![\"SpringBreakers\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/52\/2015\/03\/SpringBreakers-202x300.jpg\")
<\/a>Since ATMs and a banner promoting \u201ciDrink\u201d appeared out front of The Life Center, the Bay County Sheriff\u2019s Office and Panama City Beach Police Department investigators have began taking a closer look at the church. Owned by Markus Q. Bishop, former pastor of Faith Christian Family Church, officials said the club has been engaging in activities unbefitting of a church. \u2026<\/p>\nClub Amnesia has shut down its website. However, when the website was available, it boasted a Sunday night event called \u201cSlumber,\u201d a pajama and lingerie party hosted by \u201cthe sexiest ladies on the beach.\u201d Raves take place weekly along with an \u201cAnything But Clothes\u201d paint party. And Wednesday nights are reserved for an event called \u201cWet n Wild,\u201d a water-themed event where \u201cwhite water meets Tabernacle PCB with a little twerkin\u2019,\u201d the website stated.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been in a lot of nightclubs and I\u2019ve been in a lot of churches,\u201d said PCBPD Chief Drew Whitman. \u201cThat isn\u2019t a church.\u201d<\/p>\n
Patrons are charged $20 at the door, which is called a donation. And T-shirts depicting stick figures performing oral sex on one another and the text \u201cI hate being sober\u201d adorn the walls.<\/p>\n
Whitman and McKeithen said it is not the nature of the events that has piqued their attention. Several similar events are hosted at clubs just east of Club Amnesia. However, the business does not have alcohol permits or appropriate licenses, is zoned as a church and has been tax-exempt as a church for years, McKeithen said.<\/p>\n
Property Appraiser Dan Sowell sided with law enforcement. He said the lot had been tax exempt as a church until word spread about the activities being held within. The property\u2019s tax-exempt status was changed Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n
\u201cA bottle club, charging $20 at the door and selling obscene T-shirts is not being used as a church,\u201d Sowell said. \u201cA God-fearing, God-honoring church in January does not sponsor this type of debauchery in March.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I\u2019m inclined to agree with the police chief\u2019s conclusion: \u201cThat isn\u2019t a church.\u201d This certainly appears to be what he and other local officials have concluded \u2014 an attempt to exploit the tax-status of a church while operating as a club geared to attract partying spring breakers.<\/p>\n
But local officials \u2014 police departments, appraisers, liquor boards and the like \u2014 are obligated to be cautious and deferential whenever their roles require them to make a determination about whether something is or is not \u201ca church.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s part of the reasoning behind the unanimous 2012 Supreme Court decision in Hosanna-Tabor<\/em>. That case involved the ministerial exemption from employment discrimination laws. More specifically, it involved the question of who has standing to determine what constitutes a \u201cminister.\u201d The court ruled 9-0 that this designation is not their business.<\/p>\nThat reasoning has been at work in several subsequent cases \u2014 including the Hobby Lobby<\/em> decision, which extended religious exemptions even to some for-profit companies. There\u2019s a commendable impulse there and a credible principle at work. The courts do not want to be put in the position of church councils. They do not want to be asked to adjudicate between legitimate and illegitimate religious claims.<\/p>\nFrom Hosanna-Tabor<\/em> to Hobby Lobby,<\/em> in other words, the Supreme Court has shown a decided unwillingness to ever say the sort of thing\u00a0Chief Whitman says: \u201cThis isn\u2019t a church.\u201d<\/p>\nAgain, I think Whitman is probably<\/em> right in the case of the dubious Markus Bishop and his \u201cLife Center Church.\u201d But what objective or legal basis do we have for determining that?<\/p>\nIt\u2019s also possible that Bishop has founded a new church that embraces ecstatic forms of worship including \u2014 and requiring<\/em> \u2014 body paint, lingerie parties, \u201cand a little twerkin\u2019.\u201d As some folks smartly noted in comments here, there\u2019s plenty of historical precedent for such forms of religion and worship.<\/p>\nAnd who is to say that Bishop\u2019s new religion mustn\u2019t also include slot machines, table games, smoking indoors, all-nude dancers, and the sacraments of ecstasy and marijuana? If he\u2019s sincere in his religious beliefs, why shouldn\u2019t his sincerity be just as legally determinative\u00a0as the sincerity of the owners of Hobby Lobby?<\/p>\n
Actually, that understates<\/em> the case. The Hobby Lobby ruling didn\u2019t require the company to be<\/em> sincere, only to claim<\/em> that it was sincere. The court did not wish to entangle itself in distinguishing sincerity from insincerity any more than it wanted to entangle itself in distinguishing legitimate religion from illegitimate religion.<\/p>\nThe Rev. Markus Bishop may be a lecherous huckster, but if his lechery and hucksterism were sincerely religious,<\/em> then the Supreme Court would disagree with Chief Whitman. \u201cClub Amnesia\u201d would still be a church.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I’m inclined to agree with the police chief’s conclusion: “That isn’t a church.” This certainly appears to be what he and other local officials have concluded — an attempt to exploit the tax-status of a church while operating as a club geared to attract partying spring breakers. But it’s also possible that Bishop has founded a new church that embraces ecstatic forms of worship including — and requiring — body paint, lingerie parties, “and a little twerkin’.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-27382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-church-state"],"yoast_head":"\n
Religious liberty and naked beach parties<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I'm inclined to agree with the police chief's conclusion: "That isn't a church." This certainly appears to be what he and other local officials have concluded -- an attempt to exploit the tax-status of a church while operating as a club geared to attract partying spring breakers. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Religious liberty and naked beach parties","description":"I'm inclined to agree with the police chief's conclusion: \"That isn't a church.\" This certainly appears to be what he and other local officials have concluded -- an attempt to exploit the tax-status of a church while operating as a club geared to attract partying spring breakers. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27382\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}