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The third speaker, local business leader Steve Hanamura, said he'd keep his commitment, but reluctantly. "You guys are wrong in what you did, but I'll stand by you," he told the event organizers.

When it became clear that few, if any, mayors would attend, the board canceled the event altogether. "The purpose of the event is gone," explained registrar Roy Dancer. Other prayer events in the city scheduled that day (May 5 is the National Day of Prayer) will continue. It may not happen next year, either, he said. "It's in limbo. If it's going to be held next year, some fences need to be mended."

'Vitriolic' explanations
Drake said he received about 600 responses at City Hall about his decision to withdraw. "And you can count on two hands the negative comments," he said. "I appreciate the community's outpouring of support for diversity, tolerance, and understanding."

Ah, yes. Diversity, tolerance, and understanding. That is, a diversity that doesn't include people who believe the Muslim Allah is not the Christian God, a tolerance that says Christians must pray with Muslims, and an understanding that doesn't see why a non-governmental prayer event sponsored by a Christian organization doesn't include prayers from all faiths.

The controversy will likely continue, since it's clear that this debate got quite heated. When breakfast spokesman Peter Reding explained that "everybody is invited to come to the breakfast," but that the breakfast has a "Jewish-Christian tradition only on the dais," the executive director of Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon called those comments "vitriolic." Diversity, tolerance, and understanding, indeed.

The Oregonian, which has already published many opinion pieces on the debate, piles on in an editorial today. "The event itself was divisive," the paper says. Mayor Drake and others who withdrew "deserve praise. … They have taken a stand for Washington County residents of all faiths."

Well, except for those who believe that not all faiths are equal when it comes to praying to God Almighty.

The paper says the organizers were wrong to call the event a mayors' prayer breakfast "because it gives the erroneous impression that this is an event that has the full support of elected officials, which it plainly does not."

Of course, the organizers may have thought that a breakfast meeting organized with the intent of praying for mayors, with a mayor speaking at the event, might have warranted the title.

Still, The Oregonian (which, by the way, does not have the full support of Oregon's state government, despite its title) says the prayer breakfast organizers are free "not only to worship as they see fit, but also to behave in ways that many others would find offensive, or at least rude."

But apparently the newspaper has absolutely no qualms with government officials telling religious believers how they should pray and to which deity those prayers should be directed. The paper also seems to be untroubled by the fact that Mayor Drake, not the breakfast organizers, took it upon himself to invite the Muslim leader.

One thing is clear: this county and its officials certainly do need prayer.

More articles

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• Hughes defends remarks on abortion rights march | Presidential adviser Karen Hughes responded yesterday to criticism that, in a television interview, she had compared participants in Sunday's abortion rights march in Washington to terrorists, calling that interpretation "a gross distortion" of her remarks (The Washington Post)
  
  

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April (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48