Private property rights? - advice needed to settle a bet

RightFighter

[RightFighter]

I'm just looking for some Freeper advice to help me settle a bet with a friend. Here's the situation:

We go to a church that practices biblical church discipline. The church believes very strongly in this and takes it very seriously, especially in the case of adultery and divorce. Well, recently, we became aware that there is a couple who will soon be getting a divorce. The woman is initiating it, not for infidelity or anything like that, but simply because her husband "doesn't have the same goals" that she does, etc.. Needless to say, she's being asked to leave the church because of this. When a member is expelled like this, church members are told that we are not to fellowship with the expelled member and are simply to pray that they would repent of their sin and return to the body and that we should urge them to do so any time we see them. This is where the argument with my friend comes up.

My friend says that, because the church is regularly open to the public, he doesn't think that it has the right to tell her that she can't come to church there, and that if she wanted to continue to come there, she could do so and the church could do nothing about it.

I say that the church, as a private entity, has every right to tell someone that they are not welcome on the property, and would have the right to have someone arrested for trespassing if they failed to heed such a request.

I would hate for it to ever come to something like that, and I doubt it would, because what church member would WANT to come to a church that doesn't want them there. My friend, however, just doesn't seem to agree with the whole church discipline thing, so he's drawn a line in the sand here with this argument. Who's right??? And can any of you give me any legal case that involved a similar situation that would back it up? Sorry for this whole post, but I tend to a little bit argumentative, and the nature of my relationship with my friend is such that it would be best to clear it up once and for all.

[kkindt]

In Paul's letter to the Corinthians:

1 Cor 5:1-8

There was a man and woman who would not break off their immoral relationship and it is directly related to the same kind of effort of a woman to divorce her husband for unblical reasons.

[AppyPappy]

1It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that does not occur even among pagans: A man has his father's wife. 2And you are proud! Shouldn't you rather have been filled with grief and have put out of your fellowship the man who did this? 3Even though I am not physically present, I am with you in spirit. And I have already passed judgment on the one who did this, just as if I were present. 4When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, 5hand this man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature[1] may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord. 6Your boasting is not good. Don't you know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough? 7Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast--as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 8Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth.

Actually, he was having an affair with his father's wife. No sexual immorality has even been mentioned in this case.