On November 6, 2010, Pastor Rich Parker of Palm Beach Gardens Baptist Church, signed a letter of intent to lease space in the Port St. Lucie’s Southport Shopping Center for the Church’s worship services.  But he ran into a problem almost immediately.  Although several different churches are already located at the Shopping Center (churches have been leasing space there for the past nine years), the City of Port St. Lucie prohibited the Church from even attempting to obtain a certificate of occupancy.  In fact a city employee informed Pastor Parker that there is no way the Church could ever use the Property for worship services based on the Port St. Lucie Zoning Code.  And the City is taking steps to make the other two churches leave.

But the Zoning Code allows private clubs and lodges, as well as day care centers in the Shopping Center.  Moreover, the Zoning Code allows civic and cultural facilities in nine different zoning districts as a matter of right and five as a special exception.  But it limits churches and other places of worship to only two zoning districts as a matter of right, and five as a special exception.

On January 19th, ADF filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Church, asking the federal court to prohibit the City from enforcing those parts of its Zoning Code that discriminate against churches as compared to other types of assemblies.  The lawsuit claims Port St. Lucie’s Zoning Code violates several constitutional and statutory provisions, including the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), and the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.

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There is currently a trend in our courts to rely on foreign legal precedent from – especially Europe – when ruling on important social issues in the U.S. The most notable case, Lawrence v. Texas, used foreign precedent in 2003 to justify striking down a law criminalizing homosexual behavior. This should be alarming for many reasons, but one of the most important is Europe’s increasing hostility to Christians.

A report issued on December 10, 2010 titled Shadow Report on Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians in Europe chronicles many of the acts of discrimination against Christians in Europe in the last five years.  I’ve listed some of these below. But before reviewing them, it’s significant that the non-profit group who compiled the report concluded:

“Such intolerant and discriminatory behaviour results from opposition to individual traits of the Christian faith or moral positions that are intrinsically part of the Christian faith, or from　a negative categorical bias against Christians or Christianity as a whole. It leads to attacks on the social level (such as negative stereotyping or social exclusion), on the legal level (for example through a discriminatory law or a bias court verdict) and on the　political level (exclusion from the public sphere; a resolution of a parliament; etc.).”

In other words, Christians are being discriminated against in Europe because of biblical beliefs regarding moral issues. Some examples from the report are:

France, January 2005: French member of parliament, Christian Vanneste, sentenced to payments for homophobic insults”. 

United Kingdom, January 2006: Member of the Scottish Parliament asked Strathlyde Police to investigate remarks made by the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow. The Archbishop had defended the institution of marriage in a church service.

Spain, November 2008: Judge Fernando Calamita was sentenced to 18 years of occupational ban for exercising conscientious objection and thereby delaying the adoption of a little girl by the lesbian partner of her mother.

United Kingdom, January 2009: Brighton Council requests care home for elderly Christians to ask its residents about their sexual orientation and cuts funding when rejected.

Turkey, June 2010: Turkish attorneys are now in the fourth year of prosecuting two Christians for allegedly slandering Islam. Despite the lack of any concrete evidence to support their claims, Turkish courts are continuing prosecution.

We can expect the same kind of persecution of Christians here in the U.S. soon if our courts continue to be enamored with foreign laws.

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According to proponents of homosexual behavior, the battle between religious liberty and homosexual behavior is a zero sum game where one side must lose so the other one can win.  And the battleground has now moved to the military.

President Obama has called for repeal of the so-called “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law, which prevents open homosexual behavior in the military.  Already, two bills are pending in Congress that would both get rid of DADT and replace it with special rights for homosexual behavior, treating such behavior as deserving the same protection from discrimination as innate, innocuous characteristics like race and gender.

The result of this change will be a major loss to religious liberty in the military, especially for chaplains.  We’ve already seen the effects of such “non-discrimination” laws in the past, and they almost invariably end in marginalizing or attacking Christians simply for being Christians.

Christian counselors have been punished for declining to counsel same-sex couples, Christian chaplains have been disciplined for refusing to turn their worship service over to individuals who openly engage in homosexual behavior, and Christian ministries have been penalized for choosing not to allow their facilities to be used for same-sex commitment ceremonies. Keep reading… »

Government shouldn’t try to tell private Christian educators how to teach Christianity.

                In a decidedly unconstitutional turn of events in April of 2009, the state of Wyoming threatened to shut down a small but well-established Bible school because the school’s Bible classes weren’t state approved.  That the First Amendment prohibits government attempts to control religious education wasn’t enough to stop the state’s actions—at least not initially.  

                The school, Frontier School of the Bible, is a purely religious non-profit technical school that was founded over 40 years ago in LaGrange, Wyoming.  The school’s curriculum is solely aimed at preparing its students for Christian ministry, and the few non-Bible classes taught at the school—like English—are provided only because they aid effective teaching and interpretation of the Bible.  The school has over 1,600 alumni, most serving as missionaries, pastors, and youth ministers throughout the world.  Frontier exists for one purpose: preparing Christian leaders to teach others about God.

                But the state of Wyoming believed that the quality of Frontier’s Christian education might not be good enough for government work, so its education department sent the school a letter last April demanding that it either become approved by the state or close its doors.  And approval by the state didn’t present an attractive choice.  One way to become state-approved would have accreditation.  But for a school that didn’t pay salaries to its faculty or staff (instead, they all have to obtain voluntary financial support, much like missionaries do) in order to keep costs low so ministry-oriented students weren’t crushed by debt at graduation, the sky-high costs of accreditation wasn’t feasible.  Plus, other similar non-accredited Bible schools that have sought accreditation report that it often requires jettisoning the purely Bible-based teaching that was the sole reason for Frontier’s existence.

                The school’s second route to state approval was even worse: getting a state license.  But this would require ceasing to discriminate based on religion both in admitting students to the school and in hiring teachers for its Bible classes.  Nothing could be more destructive to school’s Christian identity and purpose than having its Christian curriculum taught by non-Christians to non-Christians.

                Thankfully, after being challenged on the many constitutional infirmities of demand to the school, the state made the right decisions to protect religious liberty, granting Frontier an interim exemption from the state’s regulations while legislators crafted a fix to the statute.  That fix was signed into law just this month.

                But what if Wyoming hadn’t made the right decision?  It would have set the State up as in authority over the Church to determine the content of theological instruction.  And “setting standards for a religious education is a religious exercise for which the State lacks not only authority but also competence.”  HEB Ministries v. Texas Higher Educ. Coordinating Board, 235 S.W.3d 627, 643 (Tex. 2007).  That is, having a bureaucrat determine the content of a quality Christian curriculum is like having your single neighbor tell you how to raise your children: not only does he not have any right to tell you what to do, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. 

Christian education is too important to be left in the hands of government.

Banning Bible Study in Your Backyard

Does your neighborhood need to be protected from dangerous small-group Bible studies?

Oasis of Truth Church in Gilbert, Arizona, has seven adult members.  It met on a rotating basis in the homes of its members for a few hours of church services and a weekly Bible study.  The maximum number of people who ever attended Oasis’ meetings was 15; even then, only one car had to be parked in the street to accommodate the vehicles of the attendees.

As is painfully obvious from this description, the church’s meetings in homes were a threat to the community and had to be stopped.  And stopped they were when, just a few months after it started meeting, a Gilbert zone enforcement officer issued a cease-and-desist order to Oasis.  And why were the meetings stopped?  Because they were too big?  Meeting too often?  Being too loud or attracting too much traffic?  Generating irate community complaints?

Try none of the above.  Rather, the church was targeted simply because it was a church.  Nothing more.  As the Town later acknowledged in an official zoning interpretation, it didn’t matter if the meeting in question was a one-time get-together of two people for a quiet prayer time.  If the meeting was a church meeting, it was banned.

By contrast, other types of meetings—like Cub Scouts, business parties, or Monday Night Football gatherings—were all acceptable.  In fact, some day cares are specifically allowed by the zoning code to be run from homes.

Such blatant discrimination against churches is unconstitutional.  Targeting churches for disfavor simultaneously violates the Free Exercise Clause, since it unfairly limits religious liberty, and the Establishment Clause, since it prefers non-religious gatherings to religious ones.

Of course, municipalities can make some reasonable regulations on how homes are used, preventing your next door neighbor’s duplex from being turned into a shopping mall or a convention center.  But such regulations are only legitimate as long as they are focused on concerns like traffic, parking, building code safety, and the like.  Where the law instead singles out religious activities for discrimination, it leaves behind all pretense of legitimate regulation and becomes a tool to silence the church.

Fortunately, Gilbert is fixing the problem.  It sent high-ranking officials to church services to apologize and is working with the church now to protect religious liberty.  Hopefully, Gilbert’s approach to fixing the problem can be a model to other municipalities on how never to have a problem in the first place.