In February 12, 1888, Pastor Johannes Telleen of the Augustana Lutheran Synod met with 29 other Swedish immigrants to found Angelica Lutheran Church. That first outpost of Swedish Lutheranism in Southern California was erected on 10th and Grand Street, and the second location was close by, on Hope and 17th.
The current church on Burlington Avenue was built in 1925 in the style of the English-influenced Gothic revival, with stained glass windows from a Los Angeles art studio and the "Last Supper" in the chancel area carved in Germany. Located within the original 1781 Pueblo de Los Angeles borders, the area was known as the Westlake District, a suburb popular with European immigrants with streetcar access to downtown.
At the same time, Mexican-American immigrants were settling in a growing Los Angeles and what had been a suburb became an urban center. Now known as Pico Union, the area is a culturally rich merging of Central and South American, European, Cuban, and Asian populations. In 1962 the Augustana Lutheran Synod merged with the Lutheran Church in America, which in its turn merged with other Lutheran bodies to become the ELCA in 1988.
In the 1980s, Angelica became central to the LA Sanctuary Movement, offering citizenship and English classes as well as housing, and in the aftermath of the 1992 civil unrest in Los Angeles, Angelica joined with seven other LA-area ELCA Lutheran congregations to form New City Parish -
a non-profit urban coalition working towards community transformation through holistic ministries and social outreach.
Today Angelica offers cultural enrichment, early childhood support, emergency food and health services as well as the Word, which has been preached here in Swedish, Spanish, Korean, the indigenous languages of Central and South America, and English.
