Ceremonies to Honor Life of Rev. King

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and his civil rights legacy will be remembered in religious gatherings Sunday and Monday.

Among churches highlighting his life Sunday morning is Brookins Community African Methodist Episcopal Church, 4831 S. Gramercy Place, Los Angeles, which will present an audiovisual program at 10 a.m. Church member Eva F. Holmes, a retired administrator in the Los Angeles Unified School District, will narrate the program as she has done in hundreds of other educational and religious settings.

In a joint King birthday celebration Sunday, representatives of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) will join United Church of Christ officials for a 4 p.m. service at First Congregational Church of Long Beach. The Rev. Herman Haller, interim executive for the UCC’s Southern California region, will be the speaker.

On Monday, the official holiday, a prayer breakfast sponsored by the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese at Verbum Dei High School gymnasium, 11100 S. Central Ave., will feature speaker Evelyn Knight, executive director of Peoples’ Coordinated Services for Southern California. Auxiliary Bishop Gabino Zavala will preside at the 8:30 a.m. to 11 a.m. breakfast. Reservations: (213) 637-7435.

Also on Monday, a multifaith and multiracial lineup of speakers will take part in the San Fernando Valley Interfaith Council’s ninth celebration of King’s birthday. The 7 p.m. service will be at newly renovated St. John Eudes Catholic Church at 9901 Mason Ave., Chatsworth.

Readings and reflections will be presented by Rabbi Stewart Vogel of Temple Aliyah of Woodland Hills; Father Fisher Robinson, vicar of African American Catholic ministries; and the Rev. Lydia Jackson-Waters, pastor of the Crossroads-Njia Panda United Methodist Church in Compton. An offering will be taken. (818) 718-6460, Ext. 3002.

In addition, members of First Presbyterian Church of North Hollywood will travel to Faithful St. Mark Baptist Church, at 9502 S. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, for a joint celebration of King’s birthday at 3:30 p.m. Sunday. Choirs from both churches will sing, followed by a potluck dinner.

On Thursday, Christian ethicist Peter Paris of Princeton Theological Seminary will deliver the annual King lecture at Claremont School of Theology’s Mudd Theater. Paris’ talk, at 4:30 p.m., is titled “The Church’s Response to the Vision of Martin Luther King.” The lecture is free. (909) 626-3521, Ext. 1262.

DATES

Catholic theologian Thomas Rausch will talk about the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and subsequent church renewal trends in liturgy, women, authority and interfaith dialogue in two lectures at St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church, 10750 Ohio Ave., Westwood. The Jesuit priest, who is chairman of Loyola Marymount University’s theological studies department, will speak at 7:30 p.m. Thursday and the following Thursday. $5 per session.

* Sojun Mel Weitsman, a Los Angeles native who helped popularize Zen Buddhism in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960s, will speak at 2 p.m. Sunday on “Buddhism in Our Daily Lives” at Zenshuji Zazenkai, 123 S. Hewitt St., in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo District. The 67-year-old Buddhist priest is abbot of the Berkeley Zen Center and co-abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center. (213) 624-8658.

* Brooklyn preacher Johnny Ray Youngblood, the subject of a popular 1993 book “Upon This Rock: The Miracles of a Black Church,” will lead a winter revival Wednesday through Friday night at 7 p.m. at Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, 5200 S. Compton Ave., Los Angeles. Youngblood is pastor of the 8,000-member St. Paul Community Baptist Church in Brooklyn.

* A conference for Jewish religious school educators on Sunday at the Skirball Cultural Center in Sepulveda Pass will feature Elliot Dorff, rector of the University of Judaism, and David Ellenson, professor of Jewish religious thought at Hebrew Union College, as keynote speakers. The five-hour conference organized by the Bureau of Jewish Education will begin at 8:30 a.m.

* Ken Wales, executive producer of the CBS television series “Christy” that ran in 1994 and 1995, will talk about the drama at Santa Monica First Presbyterian Church, 1220 Second St., at 11:15 a.m. Sunday, after the worship service. Wales is a member of Pacific Palisades United Methodist Church.

* Psychoanalyst C. G. Jung, whose spiritual perspectives have fascinated generations, will be portrayed by British actor John Maxwell Taylor in a one-man play titled “Forever Jung” for three nights next week at the Philosophical Research Society, 3910 Los Feliz Blvd., Los Angeles. The 8 p.m. performances will begin Thursday. $15. (213) 660-8587.

* Links between spiritual commitment and fighting illness, among other medical-religious issues, will be discussed in a three-day symposium next week at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena. Dr. David Bruce Larson, policy analyst with the National Institutes of Health and an adjunct associate professor at Duke University Medical Center, will give free lectures at 10 a.m. Wednesday through Friday at the seminary’s Psychology Building. (818) 584-5500.

FINALLY

A newly announced Center for Religion and Civic Culture at USC plans not only to chronicle the grass-roots social services developed by religious groups in the Los Angeles area but also to suggest ways for them to thrive and expand.

Funded by a $350,000 grant from the James Irvine Foundation, the center is co-directed by Donald E. Miller and John B. Orr, both religion professors at USC.

Governmental cuts in welfare programs “is creating a vacuum into which churches, synagogues and mosques are stepping” to meet health care and housing needs and respond to problems caused by drugs and violence, Miller said.

Although public demands on churches probably will escalate, Miller said, “there is no way they can substitute for the role of government. But they can play an important role.”

Orr will head efforts to analyze church-state issues stemming from public funding of religion-based programs.

CONFERENCES

Former Gov. Robert P. Casey of Pennsylvania, a vocal antiabortion rights advocate within Democratic Party ranks, will give the keynote speech Wednesday in Long Beach at a Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese program on the 24th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion.

Casey will speak at 10 a.m., shortly after an ecumenical prayer opens the conference at the Sheraton Long Beach Hotel. The meeting will end with Cardinal Roger M. Mahony celebrating Mass at 2:45 p.m.

In between, a dozen workshops will deal with physician-assisted suicide, abortion, euthanasia, church teachings and grass-roots activism, a spokesman said.

Speakers include former California Supreme Court Justice William P. Clark, Rabbi Elliot Dorff of the University of Judaism, ethicist Hassan Hathout of the Islamic Center of Southern California, Lutheran Pastor Roger Sonnenberg of Arcadia and the Rev. Donald Shoemaker, pastor of Grace Community Church of Seal Beach. Registration fees are $10 and $5. (213) 637-7367.

* Members of the Los Angeles-based Progressive Religious Alliance will watch the presidential inauguration on television Monday morning at Holman United Methodist Church in Los Angeles, then hold a two-hour forum on what President Clinton should do in his second term.

A six-point letter outlining the group’s stances--often at odds with the president’s--on campaign finance reform, welfare, civil rights, health care, religious pluralism and abortion rights will be discussed. Copies will be delivered in Washington this week to the White House and Congress, according to a spokesman.

The year-old interfaith coalition terms itself a response to the religious right. Speakers at the forum, which will begin about 9 a.m. in the church at 3320 W. Adams Blvd., will include host pastor James Lawson and ex-congressman Robert Edgar, president of the Claremont School of Theology. (213) 651-4601.