I shall lift up mine eyes to the hills, whence cometh my deliverance. —Psalm 121
On a clear day, from the top of the highest peak in the Santa Monica Mountains, the world spreads out beneath one’s feet like a map. The Conejo Valley stretches away to the distant Simi Hills, beyond them, the bigger mountains are arranged like the folds in a rumpled blanket, stretching away to the east and the north. To the west, the ocean is a dazzle of golden light, and the Channel Islands seem close enough to touch.
This is a special place, and contemporary Californians are not the first to think so. Thousands of years before European colonists arrived, the indigenous Chumash people regarded Sandstone Peak and Boney Ridge as sacred places. Traces of rock art and other archeological evidence suggests that these dramatic volcanic outcroppings, visible for miles, were more than landmarks.
Chumash tradition indicates that Point Dume was a sacred fire shrine. Before the Woolsey Fire erased them, the caves and overhangs at Oakbrook Regional Park in Thousand Oaks sheltered spirit drawings on the rocks: a swordfish man, frog and bird people, thought to be the work of shamans or those who were undertaking spirit journeys.
Topanga State Park contains sites that were home to one of the oldest known indigenous communities in these mountains, documented by radiocarbon dated to more than 6000 BCE. Contemporary Chumash and Tongva peoples still consider this area sacred and special, but there are also ancient burials under the part of Topanga Canyon Boulevard that runs through the middle of town center. Most of us do not stop there to honor these ancestors—many of us go through life entirely unaware of what is under our feet—but even this most prosaic of places in the canyon is sacred, and for many who live here, the mountains are a source of inspiration.
Many contemporary residents move here for that source of inspiration. That wasn’t always the case.
Today’s Topangans embrace meditation and yoga, study philosophy, occultism, mysticism, and practice a wide range of world religions from spiritual humanism to every branch of Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism, as well as Taoism, animism, and Wicca. Topanga’s reputation for open-mindedness, spiritual inclusivity, and new age philosophies is well-earned, but it’s also surprisingly new.
In the early homestead years in Topanga most religious residents were either Catholic or Protestant Christians. They had the choice of observing their religion at home or making the long trek into Los Angeles to celebrate important holidays and occasions like baptisms and burials. These families were drawn here because the Santa Monica Mountains offered a chance to stake a claim and have land of one’s own.
The first two families to stake claims to homesteads in Topanga—the Santa Marias and the Trujillos—were Catholic. The closest Catholic church in 1880, when Jesus and Elena Santa Maria staked their claim in Topanga, was on Olvera Street in Downtown Los Angeles, a two-day journey from the canyon by wagon.
The parish of Saint Monica’s in Santa Monica was established in 1886, the same year that Manuela and Francisco Trujillo settled in Topanga, but Saint Monica’s church wouldn’t be completed until 1925, and the route to Santa Monica was often almost impassable until around 1898, when efforts were made to hack a stagecoach road out of the rough terrain.
We know that the Santa Marias belonged to the Olvera Street parish because of church records, but they also had their own cemetery on their Topanga homestead. Life in the canyon was challenging, and transporting a deceased loved one for burial in consecrated ground in Los Angeles would have been an almost impossible task before the advent of roads and cars.
Beginning in 1903, Topanga Protestants in search of spiritual fulfilment had the option of traveling to Chatsworth Community Church (known today as the “Pioneer Church”) at the far end of Topanga Canyon Boulevard. It was established in 1903 as a Methodist Episcopal church. Other than that, there weren’t many other options on the valley side of the mountain until the town of Van Nuys was established in 1911, and brought “modern conveniences” like a hospital with a maternity ward into relatively easy reach for Topanga homesteaders for the first time, especially after Topanga Canyon Boulevard was completed in 1915. Van Nuys also provided access to new churches: Presbyterian, built in 1911, Methodist in 1915, and Catholic, in 1919. St. Elisabeth Catholic Church has the title “Mother Church” of the San Fernando Valley. Mission San Fernando Rey de España might appear at first glance to have been the top contender for that honor, but it was secularized in 1834 and the church wasn’t restored, rededicated, and put back into use until 1920.
The stagecoach route to the coast enabled Topangans access to Santa Monica’s churches, including Santa Monica Methodist Episcopal Church on Fifth and Arizona, established in 1875, the same year the city of Santa Monica was founded; and Santa Monica Presbyterian church, built just down the road and the same year. The Presbyterian church was founded by sisters Emma and Jennie Vawter, with the goal of providing Sunday school instruction and a safe space for the children they saw ‘running wild’ on the beach. Saint Augustine’s Episcopal Church soon joined its sister churches in Santa Monica. It was built in 1887.
Despite the sudden church-building boom in neighboring communities, Topanga remained without an official church building of any kind, although the one-room schoolhouse provided a location for community events, including religious gatherings.
The Malibu Court House, built in 1932, began providing space for several local congregations on Sundays in the late 1930s. Catholic, Presbyterian, or Methodist services took place in succession on Sunday mornings, but it was still a long drive for Topanga congregants.
Retired Baptist Minister Alva Gustavus, proprietor of the Horseshoe Bend Inn, built what was technically the first church in the canyon in 1926—a small chapel behind the hostelry built to accommodate the needs of the inn’s guests—but regular services never took place there.
Topangas Christian Science Community found a home in one of the vacation cottages at Kneen’s Kamp vacation resort in the 1920s. It wasn’t exactly a church, but it was extremely popular, attracting big crowds from Santa Monica. Christian Science was a relatively new philosophy, founded in 1879 by New England religious leader Mary Baker Eddy. The Christian Scientists soon outgrew the space but were able to build a simple, concrete block building nearby that became Topanga’s first real church.
After years of fundraising, Topanga Catholics built St. Jarlath’s Catholic Church on Lookout Trail in 1942 (Jarlath was a sixth century Irish priest and scholar, and the Patron Saint of the Archdiocese of Tuam). It was very small, with room for just 60 in the church and a small apartment downstairs for Father Daniel Joseph Gallagher.
The Topanga Story recounts how “Father Dan” would conduct Sunday mass in the Courthouse, with counsel’s table serving as an altar and the courtroom rail as communion rail.” Once the service concluded, “[He] gathered his altar kit, and with cassock flying, boarded his little black Chevy and raced back to Topanga for 9:30 mass.
St. Jarlath’s served both Topanga and Malibu until Our Lady of Malibu church was built in the Malibu Civic Center area in the early 1970s. After that, St. Jaralath’s was consigned to memory.
Malibu soon had Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutheran, and Christian Science churches. Topanga was home to a Baptist Church in Old Canyon—formerly the Williams Hardware Store, according to The Topanga Story.
Topanga Christian Fellowship Church in Old Canyon was built with volunteer labor in the 1940s. It got its bell in 1952 and remains the only purpose-built church from this period still in use for its original purpose. There was another church across the road, where the Inn of the Seventh Ray is now.
Topanga’s Foursquare Church opened its doors in 1958. Its founder, Amiee Sempler McPherson is sometimes said to have used the property as a retreat, but the author hasn’t been able to find a historical record to support the claim. McPherson does have a connection to Las Tunas Beach, where she lived for around a year during the height of her career. Topanga Historical Society archivist Pablo Capra has a full account of “Sister Amiee’s Topanga Beach adventures on his blog: https://lowertopanga.blogspot.com/2021/10/2021-10-14-malibu-times-sister-aimee-hides-out.html. It’s a fascinating read.
McPherson preached old-fashioned, American Protestant Christian values—what today we would describe as fundamentalism—but she herself was a modern woman: a canny and savvy businesswoman, a divorcee at a time when divorce was still regarded by many as scandalous, and a highly respected preacher when women were not permitted to preach in most Christian churches. She drew inspiration for her sermons and faith-healing events from that thrilling new art form the motion picture, dressed with theatrical inventiveness that was soon imitated by her fans, and became a high-profile radio evangelist. She drew criticism that she was more of an entertainer or a circus barker than a servant of Christ, but she didn’t let that trouble her. In the 1920s she was one of the most recognizable Los Angeles celebrities.
McPherson’s Angelus Temple was built in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles and became one of the first American “megachurches.” Smaller Foursquare churches sprang up all over Los Angeles, including the one in Topanga, but this was the last conventional church built in the canyon (if you can call a church where members of the congregation regularly spoke in tongues conventional).
During the height of the counter-cultural revolution in the 1960s and ’70s, Topanga began attracting religious groups that were not part of the conventional religious traditions. They include the Pyramid Center, a building designed to resemble an Egyptian Pyramid that was devoted to Hare Krishna; and a garden sanctuary built by Ayurvedic practitioner Felix Babu Stephen, who got into trouble with the law in 2005 for practicing medicine without a license, specifically, for providing psychoactive compounds to some of his patients.
Stephen described himself as an Ayurvedic spiritualist. According to the Los Angeles Times, his clients—the list was extensive and reportedly included Sting and Robert Downey Jr.—called him “a guru, a healer and a spiritual teacher.”
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Sgt. Steven Oferman, who supervised the criminal investigation described the guru’s followers as “a hippie cult.”
Stephens maintained that he was a spiritualist who taught people “how to bring their spirit home and live with it.”
Malibu Judge Lawrence Mira didn’t buy the DA’s argument that Stephen was leading a cult. He let the spiritualist off with a year of probation and required him to take a medical ethics class and obtain the appropriate licensing for his healing practice.
Stephen’s lawyer declared the ruling to be just, but had harsh words for the DA: “This was characterized by the government as voodoo and black magic,” he told the LA Times. “The government is afraid of what they don’t understand.”
Timothy Leary, the famous advocate for the use of LSD as an aid for obtaining higher consciousness would likely have agreed. He lived in Laurel Canyon for much of the 1970s and was a regular Topanga visitor during that time. He even started writing a column for the Topanga Messenger. His local journalism career, however, was interrupted by the arrests that accompanied his campaign to legalize and destigmatise the use of marijuana, LSD, and other psychoactive substances.
Many of the conventional churches in the Topanga area closed their doors during the last decades of the 20th century. The passion and determination of the church builders didn’t have enough momentum to keep the congregations going after the founding generation died out. Only the old Topanga Baptist Church—currently home to both a Montessori school and Topanga Chabad, the canyon’s Jewish community—and the Topanga Christian Fellowship Church are still standing and still used for religious purposes. The church’s bell still calls the faithful to service, although its congregation is now far smaller than it was when the church was built. The bell pull hangs beneath a wooden sign carved with the message, “Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord.”
Topanga’s homesteaders devoted huge amounts of effort to building congregations and churches to house them. Every one of the original churches in this area was built by volunteer labor, and although all of these churches were small, they were important to the people who built them and worshiped in them, even if that need was transitory.
These mountains have attracted many individuals and groups seeking enlightenment. They continue to be home to places of prayer and worship for believers in many religions, but also for individuals seeking enlightenment on their own terms. What all of these seekers have in common is the desire for peace, enlightenment, and communion with the divine. “You are your own guru and life is your guru,” longtime local Tai Chi instructor Dena Saxer once told a reporter from the Topanga Messenger.
Whatever one believes, Topanga’s mountains are an inspiration.
