Identify This Church - I'll

Identify This Church - I'll give you the clues:

• Complete inabilty to tell villain from victim
• Picking the precise response that Jesus would not
• An absurdly exaggerated notion of the value and purpose of a church's physical property.

If you guessed Edina Community Lutheran Church, the congregation of well-heeled, anti-gun DFLers in Edina, you'd be close...

...but in fact, we're talking about this church in New York City:

A Manhattan church that rented space to a synagogue tossed its tenants into the street and locked the doors yesterday in a tenant-landlord dispute allegedly prompted by terroristic threats against the Jewish worshippers.

Don't take this the wrong way; I'm a virulent, militantly-moderate Christian (and fish out of water - I'm a conservative who worships in the Presbyterian Church). I think (as most of the principals in the story do) that the vast majority of churches would tell those making the threats "Over our dead bodies". I'd suspect that most Jewish congregations would do the same. (Suspect? No, I know that one liberal St. Paul synagogue recruited one of its members, a known firearms expert, to bring his legal, permitted handgun to services, after a flurry of antisemitic violence a few years ago).

But the church involved is cut from a different grade of cloth, it seems:

Cohen, 48, said he had first received a letter from the church last October informing him of a rent increase. He said he was open to discuss changes with Casey.

But instead of talks, Cohen said he received a flurry of letters telling him he had until May 31 to leave the premises. One letter contained a list of reasons for eviction, including a claim by the church that an "Arab-looking man" had verbally threatened them to "get rid of the Jews," the rabbi said.

"When we challenged them about the letters, the church told us they had received two Muslim threats saying, 'Get rid of the Jews - or else,' " Cohen said. "We said, 'You can't throw us out on the basis of that.' "

He produced a typewritten letter, hand-dated Oct. 19, 2002, that said in part that "threats have been made against 'Rock Church' because their premises are being used by Congregation Beth-El." The missive provided three months notice of eviction.

Here's the big question; what do you suppose the odds are that "Rock Church" is a left-of-center congregation that was in complete support of, say, the Sanctuary Movement?

(Via Powerline

Posted by Mitch at June 8, 2003 02:16 PM