Parris<\/a> told the audience of ministers gathered for his address. <\/p>\n\u201cI need [Lancaster residents] standing up and saying we’re a Christian community, and we’re proud of that," the mayor said.<\/p>\n
The Greater Los Angeles area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations denounced the statement and said it plans to file a complaint about the mayor’s remarks with the civil rights division of the U.S. Justice Department. <\/p>\n
\u201cElected officials should not use their public positions to impose their religious beliefs on others," said Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Los Angeles chapter of CAIR. <\/p>\n
The mayor, reached by telephone today, said his remarks did not intend to impose his faith on others, and he said he would make no apology.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is just about very few people wanting to get their 15 minutes of fame,\u201d he said. \u201cI guess they got it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0— Garrett Therolf <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris drew criticism from a leading Muslim group today after saying in his annual State of the City address that the high desert town was \u201cgrowing a Christian community.\u201d "We’re growing a Christian community, and don’t let anybody shy away from that,\u201d Parris told the audience of ministers gathered for his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4135,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-256737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256737\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}