3 Faiths in Prayer for Peace : Religion: Christians, Jews and Muslims intensify anti-war lobbying. Archbishop Mahony leads cathedral Mass.

Declaring that “God called us here tonight to say no to the war,” an Episcopal pastor told an interfaith prayer service in Los Angeles on Sunday night that President Bush and Congress “would take us into the pit of hell.”

Rev. George F. Regas, rector of Pasadena’s All Saints Episcopal Church, told a vocal, overflow crowd at the Islamic Center of Southern California that the religious community “will not support a war in the Persian Gulf--not now, not later, not ever.”

With war in the Gulf appearing imminent, more than 1,500 Christians, Jews and Muslims attended the service at the center on South Vermont Avenue to underscore their position that further negotiations with Iraq are preferable to military intervention.

Organized by the Religious Community Against War in the Persian Gulf, a coalition of religious leaders based at activist All Saints, the interfaith service was held in the framework of intensified anti-war lobbying nationwide by religious leaders, who have taken a position against using military force to oust Iraq’s forces from Kuwait.

“It’s a bleak time,” Regas said, all too aware of Tuesday’s United Nations-imposed deadline for Iraq to pull out of Kuwait. “But remember, the Middle East is the cradle of miracles.”

Leading the service Sunday night along with Regas, 60, were Rabbi Leonard Beerman, 69, retired founder of Leo Baeck Temple of Bel-Air, and Dr. Hassan Hathout, 65, an official of the Islamic Center.

Noting that prayers were being offered in all three faiths, Hathout’s brother, Dr. Maher Hathout, elicited laughter from the otherwise somber crowd when he told them, “We better believe that one of these prayers will make it.”

Earlier Sunday, Los Angeles Catholic Archbishop Roger M. Mahony led a Mass of about 200 parishioners gathered at St. Vibiana Cathedral in downtown Los Angeles to pray for a peaceful solution to the crisis.

Tuesday is “a day and date which hold so much threat, but which are also capable of so much promise,” he told the gathering. “I personally do not feel that we have reached a last resort in this crisis. If our world leaders can’t find peaceful ways (to resolve it), then our world is in big trouble.”

Across town, about 100 Kuwaitis and their American friends rallied at the Westwood Federal Building, where about 5,000 anti-war demonstrators had gathered Saturday. Kuwaitis urged Americans to support President Bush’s policies and displayed photographs of Kuwaiti victims of Iraqi atrocities.

“It’s Not for Oil. It’s for Justice,” one sign said.

Meanwhile, dozens of anti-war protesters countered the Kuwait rally with signs urging “Peace Now.”

A spokesman for the Islamic Center, Salam Al-Marayati, said it was appropriate that the interfaith event Sunday evening be held there because the institution’s position was that there should not be a military solution to the Persian Gulf problem.

To be sure, he said, the center condemns Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. However, he added, “we regard war as no option.” Instead, he said, order should be restored to the region by “peacekeeping troops in a United Nations framework.”

Beerman and Regas have worked together before on anti-war issues. Both joined forces two decades ago to oppose the Vietnam conflict. In 1979, Regas and Beerman organized an interfaith conference that called on Congress to end funding for nuclear weapons.

“We hope that we can give some courage to those who feel that the option of war would be tragic and preposterous,” Beerman said in an interview. “We’re hoping we can help to deepen the convictions of those who believe that war in this era is immoral and can have no justification.”

If he had been sitting across the table from Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz, like Secretary of State James A. Baker III was last week in Geneva, Beerman said he would have emphasized tightening the screws on the embargo rather than threatening an invasion.

“We could continue the economic siege and embargo which could only bring agony to the Iraqi people, and this position has almost the entire world behind us,” he said.

The interfaith prayer service, Beerman said, adds “voices to the millions of Americans who do not approve going to war in this instance. If this sort of debate had occurred before (the Vietnam War), maybe we wouldn’t have gotten so involved in that tragedy.”

Hathout, a native of Egypt, said in an interview that he was not necessarily disheartened by last week’s diplomatic impasse in Geneva.

“I’m not discouraged,” he said. “If we think of the price of war, the price of peace is far much less. It takes a will to make peace, a strength to make peace--maybe more than the strength to make war.”

Taking issue with Bush’s position that Washington should not compromise with Hussein, Regas said the United States must find a way to defuse the situation “through patient, long-term, unrelenting negotiations, which involve some compromise, to move to a better justice in the Middle East.”

Times staff writers Scott Harris, Tina Anima and Edward J. Boyer contributed to this story.