Thanks to a reader for this:
Dan French was telling a joke about being bald when strains of gospel music flooded the comedy club where he was performing.
“Am I being heckled by God?” he asked the audience at the Capitol City Comedy Club.
The music was coming from Fresh Oil Family Fellowship, a boisterous nondenominational congregation that occupies the adjacent storefront in a strip mall here.
Mr. French’s ad-lib drew some laughter from the crowd that evening several weeks ago, he said. But since then, the issue of music seeping through the church walls has erupted into a brouhaha.
The comedy club complained about the noise; the landlord asked Fresh Oil to leave the building by the end of the year.
But Bishop Nathan Thomas, the founder and leader of the Pentecostal-charismatic church, isn’t going without a fight. Using the slogan “Jokes vs. Jesus,” he organized several protests earlier this month, objecting to what he says is religious bigotry and racism. He is consulting with a lawyer.
And
The City of San Diego fought for two years to prevent a church from settling in an industrial park, which the city said was meant for job-creating businesses, not worship. After filing a federal lawsuit, the church ultimately won the right to stay earlier this year after a judge determined that the city was violating the 2000 act protecting churches from discrimination.
This summer, officials in Mesa, Ariz., toughened the city’s noise ordinance after a neighbor complained about Christian rock music blaring out of a strip-mall church. In Fort Lauderdale, Fla., residents of an upscale neighborhood complained about worship sessions at a Jewish Hasidic leader’s rented home that included stomping, moaning and loud music.
In Texas, where thousands of churches and temples tend to one of the nation’s biggest contingents of regular service-goers, there is a lot of opportunity for conflict.
See here for the complete story.
January 2nd, 2010 1:46 am
I am all for standing on legal ground when it comes to home churches. However, when it comes to churches in commercial locations I have an entirely different belief. Churches belong in residential communities where the church can be central in the lives of the Church. Of course there is also the situation where residences are moving into industrial locations and factories are converted into housing. In this case then there should be churches there, so long as the Church is also. The local church should be a local Church.
All that being said, why can the church and comedy club come to the owners of the property and request they soundproof the wall between them? Maybe they did, brought in an acoustic engineer and it cannot be done. The other side though seems more likely, where the Church trying to press its rights instead of doing whats right.
January 2nd, 2010 7:54 am
I tend to agree.
I know of churches who use laws like this to shut down certain enterprises. Granted, I’m all for shutting down strip clubs, etc…, but now, we have churches moving into places far removed from the people they are supposed to be serving.