The first church was ELCA, but there are Jewish, Catholic, assorted Protestant denominations involved.
There are four complaints:
The way the law was passed was unconstitutional.
The law requires specific language be posted to ban guns in a church.
The law does not allow churches to keep people from storing their guns in their cars, in church parking lots.
The law states that it is the tenant that has the authority to decide whether to allow or to ban guns, even if a church is the landlord.
The Catholic Charities gripe is that tennents in public subsidized housing can have them and that would endanger the CatholicC folks. I wrote them and that's all they came up with. They spoke in a very condescending way, regarding the folks they were "helping" and everyone else for that matter.
"The way the law was passed was unconstitutional. "
Is this really true?
"The law requires specific language be posted to ban guns in a church."
What's wrong with that? If the state has a right to carry law and someone doesn't want guns on their property, how is anybody supposed to know? On the other hand, why should they have the right to override a state law in the first place?
"The law does not allow churches to keep people from storing their guns in their cars, in church parking lots."
It seems pretty clear what the REAL issue is here. These groups oppose the concealed carry law - period.
What is ELCA??
It is beyond me how these different denominations have the gall to impose the personal prejudices of their hierarchies upon the state when in many cases these prejudices do not reflect the opinions of their congregants. They do it on a whole spectrum of issues - without any substantive Biblical backing and its getting worse.
No wonder these churches are loosing members to more fundamentalist groups.
I am a Methodist and am getting pretty fed up with the tripe I am continually baraged with from official Methodist Publications on these issues. If it weren't for my wife, I'd tell them to take a hike and join some fundamentalist group.