Hamstrung Churches Urge Monday Marathon

With the Los Angeles Marathon just days away, area church leaders on Tuesday urged race organizers to hold next year’s event on a day that does not conflict with any religious group’s Sabbath.

“Not just Sunday, but Saturday and Friday afternoons represent the special days for the major religious and faith traditions that are part of the Los Angeles community,” said the Rev. Dr. Clyde W. Oden of Bryant Temple African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Oden and others have suggested moving the marathon to Presidents Day, the third Monday in February. This year’s marathon takes place Sunday.

Marathon organizers did not agree to a change but said Tuesday that they were willing to meet with church leaders to discuss the issue.

Religious leaders from congregations along the marathon route and beyond said their members struggle every year to traverse streets teeming with runners and to navigate around blocked boulevards on their way to worship.

An estimated 500 churches are affected by the crowds and detours, said Father Dick Martini, who has helped lead the campaign. His parish, Church of the Transfiguration, is along the marathon route on Martin Luther King Boulevard west of Arlington Avenue.

Martini remembered one marathon Sunday two years ago when only 12 people attended the main service. Usually, there are 300.

Annual frustration has led leaders to unite under One LA, a countywide network of religious and community organizations, to insist on changing the day of the marathon, Oden said.

But the group also stresses it is not anti-marathon, said the Rev. Henry L. Masters Sr., senior pastor at Holman United Methodist Church on Adams Boulevard, one of the streets crossed by the marathon route.

Next Tuesday, a task force formed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will meet to discuss possible solutions, said William A. Burke, the marathon’s president, who sold the race to a Chicago company in 2004 but still organizes the event.