Praise the Lord! Just do it quietly. That's basically what the City of Oakland California said to the Pleasant Grove Baptist Church. The City sent the Church a letter threatening a $3,529 initial fine, and penalties of $500 a day, until it stops the noise. The so-called noise is the once a week rehearsals of the Church's Gospel Choir.
The letter says the City has gotten complaints about “excessive noise” of organ, drums and amplified vocals during the church’s weekly choir rehearsals "[This] activity may constitute a public nuisance due to its impact to the use and quiet enjoyment of the surrounding community’s property,” the letter states in part.
Pastor Thomas A. Harris III of the Pleasant Grove Baptist Church said, "This is strange,” adding that it’s “quite unheard of for a church to be fined because of joyful noise.”
“If you come around a nursery, you’re going to hear babies crying,” he continued. “If you come around a church, you’re going to hear noise.”
The problem, according to a copy of the complaint to the city, is that the loud music goes on sometimes until 2 a.m. The copy of the complaint was sent to the local NAACP head, George Holland, but excluded the name of the person who complained, self-described as an 11-year resident of West Oakland who had never had problems with the church noise until 2014.
Harris said the choir practice ends at 9 p.m. He also said he didn’t know which of his neighbors complained but assumed the person must be a newcomer to the area.
Others say the complaint has nothing to do with music:
Lawrence Van Hook, the senior pastor at Community Church, sees the larger trend — black Oakland is being gentrified, and quickly, and without respect to its traditions and culture. “We’re being bought out," he says. "We’re being moved out. We are being priced out of our own neighborhood."
George Holland, president of the Oakland branch of the NAACP, says that “Those persons who are just new arrivals should not come and try to change the culture that existed before they arrived here... We cannot have people come attack churches about music.”
"Kind of hard to believe because we’ve been here about 65 years in the community and all of a sudden we get some concerns about the noise,” said Thomas A Harris III who is the pastor of Pleasant Grove.
The Beckett Fund For Religious Liberty has joined the fight and is giving legal help to the Church.
The Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty filed a Public Records Act request to ensure that the city isn’t unfairly targeting the Church. The Beckett Fund calls on the city to withdraw its threat and to proceed in a manner that respects the rights of the Church.
“Don’t the enforcement bureaucrats in Oakland have better things to do than to sic the police on a church choir?” stated Daniel Blomberg, Legal Counsel at the Beckett Fund. “This church contributes to a community that is already suffering enough. This kind of government overreach is precisely why we need strong religious liberty protections for minority groups.”
(...) The Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty strongly condemns this kind of heavy-handed censorship, and is very concerned that this may be unfairly discriminatory. Some commentators have already raised concerns that this may be an example of punishing “singing while black.” Given the typical noise of a city—from airplanes to trucks to motorcycles—it’s beyond strange to single out a church’s vibrant singing for silencing.
I would imagine if one took a poll asking the citizens of Oakland whether they would prefer to hear people of faith sing praise to their God, or the speeches and rhetoric at an Oakland city council meeting, the Pleasant Grove Baptist Church would win by a very large margin.