Churches meeting in New York City’s schools are scrambling this month and face eviction. They were given six weeks to re-locate after an appeals court ruling upheld evicting the churches.
After a recent protest, housing officials claim the churches will be allowed to stay, but technically the ban still remains.
The City does allow non-religious groups to rent their schools, so the ban is clearly based on the religious content of the churches’ speech.
Churches shouldn’t be unduly burdened and discriminated against simply because of their religious beliefs. If New York City continues this kind of behavior it won’t be long before other cities join in.
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This is tantamount to a city government arbitrarily deciding to close down and padlock churches, which should not happen anywhere in America. What happens to NON-Christian applications for rental of the same public facilities? Are those applications also rejected and refused? I’ve used the above information to contact Mayor Bloomberg and lodge a protest.
Christian are not religious beliefs… religion is a filthy word created by satan… religion are things like catholics, muslims, buddist, hindu etc… Christian is opposite of religion… therefore worldly thinking has been made a fool again…
It is rather ironic that what appears to be opposite logic is being applied in Hawaii and NYC. The previous Christian Defender article on Hawaii demanding the use of churches for civil wedding services for homosexuals was not clear on what legal grounds the new law was enacted, however, I can only assume it was on the basis that the churches effected also rented their facilties to others for such purposes and may not apply to churches which limited use of thier church to weddings of members of thier own congregations or denomination and/or did not permit other civil ceremonies. I have written the Senators from Hawaii for further clarification, but not received any yet. However, what NYC is doing is the exact opposite. If you can rent to any group, based on what I assume is going on in Hawaii, then one should expect open acess to all. BUT as Christians, it might be best if we did not push that aspect of the discrimination too far. Better tactic to stick with discrimination based on religious use than the open to all argument, lest we succeed in NYC and take away our own rights to choose to whom we will and will not provide access to our own facilities.
And a note to Adrian: Years ago there was published a very nice book discussing the New Testament Book of Romans, it was entitled: “How to be a Christian without Being Religious.” On that basis, as you point out, Christians are not, or should not be, putting on religious airs and cloaking their faith with religiosity. In this sense of the term, a pretense of faith that turns rigid rules into the rubric of spiritual rigermortise as opposed to the life giving relationship that receives redemption as the gift of God; then yes, religiosity is bad. But this use of the word doesn’t preclude Christianity from being a religion with a set of religious beliefs and in the same sense as all of the other faiths you named. Another, more recent classic Christian book, “Perfection and Perfectionism,” addresses the issues of how many Christians turn the command of Christ to “be perfect” into an obsession; into a to do list and a not to do list, instead of finding our perfection in Him.
So, unless you have some other definition or “Religion,” I beg to differ with your statement that Christianity is not a religion. It is a religion, and as humanly practiced, often not a very good one at that because it often relies on conformity to man’s rules concerning God rather than God’s rule concerning His relationship with mankind. It becomes the true faith, the true religion, through which salvation can alone be found only when its practitioners practice the perfection that is found in Christ and Him crucified. In that sense, Christianity is the ideal religion; the only religion where God becomes one of us to provide for our hope of salvation by his justifying act of taking on Himself the penalty for our sins.
God does have rules intended for the good of all. Not following those rules is sin; sin for which God paid a horrific price. If this were not so, we would not be having this dialogue. Hawaii would not consider individual choices contrary to those moral foundations to be considered marriage, nor would NYC likely have any political differences or make any distinctions between churches and any other organization.
I echo your sentiments exactly on the tactics that we as a body should take in defending our rights to freely and openly exchange our religious beliefs.
I also appreciated the comment you made about the term religion which is being increasingly vilified inside and outside of Christian circles. I certainly do not consider myself an expert on the matter but I assume some of the feelings of Christians on this issue have arisen in order to separate those of us who claim to be true followers of Christ from members of the “Church Institution” and perhaps false religions. Some of us in the body feel that in order to deflect criticism of religion from nonbelievers, we must disassociate ourselves from the term altogether.
I believe our hearts are in the right place but I think we sometimes forget that Jesus did fulfill the Mosaic law [Matthew 5:17] in obedience, reverence, and love for the Father. Are we called to have a relationship with Jesus? Emphatically yes! Personal experience and many verses of Scripture highlight this fact…John 15:7, Rev 3:20, Rom 5, among others. We are also called to obey the teachings of Christ…John 3:36, Heb 5:8-10, John 14:23,24, etc. Obeying entails following a code of behavior or rules. And even though rituals are not necessary for salvation, we are given liberty to take communion and be baptized as symbols of what Christ has done for us. Rules and rituals are not evil in and of themselves but can be sinful if motives are impure.
Pastor Ken, I am interested in reading the books you offered as supplemental materials. I found the first one by Ridenour but I was wondering if you could give me more information on the second [Perfection/Perfectionism] as there are many books with the same theme.
In Christ