c. 1997 Religion News Service

RICHMOND, Va. _ Churches in Richmond, Va., and the homeless they serve, have beaten city hall.

Next is the state legislature.

In a massive outpouring of opposition to the city’s new ordinance regulating how many times a year churches can feed the poor, the city council on Monday (Sept. 8) threw out the restrictions.

The reversal came during the council’s regular meeting, when advocates of the homeless and the churches that support them demanded the city back down on the ordinance.

The showdown between the churches and local lawmakers was one of the first local tests of the new environment created in June when the Supreme Court struck down the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a law that made it more difficult for government to interfere with religious practice and expression.

Similar efforts to use zoning, historic preservation and other local ordinances to limit unwanted activity by religious groups _ from feeding the homeless to building new sanctuaries _ are under way across the nation.

In Richmond, public opinion sided with the churches.

On Monday, 350 people, including a platoon of clerics from various denominations, packed the city council meeting. The council, already expecting a large turnout over the issue, suspended its rules and allowed the group to vent its views without being on the council docket.

The turnabout came after an announcement by Richmond-based state delegate A. Donald McEachin that he plans to introduce what he calls the Virginia Religious Freedom Restoration Act in next January’s General Assembly.

McEachin’s bill, if passed, would prevent governments in the state from infringing on the rights of religious groups. It already has the support of the Democrat and Republican candidates for governor.

The Richmond ordinance, adopted in July and driven mostly by neighbors of the churches feeding the poor and homeless, imposed regulations restricting any group from feeding more than 30 people at a time more than seven times each year.

It resulted in an uproar from church members who support those programs.

During the Richmond city council session, supporters of daily and weekend feeding programs argued vehemently that feeding the homeless and the poor are at the core of religious teaching. They also demanded the council override a 1991 city planning commission decision that feeding the homeless is not the primary activity of churches.

When the regulations were enacted, Leonidas B. Young, a city councilman and a Baptist minister, vowed to violate the law. During the council session that reversed the action, he said the council “was wrong in the action it took, and you (homeless and church advocates) are owed an apology.”

“There is no way … feeding is other than a principle activity of the church,” argued the Rev. Eddie L. Perry, chairman of the civic committee of the predominantly black Baptist Ministers’ Conference of Richmond and Vicinity.

Monsignor Charles A. Kelly, rector of the Catholic Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, said the city’s law was an “inappropriate invasion” of the church’s basic mission.

“Whose responsibility is it to feed the hungry?” asked Kelly. “If the churches are impeded, are you going to pick it up?”

The Rev. Benjamin P. Campbell, pastoral director of Richmond Hill, an ecumenical retreat center, said, “You don’t get a good city by scrubbing folks out of the city. What you get is a suburb, and we don’t live in a suburb.”

The Rev. A. Lincoln James, pastor of Trinity Baptist Church, one of the city’s most influential African-American congregations, won thunderous applause when he told the council:”The city does not have the right to tread on or determine what happens on temple territory.”

MJP END BRIGGS