In a move that says more about the city’s residents than it does the city council itself, the people of the City of Brookings, located in southwest Oregon, have successfully petitioned the city council to enact a law that unconstitutionally limits a local church’s ability to feed those in need.
Brookings is facing a lawsuit brought by St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church and the Episcopal Diocese of Oregon that claims the city is violating the church’s First Amendment right to “religious expression” through the enactment of an ordinance limiting the church’s free meal outreach to the poverty-stricken and the hungry in their community to only twice a week.
For more than 75 years, the church has been serving its local community, but most notably today, the church has become a refuge for the hungry, frequently serving free meals to the needy on church property.
Because other churches and non-profit organizations suspended their meal services to the needy under the draconian edicts issued by the State of Oregon during the pandemic, St. Timothy’s expanded its free meal service to six days a week, sometimes serving up to 70 people at lunch.
But some woke members of the community (read: selfish and, evidently, nourished), petitioned the city council complaining of “trespassing, littering, and noise” in their neighborhood. The petition called for an end to the church’s homeless services.
In response, the Brookings City Council passed an ordinance requiring churches to obtain a “benevolent meal service” permit to remain legal and to force them to operate under a regulatory process if they want to continue to provide meal services on their property. The ordinance limits such service to two times per week. It is not clear if there is a cost for the permit.
The city maintains the ordinance serves the local residents while respecting the needs of those served by St. Timothy’s charitable meal service.
“There is nobody on this council that has made an attack on St. Timothy’s whatsoever. It’s not because we’re all wicked. It’s because we’re meeting needs [to serve] a dual purpose. There are other ways to explain what’s going on without vilifying the city council,” Ron Hedenskog, the mayor of Brookings said.
St. Timothy’s and its diocese are refusing to comply, arguing that the religious liberty of their congregants – and those served by the church’s charitable benevolence – are being unconstitutionally burdened.
“The parishioners of St. Timothy’s are obeying the teachings of Jesus when they provide food and medical care to their community,” Bishop Diana Akiyama said in a statement. “As Christians, we are called by faith to feed the hungry and welcome the stranger. Providing hospitality to all who enter St. Timothy’s in search of help is integral to our beliefs.”
“We have no intention of stopping now and we’re prepared to hold fast to our beliefs. We won’t abandon the people of Brookings who need our help, even when we’re being threatened,” the church’s reverend, Father Bernie, said.
St. Timothy’s and the Episcopal Diocese of Oregon are petitioning a federal court to declare the ordinance unconstitutional under the First Amendment.
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Why This Is Important
There were some easy fixes to this issue that the city council completely overlooked, opting instead to legislate a solution. Of course, always relying on the creation of regulations, ordinances, and laws to solve problems in the community is the trademark of poor government and action that happens all too often in our country today.
The city council could have brokered a dialogue between the church elders and the well-fed in the community to address the “trespassing, littering, and noise.” It would be unrealistic to believe that the church wouldn’t have started asking those who receive its charity to be more respectful of the community around the church.
The city council could have created a public works corps from community service parolees tasked with ministering to the immediate community during the hours the church was operating its kitchens, making sure those coming to and from the church kept to the public thoroughfares while policing up any garbage improperly discarded.
The city council could have asked the church elders to supply the above-mentioned “corps” from its volunteer congregants to achieve the same goals.
And, of course, the complaining members of the community could have approached the situation differently and sought to be more benevolent by engaging in the above-mentioned solutions as volunteers themselves.
Instead, those who most likely have never known true hunger pressured their elected officials (who have probably never gone hungry themselves) to restrict access to a critical, life-sustaining public service – feeding the hungry – because those hungry people were disturbing their day.
From a constitutional standpoint, the Church and the Diocese have a rock-solid case. The First Amendment to the US Constitution states clearly and without caveat:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”
It is the very first subject addressed in the Bill of Rights and rightly so. Our nation was founded on Judeo-Christian values, not a religion, but the values and principles held by all faiths of the world and tenets that include a dedication to benevolence and a clear understanding of right and wrong.
As Bishop Akiyama said in her statement, it is the religious calling of the pious among the parishioners of St. Timothy’s to provide food and medical care to their community in obedience to their religion’s teachings. This, by definition, is the “free exercise” of religion.
Constitutionally, the City of Brookings has no authority to limit the church’s actions inside the church or on church grounds. Because the actions of those that “offend” the surrounding community are not sanctioned by the church, this becomes a matter of community policing as any transgression of the law is between the transgressor and law enforcement, not law enforcement and the church.
But a larger point that relates to the societal angle of the matter centers on both the false narrative that the “woke” Oregonian culture is “inclusive,” “tolerant,” and “benevolent” and the ease with which our governments’ believe they can ignore the Bill of Rights.
During the pandemic, Oregon had some of the most stringent and restrictive regulations; regulations that found the Oregon Health Authority moving to make indoor mask mandates indefinite. This avenue was floated under the guise of caring about the well-being of Oregonians.
This faux-concern is demonstrated with a full-throated voice in the limiting of St. Timothy’s free meal service to the poverty-stricken and hungry. How is addressing hunger not in the best interest of serving all Oregonians? Apparently, benevolence is only in vogue in Oregan if there is a high-pitched, dog-whistle virtue signal involved. The phrase “self-important hypocrites” comes to mind.
But more serious than that is the penchant for government – from local to federal – to whittle away at the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious free expression. This attack on religion is the speartip that opens the path to the degradation of each of the inalienable and enumerated rights under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
It started with a ruling against displays of religious symbols in the public square and the adoption of a non-legislated separation of church and state (actually just a passage in a letter from Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association to clarify no one religion would be selected as a State religion) arriving at a moment today when an overreaching city council believes it has the authority to mandate the internal operations of a church.
We are slowly losing our guaranteed rights to government as it expands its authority in the most fascist of ways. It will be up to us to reassume control over out-of-control government at all levels, else we cease to be a Republic; we cease to be a “free” people.
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