Chronicles of Faith: Spiritual leaders hail LV's 'open arms'

A sea of drink-clutching gamblers parts as the Rev. Tommy Starkes strides through the casino floor of the Flamingo Hilton hotel-casino.

With a red paperback copy of the New Testament tucked in the back of his pants, he is on his way backstage to lead a prayer meeting with a small group of Rockettes and stagehands -- one of many Strip stops he makes on an average night.

Down the street, across from the Stardust hotel-casino, the Guardian Angel Catholic Cathedral stands as a religious Rock of Gibraltar. Inside, parishioners may tithe with currency -- or casino chips.

And yet, while Starkes' Baptist ministry captures the drama of God vs. sin and Guardian Angel's tithing plate reflects an odd convergence of saintliness and vice, religion is woven tightly into the communities that extend beyond the Strip -- as a force affecting, and reflecting, the development of suburban Las Vegas.

"Las Vegas has a bit of an identity crisis in terms of wanting to be accepted as a mainstream city," said the Rev. Stan Steward, a pastor at Calvary Community Assembly of God Church. "So it accepts religion with open arms -- maybe more so than other cities."

On any day, at any given time, a spiritual group likely is meeting somewhere in Las Vegas. Twenty newcomers may be gathering on the carpeted floor of an apartment clubhouse for a Jewish Kaballah meeting. Or 1,000 Baptists may be singing a hymn in the sanctuary of a westside church. Or, tucked away in a downtown office building one night after hours, a handful of members of the Self Realization Fellowship may be discussing the similarities between the New Testament and Hinduism.

"People from outside Las Vegas are shocked to see any kind of normalcy, but once you get beyond the tourist attractions, you will find a community. All of the amenities or experiences of religious culture and life are found in Las Vegas," said Rabbi Sanford Akselrad of Congregation Ner Tamid.

"In the past, many people came to Las Vegas to escape something. Now people come for opportunity. It's part of the great normalization of Las Vegas."

Religion is drawn into the machinery of the city's growth in a number of ways: An influx of newcomers -- some 7,000 per month -- are looking for the elements of a suburban refuge away from the Strip. The rise in gambling elsewhere is causing Vegas officials to put a new spin the city's appeals and focus on improving the quality of residential life. And the ever-examined Las Vegas moral question is recast in innumerable political debates -- how do we preserve an economy based on the casino industry while managing its sometimes destructive effects on individual lives and neighborhoods?

"There is a dual life here," said Doug Nehring, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. "There are two cities -- the tourist city and the city where the rest of us live. Religion plays a big part in life outside the Strip."

In Clark County, some 85 percent of residents identified themselves as affiliates of a religious community in a 1998 survey by the UNLV Cannon Center for Survey Research.

Roman Catholics make up the dominant religious group in the county -- 27 percent -- followed by nondenominational Christians and Protestant denominational Christians, Mormons, Jews and increasing numbers of Eastern religionists.

The breakdown loosely mirrors national numbers -- Catholics are the largest religious group in the nation at 61 million, followed by other Christian groups. But Las Vegas does have a higher percentage of Mormons than the nation -- Clark County is roughly 7 percent Mormon, compared with 2 percent nationwide.

And while the Judeo-Christian traditions still have a firm grasp on the U.S. population -- some 241 million Americans are Christian -- a rise in the religious "other" has stirred the pot, causing changes in even the most firmly rooted religious groups.

In the United States in the past 30 years, the Muslim population has increased from 800,000 to 4 million. Hindus are up from 100,000 to almost 1 million. Shamanists, Shintoists, Chinese folk religionists and Jainists have appeared in significant numbers on the map for the first time. And the number of practicing Buddhists has blossomed to more than 2 million, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica Book of the Year 1998.

Americans are increasingly exploring more than one religion in their lifetime, dabbling in Eastern and metaphysical spiritual philosophy and responding to the Madison Avenue repackaging of Christian theology into a user-friendly "Christianity Lite." The trends are prompted, scholars say, by forces ranging from the coming millennium to the baby boomers' search for midlife meaning and a continued obsession with anything that allows for self-analysis.

In Las Vegas, heightened religious consumerism and multicultural migration are ushering in a revised definition of religious life. In all of its capacities -- from pastime to moral compass, political launching pad to last resort -- religion is becoming understood as something more vast than the often stodgy connotations associated with "organized religion."

Sunday mornings once saw the well-dressed plod in droves to the pews in mainline churches, children following in the footsteps of their parents, generation upon generation reciting the same liturgy. Now families are split in their beliefs, Buddha and Baha'u'llah are making inroads into the suburbs, and a rekindled spiritual interest is selling books and bracelets and celebrating Allah, a less dogmatic Jesus Christ or, simply, a Higher Power.

Religious influences continue to merge with secular issues, affecting the development of business and public policy.

From Catholic Charities to the Soka Gakkai Buddhists, religious groups have mounted efforts to clean up neighborhoods, provide care for the elderly and feed the hungry.

Religious groups also work the avenues of politics and commerce. Take, for example, a handful of occurrences from a two-week period earlier this year:

* On the Strip, members of the Interfaith Council for Worker Justice, an organization of 21 religious congregations, protested the low wages of hotel restaurant workers. The Rev. Spencer Barrett, pastor of the First African Methodist Episcopalian Church, told the Las Vegas Sun, "Saving souls is more than preaching the word. It is taking care of the mind, body, soul and social conditions of our parishioners and our community."

* A private ceremony at Guardian Angel was held to charter the Las Vegas Chapter of Legatus, a Catholic business coalition headed by George Maloof, CEO of the Fiesta hotel-casino. The coalition is intended to encourage business professionals to incorporate their religious principles into their daily business lives.

* At a Baptist Ministers Alliance meeting at the Second Baptist Church in West Las Vegas, pastors met with a representative from the Equal Rights Commission to discuss educating church members about racial discrimination. Pastors also discussed implementing a neighborhood program to prevent teen pregnancies.

* The Las Vegas City Council faced issues of church versus state over the inclusion of denominational prayer at public meetings; the interfaith council of the National Conference for Community and Justice (formerly called the National Conference of Christians and Jews) drafted recommendations for appropriate prayers.

Additionally, religious leaders of a variety of faiths have mounted lobbying efforts aimed at influencing the moral character of the community.

For example, Mormons actively lobbied the Legislature to prevent the proliferation of gaming in neighborhoods last year, according to Ashley Hall, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Nevada Zone public-affairs director.

"We didn't want it springing up on every corner," he said. "We wanted to protect our neighborhoods."

As the Las Vegas community continues to grow, its residential character will be partially founded in the hundreds of houses of worship sprinkled throughout the city. And although many religions share commonalities, each has its own appeal to followers.

"Underlying community activism, there is a core moral belief -- a set of principles that guides us," said the Rev. Kevin Odor, a pastor at Canyon Ridge Christian Church.

"This is a city that some would say needs moral guidance, and there are a lot of faiths here to choose from. In this day and age, people are looking for that. There is a spiritual hunger out there, and everyone is trying to fill that need."

ON WEDNESDAY: Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints helped lay a foundation for modern Las Vegas and still have a significant presence in the valley.

archive