The 16th annual Los Angeles Mayor’s Prayer...

The 16th annual Los Angeles Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast will be held next Saturday, renewing an event that tends to feature charismatic Protestants and, lately, a little political suspense.

The breakfast drew its highest attendance last year--2,000--when the featured speaker was House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Tex.), who resigned that position Wednesday after defending his handling of personal finances against ethical violations charges by the House Ethics Committee. That panel voted to begin its investigation shortly before last year’s prayer breakfast.

The featured speaker this year is U.S. Secretary of Labor Elizabeth Dole, who is under no such cloud. But questions about financial conflicts of interest have been raised recently in Los Angeles about Mayor Tom Bradley, who will be present and speak briefly at the 8 a.m. event at Westin Bonaventure Hotel.

Chairman Keith Phillips said he does not know whether advance ticket sales, which reached 1,000 this week, reflect any sympathy for the mayor. “I think the sense of the Christian community is that if the mayor ever needed prayers, he needs them now,” said Phillips, adding that he was making no judgment on the validity of various charges.

“The breakfast is not tied specifically to Bradley; we pray for the well-being of the city--for concerns about drug and gang activity,” said Phillips, who heads World Impact, an inner-city ministry that is handling ticket reservations ((213) 735-1137).

Among the charismatic Christians taking part in the program are master of ceremonies Pat Boone, who will sing; Trinity Broadcasting Network owners Paul and Jan Crouch; Bishop Charles E. Blake of the Church of God in Christ; Pastor Lloyd John Ogilvie of Hollywood Presbyterian Church and Pastor Jack Hayford of the Church on the Way in Van Nuys. Charismatic and Pentecostal Christians believe in speaking in tongues and other “gifts of the Holy Spirit.”

Last year singer Andrae Crouch, ex-football star Roosevelt Grier, actor Dean Jones and the Crouches took part in the program.

Phillips said the breakfast’s sponsoring committee is only 50% charismatic Christian and the predominant participation of charismatics this year and last was unintentional. “I am not a charismatic myself,” he said. He suggested that the selections came about because charismatic clergy and lay people are among those who are best known in public life for their Christian identity.

CONFERENCE

A conference on Jewish spirituality, including mystical traditions in Judaism, is being held for the third year by the Westwood Kehilla, which describes itself as an eclectic Orthodox community embracing members at varied levels of religious observance. Rabbi Abner Weiss, the spiritual leader of Beth Jacob Congregation, will give a plenary talk on the “spiritual dimension” of sex, love and marriage at the June 11 conference. Workshops include “Hassidic Wisdom,” “Kabbalah of Love and Meditation,” “Music as a Vehicle to God” and one by Rabbi Joel Zeff, the congregation’s spiritual leader, on “Prayer: Making the Rote Meaningful.” The conference, which will start at 8:30 a.m., will be held at Hillel Hebrew Academy in Beverly Hills.

PEOPLE

Mary Elizabeth Moore, a professor at the School of Theology at Claremont, has been elected to chair the board and serve as president of the Religious Education Assn. She is the first woman to head the board in the 86-year history of the organization. Moore said the association is an interfaith body that brings together theorists and practitioners, and the only such organization “working internationally in religious education.” The spring issue of its quarterly journal, Religious Education, featured articles on religious education trends in Islam and eastern religions.

Gordon Stein has resigned as president of Atheists United, a small but active Los Angeles-area group with an office in Sherman Oaks, to accept a position as associate professor of biology at the University of Rhode Island. Stein, who was succeeded by Herb Livingston, edited the two-volume “Encyclopedia of Unbelief” and edited two anthologies of atheist and rationalist writings during this decade for Prometheus Press.