Long apologizes for actions during service Rev. Bernice King sits with Bishop Eddie Long during funeral services for King's mother, Coretta Scott King, at the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Ga., February 7, 2006. UPI Photo/Ric Feld/Pool LITHONIA, Ga., Feb. 6 (UPI) -- Georgia megachurch Bishop Eddie Long apologized for being wrapped in a sacred Torah scroll and carried to a throne while being called "king" during a service. "The ceremony was not my suggestion, nor was it my intent, to participate in any ritual that is offensive in any manner to the Jewish community," Long wrote in a letter sent Saturday to Bill Nigut, Southeast regional director of the Anti-Defamation League. Long of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church was criticized by Jewish groups and religious scholars after the Jan. 29 service, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Long is shown being wrapped in a Torah scroll and carried upon a throne in footage of the service, viewed by nearly 600,000 people on YouTube. Before covering Long in a scroll, Rabbi Ralph Messer, who has no formal rabbinical training and is active in the Messianic Judaism movement, which blends evangelical Christian beliefs with elements of Jewish tradition, said during the service: "He's a king. God has blessed him. Messer said the scroll "may still have the dust of Auschwitz and Birkenau" -- references to Nazi concentration camps in Poland where millions of Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. In his letter to the Anti-Defamation League, Long denounced "any action that depicts me as a king, for I am merely just a servant of the Lord." Nigut, who said he was "horrified" by the service, told the Journal-Constitution he appreciated Long's apology. "For the ADL, it's a real wake-up call that a lot of people do not understand our liturgies and practices," Nigut said. Guys like Messer are troubling to us because they appropriate real ritual or, in this case, make one up.