Churchgoers Protest Limit On Attendance

More than 1,100 people from different faiths packed into a Methodist church Sunday to protest a city official’s order limiting another church’s attendance to 70.

Last month, land-use hearing officer Elizabeth Normand told Sunnyside Centenary United Methodist Church to cut its attendance. She said neighbors had complained that people leaving the church’s twice-a-week meals program sometimes created a nuisance.

The Portland city attorney’s office on Friday recommended dropping the attendance limits at services, but it suggested keeping restrictions on other church activities.

A hearing on the issue is scheduled for March 1.

Many of the protesters Sunday said they felt their constitutional rights were being trampled.

“That hearing officer has given us a gift. When was the last time people of all faiths united here around the right of a local church to reach out and touch people in need?” said the Rev. Steve Sprecher, superintendent of the Oregon-Idaho United Methodist Conference.

Several religious leaders said the church’s fellowship and outreach programs provide more than government assistance because the services satisfy both basic and spiritual needs. One man told how his life had improved because of the church’s outreach programs.

“For 40 years of my life, I was either under a bridge, in jail, in a mental institution, or in treatment,” said Alan Devine of the Recovery Association Project. “There were places like Sunnyside where I could go practice what it was like to be a human being.”