Chapter 3 Tables

Tabular comparisons updated to include 2008.

There are eleven groups in the list of associations I know to have been legally incorporated, but I have not found evidence that they existed in reality. They are not counted in these tables.

1. All associations listed, analyzed by type of activity

Family Wor- Conf. School Serv. Commun- TOTAL

ship Center org. ity

Western 27 6 13 9 4 59

Liturgical

Eastern 5 0 1 1 1 8

Liturgical

Lutheran 8 1 0 1 0 10

Reformed- 23 1 0 0 0 24

Presbyterian

Pietist- 15 4 0 0 0 19

Methodist

Holiness 12 3 1 11 0 27

Pentecostal 67 2 4 1 0 74

European 2 1 0 0 0 3

Free-Church

Baptist 43 2 2 1 0 48

Independent 6 0 0 1 0 7

Fundamentalist

Adventist 14 2 3 0 0 19

Liberal 4 1 0 2 1 8

Latter-day 5 2 0 2 0 9

Saints

Communal 1 1 0 0 16 18

Christian Sci.- 9 0 0 0 0 9

Metaphys.

Spiritualist, 17 0 1 3 0 21

Psy, New Age

Ancient 4 0 3 2 1 10

Wisdom

Magick 2 3 1 4 0 10

Middle 11 3 0 3 1 18

Eastern

Eastern 37 4 3 12 3 59

Other 23 0 0 19 0 42

TOTAL 335 36 32 72 27 502

2. Persistence in existence: percentage of associations established still existing in 2008

Family Number est. Currently %

Western Liturgical 59 41 69%

Eastern Liturgical 8 6 75%

Lutheran 10 7 70%

Reformed-Presbyterian 24 14 58%

Pietist-Methodist 19 11 58%

Holiness 27 13 48%

Pentecostal 74 35 47%

European Free-Church 3 3 100%

Baptist 48 28 58%

Independent Fundamentalist 7 7 100%

Adventist 19 17 89%

Liberal 8 2 25%

Latter-Day Saints 9 7 78%

Communal 18 4 22%

Christian Sci.-Metaphysical 9 6 67%

Spiritualist, Psychic, 21 3 14%

and New Age

Ancient Wisdom 10 8 80%

Magick 10 6 60%

Middle Eastern 18 13 72%

Eastern 59 33 56%

Other 42 11 26%

TOTAL 502 275 55%

3. Associations existing in 2008, analyzed by type of activity

Family Wor. Conf. School Serv. Com- TOTAL

ship Center org. munity

Western 21 4 5 9 2 41

Liturgical

Eastern 3 0 1 1 1 6

Liturgical

Lutheran 6 1 0 0 0 7

Reformed- 13 1 0 0 0 14

Presbyterian

Pietist- 8 3 0 0 0 11

Methodist

Holiness 5 2 1 5 0 13

Pentecostal 29 1 4 1 0 35

European 2 1 0 0 0 3

Free-Church

Baptist 24 1 2 1 0 28

Independent 6 0 0 1 0 7

Fundamentalist

Adventist 13 2 2 0 0 17

Liberal 1 1 0 0 0 2

Latter-day 3 2 0 2 0 7

Saints

Communal 1 1 0 0 2 4

Christian Sci.- 6 0 0 0 0 6

Metaphys.

Spiritualist, 2 0 0 1 0 3

Psy, New Age

Ancient 2 0 3 2 1 8

Wisdom

Magick 1 2 1 2 0 6

Middle 7 3 0 3 0 13

Eastern

Eastern 21 2 3 5 2 33

Other 3 0 0 8 0 11

TOTAL 177 27 22 41 8 275

4. Numbers of associations in existence at various points in time

Family 1850 1900 1950 2008

Western Liturgical 2 19 27 41

Eastern Liturgical 0 0 0 6

Lutheran 0 1 4 7

Reformed-Presbyterian 0 11 10 14

Pietist-Methodist 1 7 13 11

Holiness 0 1 6 13

Pentecostal 0 0 18 35

European Free-Church 0 0 1 3

Baptist 0 8 11 28

Independent Fundamentalist 0 0 0 7

Adventist 0 3 9 17

Liberal 1 1 2 2

Latter-day Saints 0 0 2 7

Communal 1 2 2 4

Christian Sci.-Metaphysical 0 2 6 6

Spiritualist, Psychic, 0 1 0 3

and New Age

Ancient Wisdom 0 1 1 8

Magick 0 0 0 6

Middle Eastern 0 2 2 13

Eastern 1 5 4 33

Other 0 4 8 11

TOTAL 6 68 126 275

For comparison: U. S. Census counts of Santa Cruz County population that year, rounded to nearest 1,000:

<1,000 21,000 67,000 250,000

5. Tabulations from various religious surveys

In the general census of 1890 and in special religious censuses of 1906, 1916, 1926, and 1936 the United States Bureau of the Census obtained church data, including the counts of members. Many other organizations have also collected church membership data before 1890, after 1936, and between the two dates. Unfortunately the methodology, even that of the U.S. Census Bureau, has not been uniform. Kevin J. Christiano, Religious Diversity and Social Change: American Cities, 1890-1906, Cambridge University Press, 1987, pp. 29-41 discusses the accuracy of the U. S. Census counts, concluding that the counts from 1890 to 1926 are reasonably trustworthy. It is significant, however, that they were reported not by someone going door-to-door and asking the religious affiliation of the members of the household, but by tabulating questionnaires sent to and filled out by the pastors or heads of the individual congregations.

(The sources of Table 5 are:

1890: U.S. Census, reported in Henry K. Carroll, Report on Statistics of Churches in the United States at the Eleventh Census: 1890. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1894.

1914: Summary of the data gathered by the Santa Cruz Federated Men's Club and reported in the SC Surf on June 12, 1914. Sixty to eighty workers went door to door, collecting data.

1926: Bureau of the Census. Census of Religious Bodies, 1926, Part I: Summary and Detailed Tables. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1930.

2000: Summary of the data gathered by the American Religious Data Archive and reported on its website, www.thearda.com/mapsReports 2004. The data were obtained by statistical sampling.)

5a. The numbers reported in the surveys

Family 1890 U.S. 1914 SC Surf 1926 U.S. 2000 ARDA

Census religious religious counts

census census

#members #households #members #persons

SC County SC City SC County SC County

Western 2,045 626 8,205 56,925

Liturgical(1)

Eastern -(2) 1 - 701

Liturgical

Lutheran - 32 - 1,701

Reformed- 680 421 1,424 2,399

Presbyterian

Pietist- 639 388 905 1,893

Methodist

Holiness 9 33 - 1,360

Pentecostal - 9 224 3,933

European - 3 - 95

Free-Church

Baptist 241 244 1,011 6,077

Independent - - - -

Fundamentalist

Adventist 140 70 234 1,551

Liberal 100 62 - 179

Latter-day 35 3 - 2,687

Saints

Chr. Sci.- - 93 97 -

Metaphysical

Spiri., Psych., 60 23 - -

New Age(3)

Ancient Wis- 9 1 0 -

Dom(4)

Magick - - - -

Middle- - 10 90 8,616

Eastern(5)

Eastern(6) - - - -

Other 185 - 503 -

Total stating 4,143 2,019 12,693 88,117

preference

Total 19,270 3,165 32,000(ap- 255,602

Population prox.)

5b. Groups' share of Santa Cruzans expressing preferences

In percentages

Family 1890 1914 1926 2000

Western Lit.(1) 49% 31% 65% 65%

Eastern Liturgical -(2) <1% - 1%

Lutheran - 2% - 2%

Reformed-Presbyter. 16% 21% 11% 3%

Pietist-Methodist 15% 19% 7% 2%

Holiness <1% 2% - 2%

Pentecostal - <1% 2% 4%

Euro. Free-Church - <1% - <1%

Baptist 6% 12% 8% 7%

Indep. Fundam. - 7% - -

Adventist 3% 3% 2% 2%

Liberal 2% 3% - <1%

Latter-day Saints 1% <1% - 3%

Chr. Sci.-Metaph. - 5% 1% -

Spir, Psy, New A.(3) 1% 1% - -

Ancient Wisdom(4) <1% <1% - -

Magick - - - -

Middle Eastern(5) - <1% 1% 10%

Eastern(6) - - - -

Non-denominational - 1% - -

Other 4% - 4% -

Total stating 100% 100% 100% 100%

preference

% of total pop. 21% 71% 40% 34%

Notes to 5a and 5b:

1. Western liturgical: all these were Catholic except for Episcopalians: 149 in 1890, 200 (households) in 1914, 674 in 1926, and 1,575 in 2000.

2. The symbol "-" signifies that no data are given for this group in this year.

3. All Spiritualists.

4. All Theosophists.

5. The Middle Eastern group consisted entirely of Jews in 1914 and 1926. Of the 8,616 in the group in 2000 6,000 were Jews, 1,891 were Muslim, and the other 725 were Baha'i.

6. Although ARDA states that in 2000 there were two Hindu and 12 Buddhist congregations, it presents no count of their members.

6. Santa Cruz spirituality compared with that of two similar California places, with one "liberal" university town, and with one typical Midwestern city.

The data are from the www.smartpages.com listings online as of May 13, 2004. The writer cannot guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the data, but the general Yellow Pages (Smartpages) methodology can be seen by inspection to be quite uniform at least in these instances. This includes the headings, which have evolved over the years and which now readily lend themselves to comparison. If, then the interpretation of the data is distorted in the following table, the distortion can be taken to be uniform throughout, and thus the comparisons themselves stand valid.

S. Cruz S. Luis Obispo S. Barbara Boulder, CO Racine, WI

2000 Pop. 2000 Pop. 2000 Pop. 2000 Pop. 2000 Pop.

City 54,000 City 44,000 City 92,000 City 94,000 City 81,000

Co. 255,000 Co. 246,000 Co. 399,000 Co. 291,000 Co. 188,000

Churches(1)

Christian

241 315 164 230 207

Other

14 10 12 19 1

Total

255 325 176 249 208

Religious conference centers & retreat facilities(2)

Christian

8 1 4 4 3

Other religious

5 0 2 0 0

Total

13 1 6 4 3

Non-religious

10 2 6 5 1

Grand

T. 23 3 12 9 4

Notes

1. Includes The Smartpages headings, "churches," "synagogues," and "mosques," whereas there is no heading, "temples." The heading "churches" includes various kinds of worship congregations, so the count "other" is derived from inspecting and interpreting the names of the "churches" and adding "synagogues" and "mosques."

2. As in note 1, the counts other than the total are derived from inspection and interpretation of the names of the "conference centers" and "retreat facilities."

Chapter 4 Historical Summary

About Santa Cruz

This history of Santa Cruz spirituality is about the whole county of Santa Cruz California, which lies on the north side of Monterey Bay and consists of a narrow strip of populous coastal plain behind which rise low, but rugged mountains. It was a region of the Ohlone People until Spain took effective possession of it with the establishment of the Santa Cruz Mission in 1791 and the Branciforte Pueblo in 1797. In 1821 it came under the control of the new Mexican government, but this period came to an end in 1848, when Santa Cruz became an American outpost. And outpost it might have remained in spite of its richness of timber, limestone, and pasturage had not the gold rush of 1848 first siphoned off its work force but then created a demand for its products. From that time the north end of the county, the Santa Cruz City area, was a commercial stronghold and the Watsonville area, the south end of the county, was heavily agricultural. The county grew in population and activity along with the rest of California. In 1965, however, the city of Santa Cruz became the home of the ninth campus of the University of California System, and this presence, plus an enduring effect of the 1960s social upheavals, gave it and the surrounding area a new and different character.

Spirituality

Were it not for the changes brought to Santa Cruz in the 1960s it would be satisfying to compose, among other historical studies, the history of its churches. Now, however, the churches - or, more properly, the church congregations - are only part of the wider picture of the place's spirituality. Today's Santa Cruz has been called weird, a refuge of latter-day hippies, of carefree surfers, and of performance artists. If these people are not religious in the traditional sense, nevertheless many of them are spiritual, which is to say that they base their lives on a conviction that the world has reality and meaning beyond what meets the eye and can be touched and weighed. The several spiritualities which coexist in Santa Cruz include 1) older and newer forms of Christianity, 2) the beliefs and practices of Asia, from Judaism in the west of it to Zen Buddhism in the east, and 3) peculiar spiritualities which do not fall under the first two broad headings.

The current spiritualities of Santa Cruz belong to peoples who migrated here in recent historical time from Europe, Asia, and Africa. The Ohlone people, who possessed the area before all these, had a deep appreciation of nature and of their unity with it. Unfortunately their historical continuity has been lost, but there is some knowledge about them, and some of their descendants are trying to restore it. Another people, one that came from India by way of Europe, maintaining, in spite of all, a racial, cultural, and spiritual identity were the Roma - known commonly as Gypsies. In both ends of the county these were seen as foreigners, undesirables. Run out of town innumerable times, they eventually stopped coming, and their spirituality is lost to Santa Cruz County.

Christian Churches of the European Forefathers

As the Europeans migrated to America they brought with them their Christian Churches, Catholic, Protestant, and, to a lesser extent, Orthodox. Except for Spanish Catholicism, this movement proceeded westward from the Eastern American states to California and Santa Cruz. Here is a table showing when they established worshipping congregations in Santa Cruz:

Church North County South County

Catholic 1791 1856

Methodist 1848 1852

Baptist 1858 1914

Presbyterian 1889* 1860

Episcopalian 1862 1868

Lutheran 1930 1880

Orthodox 1962 -

* Santa Cruz Presbyterians of 1857 voted to join with the Congregationalists. The two groups called their church Congregational, but they professed a Presbyterian Confession of Faith

The change over the years of the relative sizes of these groups can be shown by the percentages of Santa Cruzans stating their religious preference:

Year Catholic This Table's Protestant Churches

1890 46% 27%

2000 63% 14%

Methods of counting church members are not uniform, but the main factor to be considered is that in 1890 only a fifth of the population expressed a preference, and in 2000 preference was stated by about one third of the people.

Christian Churches of American Origin

In the nineteenth century American Protestant Christianity began to take on forms that were sufficiently different from the European ones to constitute new denominations. The indigenous denominations number in the hundreds, and only a few of them have grown enough to take a place among the religious forces in the country. Most of the major ones, however, at least made their way to Santa Cruz, and here is a table showing when they were founded and when they established worshipping congregations in the county:

Church Founded North Co. South Co.

Congregational 1648 1852 1884

Chr. Ch./Ch. of Christ 1807 1890 1859

Adventist 1844 1859 1925

Unitarian 1786 1866 -

Latter Day Saints 1830 1946 1873

Pentecostal 1906 1909 1921

The change in the size of this group of indigenous churches as a whole can be shown by the percentage of Santa Cruzans stating one or the other of the group as a religious preference:

1890 15%

2000 11%

(The Congregationals lost the most; the Pentecostals gained the most.)

Asian Spirituality

Setting aside the matter of the geographical origin of Christianity, one finds in Santa Cruz spiritual groups which come from the whole range of Asia, west to east. Before World War II only Judaism among them was found close to mainstream American life, although there were ethnic enclaves of Buddhists, Hindus, and Chinese Tao-Confucianists. Repeal of Asian immigration restriction laws after World War II and after the Vietnam War led to a great influx of South and East Asians, along with their spiritualities. The social changes of the 1960s also brought about the Americanization of these and of some West Asian spiritualities, so that many of them are now demographically mixed American. This table shows when they established worshipping congregations in Santa Cruz:

Spiritual Body North County South County

Judaism 1869 -

Tao-Confucian 1880s 1880s

Buddhist 1888 1905

Hindu 1935 1978

Islam 1973 2005

Baha'i 1974 1975

Sikh 1977 -

If all the residents of Jewish, Arab, and Persian ethnicity are assumed to have adhered to their traditional religion, then they amounted to 2% of all those who expressed religious preference in 1890 and 10% of all those who expressed religious preference in 2000.

In the 1890 study 0% claimed any of the other Asian spiritualities, although there were at least several hundred ethnic Chinese and Japanese who frequented Confucian and Buddhist temples. There are no figures at all regarding adherents to South and East Asian spiritualities in the 2000 study, but one assumes that the county's more than 30 worship and/or conference facilities representing them must have some formal members.

Other Spiritualities

Ancient spiritualities are present now in various forms, such as Wicca. Historically recurrent beliefs, such as Gnosticism, can be found here, as can newer kinds of spirituality, such as Theosophy, that link themselves with the distant past. Other religious movements have based themselves on links between spirituality and science. Finally, there is the non-dogmatic faith in the oneness of all things, which is found in the New Age and Hippie movements. These special groups can be categorized under the four headings which are listed below, along with the dates of their entry as groups in the county.

Group North County South County

Spiritualist 1850 1866

Mystery practices 1886 -

Christian Science 1897 1898

New Age/Hippie 1965* 1976

* = These groups and their dates are hard to find; the date stated here is at least documented.

The numbers of adherents involved are small. In 1890, for instance, there were 60 Spiritualists and 9 Theosophists reported, but a similar 2000 study, extensive in other regards, gives no counts for either of these groups.

Conclusions about California Spirituality

It is said that Santa Cruzans feel that their shores and mountains have a special spirituality, that this is a place where all can think as they please, where they are not bound by history and dogma, or at least that their opinions are private affairs and are in harmony with the surf and the forests. Politically this attitude seems to have translated itself into a brand of liberalism which makes the place sublimely open to the world but at the same time jealously closed to the world's intrusion. In the hearts of Santa Cruzans, however, it is a worldview that continues to feel the freshness of one's first awe-inspiring sight of this little world "over the hill" from San Jose and the joy at having found the place where one is in harmony with whatever there is that is both out there and deep inside one's self.

Stepping out of Santa Cruz into the rest of California, however, one finds a similar worldview to be widespread. Several brief points can profitably be made in this regard.

First, the renowned sunny, pleasant climate of California, "represented a kind of exterior assurance that inner, psychological affirmations of health, happiness, and prosperity were attuned with cosmic harmony. California was an outer manifestation of inner abundance; a place where the possibilities were endless." (John K. Simmons and Brian Wilson, Competing Visions of Paradise: The California Experience of 19th Century American Sectarianism, Santa Barbara: Fithian Press, 1993, pp. 66-67)

Then, there was the romantic attitude to the majestic mountains of the state and the awe-inspiring beaty to be seen in them. The vision of an uplifting nature, of a nature that unfolded historically not by a “survival of the fittest,” but by an impetus of positive, divine force, a nature that was a divinely written book to be read, understood, and felt by man, was given voice and vigor by John Muir. This transplanted Scotsman and Wisconsinite combined his emotional awe with meticulous scientific observation and so produced a view of California that satisfied both poles of the human attitude toward nature. The recent, copiously annotated, biography of Muir by Donald Worster, A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir, (Oxford University Press, 2008) describes this complex phenomenon.

California's physical attributes led John Muir to influential conclusions. Ferenc Morton Szasz, in Religion in the Modern American West, observes that "Euro-Americans held a much more constructed [compared to Native Americans] view of sacred space, limiting it to a graveyard, a church or synagogue interior, or an altar. Although both Judaism and Christianity share the concept of the stewardship of land, this view was marginalized at the dawn of the twentieth century. Perhaps John Muir's greatest contribution was to broaden this concept of stewardship to the country at large." (p. 64) "At the core of Muir's environmental accomplishments lay his vision of the interconnectedness of all life. Growing to maturity in a world of Darwinian materialism and rapacious utilization of natural resources, Muir's forging of a new relationship between humankind and Nature represented a genuine intellectual breakthrough for the Euro-American mainstream." (p. 65) Other authors also point to Muir's pivotal position in the development of California spirituality. Thus, Sandra Sizer Frankiel in California's Spiritual Frontiers, pp. 120-125, compares Muir's spirituality with that of California religious groups, and Eldon G. Ernst considers the spectacular qualities of California topography which influenced Muir and helped form California Protestantism in Pilgrim Progression, pp. 56-61.

A somewhat different point is made by Szasz, loc cit, p. 198:

"As historian Eldon G. Ernst has noted, California never produced any religious mainstream. From the beginning, the various faiths have all been minority faiths, juxtaposed against a dominant secular culture. California has changed our whole understanding of what it means to be religious, Ernst argues. While one might easily comprehend what it means to be religious in, say, Boise, Amarillo, or Provo, what does it mean to be religious in Los Angeles?

"A 1990 Lilly Foundation report concluded that the majority of Californians were spiritual but not conventional in their religious belief patterns. Without the structure provided by historic faith traditions, however, such spirituality often becomes formless, guided by individual whim. Consequently, many describe Los Angeles as a city filled with people who lack social ties. In such a world of pluralistic belief patterns, religion has emerged as yet another 'consumer item.' Los Angeles has enormous choice in this regard.... It is likely that Southern California will continue to lead the nation in this tremendous range of individual religious options. If western individualism is more spiritual than atheistic (and all surveys seem to suggest that this is so), then those that can best respond to this situation will be those that will thrive in the future."

All authors who tell the story of the religious evolution of California mention perforce the enormous immigration of fortune-seekers to Northern California in the Gold Rush and the concomitant shortage of women, and therefore of family life. About fifty years later, they go on, began the even greater migration of Americans to Southern California. All the traditions of spirituality found in the state were affected by these historical accidents. Nevertheless, it is justly said of the events in the history of California spirituality in general that they "do not mark California as religiously unique so much as they make California a distinctive reflector and bellwether of American religious developments." (Eldon G. Ernst, Pilgrim Progression, p. 90)

Several of the sources I consulted on the history of religion in California make the point that in the past fewer Californians claimed membership in religious bodies than Americans in general. The 1890 U. S. religious census, for example, showed 33% of all Americans, but only 23% of Californians to be church members. In the 2000 ARDA survey, however, although the proportion of all American church members had increased by a half, to 50%, that of California church members had more than doubled, to 46%. Even so, one must remember that many Americans who are not church members consider themselves to be religious. Thus, in spite of the ARDA figure of 50%, the American Religious Identity Survey of 2001 showed that 76% of all Americans considered themselves Christian, 13% called themselves non-religious or secular, 1% adhered to the Jewish religion, and no other religious body claimed as much as one-half of one percent of the population. The largest affiliation of any kind was Catholic, which claimed 24% of the total population, then came Baptist, with 16%. (The American Religious Identity Survey was conducted by researchers of the City University of New York. It comes to this study via the website www.adherents.com 2005, which presents many similar studies and notes the varying methodologies which are used in them, demonstrating in so doing that the ARIS figures are consistent with others.)

The Catholic Church is the largest by membership in California as it is in 35 other states, but the religious body which has the greatest number of congregations in California is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and this is true of seven other states. (Churches and Church Membership in the United States, 1990. Glenmary Research Center, Mars Hill, North Carolina, which comes to this study via ARDA, as reported in www.adherents.com 2005)

It is also the case that the distribution of religious preferences throughout the state is not uniform. Every source that deals with the religious evolution of the state points out that Northern California is in general religiously more liberal than Southern, although Southern California is more given to extremes, having more activity in both alternative spiritualities and in fundamentalist evangelicalism.

There is also a marked dichotomy between coastal counties and inland counties as shown by Mark DiCamillo, the Field Poll, February, 2006, "Three California Election Megatrends and Their Implications in the 2006 Gubernatorial Election," on the website field.com/fieldpollonline/ subscribers/CaliforniaMegatrends.pdf in Spring, 2006):

Coastal Inland

Religion Population Population

Protestant 34% 44%

Born again Christian 21% 34%

Catholic 26% 25%

Other religion 22% 18%

No religious preference 18% 13%

Conclusions about Santa Cruz Spirituality

It is easy to apply to Santa Cruz the points just made about California spirituality. Furthermore, the very ordinariness of the vast majority of the associations in this study shows that Santa Cruz has not been an exception to the general flow of religious development in the United States and in California, i. e., that the Catholic church and the Old-line Protestant churches came west and flourished. Recently the Old-line Protestant churches have yielded their relative dominance to the Pentecostal denominations and to congregations which are historically rooted in the old-line, but which call themselves "community" or "bible" churches. This phenomenon, however, is a part of the evolving general American scene. Some movements, like the Holiness churches and the Christian Spiritualist churches, had their days many decades ago, but this, too, is the American experience.

As shown by the numbers and percentages reported above, the proportion of Santa Cruz church members is lower than that of Californians as a whole: in 1890 it was 26% of Californians and 21% of Santa Cruz County residents, and in 2000 it was 46% of Californians and 34% of county residents. This is consistent, however, with the differences just mentioned between coastal and inland California voters' religious preferences.

Two unique characteristics, nevertheless, stand out. The one is that Santa Cruz County is, and has been for well over 100 years, a place of retreat and conference centers. A few of these have been along the ocean shore, but most of them have been and still are in the mountains ringing the city. In huge encampments like that of the Annual Seventh Day Adventists on Old San Jose Road and in the hidden, quiet places like the Fasting Prayer Mountain of the World in Scotts Valley, people of Santa Cruz and elsewhere come to pray, meditate, or just plain be in an atmosphere conducive to such activity.

The other characteristic is that Santa Cruz has had far more than its statistical share of South and East Asian spiritual influence. Even compared with other California coastal cities, Santa Cruz has a great variety of Hindu and Buddhist centers. It also has an astoundingly large number of services that derive from Asian worldviews: yoga and meditation instruction, traditional Indian and Chinese medicine, feng shui, and martial arts. Some statistics regarding these services are included in Chapter 5 Particulars.

People also point to the communal movement of the 1960s and 70s, especially the hippie movement, as being a part of Santa Cruz spirituality, and indeed this is true, but it appears that the main reason was the convenience of finding suitable sites for group living in the mountains.

The thoughtful visitor will be struck by the scarcity of traditional American church structures in downtown Santa Cruz. There are only three, Greek Orthodox, Episcopal, and Progressive Missionary Baptist; two others, Catholic and Presbyterian, are on the edge of the city center. This is a small number for a city the size of Santa Cruz, and it might create an impression of an anti-church or at least a non-church community. The fact is, nevertheless, that large and bustling congregations exist throughout the city, and they are the result of a mass displacement of churches that occurred between 1954 and 1965. Before then the Synagogue, the Christian Church, the Congregational Church, the Baptist Church, the Unitarian Church, the Methodist Church, and the Advent Christian Church all had their own conspicuous buildings not far from the corner of Center and Lincoln Streets, a place called "Churchside." Every one of these congregations built a new structure away from downtown and moved there between 1954 and 1965. Before that the churches of Santa Cruz were a notable attraction for weekend visitors from San Francisco, San Jose, and elsewhere, and they were a feature of what the visitor would have felt to be Santa Cruz spirituality. (Ross Eric Gibson, "Churches once a Santa Cruz attraction," San Jose Mercury News, Nov. 22, 1994)

One might, however, observe that using the car on Sunday became a part of the spirituality of Santa Cruzans just as it did for others in California and in the rest of the country.

All in all, the spirituality of Santa Cruz may not be as close to unique as it seems at first sight to be, but the story presented by the associations in this study is rich, complex, and fascinating.