Posted on 02/10/2018 10:37:21 PM PST by TBP
Tucked away in Michigans Lower Peninsula, somewhere along the winding roads that hug Great Lakes shores, is an idyllic town named Bay View. For more than a century, generations of Bay Viewers have congregated here to share in summer activities.
What started out as a modest camping ground for Methodist families 140 years ago has quietly developed into a stunning vacation spot for people who can afford the upkeep of a second home. Streets named Moss, Fern and Maple are dotted with impeccably maintained century-old gingerbread cottages. Over the horizon, residents can watch lifelong friends sail their boats across the water.
But this paradise is not open to all.
In Bay View, only practicing Christians are allowed to buy houses, or even inherit them.
Prospective homeowners, according to a bylaw introduced in 1947 and strengthened in 1986, are required to produce evidence of their faith by providing among other things a letter from a Christian minister testifying to their active participation in a church.
Last summer, a dozen current and former resident members filed a federal lawsuit against the town, its ruling Bay View Association and a real estate company, claiming the Christian litmus test was illegal and unconstitutional.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
The Great Auditorium? Yes, it is beautiful. I don’t think there was a suit about non-Christians “buying”. I think it was that gate matter. The gate is still at the entrance but it is now permanently opened.
The multichoir concert and the organ are a extraordinary experience.
It is next to Petoskey, Michigan....a very wealthy area of seasonal homes.
I have no problem with this.
Liberals will never admit that society runs better when it is more, not less, homogeneous. No, they want everyone to speak different languages, for women to share bathrooms with men who dress as women, for Christians to live with Muslims, for Hutus to live with Tutsis, thinking everyone will benefit somehow from the diversity. They just don’t understand the reality of human nature, among many other things.
Yes, everything about the auditorium is wonderful. They also have superb preachers on Sunday. Very different from my own tradition.
Many Methodist camps dotted NJ, but they are fading into irrelevance.
The denomination refuses to enforce its own discipline.
Private property is private.
I haven’t locked the doors to my home in over 2 years. It’s a nice feeling.
The ordinary members of the Methodist Church in OG are very conservative - unlike the leadership. I remember them going ape when it was decided that the auditorium’s huge electric flag could no longer be lit on Sunday because it might offend “visitors from other countries”!! I don’t know if they reneged on that outrageous idea since the only foreigners I met there were looking for Asbury Park.
All summer long there, they have bible classes held outside and then a big meet up in August. It truly is a heavenly place. When we moved there, we bought cheap, because of the huge homeless population there. That’s long gone.
If you sift through the comments on the article, you will see that several residents of that state are calling the piece total garbage. Apparently, all types of mistakes in it which is why The Guardian is referred to as The Graudiad (because of its constant typos).
Simple. Muslems dont believe Jesus Christ as humanities savior.
“They” can come in when I get an engraved invitation to Mecca.
Some still reside in tents ....
I have been to Bay View. It is NOT a ‘town’. It’s a tiny community, a sub-division, if you will, within the city of Petoskey, Michigan. The houses are tiny, quaint, and reminiscent of living a century ago. Everything in it is closed up, and shut down all winter, and most of the fall and spring, too, for that matter. It is more like a closed religious community than a city. Except that it has no fences or gates. To enter it, you simply drive, or walk, in. The people are happy to see you, and often smile and say Hi!. No one asks for your certificate of religion.
He probably left any offspring who left the faith off his will, too.
Hi Gigster. Snowing in Gaylord today. Hope things are going well with you.
Wow. I didn’t realize what it was.
You have to know people who own there. I do and was invited if I wanted to buy there.
It is beautiful.
Not my thing though.
Yes, in summertime. They’re beautiful tents.
Need more communities like this.
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