Should religious groups be allowed to rent and use public schools for worship services? Why or why not?

Public school buildings are relatively inexpensive, well-equipped facilities that can be found in the least-wealthy, least-equipped neighborhoods. Consequently, school buildings offer a particularly practical means of helping the country fulfill its responsibility to ensure the freedom of religious practice among its citizens. The fear of allowing religious congregations to rent public school space is, apparently, the fear that such a relationship between a religious congregation and a public entity like a school system constitutes a governmental sanction of religion (or of some particular religion). The use of public space by religious congregations certainly carries this risk. However, a legislative prohibition of the use of public school space by religious groups would contribute to preventing religious communities with marginal identities and limited resources from finding a place in the public bazaar. Surely, the vitality of marginal communities in the public sphere is an index of the country’s commitment not only to religious freedom, but to freedom in general. Towards seeing that the government protects the capacity of marginalized and disadvantaged communities to contribute to public life—to have an equal presence and voice beside their landed neighbors—we might consider passing legislation that explicitly requires public schools to rent space to religious congregations (and other kinds of groups).

Should religious groups be allowed to rent and use public schools for worship services? Why or why not?

Empty buildings are only icons of what that institution stands for while in session. As we know school can take place many places outside the brick and mortar of the school building. School can take place at home while a parent reads to a child before bedtime. School can take place as children play in the sand box; be it at a neighbors house or at recess. You learn that when someone throws sand in your eyes that it hurts and their are consequences for that. You learn to share your toys while playing in a sand box where ever it may be. So school can be defined outside the walls of our public facilities and of course some are even home schooled, which meets all of the qualifications of a school as well, without the building.

Church is the same way in that it is not about the building. We know that it is about relationships. Church can happen when people gather in a home for dinner and sharing their lives, supporting one another and Bible study. Church can happen in the lobby of the cancer center, when someone distraught needs comforting and a prayer is said with a stranger. Church can happen on a nature trail in all its beauty and stillness.

In both school and church we are taught to share. So what better way to share then the buildings that lie dormant so much of the time. Why not share spaces when so many churches are having a difficult time maintaining their current building. One by one churches are selling their buildings so they can put more of their resources on actual ministry outside the church walls, which is what we are called to do.

New church plants get that investing in a building does not hinder the gospel but can in fact help enliven it. A church no longer strapped to mortgages which consume most of the money can redefine themselves and use those resources to help the poor and those who could use the churches compassion.

Then there is the cost of maintaining our schools, which sit mostly dormant, crippling the already taxed educational system as well. So let us share the costs, help each other out, and be good stewards of our resources, which is what both institutions teach us to do anyway.

Should religious groups be allowed to rent and use public schools for worship services? Why or why not?

I’d like to think that the NYC Education Department’s decision to ban religious services on school property arose from a misunderstanding of the so-called separation of church and state. A less charitable interpretation: they’re trying to scrub any hint of religious expression from our public spaces. And they are our public spaces, meaning they belong to all citizens and taxpayers. As I’ve said previously in this space, muzzling religious expression weakens our communal bonds and strains our democratic polity. If we’re going to live together, we have to allow for all manner of respectful public expression–religious and secular. Every reasonable voice must be allowed a place in our public places. If the NYC Education bans religious believers, they must also ban meetings of Girl Scouts, Future Farmers of America, Black History Clubs, and any other organization that’s not part of the official school curriculum. Our larger community would suffer if we lost the contributions of all such groups.

Should religious groups be allowed to rent and use public schools for worship services? Why or why not?

Yes, they should. I’ve followed this story because I once pastored a church that met in a school, and because one of the NYC churches affected is pastored by the son of a couple in my church. New York Judge Pierre Leval’s opinion that holding religious services in a public space consecrates that place, thus making it a church, is not how the churches themselves see their use of those spaces. Judge Leval’s “consecration” rationale as legal judgment is thin. A school building is now holy ground because a church gathers there on Sundays when the building is otherwise unused? Christians do have theologies of sacred space, but Judge Leval’s rationale confuses consecration with superstition.

What is afoot in NYC is nothing less than unjust discrimination. There are no good reasons of logic or legality for the city to ban its churches from renting public schools for Sunday meeting space.

We’re not talking about large churches overpowering the public schools of NYC. The 68 churches about to lose meeting places this Sunday in the boroughs of NYC are mostly small churches. These churches are neighborhood churches and mostly welcome in their neighborhoods because the people in the churches live there too, loving their neighbors and addressing their social problems with mercy ministries. Most of these churches are also welcomed by the administrators of the schools they meet in. They see the churches as assets to the communities their kids come from.

The son of the couple in my church is Jon Storck. With his permission, below is the letter he wrote this week to the Woodside Herald, a NYC newspaper that covers Jon’s Sunnyside, Queens, community. His church meets in Public School 150:

An Open Letter to The Neighborhood

Over the last couple of months I have been engaged in a movement to see legislation passed that would allow houses of worship, mostly Christian churches, to continue to have the same access as other organizations to rent vacant space in New York City Public Schools when schools are not in session. Yesterday, the State Senate passed bi-partisan legislation that would allow us to stay by a 55-to-7 vote.

Our congregation, Grace Fellowship Church, has been quietly meeting for nearly 7 years at PS 150 and until the last few weeks, had not heard any opposition to our presence there. Many of the people who now openly oppose the right of churches to meet in Public Schools because they fear we are engaging in hate-speech or discrimination against those that do not believe the way we do, did not even know we were present until just a few weeks ago, including City and State legislators.

Nevertheless, it is a non-negotiable core value of ours to cultivate a welcoming community within our congregation. It is, in fact, in our very Mission statement. And that means not just for those that think the way that we do, or vote the way we want them to, but even, and especially, for those that oppose us. The true mark of a Christian is not one who can vehemently stand and fight their opposition, but rather one who can love even one’s enemy.

I am therefore, writing the residents of this great community to let you know that should the legislation not pass in our favor, we will not leave PS 150 resentful or even thinking we have been mistreated. Wherever a new location is secured, I want to communicate that anyone, regardless of sexual orientation, creed, race or even one’s position as to the rightness of our presence at PS 150, is always a welcome guest at GFC. In fact, I am confident that that is the welcome you would receive at many of the churches in our community. I encourage you to visit one. You might be surprised at what is really taught there.

Pastor Jon Storck