Promise Keepers to Hold Free L.A. Rally

Rebounding from a staffing crisis, the Promise Keepers movement returns to the Memorial Coliseum next weekend with a Los Angeles rally unchanged in its emphasis on male Christian duties to family, church and racial reconciliation.

The major change this time is that admission is free.

As a result of eliminating registration fees at 19 sites around the country this year (it was $60 last year at the Coliseum), founder Bill McCartney announced in February that the Denver-based evangelical men’s organization was laying off its 345 full-time staff members.

“But more than 70,000 letters brought in $4.5 million in contributions in March alone that made it possible to pay all bills and to reinstate a payroll,” said Steve Ruppe, national director of public affairs for Promise Keepers. The staff is back to 277 full-time people, although how many permanent positions will be created is uncertain, Ruppe said.

Promise Keepers, which drew hundreds of thousands to its Washington rally in October, will kick off its 1998 regional stadium and arena season this weekend in Detroit, followed by simultaneous rallies next weekend in Los Angeles and Little Rock. McCartney will address the Arkansas rally.

Speakers at the Coliseum will include the Rev. John Maxwell, who has an independent ministry in San Diego, and Bishop William Porter of Aurora, Colo., a Church of God in Christ minister who heads the Promise Keepers board of directors.

Attendance at the Memorial Coliseum event, which begins Friday at 6 p.m. and runs from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. next Saturday, may approach last year’s turnout of an estimated 43,000 men.

Ruppe said nearly 30,000 men had preregistered by early this week.

“Even though it’s free, we want men to register as they arrive so that they can receive their packets,” Ruppe said. Contributions will be asked, however. “We are relying almost entirely on donations now,” he said.

CONFERENCES

The meanings associated with veils and head coverings, customs rooted in the Mediterranean and Islamic cultures, will be discussed in a forum Wednesday at UCLA featuring an exchange of views among researchers, educators, and news and entertainment media professionals.

“On Veiling and the Media” is co-sponsored by Middle East centers at UCLA, New York University and Columbia University. Veiling’s meanings range from “modesty and traditional values to the assertion of political and ideological opposition,” said a conference spokesman. “We hope exchanges . . . will lead to a greater familiarity with the issues, [and] respect for individual and communal choices.”

The forum at Bunche Hall will start at 10 a.m. (310) 825-1181.

* “God, Religion and Myth,” the Skeptics Society’s 1998 conference at Caltech’s Baxter Hall in Pasadena, will examine “the human need to believe” next weekend.

Speakers next Saturday include Randel McCraw Helms of Arizona State University, author of “Who Wrote the Gospels?”; publisher Michael Shermer of Skeptic magazine; J. Gordon Melton, director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion in Santa Barbara, and Richard Abanes, author of “American Militias” and “End-Time Visions.”

Paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson, who hosted the PBS series “In Search of Human Origins,” will give the keynote speech next Saturday night on creation myths and scientific explanations. Magician-debunker James Randi will lead a “solved mysteries workshop” on May 24, starting at 9 a.m. Nonmembers and guests $175. (626) 794-3119.

* A national, four-day conference of prison ministries in the Episcopal Church will open Thursday at the Cathedral Center of St. Paul, 840 Echo Park Ave., Los Angeles.

The banquet will feature a talk by Jean Harris, who served 13 years in prison for the murder of Herman Tarnower, the “Scarsdale diet doctor,” and has become a prison rights advocate and author. Conference fee $125. (888) 839-3990.

ISSUES

Faith United Methodist Church in South-Central Los Angeles is hosting a “speak-out against police brutality” at 4 p.m. Sunday.

The Rev. M. Andrew Robinson-Gaither, pastor of the church at 1713 W. 108th St., said that families of victims and community leaders will speak. “Our governmental leadership at all levels is fearful and ineffective at stopping this violence against our community,” Robinson-Gaither charged in a letter to clergy.

The program is a joint project of the Coalition to Stop Police Brutality, the National Lawyers Guild and the Anthony Baez Foundation. (213) 754-8453.

* Religious issues of an afterlife, the healing of addictions and the linking of God, marriage and family will be explored on upcoming Thursday nights at the University of Judaism in panels moderated by Michael Levine, who heads his own entertainment public relations firm.

The afterlife will be discussed next week by entertainer Pat Boone; the Rev. Cecil Murray, senior pastor of First African Methodist Episcopal Church, Los Angeles; Keith Atkinson, Southern California public affairs director for the Mormon Church; Father Gregory Coiro, media relations director for the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese, and atheist Fritz Stevens of the Center for Inquiry West.

Murray and Atkinson will also appear at the panels on June 11 (addictions) and June 25 (family). The sessions, which cost $12 each, will start at 7:30 p.m. (310) 476-9777, Ext. 246.

CORRECTION

In an item on the merger of Pacific Homes and California Lutheran Homes, which ran in Southern California File on May 9, the combined annual revenue of the two facilities was incorrectly stated. The revenue is close to $100 million.

PRAYER BREAKFAST

Executive Producer Martha Williamson of CBS’ “Touched by an Angel” will be the main speaker at the 24th annual Los Angeles Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast on May 30 at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel.

Mayor Richard Riordan will attend the nonpartisan event, organized by the Los Angeles-based mission agency World Impact, but the program emphasizes prayer on behalf of all city leaders.

The Rev. Jack Hayford, senior pastor of Van Nuys’ Church on the Way, will host the program. Other participants include the Rev. Hee Min Park, senior pastor of Young-Nak Presbyterian Church; the Rev. Luis Perez, pastor of Celebration Christian Church; Richard Felix, president of Azusa Pacific University; and entertainer Rosey Grier. Reservations due by Friday. $19 each. (213) 735-1137.

DATES

New Testament scholar David Scholer of Fuller Theological Seminary will talk next Saturday at a Los Angeles seminar organized by Christians for Biblical Equality. “Should Women Shut Up or Stand Up?” is Scholer’s topic for the seminar, starting at 9:30 a.m. at the Angelus Plaza Senior Activities Center, 255 S. Hill St. $10. (213) 724-5484.

* Celtic music will be performed Sunday at two churches in the Los Angeles area. A “kirking o’ the tartans” with traditional Scottish bagpipe music, organ and choir will be at the 10:15 a.m. Eucharist service at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 1014 E. Altadena Drive, Altadena. (626) 798-6747. At St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 11000 National Blvd., West Los Angeles, the 25-voice Celtic Choir will perform sacred and secular works in a 4 p.m. concert. Free. (310) 477-2513.

* A free workshop Sunday on “You and Your Aging Parent” will be led by social worker Rena Snyder of the Valley Storefront, Jewish Family Service, from 10 a.m. to noon at Adat Ari El Synagogue, 12020 Burbank Blvd., North Hollywood. (818) 984-1380.

* Exploring the Christian Trinity from a feminist perspective, theologian Sarah Coakley of Harvard Divinity School will speak today and Sunday morning at All Saints Episcopal Church, 132 N. Euclid Ave., Pasadena. She will give two talks today, starting at 9 a.m., and narrate a slide show of images of the Trinity in Western art during the 10:15 a.m. rector’s forum on Sunday. (626) 583-2735.

FINALLY

The second annual Walk Against Hunger Sunday afternoon in the Wilshire district could also be called a tour of religious architecture.

The three-mile jaunt, starting and ending at Wilshire Boulevard Temple (a synagogue designed in Byzantine/Romanesque style), 3663 Wilshire Blvd., includes sightseeing stops at Wilshire Christian Church (Northern Italian), Immanuel Presbyterian Church (French Gothic), First Congregational Church (Gothic Revival), Precious Blood Catholic Church (Northern Italian Romanesque), First Baptist Church (Gothic towers and Romanesque arches) and First Unitarian Church (Renaissance Revival).

The funds raised from $25 registrations or from walk sponsors will go to Hope-Net, whose 14 congregations jointly sponsor eight food pantries, a thrift store and a 17-unit apartment building for low-income families. The event will begin at 1 p.m. (310) 390-3470.

Notices may be mailed for consideration to Southern California File, c/o John Dart, L.A. Times, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, CA 91311, or faxed to Religion desk (818) 772-3385, or e-mailed to john.dart@latimes.com Items should arrive 2-3 weeks before the event, except for spot news, and should include pertinent details about the people and organizations with address, phone number, date and time.

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PEOPLE

Prominent entertainment attorney Bruce M. Ramer of Los Angeles was elected Friday as president of the American Jewish Committee during the religious and human relations agency’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

Ramer, who chaired the committee’s board of governors prior to his election, appears among the 100 most influential lawyers in America in the National Law Journal’s triennial listing of 1994 and 1997. A partner in the law firm of Gang, Tyre, Ramer & Brown, Inc., Ramer is executive director of USC Law School’s Entertainment Law Institute.

Succeeding New York attorney Robert S. Rifkind in the American Jewish Committee as president, Ramer praised the New York-based organization’s efforts on behalf of Israel, the United States and world Jewry, and on domestic issues and interreligious issues.

In a statement, he urged the committee to speak and act decisively enough “to convey our unyielding commitment to human rights, human dignity and respect for the rule of law.”