Church of Christ (Emeryville’s “First” Church)
For decades, Emeryville carried a notorious reputation as a “Godless” town—mocked as “the city without a church or a graveyard.” Unlike neighboring Oakland and Berkeley, it lacked permanent religious institutions or cemeteries, reinforcing its image as a rough-edged place shaped more by industry and vice than by faith.
When Emeryville incorporated in 1896, its boundaries were reportedly drawn to exclude nearby religious institutions diminishing their influence. This helps explain why the city line crisscrosses San Pablo Avenue in what seems like an arbitrary way.
This reflected tensions between Emeryville’s civic identity and surrounding churches, many of which opposed the California Jockey Club racetrack and the gambling, drinking, and peripheral industries—saloons, bars, and brothels—that flourished around it.
Those tensions surfaced publicly in 1932, when Emeryville Mayor Wallace Christie responded to criticism from a North Oakland minister who ridiculed the city’s lack of a church and implied the mayor preferred it that way. Christie countered that Emeryville had once had a church—apparently tied to the racetrack and overseen by a Reverend Lombard—but that it vanished after California’s 1911 anti-betting law forced the track to close.
In a pointed statement printed in the Emeryville Golden Gate Herald, Christie rebuked the minister, writing that “the graceful and Christian-like thing” would be to admit the mistake publicly from the pulpit where it began.
More than seventy years passed before Emeryville established a permanent modern church.
That milestone came in 1978, when Rev. Alonzo C. Payne, a determined minister with over 30 years of experience in the southern United States, set out to open a non-denominational congregation. He proposed converting a modest apartment complex at 1096 48th Street into a chapel, with the adjacent fourplex at 1094 serving as staff housing, a kitchen, and a children’s center.
His plan initially met resistance from the Emeryville Planning Commission. At one heated hearing, Payne reportedly asked, “Don’t you want God in Emeryville?” An audience member famously shot back, “We’ve got John LaCoste and the Democratic Party. Why do we need God?”—a sarcastic remark referring to the powerful Police Chief and his strong influence in the city.
After five years of applications, Payne finally secured approval in 1982, at age 76. He served as minister for five years before declining health led him to step aside. He died in 1990, at age 90.
Leadership passed to Brother James F. Walker Sr., who led the church for decades until his death in 2022. His son, James F. Walker Jr., continues the ministry today.
Although several other congregations have briefly come and gone, the Church of Christ on 48th Street remains Emeryville’s only active church—a lasting counterpoint to the city’s long and colorful past.
