than aligning my voice with
the groups I studied, I sought to explore what was up for debate in local cases and how
debates unfolded. In situ rhetorical case study methods, as I conceive of them in this
dissertation, builds on traditional case study methods in rhetoric whose goal is critical
analysis and appreciation, not advocacy alongside texts/communities/speakers, as, for
instance, Aaron Hess does in his “critical rhetorical ethnography” model of inquiry.
312

312
Hess, A. “Critical-Rhetorical Ethnography.” It should be noted that, not all
rhetorical field scholars agree with the critic-as-advocate role that Hess describes. For
instance, McKinnon, Asen, Chávez, and Howard write, in Text + Field, “While the critic
is framed as expert and primary actor in Hess’s work, the critic’s judgment is reduced to
151

My study, instead of advocating alongside groups under inquiry, commences a process of
inter-discourse comparisons among cases that offer many important choices of transition
with the goal of generating insight about sacred/secular spaces and decision-making in
local communities undergoing the stresses of change.
Hence, a key question in this study was what topics of debate characterized
deliberations over church buildings, particularly as they addressed unique exigencies of
secular and sacred space. Carolyn Miller and Jack Selzer, whom I followed in this
dissertation, suggest a way to find special topics in any community. They recommend
simply reading literatures emanating from a community, discipline, or field under inquiry
to find recurring themes, terms, and issues.
313
For this dissertation, many texts dealing
with church futures were gathered, readings conducted, and recurring topics mapped.
(See Appendix 1 for this list of texts.) Topic formulation remained open as in situ
research began. Interviewees who were part of the deliberation did, indeed, bring up
items that appeared in documents they had given me to read. Adding this new input, a
framework of topics likely to appear in deliberations over churches under study was
completed. This process was replicated to find topics pertaining to urban planning
controversies, since one case focused on urban planning meetings over a vacant church’s
future.

that of the people and groups he researches with and advocates for/alongside. We share
parts of this impulse, but Hess’s turn to advocacy as a normative prescription for what
“rhetorical ethnographers” should do errs too far in taking all agency from the critic. In
our view, field methods do not require such a strong turn from a critic-centered
understanding of criticism, but any critic who utilizes field methods may experience a
shift in their agency” (loc. 437).

313
Miller and Selzer, “Special Topics of Argument in Engineering Reports,” 327.
152

Fieldwork took place over the course of several months. Each church was visited
multiple times and the buildings and grounds photographed. I sat in on worship services.
My purpose was to gather snippets of each church’s story by continuing to meet people
and accumulate materials any way I could that would help me discern the shape of each
deliberation over the space. This required in-person networking, conversation, and
appearances to build trust with people who would otherwise not desire to help me. Once I
gained trust and found key informants—Lorn Foster at Second Baptist Church, Lawrence
Lacombe and John Lee for Bethany Presbyterian, and Aaron Van Voorhis and Max
Wedel for Central Avenue Church—they provided crucial help in the form of
suggestions, documents, introductions for people to interview. In situ rhetoric assumes
there are stories out there waiting to be told, which might interest scholars. That
assumption proved valid for me, since my research uncovered three interesting stories
with interesting rhetorical dynamics to explore.
Topic development plus field work enabled the creation of an exigence-oriented
rhetorical perspective on sacred/secular spaces relevant to the specific situation. The
constraints of rhetorical deliberation revealed themselves through in situ investigation of
“the rhetorical situation.”
314
In rhetorical situations, people propose what should be done
about an exigence before an audience who can do something about it. The situations each
involved aspects of decorum—e.g., norms of fellowship or civility—which appeared to
constrain and enable address in each situation. Standards of decorum vary by context, and

314
Bitzer, “The Rhetorical Situation.”

153

in this dissertation the two contexts considered were public meetings and congregational
settings.
On the one hand, public meetings operate on a decision-making logic that asks
participants to articulate allegiance to democratic principles while advancing their
position; this generates advocacy framed in ways appropriate to a secular, democratic
context of decision.
315
In congregations, on the other hand, decorum requires—at bare
minimum—proposing actions and justifying them with reasons that grace religious
principles. Margaret Harris described this as “the dilemma of how to reconcile religious
teaching with practical, organizational considerations,” or how to foster “institutions
which are capable of responding to, and surviving in, contemporary society but which,
nevertheless, remain a ‘true’ reflection of religious principles.”
316
The dilemma, she
argued, arises because people may perceive “incompatibility between ‘authentic’ (that is,
religious) goals on the one hand, and ‘inappropriate’ goals concerning organizational
maintenance and survival, on the other hand.”
317
At the very least, expedient advocacy
should not transgress principled vocation.
In situ rhetorical study of cases requires mapping emotions, authorities, and
narratives that appear to shape deliberations in significant ways. Tensions arise when, for
instance, formal and informal authority fail to align in a congregation, or when different
narratives clash over the proper vocation of a church, or when fears of change conflict

315
Tracy, “"Reasonable Hostility”: Its Usefulness and Limitation as a Norm for
Public Hearings.”

316
Harris, Organizing God’s Work, 5.

317
Harris, Organizing God’s Work, 33.
154

with emotions of devotion to a religious mission that calls for change. All of these
notions—ethos/authority, pathos/emotion, logos/story—along with topics, decorum, and
situation—furnish concepts that enable rhetorical features to be tracked and patterns of
deliberation uncovered in local cases. The dissertation crafts a model of in situ inquiry
through mapping topics, proofs, and decorum stresses. The model is adapted to the
special exigencies of sacred and secular spaces in transition within cities.
This study provides a range of topics to model topical and constitutive questions
of community. These are not exhaustive, of course. All local deliberations exhibit local
variations and characteristics. However, the dissertation works toward a model that can
identify questions of exigence, decorum, authority, story, emotion, and identity when
questions of transition arise. Consider the findings the model yielded in the case studies
pursued by the study.
Comparative Summary of Findings
Three cases were examined. Each illustrates how sacred and secular concerns
were brought into patterned relationships. Chapter 3 examined Second Baptist Church
where the congregation successfully navigated the religious dilemma of decorum by
adopting a “spiritual growth campaign,” a device by which the congregation was able to
raise money to resolve its building problems without triggering feelings that doing so was
incompatible with its religious vocation. An interpretation of scripture that highlighted
the role of generosity in mature believers justified not only giving to the campaign but
also becoming more generous in other areas of life. The congregation could grow
spiritually by giving financially; it could further its vocation by restoring its building.
155

Chapter 4 looked at a congregation in conflict with itself: The Central Avenue
Church. A change-program demands transition, but the visualization of outcomes
sometimes leaves congregations internally divided. The dividing line for this
congregation appeared to be generational. Older members resisted change, but younger
members prevailed. Founding members from the 1950s did not like the changes that
came in 2009—the year young Pastor Van Voorhis was hired—or the subsequent
changes that came later. They let him know that they opposed his decisions, argued about
changes openly, challenged his authority, and ultimately left the church when they
realized younger people were taking majority votes on changes and could not be stopped
from transforming the church materially and vocationally.
Chapter 5 found Bethany Presbyterian Church to be in the process of becoming a
post-sacred space. (Post-sacred spaces are those whose former uses were religious but
whose current uses are secular.) In this case, a denomination decided that it would be
better off leasing its empty church building than letting it sit vacant. After all, the money
from a lease agreement could be redirected into churches elsewhere. After it agreed to
lease its church space, secular debate opened up over the proposed plans of a developer to
convert it into a boutique hotel. Neighbors of the building feared their lifestyles would be
harmed and argued the proposed use was inappropriate for the location. Others argued the
proposal was in line with the identity of the neighborhood and would bring many benefits
to the city. They focused on how it would create jobs, increase tax revenue, attract
tourists, and save a historic site from potentially being demolished and replaced. Sacred
and secular actors found a common ambition to monetize the site, which would benefit
156

the denomination but also the city. City officials approved the conversion, but due to the
private misfortunes of the developer, the church remains unconverted to this day.
Case findings offer grounds for comparison, learning, and broader inquiry. Two
cases were marked by disagreement leading to rough concord; one by difference
generating dissensus. The ambit of debate varies from primarily secular controversies that
do involve religious actors (as in the case of Bethany Presbyterian where a representative
of the presbytery came to speak on its behalf in order to sway the city officials in the
direction of approving the conversion project) to primarily religious debates that employ
religious principles to encompass “secular” (read: organizational survival) goals within a
broader religious vocation (as in the case of Second Baptist Church). Other debates are
painful emotional battles resulting from a younger generation’s desire for change
grounded in cultural preferences, conflicting with an older generation’s desire for
continuity grounded in personal memories that are cherished and associated with the site
as-is.
The mix of motives increase the potential for volatility. The care invested into the
site is a value not easily reduced, dismissed, or off-loaded—even with the passage of
time. Together, these cases caution against reductive generalizations about local groups.
Motives mix, decisions grow in urgency, and mapping of differences as well as
possibilities of agreement appear to be useful in constructing systems of invention,
process and appraisal for purposes of renewal.
Local Deliberation and the Possibilities of Inquiry
Sacred spaces are precious to people for different reasons (e.g. religious, heritage-
related, personal/social memory-related), and given their central locations in cities and
157

neighborhoods, the stakes of deliberation over churches can be quite high. The
dissertation contributes a specific model of inquiry, but it also raises insights into how the
local, particular, transitional spaces of address and community offer much to the literature
on rhetoric, place, and memory; studies of deliberation; and assessments of religious
rhetoric.
In the end, the study suggests that rhetorical scholars add specificity of location—
e.g., churches as the locus of both secular and sacred space—to qualify generalizations
about rhetoric, place, and memory. Secular and sacred offer but one of a multitude of
special loci fusing material and spiritual, and this study has drawn only from instances in
a single, multi-cultural urban scene (Los Angeles).
Deliberations in congregations are important places to inquire into democratic
norms. Histories of preaching and studies of sermons abound. Contemporary local places
of debate appear to be of little interest to inquiry. Within congregations, intimate
relational histories among church members can influence the way deliberations unfold,
whereas this is not the case in public deliberations where people typically do not know
each other. Israel Galindo suggests that “a congregation is a particular kind of social,
relational, and religious institution.”
318
A committee charged with deliberating a church’s
future may proceed informally, like a conversation among family members, especially in
smaller congregations. Hence, the process of congregational deliberation depends upon
the size of the church, whether people know each other, and the nature of their
relationships. The Los Angeles cases show that deliberation in congregations can proceed

318
Galindo, The Hidden Lives of Congregations, 2.

158

in gradual, piece-by-piece ways (as it did in the case of Central Avenue Church, where
they went through the building and decided on individual artifacts, materials, and
surfaces one at a time over the course of a few years), or all at once (as at Second Baptist
Church, where they decided to restore the entire building, move to worship elsewhere
during construction, and return to the building once all work was done).
Moreover, given Margaret Harris’s observation about one of the universal
dilemmas in congregations,
319
one might expect congregational deliberations over the
future of churches to be about balancing organizational survival concerns with religious
vocations, but the present study suggests that, sometimes, they are instead about
preserving individual or social memory for participants in deliberation. Given that sacred
spaces are places where people have celebrated births, consecrated marriages, and
consoled one another after losing loved ones, it is not surprising that people might
prioritize preserving a space for its embodiment of important social memories. Churches
are places where—for some—nothing less than the meaning of life has been taught and
understood. To strip a site like this of its carpet, its decorations, its paint, is not just to
replace surface features. For some people, it may be to change life’s most important
place, the place where life’s precious memories are stored. Thus, deliberations over
churches may hinge neither on religious principle nor organizational survival, but rather
on preservation of individual and social memory. It may take a lifetime to develop such

319
Harris, Organizing God’s Work, 5. “One universal concern within
congregations seems to be the dilemma of how to reconcile religious teaching with
practical, organizational considerations; to build institutions which are capable of
responding to, and surviving in, contemporary society but which, nevertheless, remain a
‘true’ reflection of religious principles” (p. 5).
159

an affective attachment to a place or its contents, but once developed, it seems such
attachments are powerful constraints in rhetorical situations. Arguments like, ‘Doing X is
an organizational necessity for survival,’ or ‘God cares about Y, and this place is not
helping us get there, or this stuff has nothing to do with Y’ might be persuasive, or they
might not, to people whose interests also include preserving memories associated with
the space or its artifacts.
When congregations deliberate the future of spaces, certain “memories” are
available that are personal/social (e.g. ‘John’s son was dedicated here when he was born’
or ‘Sally spilled her fruit punch on Father John’s shoes Easter Sunday when she was
five’), and these memories locate a desire to preserve the church building for its personal
and group worth and meaning. Others memories might gather, too, that are “collective”
(for instance, ‘Jesus said in the Book of John that . . . , and I believe his words contain a
principle that should inform our decision’). Scripture and tradition furnish a storehouse of
collective memories that might be drawn upon to inform decision-making in a
congregation.
Danièle Hervieu-Léger notes that collective memory is mobilized in all
religions.
320
At the source of religion is a “belief in the lineage of believers.”
321
When a
congregation “recalls to memory the past,” it signifies “its adherence to a continuing line
of descent which gives entire justification to its relationship with the present.”
322
When

320
Hervieu-Léger, Religion as a Chain of Memory, 124.

321
Hervieu-Léger, Religion as a Chain of Memory, 125.

322
Hervieu-Léger, Religion as a Chain of Memory, 125.

160

religious communities deliberate what to do (whether with respect to their buildings or
anything else), deliberations entangle religious memory. Religious collective memory
shapes and reshapes a congregation’s identity and sense of vocation. Because of its
crucial role in congregational life, religious memory relates to sacred structures in that the
former define the significance of the latter. As the cases in this dissertation demonstrated,
religious memory influences deliberations, but which collective memories become
“authorized” is a choice of religious authorities.
Religious authorities “control the mobilization of memory” and have the
“recognized ability to expound the true memory of the group,” which “constitutes the
core of religious power.”
323
Rethinking the connections among rhetoric, place, and
memory when a space is a formally sacred structure and rhetors are religious—for
instance, in a congregation deliberating over its space—means not only understanding
how collective memory informs religious identity, but also how religious authority
determines authorized collective memory. Hence, a deliberation over the future of a
church might hinge, ironically, upon an interpretation of the past—one given by the
authorities within the community/group.
The present study has added a particular focus to rhetorical inquiry focused on
rhetoric, place, and memory. In situ analysis was not limited to the fixed, built products
of spatial deliberation—such as museums, monuments, and memorials; it focused also on
the processes of spatial transition and change. By examining deliberations over church
buildings, the dissertation extends in situ rhetorical inquiry to the dynamics of church

323
Hervieu-Léger, Religion as a Chain of Memory, 126.

161

change and increases understanding of how people argue and express stakes over the
transformation, preservation, or conversion of sacred / secular spaces.
Urban Rhetorics and Material Deliberation
The transitions of place across urban lifeworlds offer a vibrant space of study for
in situ, topical rhetorical inquiry that investigates the designs and loci of argument. This
study focused on sacred sites and how communities debated and decided their
preservation, transformation, and reuse. Material places of assembly, destination, and
change multiply within urban environments.
Traditions of public spaces are in change. Sites like libraries and parks, schools
and hospitals, public buildings of all kinds generate new questions of place where choices
of renovation, renewal, demolition and transformation are up for discussion and debate. It
may be that deliberations over the future of other kinds of spaces in cities may feature
similar or different topics than those featured in church debates, as well as other
stakeholder groups than those involved in the cases explored here. In other words, an area
for future research is to explore urban renewal rhetorically. Urban renewal is “the
redevelopment or rehabilitation of property in an urban area,” which can be studied by
looking at deliberations over renewing individual sites or entire districts/areas of cities.
324

The deliberations I examined had outcomes of 1) preservation, 2) transformation,
and 3) conversion. Additional studies might look at how local communities debate
destruction, which leads to ruins or is demanded by redevelopment. As historian of
architecture, Daniel Bluestone, noted,

324
Park and Allaby, “Urban Renewal.”

162

Thinking critically about preservation requires also thinking critically about its
opposite—destruction. We have a good deal to learn about historic preservation
by tracing the values that promote destruction. Both preservation and destruction
involve people framing narratives and stories about existing places that promote
the process of holding on or letting go of those places.
325

Alternatively, one could examine debates over the adaptive reuse of a variety of
historically significant public spaces. For instance, one could study the debates over the
reuse of a former navy shipyard as an arts colony in San Francisco, or the conversion of a
former fire station in Los Angeles into a restaurant.
326
Studying other kinds of sites and
outcomes such as these could give rhetorical scholars insight into the rhetorical dynamics
of place change: how rhetoric transforms space into place and place into space—or how
places are re-spaced and spaces re-placed. What material, cultural, economic, social, and
rhetorical factors are in play in such processes and outcomes?
Scholars also might continue to think about the role of religion and secularity in
urban futures, as both continue to shape identities, contour spaces, and interact in public
communication.
327
Here is another area for future inquiry. Secular and religious actors do
decide, sometimes independently, sometimes together, the future of sacred spaces and
neighborhoods in cities. In what ways might churches (or synagogues, or other types of
sacred spaces) become transformed sites of religio-secular partnership, where the

325
Bluestone, Buildings, Landscapes, and Memory, 16. He notes, for instance,
how in Chicago during the years surrounding World War II, people engaged in a “process
of ‘inventing blight,’ and promoting narratives about the dire conditions in certain
buildings and neighborhoods” in order to legitimate their destruction as part of “urban
renewal” projects.

326
“The History Of The San Francisco Shipyard”; “Engine Co. 28.”

327
Beaumont and Baker, Postsecular Cities.

163

religious and the secular come together in shared ethical ambitions? Can religious and
secular actors find ways to communicate and work together, based on an “overlapping
consensus of values,” for a common good? Can they communicate, share space, and
partner without feeling offended, stalemated, or thwarted by others’ seemingly
incompatible worldviews?
328
Might something more be learned about the dynamics of
“post-secular rapprochement” in cities if we sustain attention to how religious and secular
organizations, groups, and individuals discuss and shape the future of central urban
sacred spaces together?
329
How might people mix religious and secular motivations in
other contexts of decision-making and action in post-secular cities?
Rhetorical inquiry may be served well when it imagines future horizons that blend
religious and secular narratives in efforts to attract people to visit historic sacred
structures as tourist destinations. For instance, Second Baptist Church hopes to attract
tourists in the future. Tourists can appreciate the history of the site, its role in the civil
rights movement, and its important place in African American Angeleno history. How
will the church frame its narrative so as to navigate the tension between it being both a
sacred and secular—a civic and spiritual—place? How does it manage its multiple
identities as a site of historical heritage and living religion? What memories, artifacts on

328
Butler et al., The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere. Charles Taylor uses
this phrase “overlapping consensus of values” in his contribution to the book.

329
Cloke, “Emerging Postsecular Rapprochement in the Contemporary City,”
249. Cloke writes, many emerging “forms of racial faith practice . . . chime well with the
concerns of more secular radical politics, claiming similar ethical ground but working out
of different expressions of motivation. Here, then, is the potential for a significant
contribution to wider postsecular rapprochement, as the urgency of praxis allows a
broader coming together of ethical values and devices through which to serve” (p. 249).

164

display, and photographs will be used to create a narrative that will transform the site into
a sacred/secular tourist destination? Athinodoros Chronis notes how “selling a tourism
destination . . . is not an effort to sell the place per se, but a place narrative.”
330
In the case
of a sacred/secular space—such as a historic church used for active worship still by a
congregation—the rhetorical challenge is to create a place narrative compelling enough
to attract tourists. Since tourists come with different interests, the narrative may have to
interweave sacred and secular qualities of the space to make it appealing to the widest
range of visitors possible—ranging from its congregational origins and current religious
work, to its architecture and role in African American history, to its civil rights activities
and connection to key players in the movement that shaped national history.
Alternative possibilities are offered by the Church of the Epiphany, the oldest
sustaining Episcopal Church in the city
331
Like Second Baptist, Church of the Epiphany
was a movement center for social justice.
332
In the church’s basement in Lincoln Heights,
Cesar Chavez and other activists gathered to organize parts of the Chicano movement.

330
Chronis, “Between Place and Story: Gettysburg as Tourism Imaginary,” 1799.

331
“Church of the Epiphany | Los Angeles Conservancy.”

332
Charles Morris coined this term, “local movement center,” a key concept in his
study of the origins of the civil rights movement, and he defined it as follows: “A local
movement center is a social organization within the community of a subordinate group,
wich mobilizes, organizes, and coordinates collective action aimed at attaining the
common ends of that subordinate group. A movement center exists in a subordinate
community when that community has developed an interrelatd set of protest leaders,
organizations, and followers who collectively define the common ends of the group,
devise necessary tactics and strategies along with training for their implementation, and
engage in actions designed to attain the goals of the group” (p. 40). Morris, The Origins
of the Civil Rights Movement, 40.

165

Since becoming a Los Angeles Cultural Monument in 2005, The Epiphany Conservation
Trust was formed to raise money to rehabilitate the structure, preserve the church’s social
and cultural legacy, and support its ongoing religious mission. For any space to become a
distinct place, “[its] built environment must be given symbolic meaning through
rhetorical narratives.”
333
Now a listed historic site in Los Angeles, what memories are
highlighted to help construct the narrative of the place? What is the nature of the persona
of the audience that such a narrative creates/assumes? Does the rhetoric of the site’s
brochures, plaques, tie together sacred and secular histories? What moral lessons are
urged upon visiting tourists, implicitly or explicitly? Does the site function more as a
sacred or secular oracle?
The city has a variety of public institutions. All find housing. Structures undergo
material decay. State structures also shift when regimes of governance change. Private
development and preservation are always in stir. Urban sites are places for local
deliberation. Much can be learned about deliberation from any one site or set of events.
This dissertation argues that we should examine the qualities of discussion and debate
particular to each of these institutions, starting with the rhetoric of religion. Rhetoric and
the court houses, administrative buildings, rhetoric and parks, rhetoric and spaces of
promenade and squares—all these civic spaces form the bases of composing rhetorical
histories through case inquiries. Can City Hall be far away? This study has worked in one
city. There are likely comparisons to be drawn among cities within a nation, across
international communities, and among world capitals featuring different religions. The

333
Poirot and Watson, “Memories of Freedom and White Resilience,” 100.
166

study of churches in transition across urban centers is a way to make contact with the
local and discover rhetorics as they emerge.
Conclusion
The dissertation constructs a method for mapping deliberative rhetoric in cases of
local church transitions. The area is important in itself because of a situation peculiar to
American cities. There is a growing inversion between the number of churches and the
presence of religiously affiliated populations in US cities. In other words, the study of
churches in transition is important because American cities with the greatest number of
churches do not necessarily have the greatest number of religious affiliated
populations.
334

The mismatch between the number of church facilities and the church-going
populations will make deliberation over transition significant in the days to come. As an
increasing number of churches cease being used by congregations for public worship in
America, local communities will have to deal with the redundant churches in their midst.
A church creates a signature space for a community, a unique spot as opposed to the
chain, strip mall, and otherwise indifferent architecture of ‘everywhere’ urban spaces.
Yet, the issues of maintenance and funding are constant. The church must keep
stimulating contributions, making decisions on inheritance funding, and renewing its
resources. The agreement of congregations around investing capital will not always be
easy to maintain.

334
Speiser, “The US Cities with the Most Religious Venues per Capita Aren’t
Quite What You’d Expect.”
167

Re-imagining the church as an alternate site—out of necessity to survive—will
turn concord (what has become usual) into discord (what adaptations have yet to be
integrated). The result may be that number and importance of local deliberations are very
likely to grow, while the agreed-to norms of disposal of properties are more varied,
different, and in contention. Further, aging sacred structures in cities offer an opportunity
for religious renewal. Young congregations may choose to inhabit and transform aging
sacred structures, bringing new religious practices and ways of serving local
communities.
A loud chorus now proclaims that America's social ills can be dealt with better by
private religious organizations than by government. More than 400 ministries in
America, up from 200 just two years ago, participate in the Christian Community
Development Association's efforts to revive inner cities through Christian
commitment and zeal. Business Week, the New Yorker, Christianity Today,
America, and City Limits have devoted long articles to what is described as a
veritable urban renaissance sweeping the country thanks to community
improvement initiatives by churches, mosques, and synagogues.
335

At the end of the twentieth century, the press celebrated faith-based urban renewal efforts
of organizations like the Christian Community Development Association (CCDA),
particularly in the light of government cut backs, failed projects, and unhopeful
programs. Shortly thereafter in 2001, the Bush Administration created the “White House
Office of Faith-Based and Initiatives,” establishing grants for faith-based social services.
The Obama Administration kept the office, renamed it to “The White House Office of
Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships,” yet changed its focus somewhat.
336
The

335
Kramnick and Moore, “Can the Churches Save the Cities?,” para. 1.

336
See Rogers, “Continuity and Change” for a discussion of the differences
between the Bush and Obama Administration’s faith-based government
initiatives/offices.

168

Trump Administration in March 2018 replaced the Office with an Executive Order to
create the “White House Faith and Opportunity Initiative,”
337
whose policy details have
yet to be established.
As organizations like Partners for Sacred Places argue that government funds to
be used to support the restoration of aging sacred structures so that the social work of
congregations, occurring within and through their sacred structures, can continue, we
wait to see how policies will be debated and shaped. Will any government funds be made
available for the rehabilitation of aging sacred structures in cities? Will local, state, or
federal governments choose to support the restoration of our nation’s historic churches
and synagogues—particularly when congregations are doing valuable work but remain
unable to afford repair? Moreover, as scholars puzzle over what constitutes the
evangelical “base” group supporting Trump, doing further local inquiry into spatial
decisions over the future of churches is potentially a way to put rhetorical inquiry back in
touch with the particular, local traditions of American rhetoric and public address.
Successful deliberations over church transitions are important in themselves, but
they are also key to renewing hopes of successful societal transition. Church spaces offer
resources, potential centers of activity, places where the community can make strategic
choices to enhance economic, social and cultural life. As the dissertation demonstrates,
these choices include investments in cultural heritage, the development of attractive
public spaces, or the renewal of religious communities. The dissertation mapped three
choices. There are likely many more options.

337
Trump, “Executive Order on the Establishment of a White House Faith and
Opportunity Initiative.”
169

From the initial work of the dissertation, one can imagine a network space—
where city-specific experiences are shared and best practices established. Scale could be
increased to inter-city, and perhaps even global, sharing. The dissertation assembled
methods for in situ rhetorical inquiry into local deliberations over sacred and secular
spaces. The architectonics of these debates over cultural, social, material and spiritual
futures designate a range of topics useful for further academic studies that collect
information and network cases. Ours remains is a time in which not only religion, but
also sacred spaces have become options for network connections and interventions. How
people reinvent the role of central city churches should shed light on twisting post-secular
plots in America and elsewhere.
Based on the work of this dissertation, I believe the futures of neighborhoods,
cities, and sacred structures are entangled—relationships tied to local deliberation and
worked out through broader connections and generational dissensus. These futures will
be written and wrought together in interesting rhetorical processes that are not inevitable;
church futures must be invented. They must be deliberated—and of course, where there
are options, there is rhetoric.
338
Moreover, church transition is a space where people
become confronted with generational issues that address questions of meaning-for-us,
meanings around which actions unify, actions that differ in consequences for long-term
and newer audiences.
339
As generations and cultures shift, the modern American city,

338
The German rhetorician, Hans Blumenberg, said this. Bolz, “Das Gesicht Der
Welt: Hans Blumnbergs Aufhebung Der Philosophie in Phetorik,” 95.

339
Goodnight, G. T. “Generational Argument.”

170

which was mortared by bricks and words, moves along in the process of transition,
rebuilding, and renewal.

171

APPENDIX 1
Works Consulted to Discover Topics in Congregational Deliberations
Conder, Tim, and Dan Allender. The Church in Transition: The Journey of Existing Churches
into the Emerging Culture. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan/Youth Specialties, 2006.

Cool, Tim. Why Church Buildings Matter: The Story of Your Space. S.l.: Rainer Publishing,
2014.

DeMott, Nancy, Tim Shapiro, and Brent Bill. Holy Places: Matching Sacred Space with
Mission and Message. Herndon, Va: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007.

“Designing Worship Spaces with Millennials in Mind.” Barna, 2014. the Barna Group
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mind/.

Dirsztay, Patricia, and National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies. Inside
Churches: A Guide to Church Furnishings. NADFAS, 2001.

Douglass, H. Paul. The Church in the Changing City: Case Studies Illustrating Adaptation.
New York, NY: George H. Doran Company, n.d.

Foy, C. D. A Place of Encounter: Renewing Worship Spaces. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg
Press, 2004.

Giles, Richard. Re-Pitching the Tent: Re-Ordering the Church Building for Worship and
Mission. Collegeville, MN: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2000.

Harris, M. Organizing God’s Work: Challenges for Churches and Synagogues. New York,
NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998.

Hill, Graham. GlobalChurch: Reshaping Our Conversations, Renewing Our Mission,
Revitalizing Our Churches. InterVarsity Press, 2016.

Horton, Michael S. People and Place: A Covenant Ecclesiology. Louisville: Westminster John
Knox Press, 2008.

Hoyle, David. The Pattern of Our Calling: Ministry Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.
London: SCM Press, 2016.

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19, 2016. http://dmergent.org/articles/2015/11/17/is-there-another-way-buildings-
landlords-and-ministry.

172

Jacobsen, Eric O. The Space between: A Christian Engagement with the Built Environment.
Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2012.

Livezey, Lowell W., ed. Public Religion and Urban Transformation: Faith in the City. New
York, NY: NYU Press, 2000.

Mead, L. B. Transforming Congregations for the Future. Bethesda, MD: Alban Institute,
1994.

McCorry, Richard J. Dancing with Change: A Spiritual Response to Changes in the Church.
New York, NY: iUniverse, Inc., 2004.

Morisset, Lucie K., Luc Noppen, and Thomas Coomans, eds. Quel Avenir Pour Quelles
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2006.

Penwell, Derek. The Mainliner’s Survival Guide to the Post-Denominational World. St. Louis,
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Scharen, Christian. Public Worship and Public Work: Character and Commitment in Local
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Sokol, Donna Claycomb, and L. Roger Owens. A New Day in the City: Urban Church
Revival. Abingdon Press, 2017.

Sparks, P. D., T. Soerens, and D. Friesen. The New Parish: How Neighborhood Churches Are
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2014.

Sullivan, Lisa Marie. “Revitalization of the Urban Church: A Multi-Case Study of Turnaround
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Torry, Malcolm. Managing God’s Business: Religious and Faith-Based Organizations and
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Vandergrift, Jean Halligan. “The Dance of a Changing Church: A Practical Theology of
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173

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174

APPENDIX 2
Online Survey / Interview Guide Questions
When did you get to this church?
How did you find out about it?
Why have you stayed?
Tell me about the time when the congregation was deciding to
preserve/convert/transform the building. Tell me stories.
What needed to change? What has changed? How do changes impact the meaning of the
place/community?
What did people think was at stake?
What were the reasons people gave for preserving/transforming/converting the building?
What potential benefits or rewards were imagined for doing so?
What risks, costs, or downsides were posed as reasons not to do it?
What were the outcomes hoped for as a result of changes?
What good has come of the efforts that are finished?
Were any of your expectations not met, like you thought they would be?
Has anything bad come of it?
Was the community divided over it?
If so, who disagreed? Was it resolved?
Who was most passionate about the issues? What was your opinion?
What role did you play in the situation and in discussions over the future of the building?
Were you on any committee about this? Did you recruit people to get involved?
What is the direction this community is headed in?
175

When deliberations over change to the place were occurring, what different futures for
the community were being imagined?
How did people suggest that changes would support the future of the congregation or
community?
What is Central Avenue Church/Second Baptist Church like? Describe the church to me.
What do you think people think of when they drive by and see the church building, or the
art on the sides (as in the case of Central Avenue Church)?
Is the congregation networked with other churches, denominations, traditions, or
movements? If so describe. Did any of these connections affect the choices for
change that were made?
What books, studies, or thinkers have shaped your thinking, or the congregation’s
thinking, about its purpose, place, or vocation? Did these influence the decision to
change the church building?
Conclude with demographics on interviewees: age, occupation, education level achieved,
length of time as member of church, attendance (regular or sporadic), ethnicity.

176

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Asset Metadata

Creator Shockley, Addison Michael (author)

Core Title Sacred places in transition: congregation and deliberation in 3 Los Angeles churches

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Communication

Publication Date 10/16/2018

Defense Date 08/24/2018

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

Tag authority,civic engagement,civic spaces,congregations,deliberation,emotion,in situ inquiry,local debate,local rhetoric,OAI-PMH Harvest,place/space,religion,rhetoric,rhetorical fieldwork,sacred spaces,sacred/secular tension,story,urban churches,visual rhetoric,vocation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Goodnight, Gerald Tom (committee chair), Lake, Randall (committee member), Winston, Diane (committee member)

Creator Email addison.shockley@gmail.com,rhediobox@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-78783

Unique identifier UC11668804

Identifier etd-ShockleyAd-6844.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-78783 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-ShockleyAd-6844.pdf

Dmrecord 78783

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Shockley, Addison Michael

Type texts

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

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA