WASHINGTON - California officials ran into opposition from the Bush administration and a group promoting separation of church and state Tuesday in their bid for federal funds to restore the state's historic Spanish missions.

Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer and officials with the California Missions Foundation testified at a Senate subcommittee hearing that $10 million in matching funds is needed to restore the 21 aging missions, some of which are in bad disrepair.

"We are in danger of losing our past, losing our history," said Boxer, who sponsored a bill to provide the money. "The need is absolutely urgent."

A special assistant to the director of the National Park Service said the department opposes the bill, which passed the House in October.

"We cannot support this new federal funding commitment at a time when we are trying to focus our available resources on taking care of existing National Park Service responsibilities," said the special assistant, P. Daniel Smith. "Nor can we support legislative earmarks that would effectively take limited and critically needed historic preservation operations funding away and divert it to these specific purposes."

Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of the advocacy group Americans United for Separation of Church and State, argued that federal funding for the missions would violate the principal of separation of church and state.

"These missions are houses of worship, they are not simply museums," Lynn told the national parks subcommittee of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. "It is impossible to segregate the historical from the spiritual and expect that government funds will only go to the former."

Supporters of the legislation countered that 20 percent or less of the missions' functions are religious, and that the bill specifically directs that the money go for secular purposes.

"I am a believer in separation of church and state. That's why when this legislation was put together it was put together in a very careful way," Boxer said.

The Spanish government built California's missions from 1769 to 1823. They are spread from Sonoma in the north to San Diego in the south and draw more than 5 million visitors a year, many of them fourth-graders on field trips as part of California's social studies curriculum.

But many of the missions are deteriorating from age and decay, with an estimated $39 million needed to fund structural repairs, seismic work and deferred maintenance, said Stephen Hearst, great-grandson of William Randolph Hearst and founding chairman of the board of the California Missions Foundation. Some $10 million more is needed to preserve paintings and other artifacts and upgrade improvements for visitors.

Nineteen of the missions are owned by the Catholic Church and get no government help; the other two are run by the state Parks and Recreation Department.

The $10 million provided by Boxer's bill would be part of a $50 million campaign the California Missions Foundation is undertaking. The money would be available over five years and the foundation would be required to match the money with state and private donations.

The foundation has gotten just $3 million in private funds so far and is hoping for $10 million from the state of California from a Cultural and Historical Endowment created with money from a 2002 bond measure.

The bill must pass the Energy and Natural Resources Committee before being considered by the full Senate.