An Episcopal priest was uninvited to offer an opening prayer before a Keller City Council meeting this week after his church hosted a Pride festival.
The Rev. Alan Bentrup, who leads St. Martin-in-the-Fields Episcopal Church on the border of Keller and Southlake, was scheduled to give an invocation Tuesday. Shortly before the meeting began, Bentrup said a city official told him the prayer was accidentally double-booked.
City Council member Tag Green, whose mother was recently placed in hospice care, instead asked to give the opening prayer.
Mayor Armin Mizani, who is running as a Republican for a seat in the Texas House, said Friday in a statement to The Dallas Morning News that “delivering the opening prayer before Keller City Council meetings is a privilege, not a right.”
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The council would not “elevate 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,” Mizani said. “We will not apologize for or equivocate on this decision.”
St. Martin-in-the-Fields hosted the Pride festival in October after a woman told Bentrup that if an event like this existed when her son was younger, he might not have died by suicide. Church board members unanimously voted in favor of allowing festival organizers to use a field on church property.
The event, which included performances by a B-52s cover band and an age-appropriate drag show, drew roughly 700 people. It also sparked an outcry among GOP leaders, some of whom urged people to protest the event.
A Progress Pride flag flew during the Pride Kel-So festival at the St. Martin-in-the-Fields Episcopal Church in Southlake on Saturday, Oct. 4, 2025.
Juan Figueroa / Staff Photographer
Mizani said the city did not condone the event. “Though promoted as ‘family-friendly,’ the event’s musical acts and programming suggest an agenda aimed at exposing children to inappropriate, highly sexualized content,” he wrote on social media. “That’s unacceptable.”
Like many Texas suburbs and the state Legislature, Keller has targeted gay and transgender rights in recent years. Keller school trustees have banned library books that include the discussion of gender fluidity, directed teachers to use pronouns consistent with students’ birth certificates and required people to use restrooms and locker rooms that align with their sex at birth.
In 2024, a Keller high school canceled a planned production of The Laramie Project, a play about the aftermath of the 1998 murder of 21-year-old Matthew Shepard in Wyoming. The play was reinstated after the community protested the cancellation.
Tensions have continued, though. Before and after the Pride festival in October, Bentrup said he received numerous death threats, which he blamed on the mayor’s “incendiary public language.” Speaking to council members during the public comments portion of Tuesday’s meeting, Bentrup thanked Keller police for responding to those threats.
In a Facebook post Thursday, Bentrup said his church has donated $80,000 this year to food pantries, homeless shelters and refugee ministries, more than 15% of its annual budget.
“We do this because we believe in loving and serving our neighbors with no agenda beyond compassion,” he wrote.
“If offering a prayer grounded in love, dignity, care, and respect for all people disqualifies someone from praying for this city, then we all should ask what ‘community values’ really mean here,” he said. “I will continue to pray for Keller.”