Michigan

A school district in southern Michigan is stopping a longstanding practice of allowing the Gideons to distribute Bibles in the hallways of its elementary school after a parent complained to the district's superintendent.

Jonesville Community Schools will no longer allow Bibles to be made accessible at a table in Williams Elementary School.

Superintendent Mike Potts told The Christian Post on Tuesday that the district is not taking a stand on whether Bibles are right or wrong but simply following regulations as a government agency. more >>

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development recently dismissed a civil rights complaint that charged a woman seeking a Christian roommate of housing discrimination.

After an investigation, the department determined that there was no reasonable cause for the allegation and that no discriminatory housing practice had occurred.

The complaint was filed in September by the Fair Housing Center of West Michigan after a 31-year-old woman placed an ad on her church bulletin board. The ad stated, in part: "I am looking for a Christian roommate." more >>

An elementary school student in Michigan can distribute invitations to church activities to classmates, a federal court ruled Tuesday.

Judge Gerald E. Rosen of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan concluded that the school infringed on the student's First Amendment right to free speech when it denied him the opportunity to pass out the invitations and flyers.

Applauding the ruling, Alliance Defense Fund Senior Counsel David Cortman commented, "Christians shouldn’t be discriminated against and silenced because of their beliefs. The court made the right decision by acknowledging students’ and community groups’ free speech rights and ruling that the district’s viewpoint-based ban on the distribution of literature with a religious theme is unconstitutional." more >>

A 31-year-old woman who placed an ad for a Christian roommate on her church bulletin board has been charged with housing discrimination.

The Alliance Defense Fund, which is representing the Christian woman, has called the complaint filed by the Fair Housing Center of West Michigan "absurd."

"Christians shouldn’t live in fear of being punished by the government for being Christians," said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Joel Oster in a statement Thursday. "It is completely absurd to try to penalize a single Christian woman for privately seeking a Christian roommate at church – an obviously legal and constitutionally protected activity. more >>

A megachurch in Southeast Michigan is making a lot of people uncomfortable with its new billboard campaign that proclaims that the church is for hypocrites, losers and liars.

But it's the truth, says Pastor Brad Powell of NorthRidge Church, and he wants to communicate that to the wider community.

"As you do ministry, you start realizing there's a false view outside of the church of what the church is – that it's [full of] people who think they're better than anyone else. And there's a false view inside the church of people outside – that they're bad," he said. more >>

The attorney who represented four street preachers accused of breaching the peace at an Arab festival said Monday that he plans to file a civil lawsuit against the city of Dearborn, Mich., following their acquittals last week.

"They (the missionaries) spent the night in jail for doing nothing but attend an Arab festival and dare discuss their faith. That can't happen in the United States," Robert Muise of the Thomas More Law Center said Monday morning on the Detroit-based radio station WJR-AM 760.

“The only way we can totally exonerate them is to get these nonsensical rules,” he added. “They have these Arab festival rules, but we also have the U.S. Constitution, and the Constitution trumps. And that’s what we’re going to assert in our civil lawsuit.” more >>