{"id":98090,"date":"2025-12-23T04:34:33","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T04:34:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/98090\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T04:34:33","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T04:34:33","slug":"keller-city-council-uninvites-pastor-whose-church-hosted-kel-so-pride-from-delivering-opening-prayer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/98090\/","title":{"rendered":"Keller City Council ‘uninvites’ pastor whose church hosted Kel-So Pride from delivering opening prayer"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Rev. Alan Bentrup<\/a>, pastor at St. Martin-in-the-Fields<\/a> Episcopal Church which sits on the border between Keller and Southlake, this week was unceremoniously \u201cuninvited\u201d to deliver the invocation to open the Keller City Council meeting last week. And Keller\u2019s right-wing Republican Mayor Armin Mizani<\/a> did not any hateful mince words in explaining why.<\/p>\n

\u201cDelivering the opening prayer before Keller City Council meetings is a privilege, not a right,\u201d Mizani, who is running for a seat in the Texas House, told Dallas Morning News<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He said that the council would not \u201celevate an individual to lead us in prayer who offended a large majority of our residents by recently welcoming children to attend an event that exposed them to male drag performers,\u201d Mizani declared. \u201cWe will not apologize for or equivocate on this decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mizani was referring to the fact that Rev. Bentrup\u2019s church hosted the first-ever Pride Kel-So<\/a> festival in October. The event featured a B-52s cover band and an age-appropriate drag show, drawing a crowd of about 700 attendees.<\/p>\n

St. Martin-in-the-Fields hosted the Pride festival after a woman told the pastor that if such an event had existed when her son was younger, he might not have died by suicide, according to DMN reports. Members of the church\u2019s board of directors voted unanimously in favor of hosting the festival on church property.<\/p>\n

But apparently for Mizani, deciding who is and who isn\u2019t holy enough to pray for the city was less about actual Christian principles and more about riling up the right-wing voters he hopes will send him to Austin next November by declaring on social media that festival organizers obviously had \u201can agenda aimed at exposing children to inappropriate, highly sexualized content.\u201d<\/p>\n

For his part, Bentrup noted on Facebook that over the past year his church has donated $80,000 to food pantries, homeless shelters and refugee ministries, accounting for more than 15 percent of the church\u2019s annual budget.<\/p>\n

He wrote, according to DMN, \u201cWe do this because we believe in loving and serving our neighbors with no agenda beyond compassion. If offering a prayer grounded in love, dignity, care and respect for all people disqualifies someone from praying for this city, then we should ask what \u2018community values\u2019 really mean here.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will continue to pray for Keller,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Tammye Nash<\/p>\n

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