A historic church has reached a milestone as a center of worship and support for Assyrian immigrants who created a thriving community in Turlock.
The Assyrian Evangelical Church marked its 100th anniversary with a celebration Saturday attended by dignitaries and community members.
The church for decades has been a place of worship for Assyrians who fled persecution in the Middle East and also has been a center helping new arrivals gain a foothold in their adopted country.
“It was considered a religious center but also a cultural center,” said Ashour Yadegar, who left Iran during the Islamic Revolution and came to Turlock. “They came to the church to find other Assyrians. The church was a place to go to find friends and family.”
The church originated in the 1920s when a small group of Assyrians gathered for services in the home of Rev. David Joseph, according to a Turlock Journal clipping. Dr. Isaac Adams is credited with establishing the Assyrian colony after indigenous Christians were massacred in the Middle East.
The settlers first landed in Canada and a small group moved with Adams to Chicago. They were dishonestly sold farmland near Delhi that didn’t have access to water. About a dozen families moved to new ground in Turlock, growing melons, grapes and fruit trees, said Yadegar, who gathered historical information for the anniversary.
In time, the Assyrian immigrants became storekeepers and entered other vocations and professions.
A small chapel was built in 1924 at the corner of Cahill and Rose streets. The property was later sold to the school district and is part of the Crane School campus today.
Current church building dates to 1950
The current Assyrian Evangelical Church building on Monroe Avenue came about from a two-year construction project starting in 1948, which largely used donated materials and labor. The church building, dedicated in September 1950, had a large basement area for Sunday School classes, a social hall and kitchen. The auditorium on the main level had seating for 300.
Birthday parties and weddings were held at the church. The Assyrians also liked to put on a big New Year’s celebration, Yadegar said.
Former Turlock Mayor John Lazar said his grandparents were members of the church after they moved to Turlock in the 1930s.
Lazar said his grandparents came from Persia and traveled through Russia to Japan, and then took a ship to San Francisco, landing at Angel Island, which then had an immigration center. His grandfather’s trade was plaster work and he helped with construction of the Turlock church.
Lazar’s parents were married in the church. The former mayor’s family history made him want to be involved with the anniversary celebration.
“I have a reverence for my heritage and my family and the fact my grandfather had a hand in building it,” Lazar said. “It is heartfelt for me. I want to be part of it.”
According to a Zinda Magazine article, the Assyrians who first settled in the San Joaquin Valley mostly came from Iran’s Urmia region, as early as 1910. Acts of genocide during and after World War I increased the migration from the Middle East.
Over the decades, members of the growing community in Turlock could sponsor relatives wanting to leave the Middle East. Many Assyrian Christians migrated from Iraq and Iran because of political turmoil in the second half of the 20th century.
Yadegar was in his early 20s, playing professional soccer and attending the university in Tehran, when the Islamic Revolution broke out in 1979. He no longer saw a future for an Assyrian Christian in his home nation, so resettled in Turlock and finished college in the Bay Area.
The program for the celebration Saturday included speeches, gospel songs, food and a brief history of the Assyrian immigrant experience.
Lazar said the original church was created for all denominations and was a kind of mother church for other congregations that developed in Turlock, such as St. John’s Assyrian Presbyterian Church, Church of the East and St. Thomas Chaldean Catholic Church.
