c. 1997 Religion News Service

RICHMOND, Va. _ A Richmond minister, who also sits on the city council, has vowed to defy new rules adopted by the council restricting churches’ programs for feeding and sheltering the homeless.

The new rules are some of the first fallout from last month’s Supreme Court ruling giving government at all levels wider latitude in restricting religious practices and the Rev. Leonidas Young’s angry vow to break the new law could be the first volley in mounting opposition to the court ruling.

Young, an African-American and former mayor of this once-Confederate capital, is pastor of Fourth Baptist Church, which feeds an estimated 100 hungry and homeless people each day.

He is aligned with an ecumenical group of predominantly white churches that has been fighting Richmond ordinances restricting the churches’ efforts to feeding programs based in the downtown area.

Voting with Young in the minority against the new rules was Mayor Larry E. Chavis. Seven council members voted in favor of the restrictive rules.

The new ordinance would restrict the feeding programs to 30 people at a time. Those churches outside the downtown area wanting to feed more people, such as Young’s Fourth Baptist Church and the Stuart Circle Ecumenical Parish will be able to do so but only at a price _ they will have to obtain what the city calls”conditional use”permits. The permits carry a $1,000 application fee.”Even if this ordinance is passed, I have no intention whatsoever of abiding by it,”an angry Young said during the Monday (July 28) council meeting that passed the ordinance.

But Councilman Rudolph C. McCollum Jr., said Young’s vow was a call for anarchy. McCollum said the rules are meant to”bring a semblance of order in society.” The vote restricting the feeding areas was followed by another regulating shelters. Under an old law, shelters were allowed outside the downtown business district only if the council gave them a special permit. That was a rarity.

The new ordinance still will allow them, but only with the conditional use permits, again at a cost of $1,000 per application.

The city’s Downtown Neighborhood Association complained that the old rules were unfair toward efforts to revitalize the core city.

But Patti B. Russell, a member of the Stuart Circle Ecumenical ministry, argued, “When we feed the poor, we are exercising a central tenet of our faith.”

The ecumenical parish currently is suing the city for restricting the program under the previous law.

James E. Price, director of the Daily Planet, a citywide ecumenical program to feed and shelter the homeless, said the new rules with their pricey application fees will “trap the Daily Planet like a rat. We would have nowhere to move.”

The new laws are among the first reported instances of rules restricting religious practices since the Supreme Court struck down the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

RFRA, as the law is called, was passed by Congress in 1993 in an effort to make it more difficult for governments to interfere with or restrict religious practices by making them show they had a compelling interest in imposing such restrictions.

The struck down law had near-universal support among religious groups and many warned after the ruling that it would lead to actions such as those in Richmond.

Some of the stickiest church-state issues have emerged over such local issues as zoning, imposing historic landmark status on church buildings that prevent their modification or replacement, and rules such as those in Richmond restricting a religious group’s ministry.

In a separate but related case, the Rev. Wiley Drake of the First Baptist Church of Buena Park, Calif., has vowed that he, too, will keep aiding the homeless at his church near Los Angeles.

On Monday (July 28), Drake was convicted of illegally housing the homeless at his church and on Tuesday, city officials attempted to serve the minister with court papers ordering the the removal of some 40 homeless men, women and children from the church’s enclosed patio.

Drake’s case differs from Young’s in that it began before the Supreme Court struck down RFRA _ a one-time potential defense for the pastor.

END BRIGGS