The Village of Fife Lake Council, the local governing body in the village, opened its Municipal Building meeting room for rent by any private group or individual. However, its fee schedule forces churches and religious organizations to pay for use of the space while it allows free use by other community organizations, such as the American Legion, Rotary and Kiwanis Clubs, and the Boy and Girl Scouts of America.

This is an issue the federal courts have ruled on many times. The key ruling on this issue is Lamb’s Chapel v. Center Moriches School District, a 1993 case where a unanimous court ruled that if a government agency allows community groups to use public facilities for meetings, it must treat religious and non-religious organizations equally.

The plaintiff in this case is the Forest Area Bible Church. They are represented by the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal defense group based in Arizona. I don’t expect this case to go to court. The judge will almost certainly issue a preliminary injunction and that should prompt the village to settle the case and change its policy.

In late November, all company employees were told to answer the phones by saying, “Happy Holidays from Counts Oakes Resort Properties. How may I assist you?” Thomas objected to her supervisor and offered to say either “Merry Christmas” or to continue greeting callers the same way they are greeted throughout the year. She explained that her religious beliefs prevented her from contributing to the secularization of Christmas, and asked for an accommodation of her beliefs. On December 10, when the company president, Andy Phillips, came to see her, she politely reiterated her concern. Phillips then fired her for “insubordination” because she refused to say “Happy Holidays.”

This could be an interesting case to watch. Federal law requires that businesses make “reasonable accommodation” for the religious beliefs of their employees unless doing so would constitute and “undue burden” on the business. The exact parameters of this standard have been left to the courts to interpret on a case-by-case basis, with predictably unpredictable results.

There are two key questions here: is saying “Merry Christmas” rather than holidays really a key tenet of Christianity? The answer is probably no. In fact, she appears to be making more of a political statement than a religious one (though that’s not an easy line to draw). There is no rational reason why saying “Happy Holidays” should offend the plaintiff’s religion, nor can she point to any doctrinal statements by any religious organization supporting that contention. That may make her case difficult to win.

On the other hand, there is a second question: is there any undue burden on the company from accommodating her wishes? Again, the answer is probably no. There would be no harm from allowing the woman to continue answering the phones as she had all years. It’s not as though saying “Happy Holidays” brings in more customers. That could help her case.

But the case also raises questions about the very issue of such laws requiring accommodation: Why should businesses be forced to accommodate only religious beliefs? Are religious beliefs intrinsically more valuable than non-religious ones? Does a sincerely held position based on reason rather than faith deserve any less protection?

Ed Brayton covers the intersection of Church and State

As the primary writer covering the nexus of religion and politics for the Michigan Messenger, I have had eventful year. The presidential campaign was filled with religious controversy, from Barack Obama’s difficulties regarding his longtime pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright to John McCain having to distance himself from megapreacher John Hagee.

As I look back at what I wrote, or asked others to write, I think these are the five most significant commentaries that the Messenger published on the politics of religion in 2008.

5. The ‘Expelled’ documentary (April 25, 2008)

In early 2008, an anti-evolution documentary starring Ben Stein was released in the theaters. That movie, as I documented above, contained a great many distortions and falsehoods.

4. Let’s keep Obama’s minister in perspective. (March 19, 2008)

In this commentary I argued that while many of the views expressed by Rev. Jeremiah Wright are indeed crazy and should be criticized, the response to those things has been out of all proportion to the actual influence he has. There are at least a dozen right wing ministers who’ve said things at least as crazy as Wright and those men hold real power and influence in the Republican party.

3. Controversial pastors: What would the Founding Fathers say? (June 6, 2008)

In this commentary I looked at the history of controversial pastors and their involvement in politics, going back to the election of 1800 when right wing ministers were railing against the election of Thomas Jefferson and pro-separation ministers like Isaac Backus and John Leland were supporting his nomination. There is truly nothing new under the sun.

2. Creationist culture wars, Hollywood style (May 26, 2008)

This was a guest op-ed by Robert Pennock, then-president of Michigan Citizens for Science (Full disclosure: : I have since succeeded Pennock in that position), discussing the deceptions in the Expelled documentary mentioned in #5. He also relates the deception in the documentary to similar deceptions used to promote the passage of legislation that would allow intelligent design to be taught in public school science classrooms. A bill that would do so in Michigan expired at the end of the legislative session last week.

1. Danger lurks beneath pope’s call for conciliation (April 21, 2008)

In this commentary I discuss what looks like a call for religious conciliation by Pope Benedict XVI but which is really a call for passing laws that prohibit the defamation of religion. This is an extraordinarily dangerous idea that is already being pushed by the United Nations.

I’m sure 2009 will turn out to be as interesting a year when it comes to politics and religion.

In November, the Kalamazoo Township Board of Trustees discontinued the practice of opening meetings with prayer, which had been done for more than 30 years.

Newly elected Supervisor Terri Mellinger, while noting she is of a “strong Christian faith,” said the board was unanimous in deciding that prayer at government meetings may foster an environment in which all citizens may not feel welcome to participate.

The Gazette editorial board took a middle position on the issue on Sunday, arguing:

In communities where the long-held norms have been faith-based, there’s not a thing wrong with public bodies offering an invocation at the start of a public meeting. No one is compelled to participate, not even public officials.

In communities where the officials elected by the public choose not to start their meetings with prayer — and there are many in southwestern Michigan — there should be no pressure from outsiders to institute public prayer.

The Grosjeans filed a lawsuit claiming that this denial violated their rights to free speech and the free exercise of religion. The federal district court granted summary judgment for the state and the appeals court has now upheld that ruling.

Prior to December 2006, the UIA allowed each person listed in the directory to include a short narrative, essentially an advertisement for their services. Both of the Grosjeans had profiles that included bible verses related to the pursuit of justice and mercy.

Once informed of the content of those profiles, the agency decided not to allow such narratives and subsequently changed the template for the directory to allow only specific biographical information that was directly relevant to the provision of services to unemployment claimants. The Grosjeans then filed suit.

The courts ruled that the directory listings constituted government speech rather than private speech and that the directory was a non-public forum, which means that any government limitations on what may be said in such a forum “must not be based on the speaker’s viewpoint and must otherwise be reasonable in light of the purpose of the property.”

Based on that standard, the appeals court ruled that because the UIA’s restrictions censored all information aside from biographical data that is directly relevant to their performance as advocates, without regard to the content of that non-biographical data, the restriction was reasonable and non-discriminatory.

Image by "Eqqman" via Flickr.com

Preacher and GOP official Keith Butler tried to turn his congregation against both presidential candidates in Sunday’s sermon — then dozens flocked to an Obama event

While some local churches are taking part in voter registration drives that could benefit Democrats, others are taking steps that could benefit Republicans, including a recent spate of pro-McCain sermons.

One Michigan pastor, who is also a national Republican party official, recently tried to turn his nearly all-black congregation against both presidential candidates — but after his sermon, many of the churchgoers went to an Obama rally.

This past Sunday, the conservative organization Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), based in Arizona, sponsored a protest of the federal tax code that prohibits preachers from endorsing a political candidate from the pulpit.

The initiative, called “Pulpit Freedom Sunday,” called on preachers around the country to violate the law and make endorsements during their sermons. The 54-year-old tax code prohibits tax-exempt organizations, like churches, from engaging in partisan politics. If they do, they could lose their tax-free status. According to ADF, about 30 churches participated in the protest nationwide, and almost all of their pastors endorsed Sen. John McCain.

While no Michigan churches participated in the ADF ploy, Southfield’s popular conservative pastor Keith Butler did get involved in the election, when he pointed out to his congregation what he called the worthlessness of both candidates.

Butler, of Word of Faith International Christian Center, is a former Detroit city council member. He ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate and didn’t make it past the primary in 2006. He is currently a member of the Republican National Committee.

In his sermon last Sunday, Butler did not endorse either candidate. In fact, he suggested that both of them subscribed to the Babylonian system, a system governed by men and not God, rooted in evil, and greed. “The Babylon system operates by man’s spirit. God’s system is led by God’s spirit,” he explained in his sermon, which basically condemned the U.S. government and those involved in it.

He said neither candidate for president (he didn’t name names) had the answers to the current financial crisis. People want to know who can fix the financial mess on Wall Street, he told his cheering congregation. “Neither of them,” he concluded. “We have a way outside of the Babylon system, but we are going to make a decision that anything that isn’t God’s way is not our way. You’re gonna eventually have to get out of the world system.”

He mocked the panicking Wall Street specialists and the presidential candidates, who were pushing for the bailout plan to pass. “When Wall Street is six feet under, God just gets six feet higher,” he told the congregation.

But after the church service ended at 1:30 p.m., many people left the pews of Word of Faith for an “evil” destination: to see Obama speak in front of The Detroit Institute of Arts.

Dozens of people from the church service were seen cheering for Obama in the thick, diverse crowd. Obama and Biden spoke to a crowd of more than 30,000 from the middle of Woodward Avenue with a focus on the economic crisis. Obama defended his position on the bailout plan at the rally, explaining that he wanted to revise the bailout plan before he could vote for it. He said the original version was a “welfare program for the rich.”

So, if members of his congregation vote, chances are they are going to vote for Obama, though perhaps with some exceptions.