What happened in Santa Rosa reveals the demise of America’s civil religion.
Having come to town straight out of college in 1955 and having married a local girl, Dave Berto definitely fits into “old Santa Rosa.” He is, however, the kind of irrepressibly cheerful person who makes friends among the “new” people—those who have flooded Santa Rosa for the last 20 years. Besides building a small, successful business—a bill-collecting agency—Berto has served many civic causes, including the Boy Scouts, the YMCA, and the Santa Rosa Symphony. People like Dave Berto—they like him enough to elect him to the city council.
It was no surprise to these supporters when they read in their local newspaper, the Press Democrat, that Berto had proposed an invocation to begin city council meetings. An elder in his Presbyterian church, Berto has been known to quote Scripture during council meetings. “Prayer is the glue of our nation,” he says. “It holds us together. We look to God to lead us as a nation.”
Legally, prayers and invocations hold a tenuous position in government. Ever since the Supreme Court’s 1962 decision to outlaw prayer in public schools, secularism has dominated public life. Still, the law seemed clear that an invocation was allowable before a city council. Berto saw an opening prayer as one small way to bring respect for God back into the civic realm. “I looked at it as something I could do. Nobody was urging me to do it.”
When Berto brought up the issue at the May 12, 1992, meeting, only one council member, Nancy Burton, opposed him. “I don’t support it, primarily because of the diversity of faiths … in this community,” she was quoted by the Press Democrat as saying. “[There are] many other religious groups outside what we call bona fide churches. Many people do not choose a way of worship—and that’s their right.”
Berto had talked individually with each of his fellow council members, however. He assured them he had in mind an inclusive, not exclusive, process, and the rest of the five-member council supported him. Council member Bill Knight thought it would “set a tone, and give words of direction,” according to the minutes. Mayor Jim Pedgrift suggested a six-month trial, saying the invocations could be dropped if they proved controversial. As he commented later, the council heard no alarm bells ringing. They did not even go to the trouble of taking a vote but merely assigned Dave Berto the responsibility to contact ministers. Invocations were to begin the following week.
The city of Santa Rosa sits about an hour’s drive north of the Golden Gate Bridge. It is an old community as places west of the Mississippi River go, founded in 1854. An agricultural center and county seat, it grew as a quiet, conservative town best known as the home of horticulturist Luther Burbank and of cartoonist Charles Schultz.
In the sixties, the area began to change. Hippies from San Francisco founded communes along the Russian River, an old, nearby resort area. The River, as it is known, next became a weekend spot for homosexuals. During the same period, doctors and lawyers escaping Los Angeles sprawl found the wine country just north of Santa Rosa an attractive refuge; and some high-tech firms such as Hewlett Packard built sizable manufacturing plants. In no time the sleepy farm town became a crossroads for a wide variety of people such as “old Santa Rosa” had never seen. In California’s live-and-let-live ambiance, the different groups did not much cross paths unless a political issue brought them into contact. The invocations in city council did.
If the Santa Rosa city council was naive about prayer when it voted for it on May 12, it took less than 24 hours for them to begin losing that innocence. When Dave Berto arrived home after the council meeting, his wife, Nancy, told him she had been harangued over the telephone by a veteran city council watcher, Robert Bill. A disabled World War II veteran, Bill had developed a lasting antipathy toward organized religion through a childhood exposure to the Ku Klux Klan. He was soon picketing city hall and angrily calling up everybody he could think of.
At the next week’s council meeting, the Press Democrat reported, ten protesters showed up armed with signs. Salvation Army Maj. Ralph Hood gave the invocation after Mayor Pedgrift warned dissenters to “turn down the volume on the TV, leave the room, or put your hands over your ears.”
Santa Rosa has a long-standing practice of offering three minutes at the beginning of the meeting to anyone wanting to make a statement. Six people spoke against the invocation.
Violet Young said she was appalled and horrified at prayers and Bible readings taking place at city council meetings. Bud Myrick, who said he was representing the Church of the New Birth, asserted it was impossible to say a nondenominational prayer. According to official minutes, “He concluded by stating that the Conservatives in this country and in California are boasting that the Liberals can’t do anything to stop them from taking over the government. He personally accepts this challenge.” Robert Bill singled out Berto as a leader for a conspiracy of the Religious Right and accused him of paying off political debts. The protesters promised to return to the city council meetings as long as the prayers continued.
That Sunday three picketers marched outside of Berto’s First Presbyterian Church. Mayor Pedgrift took many phone calls protesting the invocation and found that when he walked through downtown Santa Rosa for its open-air Thursday-night market, his constituents jokingly asked him to bless their hot dogs. He did not find the humor reassuring. Gaye LeBaron, a newspaper columnist and amateur historian whom some consider the most influential person in Sonoma County, quoted an outspoken atheist from a neighboring community as saying the invocations were part of a “takeover bid” by “the powerful religious right.” Another correspondent wrote: “If the city council invites ANY representative of a religion to lead a prayer, it should be prepared to invite, accept and include ALL.… There are more ways to commune with one’s own personal god or goddess than Councilman Dave Berto can imagine.… Does he consider Paganism a legitimate religion? Neo-paganism? The Aquarian Minyan? The point is, it is NOT for him to decide.”
At the June 2 city council meeting, Rabbi Jonathan Slater gave the invocation. Four protesters spoke against the invocations. Charles Orr threatened a lawsuit if the prayers continued. Bud Myrick read bloody passages from Deuteronomy in order to show its unsuitability for children.
At the June 9 meeting, the Reverend Mary Shelton from the Church of Religious Science gave the invocation. Five spoke against it and two in favor. Those opposed tried repeatedly to ask Dave Berto his motives for the invocation. Since dialogue is not usually part of the precouncil statements, he declined to respond. Violet Young, according to official minutes, said she felt “that Mr. Berto is being rude.”
Ken Hart, on the other hand, said that “it appears from the response of the people regarding invocations that God left Santa Rosa in the 50s and 60s.” Hart stated that “God lived in City Hall and lives in his heart.” When everyone had spoken, Mayor Pedgrift asked those who were interested in discussing the issue further to meet in his office on Thursday morning.
Two of the most vociferous protesters met with Pedgrift and, according to the Press Democrat, “pressed him to explain how much controversy was ‘too much,’ so they could plan to meet and exceed the criteria.”
A woman from Sebastopol, a nearby community, telephoned Mayor Pedgrift and told him she was a pagan priestess. Would she be excluded from the invocations? Pedgrift told her that Berto was arranging the list of ministers and asked her to call him.
The June 17 meeting of the city council was, according to the Press Democrat, “one of the stormiest meetings in memory.” Statements opposed to the invocations took up more than an hour, and many made bitter personal attacks on Berto. Berto again refused to respond. “I did not spend a year in Vietnam so I could be stonewalled by a hack politician like you,” Jim Stoup was quoted saying by the Press Democrat. “Why are you afraid to tell me what your expectations are, instead of just sitting there, smirking at me?” Bud Myrick said, “Your Bible has a river of blood on it, Dave Berto. Your Bible is an abomination in the eyes of God.” (Remembering these debates, Berto said, “I told [my worst antagonist] I loved him. But I felt like jumping over the dais and beating him to the ground.”) Representatives from the gay-lesbian community, who had been opposed by conservative pastors in their bid to have Sonoma County recognize “Lesbian and Gay Pride Week,” opposed the invocation. The session was repeatedly interrupted by loud whistles, hisses, and applause.
At the end, Mayor Pedgrift called on the council to consider dropping the invocations, despite the original plan for a six-month trial. Berto made an impassioned plea not to give in to pressure, saying that “the Council was not trying to call on any one religion or tell people how to worship, since this is not a worship service.” He said prayer before civic meetings was an American tradition and pointed out that many governmental bodies at federal, state, and local levels begin their deliberations with an invocation. Pedgrift, however, had had enough. “I can see where this is going,” he told the Press Democrat. “I go to city hall to get work done.”
Mayor Pedgrift, who teaches at a local college, tried in private conversation to find common ground for all positions. The only thing they had in common, he says, was fear. For those opposing invocations, the absolute separation of church and state was more than an abstract position. They spoke of “a well documented conspiracy on the Religious Right that has an agenda.… They can point to writings by certain people that say, ‘We’re going to take over this country, and go back to our foundations … and you won’t know it’s happening until we’ve got you in a body bag.’ “To the protesters, the invocations were “the first visible sign that this is beginning in Santa Rosa.”
Conservative Christians who came out in support of the invocations felt like victims of a well-orchestrated campaign to create an America hostile to them. In the raucous debates that increasingly dominated the meetings, Pedgrift says the sides would literally “point each other out and say, ‘That’s what’s wrong with America.’ “Pedgrift learned that many of the activists knew each other from protests over abortion. Generally, he felt, they were not even talking to the city council. “Here were people playing out their fear in front of us,” Pedgrift remembers. “An ongoing, deeply felt fight was brought into our arena. They appeared to do their fighting in front of us.”
In urging the city council to reconsider the invocations, Pedgrift may have hoped to end the fighting quietly. It turned out not to be that simple. There was an argument that giving in to a rude and vociferous minority would encourage such behavior. Furthermore, some members were not at all sure they had been wrong in the first place. Certainly Dave Berto felt as strongly as ever that the invocations should continue. As the one being assaulted week after week, he had the most to gain by dropping the issue, but he continued to insist that the idea of invocations was sound. “If I start my daily life with prayer, why can’t I start my government life with prayer?” he told the Press Democrat. Previously, when friends had asked him how they could support the invocations, he had told them to stay away. Now, seeing his position slipping, he told them to come.
The June 23 city council meeting was the most tumultuous yet. In addition to the usual protesters, about 50 supporters of the invocations appeared. When Dick Cross, head of a local rescue mission, stood to pray, he was drowned out by an expletive-shouting Irv Sutley, a Peace and Freedom party candidate for state assembly. Other protesters waved signs. The mayor warned them they were out of order; when Sutley continued his shouting, Pedgrift had him removed, still shouting. He was subsequently arrested, and he proceeded to sue the city for $100,000.
The portion of the meeting devoted to comments proved equally acrimonious. According to the Press Democrat, more than an hour was devoted to “arguments and short yelling matches from both sides.… Cries of ‘Praise Jesus!’ and ‘Hallelujah’ were mixed with the protesters’ shouts as people spoke.” After 67 minutes, Pedgrift cut off the comments and again asked the council to consider dropping the invocations.
Two weeks went by before the next city council meeting, and in the interim, the Press Democrat ran six separate articles on the issue, two on the front page. Clearly, invocations were heading to a showdown. It was not clear who had the votes. Pedgrift wanted invocations dropped. Nancy Burton, who had been against the invocations from the beginning, planned to vote with him. Maureen Casey told the Press Democrat she would stick with a six-month trial. “What I’m seeing is that people are trying to bully us, and I don’t like bullies,” she said. Council member Bill Knight said he had not made up his mind. He spoke of the importance of spiritual values in a society: “You look at the gang problems, the breakdown of the family and you have to ask what it is we have lost that has led to this.…”
The Press Democrat asked its readers to phone in their votes on special telephone lines. Pastor John Warren of the Christian Life Center did so during Sunday services, calling on his congregation to follow suit. The final tally was neatly split—1,189 in favor of invocations, 1,228 against. Supporters said they had more than 300 signatures in favor of continuing the invocations.
When votes were taken at the July 7 city council meeting, however, it was clear that the tide had turned against invocations. Maureen Casey changed her mind, saying the actual invocations had included “too much of a reference to religion.” Bill Knight said he had hoped the invocations would begin meetings on a positive note and bring the community together. Because of the community’s reaction, he wanted the prayers discontinued. Dave Berto spoke last, with a passionate plea to continue the six-month trial and limit public comment. The final vote went four to one against him.
Santa Rosa’s prayer wars lasted only seven weeks, but for a community that usually spends its energy arguing over how to revamp the sewage plant, it was a troubling struggle. Jim Pedgrift says he often thinks about it. “There’s something about it that is deeply disturbing.… There’s a deeply antisocial tendency in a lot of folks, and a lot of fear.… We speak in terms of diversity, but actually we’re afraid of it. We would have diversity by being silent, instead of celebrating it.…
“One part of me says, it’s too bad that [an invocation] can’t work. But I am convinced that in this community at this time it can’t work. Do we have a community? That’s my question.”
Santa Rosa is not the same as Petaluma, a city down the road that offers invocations before its council meetings. Santa Rosa certainly is not the same as rural towns in the Midwest or South where prayer before football games has a long, untroubled tenure.
However, Santa Rosa’s troubles are increasingly the norm. Never have dissenters to America’s religious tradition been so numerous or so noisy. Dave Berto and the Santa Rosa City Council wanted invocations to be a reminder of deeper, spiritual values that undergird the community. It blew up in their faces. Invocations ended up reminding Santa Rosa not of what holds us together but of our deep divisions; not of the fundamental values at the foundation of our society but of the lack of agreement about such values—a disagreement that threatens to tear us apart.
Pedgrift says that in the middle of the struggle, some ministers quietly told him this was not their battle. They felt prayer had to be too watered down to be acceptable—and that watered-down prayer was not worth the fight.
The loss of civic prayer, however, raises deeper questions about America’s political possibilities. If we have lost a consensus that makes civic prayer work, have we also lost the consensus that makes political compromise possible? Santa Rosa’s battle reminds us of an uncomfortable reality, a reality easily discerned in the New Testament and throughout history, yet little known in America: Faith can divide as well as unite, can undermine civility rather than increase it. Santa Rosa is a long way from Bosnia, but at times last year, it seemed to be moving in that direction.
A common, tolerant religious tradition, such as America long enjoyed, is undoubtedly a bulwark of democracy and community. If we lack such common ground, are we really capable of living together? Can we find a way to work together despite our diverse views of sexuality, of the sanctity of human life, of education? And, is there any way to restore the unity we have lost? The view from Santa Rosa is not rosy.
Loren Wilkinson is the writer/editor of Earthkeeping in the ’90s (Eerdmans) and the coauthor, with his wife, Mary Ruth Wilkinson, of Caring for Creation in Your Own Backyard (Servant). He teaches at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
