1st Edition

Religion in Los Angeles Religious Activism, Innovation, and Diversity in the Global City

Edited By Richard Flory, Diane Winston Copyright 2021
318 Pages
by Routledge

318 Pages
by Routledge

318 Pages
by Routledge

Why has Los Angeles been a hotspot for religious activism, innovation, and diversity? What makes this Southern California metropolis conducive to spiritual experimentation and new ways of believing and belonging? A center of world religions, Los Angeles is the birthplace of Pentecostalism, the site of the largest Roman Catholic diocese in the United States, the home of more Buddhists anywhere... Read more

Section One: Then

1. Rivers of Living Water: Radical Social Behaviors and Religious Innovations on Azusa Street, 1906-1909.

Caroline Bunnell Harris

2. Funding Fundamentalism: Lyman Stewart, Hard Financing and the Creation of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles

Christina Copland

3. International Guru as Local Swami: Yogananda and the Religious Culture of Southern California

David J. Neumann

4. Borderlands Believers: Migrant Laborers and the Growth of Pentecostalism from Los Angeles

Lloyd Barba

5. Religion and the Urban Civic Landscape: The Case of the Los Angeles County Committee for Church and Community

Mark Wild

6. A Respectable Militancy: Rev. J. Raymond Henderson & the Civil Rights Struggle in Los Angeles, 1941-1963

David J. Neumann

7. The Pentecost Moment: Los Angeles as Global Christian Space in the Late-20th Century

Sean Dempsey

8. The "Flying Nun" and the "Painting Nun": Gender, Conflict, and Representation in 1960s Los Angeles.

Diane Winston

9. Theosophy and the Realization of Southern California’s Divine Destiny

Grace Converse

Section Two: Now

10. Redeeming the City: Los Angeles in the Social Imagination of an Urban Social Ministry

Richard Flory and Bradly Nabors

11. Expanding Never Again: The Cosmopolitan Parochialism of Los Angeles Jewish Mobilization on the Genocide in Darfur

Brie Loskota, Jennifer Thompson and Tobin Belzer

12. Justice Activism and Latino Spiritualities: Los Angeles as a Post-Colonial Border Space

Helene Slessarev-Jamir

13. Sustaining Borderlands Traditions in a Latinx Pentecostal Church

Jonathan Calvillo

14. Aum Shalom: Jews, Gurus and Religious Hybridity in the City of Angels

Amanda J. Lucia and Michael Scott Alexander

15. Korean Diaspora Churches in Los Angeles: Place Matters

Sung Gun Kim

16. Japanese Americans and the Birth (and Rebirth) of Buddhism in the City of Angels

Jean-Paul R. deGuzman

17. The Legacy of Religious Diversity in Southern California.

Bruce Phillips

Biography

Richard Flory is Senior Director of Research and Evaluation at the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA.

Diane Winston is the Knight Chair in Media and Religion at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA.

"The twenty-seven scholarly pieces that make-up Religion in Los Angeles: Religious Activism, Innovation, and Diversity in the Global City are a valuable contribution to what appears to be a growing body of literature examining the relationship between cities and their religious components." - Stephanie L. Derrick, independent scholar