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PASTOR'S REPORT, April 17, 1979
Page 6
a parochial school welcomed the prospect of state aid. The church
related school was willing to meet the state's condition for receiving
the much needed funds which was a subject-to-audit rule. Even though the
church school was willing, the Supreme Court said, "No, this arrangement
will mean excessive entanglement between government and religion." The
Supreme Court ruled that this was unconstitutional and that the state
should not be examining the parochial school's financial records to
determine which expenditures were religious and which were secular.
The judge asked if the members bringing this lawsuit were really trying
to protect their Church. The attorney replied, "Yes, and themselves."
Members have rights of privacy to protect. For example;-there would be
no privacy protection of their correspondence with the Church concerning
spiritual matters if they were exposed to the state's examination and
confiscation of anything they wanted.
Judge Foster denied the taxpayer's request for a preliminary injunction,
indicating that he did not want to interfere in court proceedings of
another department. He felt that the Church had not stressed this matter
in its own proceedings thus far and indicated that is where he would like
to see it addressed. It is yet to be determined by the taxpayer's attorney
just what further action can and should be taken regarding their original
suit.
ANOTHER CHURCH RAIDED IN CALIFORNIA
Another church in Southern California was raided by the Attorney General's
office! Thursday morning, April 5th, a search warrant was served on
Morningland Church of the Ascended Christ in Long Beach. State agents,
accompanied by 14 uniformed Long Beach police officers, entered the church
and began going through its financial records, seizing any and all that
they chose. The original allegation by the State was that the Church had
made an "illegal political contribution," and so they were looking for
the evidence to support this claim.
Meanwhile, the same day across town, other state investigators literally
ransacked the offices of the attorney who represented this church,
as well as another church (Faith Center which operates channel 30). The
Attorney General had been investigating Faith Center before he descended
on The Worldwide Church, but had been thwarted by a "No, no, we won't
show" resistance to his office's unconstitutional gestapo-type attempt
to review their records.
In the raided attorney's offices were the private files of over one
thousand clients. Because the attorney made a quick call and got camera
and sound crews over to his offices, he has over seven hours worth of
documented proof showing the Attorney General's men opening, and even
in some cases taking, papers from the files of some of these clients
whose cases are outside the stated purpose of the investigation. This
clearly violated attorney-client confidentiality, as well as the rights
to privacy of over 1000 heretofore uninvolved citizens of California -
and by the highest law officer of the state!
After the raids a spokesman for Attorney General George Deukmejian stated
that the searches of the law offices were being conducted in the inves
tigation of a church. "We're examining the financial records of Morning
land /Morningland Church of the Ascended Christ/ and I've been told,"
he said, "we're a long way from filing charges-:-" Obviously they were on
a "fishing expedition" under the color of state authority.