Thursday, June 1, 2023

School Board Refuses To Let Church Use Space Due To Christian Principles;BY TYLER O'NEIL/DAILY SIGNAL MAY 26, 2023 Share this article:

School Board Refuses To Let Church Use Space Due To Christian Principles

BY TYLER O'NEIL/DAILY SIGNAL MAY 26, 2023

Share this article:

A Maine church that outgrew its meeting space applied with the local school board to lease space at a high school for worship services, but the school board appeared to apply a religious test to the church and negotiations fell through. Now, the church is suing.

"Public institutions that seek to lease their facilities for revenue should not be able to discriminate based on religious or political conviction," Mariah Gondeiro, vice president and legal counsel of Advocates for Faith & Freedom, the law firm representing the church, said in a press release exclusively provided first to The Daily Signal.

Gondeiro is representing The Pines Church in Bangor, Maine, which sued the Hermon School Committee Tuesday. The Pines Church aimed to move to Hermon, Maine, because many church members live there. Yet Hermon had no rental spaces available, and it appeared that meeting at the high school represented the best option. According to the complaint, organizations seeking short-term leases must work with the principal of the school and complete a facilities request form--a form that does not include any questions about the organization's beliefs.

Many organizations currently rent Hermon High School space, including Black Bear Basketball, Hermon Recreation, the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, and various baseball groups. The church had even offered to pay $1,000 per month, $400 over the original price, as a sign that it would invest in the community.

Yet, when the church filed the request form, Superintendent Micah Grant and a member of the Hermon school board asked pointed questions about the church's positions on "issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion."

Chris McLaughlin, a school board member who includes personal pronouns in his signature, wrote that he "wanted to get a better sense of how The Pines Church approaches issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion and around their messaging around some key issues relevant to marginalized communities."

He asked, "Is The Pines Church receptive of same-sex marriages? Do they consider marriage only to be between 1 man and 1 woman?"

00:03

02:33

He also requested information on the church's positions on "access to safe and affordable abortion," "access to gender-affirming medical care," "conversion therapy for LGBTQIA+ individuals (youth and adults)," and "inclusive sexual education and access to birth control for youth."

The superintendent forwarded McLaughlin's questions to the church.

The lawsuit states that "the implications of the board's questions are clear; unless The Pines Church affirms Hermon School Department's religious and political beliefs, the board will not support the church's lease proposal."

The committee rejected Pastor Matt Gioia's proposal to lease the high school for either six months or one year because of its religious beliefs on abortion, sexual orientation, "gender reassignment," "conversion therapy," and marriage, according to the lawsuit. The committee voted to allow the church to rent school facilities on a month-to-month basis after the pastor had told the committee that a month-to-month lease would not work.

"A month-to-month lease is not feasible for the church because it makes it impossible to plan and budget and allows the school board to terminate the lease on short notice, leaving the church with nowhere to go," the suit explains.

The lawsuit alleges that the school board's questions reflected "an improper motive on behalf of the school district to exclude traditional viewpoints on these issues from use of the school facilities."

The church claims that the school board's move "sends the message to houses of worship and other religious entities that organizations that maintain traditional historically orthodox biblical beliefs about human sexuality are second-class institutions, outsiders, and not full members of the Hermon community."

Conservative Christians who follow the Bible define marriage as between one man and one woman, defend unborn life in the womb, and affirm that God created humans male and female, not transgender. Yet a growing social movement does not just reject these ideas but brands them hateful.

The church claims the school board violated its rights under the First Amendment, under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, and under Maine's public accommodations laws. The lawsuit asks the court to order the school board to award the church either a six-month or a yearlong lease, along with compensatory damages.

"The Hermon School Committee has a history of leasing their properties to secular organizations without persecution," Gondeiro, the legal counsel, said. "We are advocating for fair and equitable treatment under the law, and The Pines Church was denied that opportunity by the Hermon School Committee."

"We are understandably disappointed with the process in which we had to go through, but we are not discouraged," Gioia said in a statement first provided to The Daily Signal. "We have seen the Lord move through our church and grow our community so much since our founding. We are hopeful that we will be able to continue our worship and fellowship without discrimination."

Originally published at The Daily Signal - reposted with permission.

Christian University Under Fire For Taking A Stand Against Pronouns

BY ROB SCHWARZWALDER/THE WASHINGTON STAND MAY 26, 2023

Share this article:

Houghton University sits amidst the rural farmland of south-central New York State. A school of about 1,000 students, it has been affiliated with the Wesleyan Church since its founding in 1883.

For 140 years, Houghton has "been providing an academically challenging, Christ-centered education in the liberal arts and sciences to students." As its website proclaims, Houghton remains "focused on preparing and equipping students to serve God fully and faithfully... as scholar-servants in a changing world."

In recent days, this commitment has been put to a test, one that has drawn national attention. From The New York Times to Fox News, Houghton is now a hot media topic. The reason, as readers of The Washington Stand might well expect, has to do with the unyielding demands of sexual radicalism.

Residence Hall directors Raegan Zelaya and Shua Wilmot added "she/her" and "he/him" to their email signatures. When they refused to remove these needless qualifiers, the university fired them.

According to Michael Blankenship, a spokesman for the school, "Over the past years, we've required anything extraneous be removed from email signatures, including Scripture quotes." My own school, Regent University, requires the same thing. The reason is pretty simple: a desire to ensure consistency and good taste in our public communications to all students, parents, staff, and alumni.

Of course, it goes deeper than this in the case of Zelaya and Wilmot. Their refusal to remove their "preferred" pronouns from their email signature blocs was more than an act of administrative defiance. Wilmot, for example, calls his stance a matter of upholding "truth and justice at the expense of a job" and implied that Houghton was trying to compel him "to do something unjust and unethical."

00:03

05:05

Following the firings, more than 600 Houghton alumni wrote a letter to the school's president, Dr. Wayne D. Lewis, Jr., arguing that "the employees' firings is part of a seemingly broader turn against multiculturalism at the school." In response, Dr. Lewis was courteous but did not back down.

In a response addressing a number of matters raised in the alumni letter, he wrote that Houghton "requires as a condition of employment that all employees be respectful of the positions, doctrine, and beliefs of the university ... Houghton unapologetically privileges an orthodox Christian worldview, rooted in the Wesleyan theological tradition. At the time of their appointment and again annually, every Houghton employee affirms his or her understanding of and agreement to these commitments."

He continued his unbending stance with these telling words: "Students have many options to choose from for higher education. Very few of those options provide an educational experience through a decidedly orthodox Christian lens. Houghton is one of those institutions."

As a side but significant note, Dr. Lewis is African American. I doubt he needs lectures about "multiculturalism." Having previously served as commissioner of Education in Kentucky and as a black man who was born and raised in the deep South, he could speak eloquently about such things as racial justice and human dignity.

However, he has made clear that his racial heritage does not define who he is. Upon his inauguration as Houghton's president, Dr. Lewis commented, "There is nothing more fundamental to who I am and my identity than my Christian faith. It influences my worldview, how I live my life, my decision-making, and my leadership."

On Houghton's homepage, the school's president has posted a moving essay on the necessity of moral courage. "For American Christians, this is a radically different time -- not only different from the time of my youth but, frankly, radically different than even ten years ago. Being an American Christian demands a degree of boldness that was not necessary just a few years ago."

He continues that God's "direction to us to be courageous is not based on his confidence in our abilities, regardless of how able we are. ... When God directs us to be strong, to be courageous, to be fearless, it is because ... He will never forsake us."

It is not surprising that many Houghton alumni and, probably, other evangelicals are dismayed by Dr. Lewis's commitment to truth. Never popular, the union of courage and truth (often simply called character) are under assault in the believing church. In the name of compassion, we affirm things the God we claim to serve will never countenance. This is arrogance masquerading as sensitivity, the elevation of human desire above the good commands of a gracious Redeemer.

It is mystifying to many in our time that there are those who will not let the culture dictate their conviction. It is also so very pleasing to God that there are those of His people for whom eternity matters a great deal more than man's empty praise.

Originally published at The Washington Stand - reposted with permission.