Following church-state issues around Michigan

This is a brief roundup of several developing stories involving separation of church and state in Michigan. As the stories develop, Michigan Messenger may have more detailed coverage of them.

A religious challenge to zoning laws in St. Joseph

A retired construction worker in St. Joseph, Mich., wants to put up a 30-foot illuminated cross on property he owns on Lake Michigan, but local zoning laws are blocking him. Ervin Wagner, 63, says the land is “sacred ground” to him and that “the Lord has been after me to do this for many years.” City officials say he can’t do this because that property is considered part of his front yard and zoning laws do not allow such structures in a residential yard. The zoning laws also do not allow accessory structures taller than 14 feet.

Wagner says he is considering legal options, and he may have some. Under the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), any zoning law that imposes a “substantial burden” on the free exercise of religion for an individual or group must meet the legal standard of being the least restrictive means of achieving a legitimate governmental interest. The courts have been called upon in hundreds, perhaps thousands, of cases to determine when an exemption from such laws is required. One of those ongoing cases is our second story:

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Okemos church asks Supreme Court to overturn RLUIPA decision

The Messenger reported a few months ago that the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals had rejected an appeal from the Okemos Christian Center, aka the Living Water Church of God, challenging zoning laws that prevented them from building the large school they wanted to build on church property. The church wanted to build a 39,000-square-foot school, but local zoning laws restricted the size to 25,000 square feet. Despite losing their case at the district and appeals court levels, the church filed what is called a cert petition asking the Supreme Court to hear the case and overturn the lower court rulings.

The appeals court ruled that while the zoning laws are clearly an inconvenience for the church, “we are hard-pressed to conclude that Living Water will be unable to carry out its church missions and ministries without it, nor do we believe that mere inconvenience equates to a substantial burden.” The appeals court further noted that the Supreme Court, in earlier cases, “has found no substantial burden when, although the action encumbered the practice of religion, it did not pressure the individual to violate his or her religious beliefs.” The vast majority of cert petitions are refused by the court; whether they will accept this case remains to be seen.

Most local governments open meetings with prayer

The Grand Rapids Press did a survey of West Michigan communities and found that about 75 percent of those local governments opened city council and other local board meetings with prayer. This has become a controversial issue in some communities around the country. Lawsuits have been filed in many cases, either because the prayers offered are sectarian in nature or because the local government has prevented anyone other than Christians, or even certain types of Christians, to say the prayers. Under Supreme Court precedent, opening public meetings with prayer is constitutional as long as the prayer is “non-sectarian.”

The controlling case is Marsh v Chambers, a 1983 case challenging the tradition of opening the day with prayer in the Nebraska Legislature. Unfortunately, that ruling gives little in the way of definition of what constitutes “sectarian” prayer, which has led to myriad lower court decisions attempting to implement the ruling with little guidance for how to do that. For some, a prayer is sectarian if it advocates a particular sect or denomination. For others, a prayer is sectarian if it speaks of Jesus specifically rather than “God,” which could cover all the monotheistic religions. And as a dissenting opinion in Marsh noted, some scholars argue that there is no such thing as a non-sectarian prayer.