Dan Bryant Article

Dan Bryant Profile
(This article re-printed with permission from the Register Guard)
May 21, 2005

Pastor takes leading role in ministries
By Jeff Wright
The Register-Guard

Dan Bryant keeps finding new hats to wear.
The ubiquitous Bryant, senior pastor at First Christian Church in downtown Eugene, has a long list of community titles, from Two Rivers Interfaith Ministries founder to past president of the City Club of Eugene.
These days, Bryant has a new hat - as president of Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon. The statewide group, based in Portland, represents 17 Christian denominations that advocate on behalf of public policy, social justice, environmentalism and theological education.
Bryant, 50, is believed to be the first Lane County resident named to the position - though he's not the first in his family. His father, Wayne Bryant of Portland, previously served as both president and interim director.
Dan Bryant said his work with the statewide group is a natural extension of his local advocacy for the poor and dis-enfranchised.
His top priorities at EMO, he said, include protecting and expanding health care benefits for Oregon's poor, and taking on a payday loan industry whose interest rates "amount to usury."
Bryant has worked with the group for years, as a board member and as chairman of its public policy committee and farmworker issues task force.
"He's almost a regular," said David Leslie, the organization's executive director. "If Dan could get frequent commuter miles (for traveling Interstate 5), he'd already have racked up millions."
Leslie said Bryant has a "very community-oriented style of ministry" that fits well with EMO's mission. It's helpful having a pastor as president, he added, "to keep us mindful that we need to be relevant to all those people sitting in the pews on Sunday."
In one of his first public acts as president, Bryant recently testified in Salem on behalf of Senate Bill 1000, which would allow same-sex couples in Oregon to enter into civil unions. He also is expected to play a role in EMO efforts to attract new denominational partners.

Dan Bryant

Bryant will speak as both EMO president and local pastor when he delivers the Rabbi Myron Kinberg Memorial Peace and Justice Lecture on Sunday at Temple Beth Israel. Bryant's lecture title is "Good God, Bad Government: When the Use of Religion Becomes the Abuse of Power."
Power is abused, Bryant said, "when public officials use their office to promote a particular religious perspective." Congress' attempt to intervene in the case of Terry Schiavo, the comatose Florida woman whose gastric feeding tube was removed in March, "is a classic example" of such governmental abuse, he said.
Sunday's lecture is named for the temple's former rabbi, who left Eugene in 1994 and died two years later in New York. Bryant and Kinberg became friends after Bryant spearheaded nightly vigils following a drive-by shooting at the temple in 1994.
MYRON KINBERG MEMORIAL LECTURE
Who: The Rev. Dan Bryant, president of Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon and senior pastor at First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Eugene.
When/where: Sunday, 7 p.m., Temple Beth Israel, 2550 Portland St. Free.
Topic: "Good God, Bad Government: When the Use of Religion Becomes the Abuse of Power."

- Jeff Wright (Register Guard)

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