{"id":4532,"date":"2011-08-08T12:48:06","date_gmt":"2011-08-08T16:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/?p=4532"},"modified":"2011-08-06T22:30:15","modified_gmt":"2011-08-07T02:30:15","slug":"usa-today-critics-of-portable-churches-say-schools-shouldnt-rent-to-christians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/usa-today-critics-of-portable-churches-say-schools-shouldnt-rent-to-christians","title":{"rendered":"USA Today: Critics of &#8220;portable churches&#8221; say schools shouldn&#8217;t rent to Christians"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Every Sunday morning,\u00a0P.S. 144\u00a0elementary school in Queens, like dozens more schools in New York City and thousands more nationwide, is transformed into a house of worship for a few hours.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s no tally of how many churches, synagogues and mosques convert public school spaces into prayer places for the nominal cost of permits and promises to make no permanent changes in the school setting. What&#8217;s clear is that there has been a steady rise in numbers as congregations find schools are available, affordable and accessible to families they want to reach.<\/p>\n<p>Critics, including some courts, are concerned that these arrangements are an unconstitutional entanglement of church and state. They say these bargain permits effectively subsidize religious congregations who would have to pay steeply higher prices on the open market. They also note that the practice appears to favor Christian groups, which worship on Sundays \u2014 when school spaces are most often available.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/news\/religion\/2011-07-18-portable-churches-worship-schools_n.htm\" target=\"_blank\">CLICK HERE to read more<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every Sunday morning,\u00a0P.S. 144\u00a0elementary school in Queens, like dozens more schools in New York City and thousands more nationwide, is transformed into a house of worship for a few hours. There&#8217;s no tally of how many churches, synagogues and mosques convert public school spaces into prayer places for the nominal cost of permits and promises&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":270,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[2201,1170],"class_list":["post-4532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-news","tag-portable-churches"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>USA Today: Critics of &quot;portable churches&quot; say schools shouldn&#039;t rent to Christians<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/usa-today-critics-of-portable-churches-say-schools-shouldnt-rent-to-christians\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"USA Today: Critics of &quot;portable churches&quot; say schools shouldn&#039;t rent to Christians\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Every Sunday morning,\u00a0P.S. 144\u00a0elementary school in Queens, like dozens more schools in New York City and thousands more nationwide, is transformed into a house of worship for a few hours. There&#8217;s no tally of how many churches, synagogues and mosques convert public school spaces into prayer places for the nominal cost of permits and promises&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/usa-today-critics-of-portable-churches-say-schools-shouldnt-rent-to-christians\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-08-08T16:48:06+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2011-08-07T02:30:15+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"USA Today: Critics of \"portable churches\" say schools shouldn't rent to Christians","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/usa-today-critics-of-portable-churches-say-schools-shouldnt-rent-to-christians","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"USA Today: Critics of \"portable churches\" say schools shouldn't rent to Christians","og_description":"Every Sunday morning,\u00a0P.S. 144\u00a0elementary school in Queens, like dozens more schools in New York City and thousands more nationwide, is transformed into a house of worship for a few hours. There&#8217;s no tally of how many churches, synagogues and mosques convert public school spaces into prayer places for the nominal cost of permits and promises&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/usa-today-critics-of-portable-churches-say-schools-shouldnt-rent-to-christians","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2011-08-08T16:48:06+00:00","article_modified_time":"2011-08-07T02:30:15+00:00","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/usa-today-critics-of-portable-churches-say-schools-shouldnt-rent-to-christians","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/usa-today-critics-of-portable-churches-say-schools-shouldnt-rent-to-christians","name":"USA Today: Critics of \"portable churches\" say schools shouldn't rent to Christians","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-08-08T16:48:06+00:00","dateModified":"2011-08-07T02:30:15+00:00","author":{"@id":""},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/usa-today-critics-of-portable-churches-say-schools-shouldnt-rent-to-christians#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/usa-today-critics-of-portable-churches-say-schools-shouldnt-rent-to-christians"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/usa-today-critics-of-portable-churches-say-schools-shouldnt-rent-to-christians#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"USA Today: Critics of &#8220;portable churches&#8221; say schools shouldn&#8217;t rent to Christians"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/270"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4532"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5618,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4532\/revisions\/5618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}