You Can't Worship Here

You Can't Worship Here: Evicting Churches from New York Schools What will really happen this weekend when churches gather in school buildings for the last time?

A Christianity Today editorial | posted 2/08/2012

Here's what you can do in a New York City public school after hours: You may gather people together once a week (or more often). You can start off with praise choruses and Bible reading. Someone can stand up and teach that Jesus is Lord, that he rose from the dead to save us from sin, and that he is coming again. Then you can break bread and pray together.

Here's what you can't do in a New York City public school after hours: Hold a "religious worship service." Got it? To the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals, the distinction is clear.

You Can't Worship Here: Evicting Churches from New York Schools What will really happen this weekend when churches gather in school buildings for the last time?

A Christianity Today editorial | posted 2/08/2012

"When worship services are performed in a place, the nature of the site changes," Judge Pierre Leval wrote. "The site is no longer simply a room in a school being used temporarily for some activity. The church has made the school the place for the performance of its rites, and might well appear to have established itself there. The place has, at least for a time, become the church."