As folks freeze to death in Milwaukee, Ohio pastor charged for offering shelter
As folks freeze to death in Milwaukee, Ohio pastor charged for offering shelter
Whose responsibility is it to protect unhoused when it's freezing outside? An Ohio pastor opened his church to the homeless and was charged by city.
Whose responsibility is it to protect unhoused when it's freezing outside? An Ohio pastor opened his church to the homeless and was charged by city.
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Ambiguous title. The pastor didn't ask for money from the freezing people. He took them in for free. The city then criminally charged him for violating zoning rules:
Chris Avell, pastor of Dad's Place in Bryan, Ohio, was arraigned in court last Thursday because he kept his church open 24/7 to provide warmth to the unhoused.
Ohio law prohibits residential use in first-floor buildings in a business district. Since the church is zoned as a Central Business, the building is restricted from allowing people to eat or sleep on the property.
I dunno. It seems pretty clear that charged in this case means the government sicced the dogs on him for being a… checks notes… good Christian.
No wonder we have so many Bad Christians when the good ones are punished for their deeds.
This is what the gospel of Jesus meant that the life of a true Christian was the hardest.
The people who actually follow the gospel are generally vilified by the majority of Christians for making the rest of them look bad or something.
If these people get angry at someone performing a good deed because that makes then look bad, they're going to hell.
If even the least absolutist christian sect, the church of England, teaches that as they did to me during my childhood, then those fuckers aren't even close to being Christian. They're just wearing a crucifix.
Fucking posers.
Hey now, since when does being a good Christian mean... checks notes... taking care of the oppressed, hungry & needy? Oh, well shit. :-P
I wonder if there’s a first amendment defense to be made here. The pastor was following his religious tenets by sheltering the poor in the church in their time of need.
So private sector does gov job, in caring for citizens and gets in trouble. As if the gov wants to criminalize kindness.
criminally charged him for violating zoning rules
Well fuck'em.
If its criminal to do the right thing for your fellow humans, do crime.
I believe it was Marcus Garvey that said all immoral laws must be disobeyed.
So by this logic church patrons would have to leave the premises to eat a snack, participate in a church meal, or even eat one of those wafers they sometimes hand out.
Yup. Serve the body of Christ? Straight to jail. Your sermon is so boring someone dozes off, believe it or not, jail.
Of course, this doesn't really happen, through the magic of selective enforcement the only people getting the boot are those preventing the homeless from freezing to death, ruining the plans of the local administration.
A pastor would not be "serving the body of Christ", since transfiguration is a Roman Catholic heresy
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You're not familiar with communion?
The doctrine of transfiguration is not the same thing as communion. When protestants take communion they are not under the belief they are eating the literal body of Christ. Instead it's purely symbolic. Catholicism holds that your salvation literally hinges on eating that piece of bread and wine every week since they believe it is literally Christ's body once it's blessed. It's like the literalist opposite of gnostic views
Buddy you're trying to nitpick something that no one cares about that still has the same result. At the end of the day the people will still be eating the cracker in a business zoned church.
Whatever beliefs or arbitrary labels are held behind the gesture do not matter at all to what is being talked about
that literally makes it illegal to eat the eucharist. And ill bet anything this church has had some kind of pancake dinner or some shit like that at least once.
Yet another evil created by zoning laws.
I don't know, we don't want a shooting range next to a preschool or something. Zoning does some good.
Since when did we care about children getting shot at school?
Zoning is there to prevent wasting those targets by accident /s
Oh come on. This is absolutely a government overreach.. yes, regulations can be good. They were not in this case.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding the situation, but it seems to me the problem here isn’t the zoning laws, but draconian enforcement during an emergency.
Usually in times of hardship, anyone with half a brain knows not to strictly enforce laws like this that were clearly not intended to stop churches, businesses, or private individuals from helping people.
It’s like charging someone for violating zoning by taking in neighbours whose homes were destroyed. In normal times, there are laws against turning yourself into a boarding house without a permit, but nobody reasonable would enforce that after a tornado.
The problem is moronic enforcement.
The regulation/law could have been written better. That's why I called it overreach. They could have written an emergency clause or wrote an emergency regulation/law that specified overruling certain laws.
That's what I meant by overreach. I'm generally pro regulations when it comes to safety which is what the sleeping and eating one I assume was written about.
You mean like here in maryville, tn, where the new Smith and Wesson factory and test range shares a property line with Middlesettlements Elementary School?
Nothing quite like kids hearing gunshots outside at school.
And it wasn’t just “allowed” by zoning laws. The city basically did backflips to get the plant to move here. They even convinced the city of Alcoa to cede the land to the city of Maryville without telling Alcoa why they wanted it.
Bunch of shady shit all around, but the whole county basically sucks Smith and Wesson’s dick now. They even had a big festival on the day the plant opened to celebrate it.
Wouldn't a daycare/private preschool and a gun range both be the same light commercial zones?
There might be regulation keeping you from owning a gun range near a school, but I don't think zoning helps
Seems like a shooting range next to a school could be a deterrent.
Hmmm, which school to shoot up? This one next to a bunch of folks with weapons and ammo within arms reach practicing marksmanship or any of these other ones without that?
Not this zoning.
he building is restricted from allowing people to eat or sleep on the property.
Okay... so any business in the 'business district' is restricted from allowing people to eat or sleep on their property.
If I was a lawyer, I'd record people eating in their business district buildings and present that to the court right next to the law that says they're not allowed to do it.
I would fight tooth and nail to ensure whatever judicial overreach is screwing over poor people also screws over rich ones.
No eating in the business district means no break rooms. And if Christian churches are in the business district, I’d imagine this means no communion wafers either.
How many of those businesses work people so hard/overnight so they are sleeping in their offices? Its Ohio so probably not many but its probably still happened.
If it's a business, why don't they pay taxes?
Yep, and what boundaries constitutes a church, synagogue, mosque or place of worship these days, and why is one religion tax free, yet a philosophical movement is not? To whom is respon$ible for making these institutions exempt of taxation? I for one would be a proud supporter of a church that actually upholds the tenants of biblical teachings, and also follows in the footsteps of those morals, but it's all just a sad sad part of modern day capitalism. This Pastor is a hero and should be heralded as such.
Not that I particularly care if churches are or are not taxed but arguing that religion is philosophy just is empirically wrong. Philosophy is rarely passed generation to generation but religion is almost always is. No one would call an 8 year old a Hegellian but they would grasp the idea that the 8 year old is Muslim and should be given hallel food. A Marxist solider who dies in combat isn't going to get a Marxist funeral. A Platoist is not going to request a Platoist leader to provide them comfort in their final moments. No one is bringing their family to weekly Russellian services where they sing about the glory of set theory. No desperate person has begged their local Utilitarian thinker to pray away the Utility Monster.
I am an atheist btw so don't try it.
You're right. The only difference between philosophy and religion is the cult aspect. So why are we rewarding the culty versions that indoctrinate children into being unable to think for themselves rather than actual philosophical movements? Its backwards as fuck. Religon is much of why humanity is so stupid. It requires faith. Faith and critical thinking cannot coexist when the faith involves meaning of life stuff.
I use Arch Linux, btw.
Technically you are correct, but this is far from the first instance of this kind, probably already even in 2024. I knew immediately what it meant b/c of that context... sigh, unfortunately:-(.
Still, thank you very much for clarifying - Lemmy is shared world-wide, and not everyone may have picked up on that, especially non-native speakers. You are preventing misunderstandings hence promoting Truth, exactly as that pastor would have wanted:-).