As the war over religious freedom roils within the halls of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops to the West Wing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (See Scott St. Clair’s post below), there’s another front on the war on Christianity.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, himself a supporter of the victory mosque at ground zero, has determined that public schools should not lease space to churches on the weekends.

As this opinion piece by a New York Pastor points up,

The city, relying on a federal court ruling that the Supreme Court chose to let stand, says it’s within its rights to do this.

What they’re not saying is that neither does the ruling or the Constitution require the city to evict congregations like ours.

This is nothing less than bigotry against Christianity for the sake of bigotry.

The mayor argues that when the city allows churches to use school buildings for worship services on weekends, it confuses communities and children into believing that there’s an official religion established at a particular school. Currently, the Department of Education rents vacant school buildings to 10,000 community organizations, only 60 of which are congregations. We pay the same rents and operate under the same terms as every other group.