Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Cities

Los Angeles

Also Known As Angeleno
United States

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Los Angeles is where the Azusa Street Revival began in 1906 under William Seymour, the event from which most of world Pentecostalism traces its descent, and it has been a place where new religious movements take hold ever since. Paramahansa Yogananda founded the Self-Realization Fellowship there in 1920, Aimee Semple McPherson built the Angelus Temple in 1923, and the Church of Scientology has had its principal presence in the city since the 1950s. The Hsi Lai Temple in the suburbs is among the largest Buddhist complexes in the western hemisphere, and the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels serves one of the largest Catholic archdioceses in the United States.

Facts
Origins
Founded
Founded in 1781 as a Spanish pueblo near the mission of San Gabriel, and grown into the largest city of the American west 1
Origin of the Name
Founded in 1781 as El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles, honoring Mary under the title Our Lady Queen of the Angels. 1
Attributions
Tradition
Catholicism from the mission period; the Azusa Street revival of 1906, from which worldwide Pentecostalism spread; the metaphysical churches of the early twentieth century, including Aimee Semple McPherson's Angelus Temple; and Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim and Armenian communities of substantial size 2
Traditions
Sacred and Liturgical Languages
Spanish and Latin in the mission churches, English in the revival and in most modern worship, with Armenian, Korean, Spanish and Hebrew in the city's congregations 3
Learn More
Azusa Street, 1906

William Seymour was the son of former slaves, blind in one eye, and had learned the doctrine that speaking in tongues accompanies baptism in the Holy Spirit from a teacher in Texas whose segregated classroom obliged him to listen from the corridor. He came to Los Angeles in 1906 to preach at a small holiness mission, was locked out of it for what he taught, and continued in a house on Bonnie Brae Street. When the crowds broke the porch, the meeting moved to a disused building on Azusa Street that had been an African Methodist church and was then serving as a stable and warehouse.

Meetings ran three times a day for about three years, with no fixed order of service and no advertised preacher. What visitors reported, and what the newspapers mocked, was the noise, the tongues, the healings and above all the mixing: black, white, Latino and Asian worshippers, women preaching alongside men, at a time and in a country where that combination was close to unthinkable. One participant wrote that the colour line had been washed away in the blood.

Reports went out through a free paper the mission printed, and workers left from the meetings for Scandinavia, Africa, India and Latin America within months. Most branches of world Pentecostalism trace their descent to this address, and the movement's later separation into white and black denominations is a departure from what began here, not a continuation of it.

A City Where New Religions Take Root

Los Angeles has been receiving and generating religious movements for a century, and the reasons usually given, a population of newcomers with no inherited congregation and an industry built on publicity, are probably right.

Paramahansa Yogananda arrived from Bengal and founded the Self-Realization Fellowship in the city in 1920, teaching kriya yoga to American audiences and leaving a lakeside shrine and an autobiography that has never gone out of print. Aimee Semple McPherson opened the Angelus Temple in 1923, preached illustrated sermons to five thousand at a time, ran one of the first religious radio stations in the country, founded the Foursquare Church, and disappeared for five weeks in 1926 in an episode never satisfactorily explained. The Church of Scientology established its principal presence in the city in the 1950s and has been closely associated with the entertainment industry since.

Later arrivals reflect immigration rather than invention. The Hsi Lai Temple in the eastern suburbs, opened in 1988 by a Taiwanese order, is among the largest Buddhist complexes in the western hemisphere. The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, consecrated in 2002, serves an archdiocese of several million, overwhelmingly Latino, which is the largest in the United States and which in 2007 settled the biggest clergy abuse claim in the country to that date.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

This source names Los Angeles directly: "an 880 million dollar Archdiocese of Los Angeles settlement and a 323 million dollar Diocese of Rockville Centre settlement that year."

This source names Los Angeles directly: "The Los Angeles Times's original news report, published 15 July 2007, on the Archdiocese of Los Angeles's agreement to pay 660 million dollars to 508 claimants, reached two days before the first..."

Source 660 Million Dollar Settlement in Priest AbusesJoe Mozingo and John Spano, Los Angeles Times

This source names Los Angeles directly: "reached outside bankruptcy (the Los Angeles archdiocese alone reached more than 1.5 billion dollars across its own settlements)."

This source names Los Angeles directly: "of Aimee Semple McPherson, held by the Los Angeles Public Library as part of the Security Pacific National Bank Collection and credited to Tibbals Studio."

This source names Los Angeles directly: "The record transcribes the Los Angeles Public Library's own catalogue entry for the photograph, credited to the Security Pacific National Bank Collection and Tibbals Studio, dated circa 1911, and..."

This source names Los Angeles directly: "the May 1953 mescaline session in Los Angeles under the psychiatrist Humphry Osmond's supervision, the 1954 publication of The Doors of Perception, and Huxley's request for LSD on his deathbed in..."

Source Aldous Huxley: An English IntellectualNicholas Murray

This source names Los Angeles directly: "Church of God in Christ (COGIC) in Los Angeles" and states he remained in COGIC ministry, serving as co-pastor of the church his father founded, throughout his recording career."

Source Andrae Crouch, The COGIC Minister (Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center)Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center

This source names Los Angeles directly: "Seymour at 312 Azusa Street in Los Angeles, continuing until roughly 1915 with the most intense activity in its first three years; and for the movement's rapid global reach, spreading to over fifty..."

Source Azusa Street Revival (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Los Angeles directly: "in the country within a generation. Los Angeles became the unlikely birthplace of modern Pentecostalism at the Azusa Street Revival of 1906, and the state has since incubated an unusual share of new..."

This source names Los Angeles directly: "News/AP report that on July 16, 2007, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Haley Fromholz formally approved a $660 million settlement between the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles and 508 clergy..."

This source names Los Angeles directly: "In 1907 Mason traveled to Los Angeles and attended the Azusa Street Revival, where he received what he described as baptism in the Holy Spirit accompanied by speaking in tongues, and returned home..."

This source names Los Angeles directly: "1906 to 1907 Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles, he and his co-founder Charles Price Jones split at the church's 1907 general assembly in Jackson, Mississippi; Jones led the non-Pentecostal..."

Source Church of God in Christ (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Los Angeles directly: "The underlying facts it reports, that Los Angeles astrologer Elbert Benjamine incorporated the church in response to local ordinances restricting astrology's teaching and practice, and that it..."

This source names Los Angeles directly: "for Daughters Of Charity Foundation, Los Angeles, California, EIN 77-0047181, tax-exempt since April 2000, classified under Philanthropy/Grantmaking Foundations."

This source names Los Angeles directly: "community edited, quoting a 1996 Los Angeles Times count of about 2,000 members and a 2022 New York Times count of over 1,500 members, more than 600 of them resident at the group's Apollo compound..."

Source Fellowship of Friends (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
Hinduism, Religions

Yogananda founded the Self-Realization Fellowship in Los Angeles in 1920.

This source names Los Angeles directly: "broadcast February 8, 1970 on KTLA in Los Angeles; it is generally described as the first televised church service in American broadcast history."

This source names Los Angeles directly: "Frank Bartleman's How Pentecost Came to Los Angeles, self published in 1925, is a primary eyewitness memoir of the 1906 Azusa Street revival that is widely regarded as the founding event of modern..."

Source How Pentecost Came to Los AngelesFrank Bartleman

This source names Los Angeles directly: "while on staff at Children's Hospital Los Angeles."

This source names Los Angeles directly: "A citation to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's own online catalogue record for its accessioned object M.81.90.2, read directly."

Source LACMA Collections, "The Life of Milarepa" (M.81.90.2)Los Angeles County Museum of Artthe holders' own account

This source names Los Angeles directly: "KPBS Public Media on 16 July 2007, on Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Haley Fromholz's approval of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles's 660 million dollar settlement the day after it was..."

This source names Los Angeles directly: "this composition, the other now at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art."

This source names Los Angeles directly: "which two versions exist, one at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and one at the Musee du Louvre, both oil on canvas at 128 by 94 centimetres, dated to about 1640."

This source names Los Angeles directly: "a way station on the Salt Lake to Los Angeles trail, though the settlers abandoned it within two years and it did not become a Mormon population center in the way Utah or southeastern Idaho did."

Source The Oxford Handbook of MormonismTerryl L. Givens and Philip L. Barlow (eds.)

This source names Los Angeles directly: "record for Pacifica Foundation Inc, Los Angeles, California, EIN 94-1347046, a 501(c)(3) since April 1958 classified under Radio."

This source names Los Angeles directly: "Seymour led a revival beginning 9 April 1906 at 312 Azusa Street in Los Angeles, marked by Spirit baptism, speaking in tongues and other charismatic experience, and continuing until roughly 1915."

Source Azusa Street Revival (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Los Angeles directly: "several holiness bodies, among them a Los Angeles congregation Phineas F."

Source Praise and Worship: The Nazarene Hymnal (Internet Archive)Church of the Nazarene (Nazarene Publishing House)

This source names Los Angeles directly: "Los Angeles Times reporting by Richard Winton, 15 May 2008."

This source names Los Angeles directly: "that Scientology headquarters in Los Angeles claimed more than 8 million members in 159 countries, while noting religion scholar J."

Tapestries, Sources

This source names Los Angeles directly: "account of the tapestries within the Los Angeles cathedral, depicting the communion of saints, carries direct authority for its own description of the tapestries' subjects and arrangement, as the..."

Source Tapestries

This source names Los Angeles directly: "Headquartered in Los Angeles and London, it is widely regarded by scholars of new religious movements as the first major UFO-based religion and remains one of the longest continuously operating..."

This source names Los Angeles directly: "of the 1906 Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles, the event from which the modern global Pentecostal movement traces its origin."

The Azusa Street Revival began in the city in 1906.

This source names Los Angeles directly: "livery stable on Azusa Street in Los Angeles, under the African American preacher William J."

This source names Los Angeles directly: "Sarah Bailey, a troubled new student at a Los Angeles Catholic high school, is drawn into a coven of three outcast classmates, Nancy Downs, Bonnie Harper and Rochelle Zimmerman, played by Robin..."

This source names Los Angeles directly: "1 in Los Angeles in 1971."

Source The Holy Book of Women's MysteriesZsuzsanna Budapest

This source names Los Angeles directly: "It premiered in Los Angeles on December 16, 1998 and grossed $218 million worldwide, the most successful non-Disney animated feature of its time."

Source The Prince of Egypt (1998 film) (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Los Angeles directly: "had broadcast biblical messages locally on Los Angeles station KNX since 19 October 1929, and the program took the name Voice of Prophecy in January 1937 as it grew across the Don Lee Broadcasting..."

This source names Los Angeles directly: "broadcast for a short run in the Los Angeles area in 1956."

This source names Los Angeles directly: "name aired for a short time in the Los Angeles area," a visual companion to his weekly radio programme of the same name begun in 1949."

This source names Los Angeles directly: "began broadcasting biblical messages on Los Angeles radio station KNX on 19 October 1929, that the program took the name Voice of Prophecy in January 1937 as it expanded over the Don Lee..."

This source names Los Angeles directly: "industry estimate of the value of its Los Angeles and Hollywood properties."

This source names Los Angeles directly: "1 in Los Angeles in 1971, one of the earliest organised expressions of Dianic Wicca, a women-only, Goddess centred current within modern witchcraft that grew directly out of second wave feminism."

Contained In

Sacred To

The revival, the Angelus Temple and the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels all belong to the city.

Sources
1. Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)
Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2024View the Source
2. How Pentecost Came to Los Angeles
Frank Bartleman, Self-published (Frank Bartleman), 1925
3. The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions
John Bowker (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1997View the Source
The Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition
Oxford University Press, Oxford University Pressdemonym / adjectival formView the Source
The Azusa Street Mission and Revival: The Birth of the Global Pentecostal Movement
Cecil M. Robeck Jr., Thomas Nelson, 2006
Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture
Grant Wacker, Harvard University Press, 2001View the Source
The Church of Scientology: A History of a New Religion
Hugh B. Urban, Princeton University Press, 2011View the Source
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