Defeat for Bible and God-Haters, Victory for Kids
BOSTON — The Boston Centers for Youth and Families announced today that it will put an end to its problematic policy banning the use of religious content in its publicly available meeting rooms.
The city agency made its decision after legal action from Calvary Chapel of the City, which reserved space for its weekly after-school “Calvary Kidz” program, as well as an upcoming vacation Bible school. After providing biblical instruction to children for more than two years at the city’s Thomas L. Johnson Community Center, the program was told that the center’s policy no longer allowed religious teaching in its rooms that are open to the rest of the general public.
Since January 2008, Calvary Chapel in the City has used a meeting room every Friday afternoon at the community center to teach character development and virtues from a biblical perspective through lessons, games, and other activities to children between the ages of 5 and 12.
Even though the Johnson Center--like other facilities under the oversight of the Boston Centers for Youth and Families--is available to various outside organizations and out-of-school programming, an official of the center notified the director of Calvary Kidz that the church’s program at the center can no longer include religious content. The director was told that Boston Centers imposes this “city policy” for all events at the center, as it stated that groups “cannot teach religion inside of a community center.” Calvary Kidz complied and withheld religious content from its meetings for weeks until the situation could be resolved.
Christian attorneys of the Alliance Defend Fund fought this religious discrimination on behalf of Calvary Chapel, and won.
“Christian groups shouldn’t be discriminated against for their religious beliefs at facilities open to the public,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Joel Oster. “The city has done the right thing in agreeing to no longer enforce its unconstitutional policy so that Christian groups can enjoy the same access that has been freely offered to everyone else.”
ADF attorneys sent letters to 151 government entities to end this sort of religious discrimination policies at more than 750 government-run facilities across the nation.
ADF is a legal alliance of Christian attorneys and like-minded organizations defending the right of people to freely live out their faith. Launched in 1994, ADF employs a unique combination of strategy, training, funding, and litigation to protect and preserve religious liberty, the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family.
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