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.
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
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
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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?
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:-).
And here I was told that the government doesn’t need to take care of these things because churches and charities will pick up the slack…
Did you even read the headline? If you could peek over your bias for a second you could see that the article is saying the government is charging a pastor for providing shelter. Big miss here chief lol
Mate, I think they were sarcastically saying that one of the reasons there aren’t government run programs to help people is the claim that churches and charities will do that instead. In this case a church attempted to do so and was instead punished, which is quite ironic if they are supposed to help those in need.
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Damn. Pulling “thousand points of light” from the anals of history. What a throwback.
Oof. Talk about a big miss. Lol
well this is fascinating. I would love to know what you THINK they meant. I can’t seem to frame it your way.
I would love to know what you THINK they meant.
“That’s my secret, captain. I never think.”
So you’ll have to explain your anger at some point.
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Going through this guy’s comment history is a trip. Almost every comment is in the past 24 hours. Almost all poor takes or overly aggressive. Takes all kinds.
If this goes to a jury trial, everyone on that jury should fucking nullify.
If you don’t know, jury nullification is an implicit property of jury trials. The court can’t make you show your work or tell you that your verdict is wrong, so you can give any answer you want. That means if someone is up for something you think is bullshit, like helping the homeless or enjoying marijuana in their backyard, you can just say Not Guilty. The court can’t do shit to you so long as you don’t scream “NULLIFIED FUCKERS” as you’re doing it.
That said, everyone involved in pushing these charges along should probably be voted out of office or run out of town. They’re trying to kill people, just slowly and via exposure.
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Just to add, if you’re selected for jury duty you should stop taking about it the day you receive the summons. Nobody needs to know what you think about nullification during that time and being in favor of it will get you removed from a bunch of courthouses. It’s the jury version of saying “bomb” in an airport.
So just make sure you know your local laws about unanimous decision vs majority decision. In the first, you can just be the stick in the mud. Question everything. In the second you actually have to convince 4 other people to vote with you.
Just to add, if you’re selected for jury duty you should stop taking about it the day you receive the summons. Nobody needs to know what you think about nullification during that time and being in favor of it will get you removed from a bunch of courthouses
I guess I know how I’m getting out of jury duty next time
Oh it’s not a good idea to do that. You can easily end up spending the weekend in jail for contempt of court.
DAs are fully aware of juror’s ability to exonerate defendants just because they don’t agree with the law.
It’s unlikely something like this would go to court unless the community has some massive hate-boner for the homeless.
All it takes is 1 person to vote not guilty and all the effort has been wasted getting a conviction.
A lot of places have moved to majority voting for non felonies. And most everywhere will not give you a jury trial unless there’s more than X amount of prison time involved.
A lot of misdemeanors are literally just the defendant, the judge, and the prosecutor, going over the plea deal the prosecutor got the defendant to agree to in a room with just the two of them.
Can you give me more information on this?
I thought accused criminals were entitled to a jury by their peers. I understand that a lot of people may wave their trial by jury, but I don’t know if it’s possible to have that choice taken away from you.
Some states let you decide, I think California is like that. Other states, like Arizona, just will not provide a jury or defense lawyer if they aren’t going to sentence you to enough jail time.
Of course you still have to tell employers, loan agents, and rental housing offices that you were convicted of a crime. So you’re going to lose your job, housing, and credit. But they say it’s constitutional because you’re not going to jail.
Now let’s talk about debtor’s prison. Because you probably just got a fine from that sham trial. If you can’t pay the fine with no job, no apartment, and no credit, they will arrest you and jail you on contempt of court with no trial.
The unhoused are supposed to die quietly, he got in the way of that.
Some heartless bastard abusing the regulations. I’m sure there are good reasons for those regulations being in place, but if they are going to abuse people like this with them, something is very, very wrong. At the absolute least don’t enforce those laws when the weather is deadly, and best pass a new ordinance suspending those laws/regulations during deadly weather. Too many of us have absolutely zero empathy for our fellow humans.
I’m not sure that those regulations are there for a good reason. I’m sure that those regulations are there because somebody wanted them and this is not an unintended consequence of them.
In fact I’m almost certain that the abusive anti-human use of this law is something dreamed up when the law was first penned to paper.
“not a bug but a feature”
They’re violations of feeding/housing people in a business. There is not a good reason for them. Unless you consider protecting the prices of the housing market to be a good reason.
I hate this god damn country so fucking much.
Don’t lose heart - it’s not all this way.
But yeah, we can’t hold out faith in it any longer either :-(.
Fwiw, did you notice the silver lining? Pastor willing to go to jail (or whatever, I haven’t read the details that closely yet, but let’s presume - anyway it’s likely true) rather than give up on his beliefs. He will die on this hill, so that they do not have to:-D. Yeah, fuck the system that made him do it, but still it’s quite inspiring that people like him exist that will fight against it:-).
It is. It throws me a bit sometimes. So used to seeing religion being nothing more than a tool of the powerful against the weak aligned with the government against us. The government makes our life hell, the shamans teach us that it can’t be otherwise.
And then once in a rate while a religious leader puts themselves in harm’s way for someone else and I don’t know what to make of it. How can you spend 99,999 being awful and 1 day being good? Makes no sense.
Shaman is a good word there - like the ancient Incan and Mayan civilizations, that kept the power of the oligarchy in check by having a… second oligarchy, side-by-side with it. If the king ever didn’t like a priest they could kill them, while if a priest didn’t like the king they could demand a human sacrifice “at random” of their son/daughter - so checks & balances. It is one of those “neat tricks” that evolution uses, to keep the masses in check underneath the authority of a few. And quite frankly it even makes sense - why train every single peasant farmer how to use a sword & read & such, if you can have 1,000 peasants just doing their illiterate thing in the fields, for every one child that you put a TON of effort into being able to do so much more? (or I guess rather, do differently / higher - like learning sword fighting is an enormous investment of training & skill)
That said, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that this preacher guy is probably a genuinely good dude? I mean like 24/7 or at least more than half the day, or at least more than 1/100,000 as you mentioned? Okay I still haven’t even read the article tbh, but religion has no monopoly at all on evil - like the Catholic church isn’t the only entity in the news lately for diddling children, Epstein and others do that just as often if not more so; though crucially, less hypocritically so.
I’m even going to say something a bit unpopular here: 100 years or so from now, there will be dumb atheists. Right now most atheists are “first-generation” in the sense that someone chooses their own views, even if their parents also held identical views. e.g. the vast majority of atheists today know what the word “agnosticism” means, and has made a decision which one they are. But eventually, it will become fashionable, and stupid people will not do the questioning part, and instead just go ahead and say it simply to fit in, b/c it’s what they’ve heard others do (that’s another fantastic “good trick” used extremely often by evolution - it takes a lot less effort to accomplish mimicry than to do the whole entire Real Deal, e.g. a butterfly’s wings that look like another set of eyes).
Anyway, whether the guy believes in God or not, it’s awesome that he helped out the homeless.:-) Even if other Christians might not have done the same - although popular stories lately aside, Jesus Himself was quite adamant that this kind of thing MUST be done, by anyone who would call themselves one of his followers. e.g. Matthew 25:34-40, tldr: “whatever you do to the least person, it’s like you did it directly to me”.
100 years from now? Atheism is its own religion in a way. There isn’t evidence there isn’t a God. That doesn’t mean there is one but also doesn’t mean there isn’t one. The absence of evidence is not the same as evidence. Militant atheists must have faith there isn’t one which makes them far more similar to religious people than they care to admit.
Correct. Logical statements such as “there does not exist ABC” are enormously difficult to prove in the positive sense, so it is the height of hubris to say that e.g. a time-traveler or alien or superpowered individual etc. (or The Matrix, or The Force, I mean the list really can go on for awhile) could never have caused what was said to have happened. Hollywood shows are even full of such events so it’s not even the tiniest bit difficult to contemplate something similar. I can only guess that what is meant is more that “it seems unlikely”, or that “the belief does not look substantiated by current evidence”.
But unlike e.g. Apatheism - “the attitude of apathy toward the existence or non-existence of God(s)” - militant Atheism ultimately comes down a belief, even if not quite a full “religion” due to lack of an organized belief system e.g. common religious rituals (then again, many people do not go to church their entire lives, yet still profess to be a Christian/Muslim/whatever so still somewhat similar), more so than most seem willing to admit.
I found this funny quote somewhere:
If atheism is a religion, then not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Which makes me think that despite calling themselves “atheists”, they are really apatheists wrt all gods everywhere, and only atheist towards the Christian/Jewish/Muslim/Mormon/whatever god that they do not personally like. Except that is most vehemently not what many claim themselves, so how can I reject the very words that come from their own mouths as to what they believe - do I think that they themselves do not even know what they believe, or that they are hypocritical in claiming that they know that which is currently unknowable? Or worst of all, do they in fact know, yet go ahead and redefine that word however they please anyway - b/c apparently words have no meaning except whatever we like, at any given moment in time?
A highly relevant point is that Carl Sagan in particular claimed that he should not be properly called an atheist, for precisely this reason - he earns much respect from me for such a goal towards precision. Therefore, a lot of what “people say about atheists” is not matching what some people commonly thought of as the founders of the modern era of atheists themselves have said - in much the same manner as what “people say about Christ” does not match what He Himself said. People just tend to be sloppy, period, in many matters.
In compassion, most atheists I know were personally harmed by some denomination or another of an organized religion, and so it looks to me like they became militant out of a hatred towards what harmed them. I get that… it doesn’t make them logically correct, but it is understandable. Religious people are still people, and people are fucked up - at least, Jesus says so in Romans 3:10: “There is no one righteous, not even one" (emphasis added).
Because they’re not the same people. Pastors don’t buy themselves a mansion and also open up their home to people in need… You get one or the other. Some of them do it for the authority, but some just want to serve and keep a community healthy.
Look at this pope compared to the last one. The last one was basically a career priest. This one went around, physically, helping poor people.
The last one was pretty conservative and anti-gay, this one is just pro-human
this one is just pro-human
Pope Francis:
Abortion is like hiring a hitman
Might be superficially pro human but anybody who uses such a horrific book for the basis of their religion can’t actually be pro human. They can make their impact less by being decent but they are still a net negative by believing such horrific shit.
This comes off as if you haven’t actually read it. The Bible is more of a collection of old historical tales and legends. Many make sense in the context of the era, when people were generally cruel to each other. Usually it’s God that does horrific shit to unsuspecting people, and indeed he usually doesn’t seem like the kind of God you would follow out of anything but fear. However the book only tells the tales - it doesn’t advocate for its followers to perform cruel acts.
Then you get to the New Testament which mostly encourages cooperation and compassion for your fellow man.
If you want a book that advocates for violence and hatred, the Koran is the one you’re looking for, with passages that explicitly tell the reader what to do, such as
The Hour [resurrection] will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews and the Muslims kill them, and the rock and the tree will say: "Oh, Muslim, servant of God, there is a Jew behind me, kill him!
And do you think he has that stance because he wants control, or because he believes it to be wrong? He also has directed bishops to stay out of politics, and removed one of them when they didn’t stop
I didn’t say he doesn’t have bad takes, but his beliefs and actions are consistent. He’s repeatedly denounced capitalism, raised the alarm on climate change, told the church to accept LGBT people (including directing priests to bless LGBT couples), and generally has told people to not use religion as an excuse for hate
You can criticize him over the abortion issue, but if you can’t see the difference between him and Pope Benedict I don’t know what to tell you
I don’t pretend to be a mind reader. His actions and words are all I can really go by. He has consistently been pro-forced birth.
You can criticize him over the abortion issue, but if you can’t see the difference between him and Pope Benedict I don’t know what to tell you
I can see that they are different humans yes
Eh, it’s really a cultural problem among the people in it.
Anyone who thinks the disparity in wealth should grow instead of shrink is part of the problem.
Greed is something democrats and republicans can routinely unite on because they’re both in on it.
It might be part of the culture, but there is a class of people with substantially more wealth who are able to direct legislation to cause people to be charged like this pastor. The vast majority of people I think anywhere on earth would believe you should help the needy, but the average people don’t have a say like the wealthy class does, and this class has it’s own distinct culture which praises greed and growth.
But I was told democrats and republicans are not the same.
An F-150 and a Prius both need tires. I was not aware this makes them the same vehicle.
It’s the entire world
All it took was a couple opinionated headlines eh?
No it took 41 years of living here and seeing what we are like.
And I’m curious what you’re talking about because clearly you’re not talking about this headline. This is a headline showing cold hard facts about what happened so you must be discussing others?
The site literally has this article classified as an opinion piece. It’s in the URL.
Because the person went into their opinions on the matter. But, glossing over you trying to downplay this because of a tag, please tell me how this is OK based on that tag?
I’m good bro. Sounds like you already made your mind up, based on cold hard facts
In other words you have fuck all to defend this other then a tag on an article.
But hey! Ill even play the part you couldn’t have. ‘The law says no sleeping there! no eating there!’
Those zoning laws are in place to make sure people don’t try to use places like this as a restaurant or as an apartment. They can, of course, be overlooked on a case by case basis, which they always are when its not about daring to help the homeless. According to laws like this pancake dinners in church’s are illegal. Eating the eucharistic is illegal, as, yes, that is serving food. No city is shutting down churches for these things, would never even consider it.
The law is overlooked all the damn time based on whats actually happening. This is not the city having their hand tied by a law and regrettably having to enforce it. This is, obviously, the city not wanting the homeless to be helped which is literally POLICY IN SO MANY PLACES
I appreciate your honesty in introducing a strawman. I won’t be defending your arguments bud lol
If you’re gonna start shit at least defend your ideas or give a glimpse into your thought process before you punk out like a bitch after getting called out lol
As much as I despise religion, the problems of our country are not caused by religion. They are caused by conservatives.
Usually those conservatives are religious and wield their religion as a weapon, but the core problem has always been conservatives.
When a religious person is not conservative, their non-conservative behavior is punished by the conservatives.
While this is true, religion goes a long way in priming people to believe in total BS without questioning it or using critical thinking.
This. By weaving their politics directly into religion, they get to benefit from the inherent suspension of disbelief that religion requires. No amount of proof or evidence will sway a conservative because the blind faith that all proof and evidence is fake is the key point of conservatism.
Not really it’s mostly the “news” poisoning people. In this case Fox “news”.
Our Chinese friends aren’t much into religion and they don’t seem to have much issue buying into the same propaganda.
What are they conserving? Is it class hierarchy and capitalism? We’ll never know…
I understand where you’re coming from, but it’s not an either-or situation. Many conservatives hide behind religion to do heinous things. But there are plenty of religious people who don’t fall into this “conservative” definition and do heinous things as well.
When doing the right thing, or even doing right by your conscience, is a crime… you live in a place and time in which politicians haven’t been tarred or feathered and run out of town on a rail in too long
The “pro-life” party strikes again
I am really confused here. Look where Milwaukee is in relation to Ohio. (For non USians, it’s under the second E in Milwaukee.)
It’s 262 miles from Milwaukee to the Ohio state line by car.
Pastor is in Ohio.Hears reports of people dying in Milwaukee. Pastor offers shelter to people in Ohio. Pastor is charged.
Thank you.
Because he should’ve offered shelter to people in Milwaukee /s
The situation is abhorrent though, some Kafkaesque level of reality
The newspaper is the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. They’re contextualizing it for local readers.
Didn’t read your part for non USians so was searching on the left side of the chart. Still wanted to say thanks though for adding it :p
Can they just charge the other pastors who ‘play’ with little boys?
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You’re an asshole.
You know that, right?
Woah, check your survivorship bias there mate.
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