Religious Briefs

Adventists win $3.7 million suit

A Seventh-day Adventist congregation was awarded $3.7 million in damages April 24 when a U.S. District Court jury in Greenbelt determined Prince George’s County had discriminated on the basis of religion when it denied the congregation permission to build a church, according to the Adventist Review.

Although U.S. District Judge Roger W. Titus will rule Sept. 8 whether the county was acting “in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest” — “It’s a major event to get a jury’s determination on the facts and a substantial burden on religious exercise has occurred,” said Ward B. Coe, III, an attorney with the Baltimore firm of Gallagher Evelius & Jones LLP, which represented the church.

Reaching Hearts International, the congregation that sued, has been meeting for several years at the Cedar Ridge Conference Center in Silver Spring but the church is only able to rent the venue for nine hours a week.

The $800,000 parcel the church purchased — 17 acres in west Laurel — was zoned for church construction. A change in the “sewer category” needed to be approved by the Prince George’s County Council for the church to connect its property to the county sewer system two blocks away. In 2003, County Executive Jack B. Johnson suggested the council approve the change; in that year the County Council approved 27 of 28 such applications.

The Reaching Hearts application was rejected by the panel; reportedly the only church application to be made and denied. According to media reports, council member Thomas E. Dernoga, who represents the west Laurel area, blocked the approval. The congregation then proposed a smaller church seating 750, with parking for 173 vehicles.

Mr. Dernoga then introduced legislation, which the council passed, to limit the amount of land on the Reaching Hearts parcel that could be used for church construction to an amount that could not support even the scaled-back church proposal.

According to attorney Coe, “We were claiming we were treated differently because we were a religion.” The jury found that this was the case, even though county attorneys argued Reaching Hearts presented no evidence of “intentional” discrimination.”

Conservatives balk at evangelist probe

Nearly two-dozen conservative Christian leaders have signed a letter to the Senate Finance Committee questioning an investigation into six large ministries that preach a gospel of prosperity.

The letter argues that the 6-month-old inquiry sets a dangerous precedent. It also suggests the ministries were targeted for sharing “the same branch of evangelicalism” and promoting “socially conservative public policy positions such as support for the traditional definition of marriage.”

Although the ministries under scrutiny are conservative theologically, they are not at the forefront of the culture wars issues championed by the leaders who are now rallying to their side.

The most prominent figures who signed the letter are Moral Majority co-founder Paul Weyrich, American Family Association chairman Don Wildmon and former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell.

“The ministries have been asked to produce financial records and internal documents in what appears to be an exercise in disproving their alleged guilt,” the letter states.

The group repeats an argument by some of the targeted ministries — that the investigation falls short of the high bar the Internal Revenue Service has for justifying a church investigation.

Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, sent letters to the six ministries in November seeking answers about spending on private planes, oceanside mansions and board oversight. The committee’s Democratic chairman, Sen. Max Baucus, joined Grassley in asking for answers.

From wire dispatches and staff reports