c. 2008 Religion News Service

`Ugly’ D.C. church files suit over historic preservation ruling

WASHINGTON (RNS) A Christian Science church that some have called the city’s ugliest church has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the historic landmark designation on the windowless 37-year-old building.

Leaders of the Third Church of Christ, Scientist on Thursday (Aug. 7) called the current structure “bunker-like” and “unwelcoming,” and reiterated their desire to replace the stark concrete building with a new church on the same location.

“Little is more representative of a church’s religious exercise than its architecture, and we do not feel this architecture properly represents us to our community,” said Darrow Kirkpatrick, a former lay leader at the church.

The city’s Historic Preservation Review Board contends that the building, located three blocks from the White House, offers a unique example of modernist architectural style known as “Brutalism.”

“Third Church is a rare Modernist church in the city and the complex possesses amazingly high integrity … down to the original carpeting and seat upholstery in the church auditorium,” said David Maloney, the state historic preservation officer for the District of Columbia, in a statement.

The lawsuit alleges that the designation ignores two federal statutes that protect religious groups’ freedom of exercise.

Anita Hairston, chief of staff for the city’s office of planning, said the department does not comment on litgation that is pending or under way.

Araldo Cossutta, an associate of the famed architect I.M. Pei, designed the building, which was completed in 1971. Shortly thereafter, Kirkpatrick said, church members began to complain about their new house of worship.

Kirkpatrick said the building’s interior design forces the church to spend as much as $8,000 per year on scaffolding to replace light bulbs, and drives up heating and air conditioning expenses.

The board granted the building landmark status last December over the protests of church members; on July 24, a church application to demolish the building was denied. Under city law, members now have a right to a hearing with a third party from the mayor’s office. Kirkpatrick said a positive ruling from the mayor’s agent could cause him to reconsider the lawsuit.

_ Tim Murphy

Church-state group, Hindus and Jews protest highway crosses

(RNS) A church-state watchdog group has joined Hindu and Jewish organizations in arguing that a Utah court erred in ruling that a highway cross memorializing a fallen state trooper is a “secular symbol of death.”

A friend-of-the-court brief was filed Wednesday (Aug. 6) in the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver by Americans United for Separation of Church and State and several other groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, the Union for Reform Judaism and the Hindu American Foundation.

“When used as a burial marker, the cross does not signify death in the abstract,” they argued. “Instead it connotes the deceased’s Christian faith.”

Last November ruling, U.S. District Judge David Sam ruled that the Utah Highway Patrol Association could continue to erect 12-foot crosses, as it has for 14 troopers.

“The cross is the pre-eminent symbol of Christianity,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of the Washington-based Americans United. “For the government to claim that the cross is a secular symbol is deeply offensive and betrays a poor understanding of religion and our Constitution.”

At the time of last year’s decision, a state trooper’s widow said she was pleased the symbol could stand.

“We made this sacrifice along with him, and we get to have this symbol of what happened,” Andrea Augenstein, widow of Utah Highway Patrol Trooper Dan Harris, told The Salt Lake Tribune.

The groups that filed the brief said they understood the “noble” impulse to honor troopers but argued it does not “justify sacrificing the Establishment Clause and its animating principle _ that the political and the religious are both better served when kept separate.”

_ Adelle M. Banks

Poultry plant swaps Muslim holiday for Labor Day

WASHINGTON (RNS) A Tyson Foods Inc. plant in Shelbyville, Tenn., will recognize a Muslim holy day as one of its eight paid holidays in place of Labor Day, a decision that has left many residents angry and some proud.

The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union negotiated the contract to assist the poultry processing plant’s Somali workers, many of whom are Muslim.

The contract makes Id al-Fitr _ which marks the end of Ramadan and falls at a different time each year, typically in late fall _ a day on which all union members can either stay home or work for extra pay. The labor agreement also sets aside prayer space for Muslim workers.

Community response in Shelbyville has been dramatic.

“You are a union that is proud of achieving a Muslim holiday and prayer room?” wrote one person to the union, according to The New York Times. “A union in the U.S.A., a country based on Christianity. You call yourselves Americans? Have you forgotten 9/11?”

A few people have called Tyson to praise the decision, said company representative Libby Lawson.

“They understand that America is a melting pot and they appreciate that Tyson recognizes this with its employees,” Lawson said.

Still, criticism was overwhelming, and prompted the union to remove from its Web site its initial press release that simply announced the change and instead post a more detailed statement defending it.

“The history of the labor movement tells us that unions are at their strongest when they’re most inclusive,” union president Stuart Applebaum said in the news release. “That means making it our business to stand up to win respect for every worker’s right to practice their faith.”

The new version also leaves out the number of Muslim workers at the plant, which the union had incorrectly stated as 700. The total number is not known, Lawson said, but Somalis total 250 out of 1,200 plant workers. Of those workers, 1,000 are covered by the union and affected by the change.

“Most of the Somali workers are probably Muslim, but some of them could be Christian too. We just don’t know,” she said. “And there could be Muslim workers who aren’t Somali.”

A committee of 12 union workers, including three Somalis, demanded the change in October as part of a regular collective bargaining talks, Lawson said.

“The contract was then overwhelmingly agreed to by 80 percent of the rank and file membership of the union at the Shelbyville plant,” said a Tyson press release on Monday (Aug. 4).

Though the change went into effect in November, the public outcry broke out only recently, brought on by a story in the Shelbyville Times-Gazette newspaper, Lawson said.

The union did not immediately respond to inquiries from Religion News Service.

_ Mallika Rao

Quote of the Day: Novelist Anne Rice

(RNS) “Basically I see the entire `Vampire Chronicles’ as a search for God, a search for the light. The vampire was a metaphor for me, in the atheistic world, grieving for a lost faith, for the lost possibility of grace.”

_ Novelist Anne Rice, author of “Vampire Chronicles,” in an interview with the Rev. Dwight Longenecker at First Things.

KRE/LF END RNS