Wilshire Chapel -- a stately sanctuary with beamed ceilings, wrought-iron chandeliers and shimmering stained glass -- was once the center of white Mormon power in California.

Visit this Hollywood chapel now, and you're likely to find it bustling with Korean Mormon choirs, Latino worshipers and African American missionaries for the Latter-day Saints.

Once considered the American archetype of white, middle- class religion, the U.S. Mormon Church is fast becoming a rainbow communion of multiethnic believers.

In Tongan neighborhoods in the Bay Area, Latino communities in Los Angeles and other immigrant neighborhoods across the United States, the Mormon Church has taken on a whole new complexion.

And Southern California -- with its worldwide mix of displaced people looking for new roots, new life and new community -- is ground zero of the new Mormon America.

``California is a place of tremendous importance to the church,'' said Mormon Apostle Henry Eyring, 62, the newest member of the powerful Council of the Twelve Apostles.

Mormons call their local congregations ``wards,'' and their list

of California congregations includes Spanish wards, Korean wards, Armenian wards, Vietnamese wards, Chinese wards, Samoan wards, Tongan wards, Laotian wards, Cambodian wards, Japanese wards and Filipino wards.

There are also rising numbers of African American Mormons in English-speaking wards in Oakland, Los Angeles and other cities.

Despite the Mormon Church's image as being a white church of the suburban West, fewer than half of the church's new members in California are Caucasian. In the greater Los Angeles area, only a third of Mormon converts in the 1990s have been white.

REMARKABLE TURNAROUND

That's an amazing turnaround for a church that once equated spiritual evolution with becoming ``a white and delightsome people,'' and that did not allow black men to serve as priests until 1978.

As the Mormon Church expands into Latin America, Asia and Africa, Eyring said, much of its U.S. growth comes from from refugees, immigrants and others whose origins lie elsewhere.

``Because of all the tumult in the world, people are coming to California in large numbers,'' Eyring said in an interview in his Salt Lake City office. ``It's a tremendous new diaspora -- but one of all people.''

``Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race?'' Young wrote in 1865. ``If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so.''

By 1978, when the late Mormon president Spencer W. Kimball proclaimed a new revelation and reversed the no-blacks rule, the old racial restrictions were wreaking havoc at home and abroad.

There were boycotts of Utah and the football program at Mormon-run Brigham Young University, along with growing dissent by many rank-and-file Mormons.

Meanwhile, no one was sure who could become a Mormon priest in church growth centers like racially mixed Brazil, where the Mormons were about to open their first South American temple.

In the Mormon church, all adult male members in good standing may hold priestly power, performing baptisms and consecrating the bread and water during Sunday communion service. Keeping blacks from the priesthood effectively kept them out of the church.

CHANGE BRINGS GROWTH

Whether Kimball's racial revelation was divinely inspired or politically expedient, its long-term effect was to send the church on a growth spiral in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.

At the same time, it helped transform Mormon California into a multicultural church.

Ernold Jean-Francois, a black Mormon missionary in Los Angeles, was born into a Roman Catholic family in Haiti but converted to Mormonism as a teenager in Miami.

Jean-Francois, 20, said he is not bothered by the fact that his new church did not allow blacks to serve as priests or missionaries until 1978.

``What made the difference for me is I came to know the church was true,'' he said. ``When I read the Book of Mormon, I felt closer to Christ.''

Nevertheless, Jean-Francois says the church's racist reputation is often a problem when he tries to spread the Mormon gospel in black neighborhoods in Los Angeles.

``It's an issue, but I'm black myself, and that says a lot,'' he said. ``African Americans and other blacks now have the same opportunities in the church as everyone else.''

Mormon missionaries of all colors are an increasingly common sight on the streets of San Francisco, Los Angeles and other California cites.

``We are not just proselytizing the suburbs,'' said Loren Dunn, who overseas California and Hawaii as president of the Mormons' North America West Area. ``This is an era when we're getting into the inner city, creating small church units and re-establishing a sense of neighborhood among African Americans in Los Angeles.''

Joseph Smith, the founding Mormon prophet, grew up around numerous Indian burial mounds in western New York and was fascinated with popular stories of their origins.

According to the Book of Mormon, published in 1830, the patriarch Lehi came to the New World around 600 B.C. Lehi had two sons: Nephi, from whom the Nephites came, and Laman, patriarch of the Lamanites. Mormons believe the indigenous populations of North, Central and South America descended, in part, from the Lamanites.

In addition, the Mormons teach that Jesus came to America after his resurrection, and performed miracles, preached sermons and chose 12 New World disciples.

COMMON ANCESTRY?

Today, many Mormons in both the United States and Latin America view the Mayan Indians of Mexico and Central America as the most direct descendants of the tribes described in the Book of Mormon.

``As a missionary among the Hispanics, I can say, `This Book of Mormon is for us. It's about our ancestors,' '' said Karla Flores, a Mexican American missionary in Los Angeles. ``That is so powerful.''

These beliefs about Mormonism's roots have also attracted many Tongans and Samoans to the faith, both in California and the South Pacific.

In Tonga, for example, about 45 percent of the population is now Mormon. Tongan immigrants even have their own ``stake,'' or Mormon diocese, in the Bay Area, which includes eight Tongan congregations.

``A lot of this has to do with our belief that the Tongans are the descendants of the Nephites and the Lamanites,'' said Mormon Bishop Lamater Takapu. ``The Book of Mormon talks about them building boats to sail from South America to North America.

``Some of the boats never made it, and they drifted into the South Pacific between 600 to 400 B.C. It explains a lot of the similarities of South American and Polynesian traditions.''

HONORING TRADITIONS

Takapu spoke at a Mormon retreat center in the hills above Sacramento, where Tongan Mormon immigrants wearing native sarongs, feathers in their hair and T-shirts depicting the Mormon Temple gathered for a weekend of basketball, barbecue and Tongan festivities.

One of the highlights of the weekend was a traditional Tongan ceremony, at which Bishop Takapu, Captain Maulepe Tuiter, tribal chief of the American Tongans, and other community leaders sat in a circle under a small tree.

All the leaders were ceremoniously handed wooden bowls filled with kava, a mildly intoxicating native drink -- despite the Mormon ban on alcohol and coffee.

Bishop Takapu, who immigrated from the South Pacific in 1970, said the kava ceremony does not violate the Mormon ``word of wisdom'' against intoxicating beverages.

``It's part of our custom, so it has been recognized by the church,'' he said. ``They did tests on kava, and they haven't found any drugs in it. They don't know how it works, but it does slow you down.''

Five years ago, Jimenez was watching television in his family's modest home in Downey when he saw a Spanish-language offer for a free video entitled, ``Our Heavenly Father's Plan.''

Mormon missionaries personally delivered the tape, and Jimenez soon joined the church. Before long, he had inspired his mother, raised as a Seventh-Day Adventist, and his father, a cardroom employee and a nominal Catholic, to do the same.

``As soon as the missionaries started giving us lessons, our house became more peaceful,'' said Jerson's mother, Gloria. ``I really felt the Holy Spirit in the house.''

A WHOLE WAY OF LIFE

On a recent Sunday, the Jimenez family attended the new $10 million Mormon church center in the riot-torn heart of south-central Los Angeles.

The sprawling center is filled with Spanish-speaking church members from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and other Latin American nations.

Down the hall at the church center, Flores, the Mexican American missionary, was dismissing a rambunctious Sunday school class.

``A lot of people in Mexico are Catholic, but only because of tradition,'' said Flores, 21.

``We say, `Well, you're Catholic, but what do you believe?' They just sit there and say, `Well, I believe in God.' But they don't really have a religion. They're just keeping the tradition of being Catholic. When we tell them that this is not only a religion, but a whole way of life, they really grasp it.''