Of Street Preachers and Newhall religion

Meet Jose.

Jose is one of those rare sights in the Santa Clarita Valley: an authentic street preacher.

Yes, Santa Clarita may be one of the most churched-out communities in the nation (just browse the CHU section of the phone book), but for a community of nearly 250,000, our street preacher-to-resident ratio is stunningly low.

Oh sure, everyone knows the Bicycling Mormons. They’re practically a fixture in the Santa Clarita Valley (it must be a pretty plum assignment for Missionary Training Center recruits to be sent to Mormon-friendly SCV) and you can find them anywhere.

But authentic, bible-thumping evangelical street preachers? They’re a rarity in the SCV, and I understand why. It’s a tough assignment: to be an effective street preacher, you need people. And to get that, you need a community that people walk around in. But no one walks in the SCV and we abhor going anywhere without our cars, so the market for street preachers has been and remains depressed in the 913xx. That’s why veteran SCV street preachers like Tony Miano use bullhorns to reach SCVers safely cocooned in their cars, or unThinkSCV altogether and head to more density-friendly places like San Fernando or Santa Monica.

But not Jose. He’s been hanging out in my neighborhood for over a month, struggling to find potential converts on our pristine sidewalks. He’s hard to miss with that Santa Claus beard, a wide straw hat, his dark black clothing, and his well-worn Bible, but whenever I see him, he is alone, sitting in the shade, looking around. And so I decided to do something out-of-character: I walked up to a strange looking man on the street and said hello.

In broken English, Jose told me that he’s 72 years young and lives and goes to church in Canyon Country.  His voice reminded me of the suave Latin gent in the Dos Equis commercials (The Most interesting man in the world), but the language barrier was too great, so I couldn’t ask him too many questions.

What does it mean for Newhall that we now have an elderly, bearded, Spanish-speaking street preacher wandering around, looking for lost souls (other than the fact that Vallarta has completely ruined us)? It just makes Newhall’s religious scene all the more spicy and interesting. Consider how diverse we are already:

OLPH is probably the most diverse church body in the SCV with masses in Spanish and English. Lots of Fillipinos and Koreans also attend OLPH.

Of course the Master’s College is also located here and its students are scattered all over (with some post grad students living on Walnut Street in Newhall). Placerita Canyon itself is filled with evangelical and Pentecostal churches.

If Christianity 2.0 is more your speed, there’s also a Mormon hall on Peachland and a Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall on Newhall Avenue. For the old school, there’s  a Jewish Synagogue somewhere (I always see local Reformed Jews walking around Newhall on Shabat, but I never know where they’re going). We have a Unitarian Congregation and a liberal Episcopal church as well. And the Newhall Presbyterian Church is the oldest congregation in all of Santa Clarita.

And yes, we even have a small population of Muslims who worship at a community building in Old Town Newhall.

To this flavorful dish, I now add Jose, our resident Latin street preacher. The religious diversity is just another thing that makes Newhall the best community in the SCV.