The Limestone Presbyterian Church in Pike Creek, Del., just got a new roof. And now they’re putting 180 solar panels on it. According to the church:
On sunny days when we are not using much electricity, our church’s electrical meter will go backwards. In the evenings or when it is raining, the meter will move forward when electricity is being used in the building. The 180 solar panels will produce, in an environmentally friendly manner, about two thirds of the electricity that Limestone uses annually.
Bravo. By going solar, the church is drastically cutting its reliance on fossil fuels and its greenhouse emissions. This is a Good Thing. It’s also, we’re coming to realize, probably a Necessary Thing — something that more churches, libraries, businesses, schools and private homes are going to need to do if we hope to substantially address both our growing energy crisis and the effects of climate change.
So why isn’t this being more widely done? Well, it turns out that this good and necessary thing is not an inexpensive thing. Limestone Presbyterian’s solar project is costing about $250,000. That money is an investment, since the church will recoup much of that cost in the years to come through energy savings, but those future savings don’t change the fact that they’ve had to come up with $251,790 up front, which is a lot of money for a medium-sized congregation — or for any library, business, school or homeowner.
Fortunately for Limestone Pres., the state of Delaware has a program that helps to encourage this sort of renewable energy by leveraging investments like this solar conversion. The Delaware Green Energy Program “provides cash incentives for the installation of Renewable Energy Systems.” In Limestone’s case, that involves an “energy alternatives” rebate of $125,895 — half the cost of the project. Between that and a loan from their denomination, the congregation was able to afford this solar conversion.
I believe in the strict separation of church and state and here we have a church, a sectarian entity, receiving almost $126,000 in taxpayer funds. And I approve. More than that, I applaud. How can I explain this seeming contradiction?
The bottom line here is that the state isn’t supporting the church. This isn’t an establishment in which the state is funding religion. The state, rather, is funding solar energy. And solar energy is not sectarian.
The state of Delaware has decided, I think rightly, that providing this kind of funding to support renewable energy is good policy. It doesn’t cease to be good policy just because this particular roof belongs to a church. The standard for this distinction is called the Lemon Test, which takes its name from the 1971 Supreme Court decision in Lemon v. Kurtzman. Wikipedia provides a nice summary of the three-part Lemon Test:
1. The government’s action must have a secular legislative purpose;
2. The government’s action must not have the primary effect of either advancing or inhibiting religion;
3. The government’s action must not result in an “excessive government entanglement” with religion.
The application of that test can be complicated, and in recent decades Lemon has been strengthened and weakened by numerous cases involving Santeria, peyote and, of course, school prayers. But the basic wisdom of this three-pronged test, I believe, still holds. The solar-energy rebate for Limestone Presbyterian Church, it seems to me, easily passes all three parts of this test. The rebate serves a secular/non-sectarian purpose; it does not have the primary effect of advancing or inhibiting religion; and it does not result in an excessive entanglement of church and state.
I hope to have a chance soon to take a closer look at Barack Obama’s proposals regarding state support for faith-based initiatives. When I do so, it will likely be through the lens of the Lemon Test. I don’t want to comment on his plans before having a chance to examine them more closely, but for now I’ll just say that I think it shouldn’t be too difficult to design such a program that could pass the first two parts of the Lemon Test. Whether or not such a program might pass the third part, it seems to me, is a trickier matter.
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