Mecca for Mediums Turns 120

In an era when religious extremism and dogmatic inflexibility threatens to tear the world to pieces, it seems that the Spiritualist Church of the Comforter on Garden Street in downtown Santa Barbara has all the right answers. The congregation, which will be celebrating its 120th anniversary on January 9, believes in personal responsibility and thinks that happiness is made by each individual; respects but does not worship Jesus Christ and other wise men; trusts that an infinite, expansive God is manifest everywhere but is not a personal or judgmental being; promotes the karmic idea of cause-and-effect as embodied by the Golden Rule; and doesn’t proselytize.

“We don’t have any dogma at all,” said the church’s pastor, Judy Campbell-Clark. “If you look at other religions and see something you can take, that’s great. We’re not going to tell you that’s wrong. Our religion is flexible to new truths. When they become evident, we go for it.”

The hook — at least for those who aren’t so sure about what happens when we die — is that the Spiritualists also use mediums to communicate with the afterlife at each Sunday and Wednesday service. “We believe in communication between this and the spirit world,” explained Campbell-Clark, who joined the church in 2006 and took over as pastor last year. “In that sense, we believe in the continuity of life. We believe our personality carries on when we cross over to the other side and believe that’s been proven through mediumship.”