GREENVILLE--South Carolina Commerce Secretary Bob Faith is pressing the Greenville County Council to resolve the fight over a holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr.

Faith said he called four members Thursday, saying the controversy continues to affect the state's recruitment of new companies and economic development.

"It's making us have to spend nonproductive time on a nonproductive issue, and I wish the issue didn't exist," Faith said. "I didn't tell them how to make it go away, I just said, and we all agreed, we need to make this issue go away."

The Greater Greenville Chamber of Commerce organized a rally of more than 250 business and community leaders who packed a huge room at the Palmetto Expo Center Thursday. They backed a call for seven Greenville County Council members to reconsider their opposition to a holiday honoring the slain civil rights leader.

On April 1, the council approved a measure that would fix five holidays, none of which were Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and let the county employees vote which other five holidays the county would observe.

The council superseded the recommendation of its own MLK Study Committee, which recommended the county designate "MLK Civil Rights Day" and move an existing county holiday to the third Monday in January.

"It's amazing what will happen to you when you broaden your perspectives, open your minds and soften your hearts and when you look to the future instead of clinging to the past and when you see it as your responsibility to listen and serve all of the community," said Baxter Wynn, minister of pastoral care and community development at Greenville First Baptist Church.

The debate, which was stirred earlier by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a Greenville native, has drawn a diverse group of voices from the community.

In a guest column in The Greenville News Friday, Bob Jones University President Bob Jones III called next Tuesday night's County Council meeting a "defining moment for all of us." He says he could have voted for a compromise resolution that would have created a holiday honoring King and the civil rights movement.

"Between now and Tuesday, I surely will pray for them," Jones wrote. "Their vote is a seed planted in community soil where we all live and work. It is their sowing, but the harvest which follows will be ours to live with."

There were a number of new faces, including David Brown, president and CEO of the Greater Greenville Chamber of Commerce, David Shi, president of Furman University, Frank Holleman, former U.S. deputy secretary of education, and Republican 4th District Congressional candidate William Herlong.

"This matter is getting to people's hearts now," said Councilman Cort Flint, who was one of five members who voted against the measure approved April 1. "That's when change happens."