Church gets the boot by county government

Editor's note: Chuck Norris' weekly political column debuts each Monday in WND and is then syndicated by Creators News Service for publication elsewhere. His column in WND often runs hundreds of words longer than the subsequent release to other media.

My wife, Gena, and I discovered this past week that in her small mountain hometown in California, our pastor's church was kicked out of the county building they were renting for Sunday church services. What's disgusting is that the eviction is engulfed in county political moves to stop the church from meeting there.

Mt. Lassen Community Church started last Easter 2014, being spearheaded by some long-term residents and respected community leaders, including teachers, law enforcement, principals, business owners, community activists and our pastor and former chaplain.

They rented a new (2012) county-run and taxpayer-paid-for public recreation building to meet in for a few hours every Sunday morning. After two months of meeting there, they were blessed by being given (free and clear) an old, closed-down theatre building. But instead of initially moving the church services there, those church leaders, who love their community and raised their families in the vicinity, decided to gift the old theatre building's primary use back to the community (instead of using it only as a church). They created a separate nonprofit theatre (Mt. Lassen Theatre) to help bolster the small town's flailing economy and encourage youth and other local businesses' community involvement.

The town loved the idea and is very excited about bringing back the theatre with an expanded venue that incorporates films, drama and concerts, as a full-page newspaper article in the local newspaper posted on the theatre's new website explains (MtLassenTheatre.org). They are seeking to do what many small towns across the country have done in restoring old theatres to help their local community and economy, as explained in the recent September 2014 Associated Press article, "Small towns try to rescue, restore downtown theatres" (also on posted on their website).

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These community leaders were able to plan and start executing the theatre's renovation because the theatre building was empty and the recreational building was available for the Church's Sunday Services. So, they secured a popular local developer, hired a firm to survey the building, and started raising funds for its renovation just this past month. It was a perfect plan to help small-town America until the local county government decided to prioritize its own projects over the people's needs.

Instead of supporting the local constituency and these great nonprofit endeavors, the county government was bent on renovating a kitchen in that brand new (2012) recreational building that would allegedly take several months to finish and shut down the entire building. Then, the kitchen renovation grew into a few more nonessential projects that would take several more months to complete. The church leaders were given a 30-day eviction notice (effective Jan. 1, 2015) and forced to occupy the theatre building and postpone its complete renovation and theatre opening, because of the immediacy of their disposal during a busy Christmas season and because there was no other building in their small town suitable to occupy the new and growing church, its nursery and classrooms.

Of course, the county's eviction notice "provided" another way by offering the church a 70-year old badly insulated community hall across town in that snow country for the same rental price as the new recreation building. And with one more significant problem: There was absolutely nowhere for the church's nursery and kids class to meet besides an old kitchen area full of items that could risk child safety.

The church had no other choice based upon its concern for the babies and children alone. It had to enter the theatre building and postpone its continued renovation.

Ironically, or maybe not so, the county government discouraged the church's use of the recreation building before it even started meeting in it. Or do you think the following are merely "neutral and unintentional governmental actions" in an age in which secular progressivism is suppressing churches and Christian sentiment?

• Even after signing a contract with the county and before even occupying the county recreational building on Easter Sunday 2014, the church was told by county officials that it needed to "find another place to meet after Easter" because being a church might prohibit its use of the building based upon the separation of church and state.

• After protests by the church leaders, they were allowed to stay in the recreation building for an entire year, though their contract application said "indefinitely on Sundays," words penned by county personnel.

• The church was initially given full use of the entire building, until a few months later when the lock on the room they used for a nursery was unexpectedly and without notice changed. When inquiring after that Sunday why it was changed, they were told the county supervisor used it for her office and they weren't allowed to use it anymore. They then had to rent a separate facility a block away to care for the babies and small children who were brought to the church services, and you know how parents feel about being that far away from their kids.

• In August 2014, the county supervisor was given the OK to proceed with her plan for a kitchen renovation. But the church wasn't told about it until three months later – just one month prior to its mandatory eviction.

• The church was then given roughly 30 days to vacate the recreation building during a busy Christmas month, yet to date, even in this new year, there are still no official plans or even permits for the kitchen renovation.

• When the church appealed to use the main auditorium during the kitchen renovation, they were told the renovation expanded and there was "no workaround" for church meetings even in the main auditorium on Sunday mornings, despite the fact that Sunday is the day when most are not working.

• Wanting to reassure the congregation that they could return into the recreation building after its renovation months down the road, in the beginning of December, church leaders appealed to county officials to ensure their contract was good for 2015. They were reassured in writing that it would be binding "until the theatre renovation was complete." However, they were called by county officials on Dec. 30 last week – two days before the close of 2014, and informed their contract was no good for 2015.

• To add insult to injury, it broke our hearts to hear about my wife Gena's friend and old colleague at the sheriff station, Kate West, a well-respected reporter and leader in the community who has been the sole helper to the church as the local contact person for county facilities in that rural region (an hour north of the county seat and government). Kate was mysteriously, unexpectedly, surprisingly and immediately terminated from an 11-year position of renting out the county facilities a week ago on Dec. 28, 2014, in the very week when the church would have needed her help so they could check out or get a key for another facility.

• The church's sole-remaining contact for the use of any facility was then an hour away in the county seat of Quincy, and that sole contact (the chief of all county facilities) coincidentally left his office for two weeks and won't be back until the middle of January 2015. So even if the church today decided it wanted to use another county facility, there's no contact left to do so.

• Not a single time over the course of this last year did any county official except Kate West ever contact any church leader to ask or discuss what they thought, needed or desired in their occupancy or eviction.

I guess I've just become too conspiratorial in an age of White House-Benghazi-IRS cover-ups, but something doesn't smell right in the county zoo cage!

Please share the following with every church leader and small-town community leaders across America that you know.

As I wrote in my New York Times bestseller, our founders created the First Amendment to prohibit government from infringing upon our religious practices and free speech. What don't they get about the words that their duty is not to "prohibit the free exercise of religion … or the right of the people peaceably to assemble"?

Case in point, here's what Thomas Jefferson (the so-labeled chief of all separatists) and James Madison (the father of the Bill of Rights) practiced and had to say about churches meeting in civic buildings. Warning: For those who don't know, the below information from the Library of Congress website might leave you stunned in shock as to where Jefferson and Madison (and other founders) met for church services throughout their presidencies.

The Library of Congress website states the following (italics mine):

 The State Becomes the Church: Jefferson and Madison 

It is no exaggeration to say that on Sundays in Washington during the administrations of Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809) and of James Madison (1809-1817) the state became the church. Within a year of his inauguration, Jefferson began attending church services in the House of Representatives. Madison followed Jefferson's example, although unlike Jefferson, who rode on horseback to church in the Capitol, Madison came in a coach and four. Worship services in the House – a practice that continued until after the Civil War – were acceptable to Jefferson because they were nondiscriminatory and voluntary. Preachers of every Protestant denomination appeared. (Catholic priests began officiating in 1826.) As early as January 1806 a female evangelist, Dorothy Ripley, delivered a camp meeting-style exhortation in the House to Jefferson, Vice President Aaron Burr, and a "crowded audience." Throughout his administration Jefferson permitted church services in executive branch buildings. The Gospel was also preached in the Supreme Court chambers.

Jefferson's actions may seem surprising because his attitude toward the relation between religion and government is usually thought to have been embodied in his recommendation that there exist "a wall of separation between church and state." In that statement, Jefferson was apparently declaring his opposition, as Madison had done in introducing the Bill of Rights, to a "national" religion. In attending church services on public property, [however,] Jefferson and Madison consciously and deliberately were offering symbolic support to religion as a prop for republican government.

So much for separation of church and state!

The following is the contact information for those local county officials in my wife's hometown county:

Supervisor Sherrie Thrall
District 3 Plumas County supervisor
[email protected]
520 Main St.
Room 309
Quincy, Ca. 95971
Ph. (530) 283-6170
Fx. (530) 283-6288

Dony Sawchuk
Director of facilities/airport
198 Andy's Way
[email protected]
Quincy, Ca.  95971
Ph. (530) 283-6299
Fx. (530) 283-6103

Please also write those local church and theatre community leaders back in my wife's hometown and consider helping them raise the funds to find a new place to meet and restore that old theatre for their community's benefit. Maybe patriots everywhere might consider donating one of the theatre's engraved foundational bricks mentioned on their website with the words inscribed in them, "For God and country" and then list your hometown name. If you'd like to help out, go to MtLassenTheatre.org. (All donations are tax deductible.)

Friends and fellow countryman, it's time to fight back against local and national government when they oppose your First Amendment rights and simultaneously help small-town America and our country at large in doing so.

What happened in my wife's hometown could happen in yours next.