ORANGE — An organization dedicated to guaranteeing political distance between religious institutions and the government has not heard from town officials nearly three months after informing them of a complaint alleging special treatment of Mission Covenant Church.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State sent a letter to Town Administrator Matthew Fortier and the Orange Selectboard on March 13 to explain that a resident reported the town has for several years been renting the property at 62 Cheney St. from the church. Orange uses the church full-time for government business under a lease agreement, but tax records indicate the church still claims a property-tax exemption for the building on the basis that it is used for religious purposes. The organization estimates the unpaid taxes for the duration of the town’s use of the building at approximately $57,000.

“We further understand that the town has undertaken several large renovation projects on the building,” the letter states. “While such renovations may be permissible if made in the normal course of the lease, the town must ensure that it is not using taxpayer funds to perform unnecessary renovations for the purpose of enriching a religious institution.”

The letter, signed by Associate Legal Director Alex J. Luchenitser and staff attorney Ian Smith, requested a response within 30 days of receipt. The nonprofit is based in Washington D.C.

Selectboard Chair Tom Smith told the Greenfield Recorder this week that the town’s assessors are examining the matter and working to make a determination. Attempts to contact church officials were unsuccessful. The interim pastor is the Rev. Tracy Spiegel, who the website states came aboard in November 2021 after two years as the associate pastor at Nashua Covenant Church in Nashua, New Hampshire.

The Selectboard voted in October 2021 to move its municipal offices from the Orange Armory at 135 East Main St. to the Cheney Street church property because the former, built in 1913, had fallen into disrepair. The town worked out a lease to operate out of the rectory of the former Bethany Evangelical Lutheran Church, which several years ago gave its facilities to Mission Covenant Church for social and faith-based activities. Town elections are also held at Cheney Street. The church building is still used for religious services and the rectory is physically connected to it.

The letter from Americans United for Separation of Church and State explains that providing special treatment to a religious organization, such as allowing it to take a religious exemption on a building that is not being used for religious purposes, violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Also, the provision of government funds for unnecessary renovations to a church building violates the Massachusetts Constitution’s Anti-Aid Amendment, which, according to the state’s website, is meant “to prevent direct assistance to private or sectarian charitable institutions and to preclude expenditure of public funds or appropriations for them.”

Ian Smith said that his organization sent the letter on behalf of two private citizens. whom he declined to identify, who take issue with the church’s special treatment.

“I just hope that [Orange] will take it seriously. They need to adjust the tax status of the building that is being used and treat the church equally to anybody else,” he said. “You can’t say it’s being used for religious purposes when what it’s being used for is non-religious purposes.”

Ian Smith also said his organization generally has no problem with places of worship being exempt from taxation.

“Churches do a lot of good things,” he said.

Still, the organization’s letter cites Engel v. Vitale, a 1962 landmark case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that school-sponsored prayer in public schools violated the Constitution. The letter states the country’s founding generation knew “from bitter personal experience that one of the greatest dangers to the freedom of the individual to worship in his own way lay in the government’s placing its official stamp of approval upon one particular kind of prayer or one particular form of religious services.”

Americans United for Separation of Church and State also cited two other Supreme Court cases reaffirming that, based on the history of religious conflict in England and the American colonies, “the government may not favor one religion over another, or religion over irreligion.”

“Consequently, the Establishment Clause prohibits giving religious groups special treatment that other groups do not receive,” the letter states.

Ian Smith said his organization is not anti-religion, but merely believes government is best run when church and state are separate.

“You don’t want the government to place their thumb on the scale,” he said, noting the organization consists of some religious members and others who align with its mission for various reasons.

Reach Domenic Poli at: dpoli@recorder.com or
413-930-4120.