“One thing we were trying to achieve was to have an alternative place for people to go who felt they didn’t want to just close their doors and hide,” but who didn’t want to bring attention to what the Klan was doing at the park, said Mary Morrison, designated pastor for the Berwyn church.
And “we wanted to make the statement, especially since we have a Hispanic and an Anglo congregation here, that it’s important for us to live together.”
Berwyn church, founded in 1894 and located about 10 miles south of downtown Chicago, actually houses two congregations now: a small Anglo congregation of about 60 people, and an Hispanic congregation, Canto de Esperanza, which was formed about six years ago and has grown to about 130 members.
The community of Berwyn and of nearby Cicero were, in decades past, “staunch middle-class white,” with some history of racism, Morrison said. But Berwyn is now about 35 percent Hispanic, and when a Klan member who’d grown up in the area and later moved to Wisconsin announced his intention to return to lead a rally, a group of congregations from the area responded by organizing the prayer service.
“It was wonderful,” Morrison said. “We didn’t allow anyone to make political statements. It was simply a service of prayer and praise,” with readings from the Bible, in English and Spanish; excerpts from Martin Luther King Jr.’s writings; and “really fabulous music,” Morrison said.
 The prayer service brought together Baptists, Lutherans, Catholics, Presbyterians, United Church of Christ worshipers, and probably some others, she said. About 200 people came to the church; the Klan brought out fewer than 10 actual supporters, but also drew a crowd of about 200 who came to watch (many to oppose) and about 300 police officers.
Morrison said the residents of Berwyn were surprised the Klan would try to organize a rally in a community where “there hasn’t been that level of conflict,” even though the demographics of the area has been changing. One of the prayer service organizers, a Catholic priest named Rich Prendergast, from St. Mary of Celle parish, told a reporter “it’s like when somebody has broken into your home” — many in Berwyn felt violated and polluted by the presence of the Klan, the priest said.
The day after the Klan rally, people from the community held a ceremony of rededication at the park where the rally had taken place.
Martin E. Marty, the scholar of American religious life, wrote in his column “Sightings” after the Klan rally that “I like to believe . . . that the voices of the 400 or so congregants in Berwyn yesterday demonstrate triumph over the haters . . . . They deserve the notice, not the Klan and its kind.”
