The Olympia-based church that moved its Sunday picnic from the state-owned Heritage Park after it was refused permission to baptize members there is dropping the matter.
Pastor Paul Jones of Reality Church said legal action would be “inconsistent with our mission as a family church” and that church members had a great Sunday barbecue, picnic and baptism at a new location.
“We don’t have an agenda to push,” he said in an interview Wednesday. At the same time, Jones thinks the state is applying rules for permits on the Capitol Campus “inconsistently, because there are places where they have a lot of religious practice (including weddings). That is why we filed the appeal.”
The church consulted the Washington, D.C.-based American Center for Law & Justice, a religious-freedom advocacy group, after the state Department of General Administration denied permission for a baptism. Jones said a church member filling out the application for a picnic added the baptism to the list of event-related activities, and the church was never explicitly seeking a permit for a baptism.
After GA denied permission, the church learned it could get free legal advice and appeal help from the center, a right-of-center legal advocacy group that has taken up the cause of Bible studies at public schools. That led to a lawyer for the center filing a 14-page appeal last week and GA issuing a letter late Friday that allowed a picnic but denied the baptism.
GA acting director Jane Rushford rejected the appeal on grounds that use of state resources for an exercise of religion is prohibited by the state Constitution’s Article I, Section 11.
The Law & Justice center said Monday it was waiting for a senior staff lawyer to return before deciding its next step.
“I hope they don’t use some loophole to carry it forward …” Jones said, adding that there are many who want to see is church “stick it to the state.”
Jones’ church and GA reported a surge in phone calls or messages from around the country after a Fox radio outlet interviewed GA officials Tuesday morning. Jones said some callers fault his church for not carrying on a fight.
National Fox television commentators criticized the state in December 2008, when GA allowed indoor displays of a nativity, a menorah, placards by an atheist group and other placards from groups critical of atheism. Rules allowing those multiple displays in a small area of the Capitol’s third floor grew out of a federal legal challenge spurred by the state’s rejection of a Capitol nativity display during the 2006 Christmas season.
The state called a moratorium on new permits during the 2008 holiday season after one man asked to display a “Festivus pole” (as popularized by comic Jerry Seinfeld’s television show), and other requests were made by the rabidly anti-gay Westboro Church as well as a Kansas group that mockingly promotes a “spaghetti monster” as the creator of the universe.
That cacophony led to a Capitol Campus rule in 2009 that forbids private displays of a religious nature inside campus buildings, but does allow outdoor displays under proscribed rules.
Gov. Chris Gregoire attended a prayer rally in July 2009 on the Capitol Campus, and many of the hundreds of people on hand bowed their heads in prayer on behalf of state and federal political leaders responding to the global economic disaster. Leading the group in prayer was Pastor Casey Treat of the Federal Way church that sponsored the event.
GA spokesman Jim Erskine said the agency considered that event an expression of political speech rather than an exercise of religion.
Brad Shannon: 360-753-1688
bshannon@theolympian.com
www.theolympian.com/politicsblog
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