The Cupertino Courier

Photograph by Lea Tauriello

Members of the Bahá'í youth dance workshop perform dances about issues like racism and drug abuse. Last summer the young people danced at teen centers around San Jose. This performance took place at the Good Samaritan Methodist Church's 'Celebration of Diversity' on Jan. 18.

Communion

Local churches focus on diversity

By Pam Marino

At City Hall, in the schools, in boardrooms and in living rooms, Cupertino's increasingly diverse population has been a very big topic of conversation among residents.

So it is no surprise that it is also an important topic for Cupertino's churches--not only because individual church members are struggling with the city's changing demographics, but because the churches as a whole are struggling with how to focus their ministries in the face of such changes.

The day before Martin Luther King Jr. Day, two different Cupertino faiths sponsored events that sought to educate others about racial diversity and promote racial harmony.

Good Samaritan United Methodist Church hosted two events, an afternoon forum called "One People Under the Sun," attended by 150 people, and an evening "Celebration of Diversity" that was attended by 500 people.

On that same Sunday, the Bahá'ís of Cupertino sponsored a World Religion Day Celebration at Quinlan Community Center, with representatives from a myriad of religions in attendance.

Mayor Michael Chang was a featured speaker at both events.

The Courier spoke with representatives from three churches--Good Samaritan, the Bahá'ís and the New Life Church--about what they have been doing in their own congregations and in the community to educate and help bring together Cupertino's diverse cultures. Their approaches are as diverse as the cultures themselves.

Good Samaritan

The church's very name, "Good Samaritan," gives it a calling to promote racial understanding and harmony, said husband-and-wife pastors John Kraps and Rachel Berry.

" 'Samaritan' was a racial epithet," Kraps explained. In the Bible, Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan, a man who finds a Jewish man beaten by robbers and near death. Samaritans were routinely discriminated against and had little contact with Jews, but despite this the Samaritan aids the Jewish man and takes responsibility for nursing him back to health.

"Jesus said we step across differences and assume responsibility to help," Berry said.

The predominantly white church has a racially diverse preschool, in both the staff and the children. "The preschool has been a guiding light for us," Kraps said.

For the last four years the church has held an annual Celebration of Diversity on the Sunday before Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The celebration is mainly organized and performed by the youth of the church. And over the years the church's youth groups have been involved with youth groups from other ethnic Methodist churches in the region, the pastors said.

So it was not a far stretch to host the first-ever "One People Under the Sun" forum this year. The forum was the idea of a congregation member, Beverly Cannon.

"Racism is something I've always been concerned about," Cannon said, adding that she came up with the idea for the forum because she believes the problem of racism has been getting worse instead of better.

Cannon, who is white, was joined in the planning by fellow member Ava Johnson, a black woman. Unbeknownst to Cannon and the rest of the church, Johnson's Sunnyvale home has been the target of several attacks since she moved there in 1973. She was the victim of one attack shortly after the O.J. Simpson verdict. The Sunnyvale police filed it as a hate crime.

"[Good Samaritan] should be a leader in understanding discrimination and removing the barriers," Johnson said last week. "A church should be a community that teaches tolerance, love and understanding."

The organizers purposely invited Mayor Chang, Kraps said, because they wanted to attract people from throughout the community, not just their own members. Johnson said of the 150 people who attended, about half were members and half were people from the community.

Several members of the church, including Johnson, sat on a panel to describe their personal experiences with racism. The pastors said it helped white members to see that people "they know and love" have been victims of racism.

Everyone involved called the forum a success.

"I think what the forum did was get us beyond being polite and avoiding talking about things," Berry said. "We tend to dance around it to be politically correct."

Cannon called the event "a step in the right direction."

"Racism is such a huge problem that we can't solve this just by having a forum, but it's a tiny step," she said.

In addition to considering a repeat of the event next year, Berry said the church is also working with the Bahá'ís and others to organize an event for Racial Unity Day on June 14.

The Bahá'ís

The very nature of the Bahá'í faith is racial unity, according to Jenny Purushotma, a member of the 25-year-old Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of Cupertino.

The religion is only 150 years old, founded by two prophets called The Báb and Bahá'u'lláh, in Persia. The Bahá'ís believe that the important figures in other religions--Abraham, Krishna, Moses, Zoroaster, Buddha, Christ and Muhammad--were messengers of God. Purushotma said it is a world religion that respects the various cultures of the people who join. "Each culture maintains itself," she said. "It's like a bouquet of flowers ... each one adds to its beauty."

Purushotma's own family is a "world family." Purushotma is a white Australian, her husband is an Indian Hindu who grew up in Singapore, and their children are a mixture.

This is the second year that the Cupertino Bahá'í group--which has about 30 members--has sponsored an event for World Religion Day; the day has been celebrated since 1957 worldwide.

The group invited followers from the Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian faiths to participate in this year's service. Each faith shared devotions, music and presentations; the service ended with everyone singing "Amazing Grace."

"We found this was really beautiful because we found people don't want to hear a sermon from one individual from a single faith," Purushotma said, adding that by having someone from each faith read from their own scriptures, "people can see the commonalities." Another way the group reaches out to educate the community is through the Bay Area Bahá'í Youth Workshop. The workshop was spawned from an earlier Diversity Dance Workshop. Children and teens in the current workshop meet at De Anza College every Sunday afternoon for four hours. Half the time is spent rehearsing various dances that the children perform locally and around the country for the public. The rest of the time is spent on education.

Last summer the young people performed at teen centers around San Jose.

Purushotma said the dances are about issues such as racism and drug abuse. In one performance that promotes racial harmony, the children perform dances representing various cultures and then come together on the stage for a grand finale.

The Cupertino assembly will continue to work toward racial unity, Purushotma said, through World Religion Day, Racial Unity Day, youth programs and other projects.

New Life Church

"I'm not into diversity for political correctness," Pastor Tom Isbell said in a recent interview. "The reason my heart is open to this general topic is it's the only way I can read the New Testament."

Any church or organization that does base its activities on political correctness will fail, he predicted.

Isbell is a former electrical engineer who left industry in 1990 to become a pastor. He joined New Life, which is a Church of the Nazarene, about five years ago. New Life was a small, struggling church whose predominantly white membership had been in decline for 15 years. Isbell saw the changing demographics of Cupertino, and he said he felt the Lord called him to serve the growing number of Chinese in the community.

Many churches around town have begun sharing space with "ethnic churches," which cater to one particular ethnicity. Because real estate is so expensive, many new churches cannot afford their own building. Many older, established churches don't use their buildings all the time, which makes sharing a natural. New Life shares some of its space with a Korean congregation.

But Isbell said those congregations normally remain completely separate, as in the case of the Korean church and New Life. Isbell said he believes people of various races should integrate at churches. They should worship together, lead the church together and spend time together socially. "We need to get to a world where we're doing life together," Isbell said.

It took three years for Isbell to realize this vision. The church opened its buildings during the week to the Far East Educational Institute, a Christian afterschool program that is attended almost entirely by Chinese children. New Life runs Bible clubs for the institute on Fridays.

The church has also gained a reputation for preparing immigrant children for kindergarten through its preschool.

Despite these gains, Isbell said the church was still not "doing life together" with Chinese families. He had all but given up until he met by chance a Chinese pastor named David Hoi. While Isbell had toiled on his end, Hoi had spent the same amount of time working toward starting a Chinese-language ministry.

"He sat here telling his story, and it was the other half of mine," Isbell said.

The result: last summer the church began Chinese-language worship services. Every Sunday morning at 9:30 a.m. the church has English-language Sunday School at the same time as its Chinese-language service. Isbell said some Chinese families send their children to Sunday school while the parents are in the service which is done in both Mandarin and Cantonese. The English-language service is at 10:45 a.m.

Because Isbell said the church needs to make sure it "creates crossover points" for both English-speaking and Chinese-speaking members, a special joint Christmas service, was held in the weeks before the holiday, and plans are in the works for a joint Easter service.

He said other events throughout the year, such as the Fourth of July barbecue, offer opportunities to "do life together."

"We have a pretty clear vision of where we're going," he said, adding that the seeds have been planted; they need just a few years of "watering and tending."

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