An Untold Story from the City of New London

When most politically-minded people hear the city New London mentioned, the infamous Kelo v. City of New London case probably comes to mind.  The Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision decided that it was constitutional for government to claim private residential property for economic development.  New London is my hometown.

Truth be told, I was only marginally aware of the developing situation.  I read about it in the paper and heard some locals discussing it.  Some friends of my parents actually had property in the area and sold it to the developers before Kelo and a few others made national news for holding out.

But there was another situation that happened in New London that was far more personal to my family.  You won’t find it in any newspaper clipping or archived local news broadcast.  It’s a story that, as I got older and did more research on the issue, I found out that we were not alone in an unconstitutional abuse of power.

Just around the turn of the 1990s my father started an Assemblies of God church in the coastal city of New London, CT.  The city is, as most New England cities are, full of rich early American history, intersecting with historical giants like Nathan Hale, George Washington, Benedict Arnold, Marquis de Lafayette, John Winthrop Jr.  Later the city would become one of the major whaling capitols of the world and home to one of America’s most famous playwrights, Eugene O’Neil.  Today, each year you can enjoy a world class Grucci fireworks show the week after July 4^th and every decade or so Opsail brings a parade of tall ships into the harbor.

When my family moved there in the late 1980s it was already well past its prime.  The population stayed fairly stable, around 25,000.  The strength of New London became its cultural diversity where African Americans, Hispanics (mostly Puerto Ricans with strong connections to New York City) and Caucasians lived side-by-side.  I still consider it one of the greatest privileges to have attended a high school where the races were equally divided about one-third, one-third, and one-third.

As with any city, though, there were issues.  Crime was often higher than it should have been.  The education system struggled to employ competent administrators and teachers, from the top down – a problem experienced by many urban schools.  Property taxes were uncharacteristically high.  But worst of all, the city was mostly devoid of competent political leadership that exercised a wide-range of authority.  We found this out the hard way.

My father’s church began in living room of our downstairs apartment.  After gaining a few core families from a weekly Bible study, it was decided to move the church into a real building.  My parents found office space on the second floor of Bank St. and there we began to have regular services.  As you might expect, having a church on the second floor of an office building was a difficult task.  The biggest difficulty was visibility, not to mention that on-street parking was no guarantee.

In the mid 1990s, our church began looking for more visible properties.  After quite a bit of looking, we finally found a place that was suitable for our needs.  The building had been vacant for some time and was on a busy road between New London and neighboring Waterford.  All that was necessary was to get a permit from the Zoning Board.

Easier said than done.

You see, as the city grew further from its heyday, more businesses began to leave.  That meant fewer tax dollars in the local government coffers.  New London became desperate for revenue streams.  One solution to this was prohibiting any new churches in the city.  When our church’s leadership met with the Zoning Board they were told unequivocally “New London has enough churches.”  In short, they would not issue the permit needed to move into more suitable property.

What was a small church of a few dozen members to do?  We weren’t lawyers or experts.  We believed in freedom of religion and wanted a better place to worship.  We didn’t realize that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) of 1993 was passed in part to protect us from these kinds of decisions (later the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 – RLUIPA – would further codify the rights of religious assemblies against unconstitutional zoning decisions).

Sadly, despite more legislation protecting religious assemblies, there are many who face just as arbitrary and just as unconstitutional zoning decisions.  RLUIPA.com has a list of major cases pending and resolved where religious assemblies have been denied their fundamental rights.  Yet, there is hope.  Organizations like American Center for Law and Justice and The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty are leading the charge against these abuses of power.  I cannot reverse the harm that was done to our church, but there are organizations out there today that are making sure it doesn’t happen to any others.