Open Door Baptist v Clark County :: 140 Wn2d 143
Category: First Amendment
Two basic tenets of the Baptist faith are: 1) Believer’s baptism by immersion; and 2) separation of church and state. This belief is older than the King James Bible when, in 1609 John Smyth separated from the Church of England and took his congregation to Amsterdam. In America, Roger Williams established a Baptist colony in Rhode Island in 1638. Twenty-five years later, King Charles issued the colony a royal charter that read, in part:
Our royal will and pleasure is, that no person within the said colony, at any time hereafter, shall be in any wise molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question, for any differences of opinion in matters of religion, and do not actually disturb the civil peace of the said colony.
It was the imprisonment of Baptist ministers who dared to preach without licensing that caught the attention of our Founding Fathers and thus affected the ideals of religious freedom in our young nation. Patrick Henry attended the trial of three Baptist ministers who were being tried for preaching without the sanction of the Episcopalian Church. Suddenly, he interrupted the court:
May it please your lordships, what did I hear read? Did I hear an expression that these men, whom you worships are about to try for misdemeanor, are charged with preaching the gospel of the Son of God? (America’s God and Country, Federer, William J, page 287).
When I was young, churches flourished without regulation from the state. I well remember the outrage when cities began requiring minimum parking codes. Nonetheless, when I began my building career, in 1975, the zoning ordinances for most jurisdictions allowed for the construction of churches in almost every category. Nowadays, of the counties that I am familiar, there are no categories that allow for the construction of a church building without a conditional use permit. Not surprisingly, however, any government building is allowed in every category.
We have come a long way from religious liberty in America. The court argues, in this case, that the requiring of a conditional use permit does not impermissibly burden the church’s free exercise of religion. [at 144]. However, our Founding Fathers understood, as illustrated by the wording of the First Amendment, that when the freedom of assembly is impaired, so to the freedom of speech and religion.
The county and the court referred to the church’s assembly as “business activities.” We cannot entirely blame the courts for this egregious misrepresentation when our churches have surrendered the worship of our Lord to state licensing, incorporation, federal 501(C)(3) status, reporting of income and the registration of members.
Our nation was founded upon religious liberty for the Christian faith. This was the seed that made our nation flourish as a mighty oak. When we banned prayer in school, we chopped down that tree. Since that time, we have been searching for all the seeds, so we can grind them up. God save our nation.
Rating the Usual Suspects:
| pass | Bennett, Roger A | |
| pass | Sanders, Richard | |
| pass | Smith, Charles | |
| fail | Alexander, Gerry | |
| fail | Armstrong, David | |
| fail | Bridgewater, C C | |
| fail | Curtis, Arthur | |
| fail | Guy, Richard | |
| fail | Horne, Christopher | |
| fail | Houghton, Elaine | |
| fail | Ireland, Faith | |
| fail | Johnson, Charles | |
| fail | Kennedy, Faye | |
| fail | Madsen, Barbara | |
| fail | Talmadge, Phil |