MANCHESTER, Conn. — Can religious beliefs be expressed on private property when part of that property is used for doing subcontract work for the government?

That is the substance of a case involving a church that contracted with the U.S. Postal Service to provide convenience for local postal customers.

An appeal in the case, Cooper v. United States Postal Service, was heard March 20 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in Manhattan.

In 2001, religion played no part in the Full Gospel Interdenominational Church in Manchester, Conn., being awarded a Postal Service contract in a storefront they named Sincerely Yours, Inc.

The government awards such contracts rather than take on prohibitive expenses to build and maintain a government-owned property. More than 5,000 privately owned and operated contract postal units (CPUs) can be found in gas stations, grocery stores, and even in seminaries, church schools and a church camp, according to affidavits filed in the case.

“The CPU system itself anticipates the postal counter is going to be present in a facility where other business is to be transacted,” said Jeff Shafer, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund. Yet according to the brief filed in the case, a postal customer named Bertram Cooper felt “uncomfortable” with the religious material at Sincerely Yours.

Cooper contended that the display of church-related materials in the store constitutes a government endorsement of religion that violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

Some displays in the Sincerely Yours facility show pictures of youth at a church picnic and videos of missions helped by the church. There is a mission jar for contributions and a box for prayer petitions and material on the church’s works, such as feeding the hungry.

Shafer described the material as a non-invasive presentation. But in 2007, the U.S. District Court in Connecticut issued an injunction forbidding the presentation of the church’s speech on its own property.

The store doesn’t sell anything. Church official Rev. Salvatore Mancini pointed out that the CPU store that Sincerely Yours replaced did sell religious material.

‘Fusion of Church and State’

Full Gospel Pastor Eleanor Kalinsky explained that when the former contract postal unit on Main Street closed down, “a plea went out for someone to take it on so postal patrons wouldn’t have to drive across town to the post office. The church applied for the contract in order to provide area postal customers with convenience.”

“And we don’t tell people to come to our church,” she said.

On entering, customers see a sign identifying this as a CPU operated by the church. A counter sign with the USPS logo states that the U.S. Postal Service does not endorse the religious viewpoint expressed in the material posted at this CPU.

“The explicit disclaimer from the Postal Service is only one of many indicators that leave no question about whose speech is presented on the property,” said Shafer.

He said the lower court erred in ordering the church to remove its religious material because the First Amendment protects the church’s religious speech on its own property.

“I think this is one instantiation of the broader attack on religious speech found in proximity to government and government symbols,” said Shafer, who has litigated religious liberty cases in federal and state courts across the country.

The Alliance Defense Fund is an alliance of Christian attorneys and organizations working to protect and preserve religious liberty and the sanctity of life, marriage and family.

“There are no government employees on this property,” Shafer explained. “The supposed government ‘presence’ exists exclusively in signs containing the Postal Eagle. That symbolism doesn’t convert a private party’s speech on its own property into that of the government, under any viable legal analysis.”

But Aaron Bayer, head of the appellate practice at Wiggin and Dana in New Haven, Conn., who argued at the court of appeal in conjunction with the Connecticut Civil Liberties Union, said the case is not so much about the church at issue.

“The issue in this case is whether the church in its role as the operator of a U.S. postal unit can simultaneously seek to advance its religious mission to postal customers,” said Bayer.

He said it may be private property but the use is dictated by the terms set by the USPS because that property serves as the local post office for downtown Manchester.

‘Political Correctness Run Amok’

“This comes down to the most basic principle of the separation of church and state,” he said. “There in the CPU you have a fusion of church and state instead of separation of church and state.”

Robert Destro, professor of law and director and founder of the Interdisciplinary Program in Law & Religion at The Catholic University of America, believes the case “is political correctness run amok.”

“If Congress passed a law that any government contractors were not allowed to have a religious symbol in their place of business, courts would strike that down in a nanosecond,” he said. It would be a violation of their constitutional rights.

Furthermore, he added that the judge of the first court attributed the speech to the government (instead of to the private contractor). “That violates every rule in the book,” he said.

Destro, who is co-author of Religious Liberty in a Pluralistic Society, the leading law school textbook on religious liberty, pointed out the federal courts are supposed to protect all people’s rights equally, but the problem is they don’t treat religious liberty the same way as freedom of speech. They’re more afraid somebody is going to be offended.

“Why is being offended by itself a violation of any liberty?” asks Destro. “This whole idea that my rights are offended by what someone says is the antithesis of free speech.”

He sees it as part of a pattern and practice against religion and religious believers through litigation by people who truly believe the public square has to be completely secular.

The lower court had granted a stay to its order to remove the Full Gospel Church’s religious material from the CPU, pending the court of appeals resolution.

But, for Shafer, the problem remains: “At least a segment of the population seems to identify Christian speech as similar to anthrax,” he said, referring to the 2001 anthrax attacks involving post offices. “It’s dangerous if it comes close to government property or symbols.”

Staff writer Joseph Pronechen

is based in Trumbull, Connecticut.