PORT ANGELES — When Vladimir Paraik was 6 years old in his hometown of Prievidza, in what was then Czechoslovakia, the principal of his elementary school gathered everyone in the gymnasium and told them the Soviet Union no longer exists.
“I remember it like it was yesterday,” the Peninsula College sophomore and Roman Catholic said at Tuesday night’s public forum commemorating National Religious Freedom Day, which was Jan. 16.
“For 60 years people had been waiting for religious freedom.”
Sponsored by the Community Multi-Cultural Alliance, the presentation at Peninsula College’s Little Theater featured young and old, students and judges reading excerpts from documents extolling religious freedom.
Documents ranged from the Bill of Rights to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Among those speaking were Christians, a Quaker and a Buddhist.
“There is no one-size-fits-all,” said former Port Angeles Mayor Glenn Wiggins, a founding member of the alliance’s first incarnation.
The Community Multi-Cultural Alliance grew out of the Port Angeles Multicultural Task Force, a City Council advisory group created in the spring of 2002 to handle racism complaints from personnel at Coast Guard Group/Air Station Port Angeles.
No longer tied to the Port Angeles City Council, it has reconstituted itself to be a broader-based, countywide group focused on improving diversity, equality and cultural awareness.
Its members include community, governmental, religious, educational and business leaders, and representatives from the Coast Guard and Lower Elwha Klallam tribe.
70 people attend forum
Francis Kyle, youth minister of Port Angeles’ First United Methodist and Congregational Church, moderated the forum, which drew about 70 people.
After the formal presentations, audience members took turns reflecting on their own religious beliefs.
Although the Community Multi-Cultural Alliance was originally founded to deal with issues of race and ethnicity in the Port Angeles area, Kyle said the group’s definition of tolerance was extended to include religious freedom and diversity.
“If you want peace, you have to deal sometime with religion,” Kyle said.
Washington is second only to Oregon in low religious participation, Kyle said, and in Clallam County about one out of three people regularly attends religious services.
