Clatskanie to get Zen Buddhist center; some Christians angered

By RICHARD KOE

CLATSKANIE -- This small community on U.S. Highway 30 in Columbia County, halfway between Portland and Astoria, will have a Zen Buddhist center. The Clatskanie School District accepted an offer from the Zen organization to lease a vacant elementary school for a monastery and seminary.

The action, finalized on Feb. 25, came as a relief to civic leaders who said their community was unfairly branded as bigoted after some residents, especially conservative Christians, objected to the offer on religious grounds.

Chip Walsanen, high school teacher and the city’s mayor, said the community can hopefully put the issue to rest. He doesn’t foresee any problems and said the city welcomes anybody to the community.

The Portland-based Zen Community of Oregon will pay $3,000 a month rent for up to two years with an option to buy the building, the former Quincy-Mayger Elementary School, for $1.02 million. The school district had asked for $1.5 million

In January, the proposal sparked a passionate debate at a public meeting held by the Buddhists to explain their plans for the school. Some residents said they thought Buddhism ran counter to their Christian beliefs and expressed fear that the monastery would attract the community’s youth. Others said residents should keep an open mind and welcome a new faith.

Those who objected initially to the transaction are still opposed to it, saying they are concerned about the Buddhists’ entry into the community. Angie Ray told The Oregonian that any religion that doesn’t believe in Jesus Christ is a cult.

The Oregonian, in the second of two editorials on Feb.15, said “kudos for Clatskanie!” It stated that the school board’s decision strikes a blow against religious intolerance. The board’s action, the newspaper noted, won’t alter divisive views, but should reaffirm Clatskanie’s stattus as an all-American community that respects the Bill of Rights and its guaranteed freedoms of religion and association.

The weekly Clatskanie Chief, filled with opposing and favorable views on the Buddhist center during the weeks between the hearing and the school board action, took a different view from The Oregonian. In a Page 1 editorial on Jan 31, publisher Deborah Steele Hazen questioned whether intolerance alleged by The Oregonian was really just the freedom to speak one’s mind.

Hazen said The Oregonian underestimated the amount of tolerance and welcoming support for the Buddhists in the hearing and chose to emphasize and condemn the most emotional and immoderate statements, which they judged to be “religious intolerance.”

“We prefer to call it freedom of speech and freedom of religion,” Hazen continued. “Just as the Zen Buddhists’ rights to practice their religion are guaranteed in the U.S., so are those who see the Buddhist religion as a threat to their own. We don’t have to agree with either of them, but they have the right to believe what they will and to express it.”

Hazen believes the exchange of ideas at the meeting and the letters to the editor were interesting and healthy.

Hazen, a Christian, quoted John 14:6 (Jesus said He is the way, the truth, and the life) and said because she believes that Scripture, she recognizes the basis of fear among Christian believers concerning the Zen Buddhists. But she added that the Bible also teaches faith, hope, and love and the greatest of these is love (I Cor. 13:13).

She told her readers that she will endeavor to treat members and guests of the Zen community the same way that she tries, sometimes not successfully, to treat everyone else -- with kindness, courtesy, fairness and respect.