Caught in a Legal Limbo, Church in BPC School Waits for Answer
February was a month of uncertainty for the many churches that meet in school buildings across the city, their fate hinging on the twists and turns of a prolonged church-state court battle.
In an event space in northern Tribeca, Ryan Holladay, the pastor of Lower Manhattan Community Church, which usually holds services in Battery Park City’s P.S. 89, stood before his parishioners on the last Sunday of the month and tried to reassure them.
“We have a lot of peace about God taking us where he wants us to be,” the 27-year-old pastor and law student said before launching into his sermon. “Thanks for being along for the ride.”
The congregation—mostly Battery Park City residents—made the trek with small children in tow to the Desbrosses Street space for the church’s first meeting outside of P.S. 89, their home for nearly 10 years.
“I don’t know much about the legal process,” said Allison Vance, a Battery Park City parent who said she wanted the church to stay at P.S. 89, but would follow it wherever it goes. “I just don’t understand why it’s back and forth, back and forth, why a decision isn’t just made and then we move forward.”
More than 50 churches in the city are waiting for an outcome in the 15-year legal battle between the city’s Department of Education and the churches. (See sidebar on page 5.)
“The Department of Education is legitimately concerned about public schools being affiliated with a particular religious belief or practice,” the city’s attorney, Jane Gordon, said in a statement last month, underscoring the DOE’s commitment to enforce its ban on worship services in public schools.
The fight over that ban heated up in February, when the DOE was set to evict the churches, based on a court ruling in December. The religious groups appealed and, after several rounds in court with the DOE, they received permission to stay in the schools until a ruling on their appeal. That is expected by June.
A complicated Constitutional issue
On one side of the legal argument are those who believe that allowing worship services in schools is a violation of the constitutional separation of church and state. On the other is a coalition of lawyers for more than 50 churches who say that the DOE’s policy is unconstitutional because it singles out religious expression.
“When the Pope holds mass in Central Park, it doesn’t mean that Roman Catholicism is the state religion of New York City, it’s merely government accommodation of private speech,” said Jordan Lorence, a lawyer for the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian coalition that has been fighting against the DOE’s policy since the mid-1990s.
Some opponents of the churches’ use of public schools also argue that children might be confused by seeing their school regularly taken over by a church. Some also see it as a government endorsement.
Opinions among local representatives are divided. State Sen. Daniel Squadron voted against a bill that would overturn the DOE policy. The bill passed, but is held up in the Assembly, where Speaker Sheldon Silver has said he is waiting for a final court decision.
Squadron said the Senate bill was too broad and could have allowed the churches to use the city-owned facilities even during the school day. But religious organizations—like other community groups—should be allowed to use public schools for non-worship meetings as long as they do not include proselytizing, he said.
“I’ve always believed that the separation of church and state is the best way to protect religious institutions,” Squadron said. “You want there to be a real distinction and that bill dealt with it in a far, far from thoughtful way.”
For Community Board 1’s Youth and Education Committee, the issue is not just about the Constitution, but about the use of a rare commodity: available community space in Lower Manhattan.
The committee, and later the full board, passed a resolution supporting the city’s ban. Along with its call to “keep church and state separate,” it also expressed concern that the churches would displace community groups that it believes have a more rightful claim to the space.
“Churches and synagogues and mosques should not be in public school buildings because of logistics,” said Bob Townley, executive director of Manhattan Youth, which uses the public school for a variety of programs. “If they get a permit, it is very hard to take it away after a while.”
City Councilwoman Margaret Chin, who has at least two churches in her district that occupy public schools on Sundays, said there should be a way for schools to accommodate all community groups—including churches.
“The schools are huge,” Chin said. “If another group wants to use the school they can work it out.”
In her ruling on Feb. 24 that would allow the churches to remain in the schools during the appeal process, U.S. District Court Judge Loretta Preska noted the conflict between competing rights is a difficult one.
“Perhaps nothing short of a Herculean effort would permit the Board [of Education] to sail unscathed through the constitutional strait that pits the Religion Clauses against one another,” she wrote.
Finding a place to worship
Founded in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks with the help of the Southern California evangelical megachurch Saddleback, Lower Manhattan Community Church (formerly called Mosaic Manhattan) has met at P.S. 89 on Warren Street since its beginning. Their weekly rent and the cost of a security guard and custodian is between $300 and $500, one-fifth the cost of the Desbrosses Street event space.
Under Holladay’s leadership over the past two years, the church has focused on serving the area’s booming number of families. It has a membership of about 150, including 50 children who take part in a youth program in the school cafeteria while the adults attend services upstairs. According to a membership roster provided to the Trib by the church, most of the 118 adults and children who have joined the church in the last three years live in Battery Park City; nearly all the others live in nearby Tribeca. About 25 members live in other parts of the city.
“It’s definitely a very family-oriented church,” said Heather Bilderback, a church member who is also an officer of the P.S. 89 PTA. “[The church] is just a really good group of people that seek to make the community stronger, and that I think is what drew us in.”
Bilderback said she hasn’t heard complaints about the church’s use of the school from other P.S. 89 parents. But the church, as Mosaic Manhattan, was the center of controversy a year after it was founded when its staff handed out candy and balloons to students who were participating in a back-to-school event.
P.S. 89 Principal Ronnie Najjar said she initially had mixed feelings about the school’s use by a church.
“I really didn’t know what the impact would be on the school,” she said, “what it meant to have a place of worship here in a school building.”
But Najjar said that, with the exception of some of the early issues with the PTA event, the church has been a good tenant and has not been a topic of discussion among school parents.
“We have very clear boundaries,” Najjar said, adding that she and I.S. 89 Principal Ellen Foote had explained to previous pastors that they couldn’t use the school as though it were their own space, forbidding them to store equipment or have mail delivered. “[We] held very firm about that, that ‘this is not your space, you come on Sunday.’”
Holladay, a father of two, said that the school’s location was important to the church’s mission of serving Downtown families. But he said he bears no bad feelings toward those who want the church to move. “I don’t feel persecuted at all and I don’t even think the [DOE’s] decision is ludicrous—it’s not. There is some basis for it,” he said. “But it’s not as if there are tons of places we can go.”
Since December, Holladay estimates, his church contacted about 70 venues below Canal Street, searching for a new meeting place. About 10 of them denied space to the church on religious grounds, Holladay noted. Only the management of 10 Desbrosses said yes.
And so 10 Desbrosses is where the church ended up meeting on the last Sunday of February, in what could be a dress rehearsal for a permanent move if the churches lose their appeal. The commitment to meet there came on Friday night, an hour before the DOE ended up granting it a permit for Sunday.
The event space, used mostly for weddings and parties, felt more like a church than does the school’s windowless auditorium, parishioners said.
They enjoyed the sunlit room with its movable furniture and pitch-perfect acoustics—but they still liked the school better.
“All that natural light was fantastic,” said Brian Vance, who lives in the apartment building above P.S. 89, and walked to Desbrosses with his two young daughters. “But the church community is weighted way more in Battery Park City. I think being rooted in our community is more important.”