By SAM HODGES and KIM HORNER / The Dallas Morning News
shodges@dallasnews.com
khorner@dallasnews.com
For 14 years, Lake Highlands United Methodist Church has brought Sunday morning worship to elderly residents of Audelia Manor, a public housing apartment complex in northeast Dallas.
But now the Dallas Housing Authority has ordered the church to stop, arguing that the services violate church-state separation required by the U.S. Constitution.
Residents aren’t exactly saying amen.
“It’s just something we will miss terribly. It’s like putting a big hole into our lives,” said Myrna Hardy, an 84-year-old resident who has attended the services since they started.
“A lot of us are older people,” said Hardy, who uses a wheelchair. “We’ve been to church all of our life, and we can’t get out to go to other churches very easily.”
MaryAnn Russ, president and chief executive officer of the Dallas Housing Authority, said the worship services violate the agency’s contract with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which funds its public housing programs.
“It’s all federal money, so we’re subject to constitutional prohibitions,” Russ said. “It’s like prayer in public schools. It’s the same deal.”
But Jerry Brown, a HUD spokesman in Washington, D.C., said the Fair Housing Act does not prohibit religious activity in common areas of public housing as long the activity does not result in unequal treatment of residents.
“We’d like to chat with the Dallas Housing Authority to see if there’s something we’re missing,” he said.
A spokesman for the watchdog group Americans United for Separation of Church and State agreed the worship services would not be objectionable, as long as federal funds weren’t used, other religious groups had the opportunity to hold services, and residents weren’t coerced or subject to “unwanted proselytizing.”
“In this case, it’s the United Methodists, a mainline Protestant group. … Most people are not going to think this is a problem,” said Rob Boston.
Beverly Childs, the DHA’s vice president of resident housing, said about a dozen churches and faith-based organizations provide some type of services at DHA properties. Only a couple have held worship services, she said.
Russ, who took over as housing chief a year ago, said she did not know that Lake Highlands UMC was holding worship services at the complex until recently.
Many church groups and faith-based charities provide food, after-school programs, entertainment and other services to residents at DHA properties, Russ said. She said the organizations are free to provide services and even pray with residents.
“But the place where it crosses the line is a religious service,” she said. Russ said the agency cannot endorse any particular faith.
She said the agency is executing new memorandums of understanding with religious groups to prohibit them from holding worship services. Some have been unhappy with the change, she said. But she hopes they will keep helping residents.
“We don’t want the churches to stop coming to the buildings, especially the senior buildings,” Russ said. “There are people who live there who don’t get out a lot and they look forward to this.”
Lake Highlands UMC decided years ago “to reach beyond the walls” of its main facility, and Audelia Manor was one of the first locations where it began to send a worship service team, said the Rev. Pamela Clark, associate pastor and director of off-campus ministries.
Typically, the service draws from 30 to 50 people and has seen a “growth spurt” in recent months, she said.
The church provides a Sunday meal to residents a few times each year and works with a ministry of First United Methodist Church of Dallas to get residents supplementary groceries each month.
Hardy said the church also offers pastoral care to her and other residents.
“They’re here when we have a death in the family,” she said. “If we’re in the hospital, somebody [from the church] comes to see us. … No one else has ever been concerned about us.”
Clark said she and others from the church expect to meet with Russ later this week and are hopeful that an agreement can be reached to allow services to continue.
Courtesy of http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/030410dnmetdhachurch.3bd4ec8.html
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