Separation of church and school?

An interesting story this morning on legal fights over holding government school graduations in church buildings, Fight Over God and Gowns. The question of course becomes whether or not it is OK for a public entity to hold a ceremony in a sectarian facility. Is that a violation of the “separation of church and state”, as is being argued by the usual suspects (i.e. Barry Lynn from Americans United for Separation of Church and State and of course the ACLU)?

I have a different question. Should church buildings be used for secular events? My feelings about church buildings are well known but given that for the overwhelming majority of Christians the church building is the place we go to worship, should we permit that building to be used for secular purposes? Is an event where God is typically not honored except perhaps in the most general sense an appropriate event to hold in a church building?

On the one hand, most church buildings are very expensive to build and maintain. If the facilities can be rented out to help defray some of the cost, isn’t that a good thing? Plus it might create goodwill among the community and encourage people to come back on Sunday morning.

On the other hand, these sorts of events seem to blur the secular-sacred divide. The church-state issue is a smaller subset of the church-world issue. Using the church building for secular events might have the effect of reinforcing the civic religion of America where the church is just another part of the greater American society.

What do you think? Should church buildings be used for completely secular functions like government school graduations? What if it were your kid but instead of a comfortable, familiar church building the graduation was being held at a mosque?

This small topic brings to mind a bigger issue, one that is largely ignored because it is troublesome. That is the issue of the role and witness of the church in but apart from the world.

The biggest threat to Christianity in America is not missionaries being arrested in Dearborn or evolution being taught in public schools, it is apathy in the church and being excessively comfortable in society. The counter-cultural, even radical if may use an overused and misappropriated term, witness of the church in the world suffers greatly when the world warmly embraces the church and the church returns the favor by accepting the world’s approval. Perfect examples of this are the tax exemptions enjoyed by the church, by donors to the church and by clergy. I am all for people paying as little in taxes as possible but by accepting the tax exemptions, the church agrees to rules and regulations set forth by the world, i.e. the government. So my concern is with how we disentangle ourselves from the world rather than how can we be more accommodating to the world. I believe that most of the unbelieving world (and perhaps much of the believing world as well) sees the church as a particularly moralistic and hypocritical version of the Rotary Club instead of a set apart people of God who by deed and word present an unmistakable contrast to the world. The witness we have abandoned by capitulation is crucial to the Gospel proclamation and recovering that witness needs to be a top priority of the church.