Violation Of Church Sovereignty

[cmotherofpirl]

Attorney Says Court Order Crosses Line, Violates Church Sovereignty

By Allie Martin and Jenni Parker

March 2, 2004

(AgapePress) - A California congregation is undergoing an assault upon its religious liberty. "We all fear the day when the government starts to take over the internal workings of a church," says Brad Dacus of the Pacific Justice Institute. "Well, for an evangelical church in California, that fear has become an unbelievable reality."

The trouble began for Free Evangelical Lutheran Cross Church in Fresno when a small group of churchgoers did not appreciate what the pastor was preaching and decided to stop attending the services. As often happens in such cases, elders in the church let the disgruntled members know that their memberships would be revoked.

Before acting on that decision, however, the elders gave the dissenters an opportunity to appear before the elder board if they wanted to remain in the church. But instead of following the procedures outlined by the church, the small group sued, challenging the right of a congregationally-based church to decide who could or could not be church members.

Brad Dacus

Then, according to Dacus, a shocking thing happened. The court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and ordered Free Evangelical Lutheran Cross Church to allow the liberal members back into the congregation. Moreover, the court ruled that, since the church is not owned by an ecclesiastical order or denomination, the members own the church and have property rights along with their membership.

Dacus feels the court's ruling is an outrage. "No church in America should ever have to question who they allow in as members and how they preach from the pulpit simply because of fears of interaction and control by the government, and that is what we're having happen here in California," he says.

The attorney says the court completely ignored the church's religious doctrine as well as its scriptural reasons for not allowing the disgruntled individuals to continue as members. He notes that the pastor could have "played it safe" and never preached a sermon that offended anyone, never used the term "born-again," and never referred to the Bible as the Word of God. But Dacus insists that no minister or church should ever be forced to sacrifice integrity just to avoid government interference.

"In today's politically correct society, too many clergy are being asked to compromise in order to please certain factions of their churches," Dacus says. "However, no pastor should ever have to compromise simply to avoid intervention by the State!"

The president of the Pacific Justice Institute says the famous phrase "separation of Church and State," coined by Thomas Jefferson, was intended to protect churches from this very sort of state involvement and control. Dacus feels the California court's ruling sets up a dangerous pattern.

"If this is not corrected on appeal," he says, "then we have the risk of establishing a terrible precedent, which would allow the State to come in and intermingle in the affairs of individual churches over basic functional issues that the church has, including their calling and who they're ministering to and how they conduct their business."

The Pacific Justice Institute is representing the Fresno church in an appeal of the court's decision. That appeal is currently scheduled before California's Fifth District Court of Appeals later this month. Dacus says his California-based civil liberties defense organization rarely gets involved in intra-church disputes, but that it takes seriously any government attempt to undermine the Church's constitutional sovereignty and religious freedom.

[Lil Red]

you know, this is really sad. I just keep thinking of what will happen in the future if more rulings like this come about.

[God Conquers]

Revolution!