Several L.A. Religious Leaders Pull Out of King Rally

Several prominent local religious leaders have withdrawn from participation in a Saturday rally honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. after discovering that the event’s “agenda” includes support of abortion, the Palestine Liberation Organization and other controversial causes.

Roman Catholic Archbishop Roger M. Mahony, Rabbis Allen J. Freehling and Harvey J. Fields, and Episcopal Bishop Oliver B. Garver Jr. were among the Los Angeles religious leaders who pulled out of “Coalition ‘88” during the last week, soon after the group made public a wide-ranging “progressive” social and political agenda.

The resignations have thrown a damper on the coalition’s ambitious plans to push for voter education and other causes over the next year and, according to some activists, may pose obstacles for future efforts to build similar groups. But leaders of Coalition ’88 said the 11 a.m. march through Skid Row to City Hall would go on as scheduled.

Mayor Tom Bradley has been advertised as a participant, but press secretary Fred MacFarlane said late Thursday that the mayor’s weekend schedule was still not final. “Whether he’s going to be there or not I can’t confirm,” MacFarlane said.

Because Coalition ’88 was an attempt by more than 180 activist groups to forge as broad-based an organization as possible to tackle numerous social and political causes, officials of the group acknowledged that the resignations came as a serious blow.

The officials differed over who was to blame.

The Rev. James M. Lawson Jr., a co-chairman of the coalition and minister of Holman United Methodist Church in southwest Los Angeles, said the group’s staff and leaders had mishandled preparation of a “progressive agenda for 1988,” a document drafted for the rally to reflect positions of various coalition members.

But another co-chairman, Rev. Luis Olivares, activist pastor of Our Lady Queen of Angels Church in downtown Los Angeles, said that the resigning religious leaders bore some of the blame for not participating in meetings in which the agenda was discussed.

Both men also pointed out that the rally’s controversial program carries a disclaimer that “these statements reflect the views of the organizations submitting them and do not reflect official Coalition ’88 positions.”

But the disclaimer did not prevent the defections.

“This is unfortunate,” said Freehling, who is spiritual leader of the University Synagogue of Westwood. “They went so far in one direction that they lost the ability to have a functioning coalition.”

Rev. Lawrence Estrada, a priest who is secretary to Mahony, said that the archbishop had no choice but to withdraw from the coalition after church officials became aware of the abortion rights position in Coalition ‘88’s agenda. In a section on women’s rights, a statement calls for “access to birth control and safe and legal abortions.”

According to Lawson, the agenda position was written by a representative of the National Organization for Women.

“We pulled out because of their (abortion) stance,” Estrada said. “It seems to us that, at the very least, their planning was poor.”

Mahony notified the group of his withdrawal last week, Estrada said, adding that the church would exercise more care in the future when it works in similar coalitions.

While withdrawing himself, Mahony did not prevent Olivares and several other priests from continuing to work with Coalition ’88. “I think the archbishop recognized that we do not espouse every item on the agenda,” Olivares said. “I do not accept abortion in any form, but that does not prevent me from talking to those who favor it and finding common ground on other social stances.”

At least two prominent Jewish leaders, Freehling and Fields, senior rabbi of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, pulled out of the coalition because of a section in the agenda calling for “U.S. government recognition of the PLO” and “an end to all U.S. support of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.”

Lawson said two rabbis from the Leo Baeck Temple, Leonard I. Beerman and Sue Levi Elwell, decided to remain in the coalition after he wrote them a letter of apology “because of their concerns.”

Elwell said she was concerned that the statement contained no reference to a need for Palestinian recognition of Israel. But the importance of the coalition outweighed her questions about the agenda, she said.

Freehling and Fields said the agenda was too biased to allow them to remain with the coalition.

“I found the statement about the Middle East to go beyond what was reasonable,” Freehling said. Fields said that when he read the agenda last week, “I became rather upset over the nature of the material and concluded that I was being used.”

Slightly to the Left

Freehling, who described his own political stance as “slightly left of center,” also criticized Coalition ’88 for including the Communist Party U.S.A. among its endorsers. Freehling said he could not participate in any function involving the group “because of its strong anti-Jewish, anti-Israel bent.”

In addition to the Catholic and Jewish leaders, coalition officials said, those withdrawing included Bishop Garver, head of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, and Bishop J. Roger Anderson, head of the Southern California Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church.

A spokesman for Garver said the bishop wrote in a March 28 letter to the coalition that “there needs to be special care exercised that the religious voice and content be primary when it is the community religious leadership which is sought as endorsers.”

According to several of those who resigned, 18 religious leaders were contacted last January as part of Coalition ‘88’s plans for a march and rally to honor King’s memory. The rally was to feature a speech by King’s son, Martin Luther King III, who is a county commissioner in Fulton County, Georgia. But an aide to King said Thursday that he would not be able to attend because of scheduling difficulties.

“We have been trying to organize around the whole notion of April 4 (the anniversary of King’s 1968 assassination), that what Dr. King represented is something that needs a broad, continuing effort,” Lawson said.

Olivares said that “from the very beginning,” the religious leaders were made aware that “there would be an agenda of causes and that they might not endorse every one of them.” The leaders also were notified of meetings discussing the development of the agenda for the rally, he said.

“Those who join a coalition like this must exercise some participative function,” Olivares said. “Perhaps they failed to send representatives.”

During the meetings, coalition officials said, representatives from dozens of political and community groups submitted position papers on a variety of international and domestic issues. If their positions met no serious objections, they were then placed on the coalition’s “progressive agenda.”

Not Told of Meetings

But several of the resigning religious leaders insisted that they were never apprised of the meetings on the agenda.

“At best, this was a result of gross irresponsibility and poor communication,” Fields said. “At worst, and I hope this is not the case, it was intentional.

“All we were asked to do is sign our support and commemorate Dr. King’s assassination. Had I known there were meetings, I certainly would have gone or else sent someone so that I knew what was happening.”

Calling the resignations unfortunate, Lawson said he, too, was not notified of what was contained in the agenda until it was printed. He said he planned to ask the coalition’s staff to find out “how our organizers missed it.”

“We did not want to censure anyone’s position,” said Lawson, who is president of the Los Angeles chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. “But I think we missed the boat when it came to making sure that our agenda had enough accuracy and balance so that different facets of the coalition would not be put off.”

Lawson said that he hoped that, over time, the coalition would be able to persuade some of the religious leaders who resigned to rejoin the organization.

“I hope to do some aggressive reaching out,” he said.