Posted on 07/01/2007 9:31:39 PM PDT by Terriergal
Woman arrested during church service
Pastor calls police after woman ignored notice that she wasn’t welcome anymore
By Jan Bellamy and Robin Boyle
Hillsdale Daily News
An Allen woman is protesting her arrest Sunday for trespassing at Allen Baptist Church.
While the elderly woman is arguing the arrest violates her First Amendment rights, local authorities describe the incident as simple trespassing.
The saga began over the winter when Karolyn Caskey said she received a letter in February, indicating the congregation no longer wanted her to be a member.
Speaking from her home Monday, Caskey said, “I’ve been a member of that church since 1959.”
She was in Florida for the winter when she received the letter.
When she returned to Allen, she went to the church, located on M–49, just south of U.S. 12, to worship.
“Do you have to be a member just to go to church?” Caskey said she asked several church members as she was being handcuffed by a Hillsdale County Sheriff’s deputy Sunday morning.
Sheriff Stan Burchardt says the arrest of the 71–year–old woman is a simple matter of law enforcement: Trespassing is breaking the law.
Burchardt referred to the arresting officer’s report as he related the incidents leading up to Sunday’s arrest.
“The deputy responded to a 9–1–1 dispatch to a call of an ‘unruly person’ at the church,” said Burchardt. “We respond seriously to those types of calls these days, since the shootings like those at Virginia Tech.”
A trooper with the Michigan State Police was also dispatched to the scene. Jonesville Post commander Lt. William Kanouse, said the trooper stood by to assist the sheriff’s deputy if asked to do so but was not otherwise involved.
Burchardt said his deputy tried to avoid making an official arrest.
“The deputy pleaded with Caskey to leave, or he would have to arrest her,” said Burchardt
“She apparently responded, ‘You’ll just have to arrest me’.”
Because she refused an officer’s legal order to leave private property she was trespassing, Burchardt said.Despite Caskey’s difficulty moving due to replacement surgery on hips and knees, she was nevertheless handcuffed and taken out of the church.
Caskey is not the only member to have received a letter from Pastor Jason Burrick and the congregation. Emmit Church, a former deacon at Allen Baptist and friend of Caskey, said he had been attending for about 16 years and was also asked to leave by the new pastor.
“Pastor Burrick was hired about a year–and–a–half ago. We were all just trying to go by the (church) constitution and he started hollering and screaming at us,” Church alleged.
Church said this was Burrick’s first pastorate. The church is independent, not affiliated with any other Baptist association, “so there’s no one else we can go to about this,” Church said.
Church kept his sense of humor in the face of losing his longtime church family, he said.
When he received the letter, he said the pastor had, “dismembered me, I mean, disrobed me,” he laughed.
The arrest report indicates the pastor authorized the report of trespassing and alleged Caskey had interrupted services that morning. The report also alleged she had interrupted services before. Neither Burrick nor Dan Childs — a deacon at the church — both named by Caskey and Church, responded to calls from the Hillsdale Daily News.
Caskey is scheduled to be arraigned June 26 on the charge of trespassing. She said she refuses to plead guilty, and has retained attorney Michelle Bianchi to represent her.
“If you don’t stand up for yourself, we might as well all start wearing burkas,” said Caskey.
For local law enforcement, the issue is one of trespassing, not freedom of speech.
“The fact is, this was private property,” said Burchardt. “And if someone in charge of private property asks you to leave, it is breaking the law not to do so.
“(Caskey) refused to leave when the officer asked her to, and was then breaking the law in front of the officer,” said Burchardt.
“He had no choice but to arrest her and take her to the jail,” he said.
Caskey said she was fingerprinted and shared an uncomfortable iron bench with other arrestees for a while Sunday, Caskey said she was treated courteously by sheriff’s department personnel. Her physical discomfort was mainly in her arthritic wrists, due to the handcuffs, and in her knees and hips, due to the entrance and exit from the rear seat of the deputy’s patrol car.
She made bond the same day, putting down 10 percent allowed on the $500 bond set by the magistrate.
“I paid $62 to get out of jail,” said Caskey. “It’s a good thing I didn’t put that in the collection plate, or I couldn’t have gotten out of jail.”
PING?
Any guesses?
here’s another story on it on someone’s blog:
http://www.thecronline.com/blog/2007/06/church-politics-send-woman-to-jail.html
Sounds like the pastor’s ready to become an Episcopalian bishop ... longstanding rules don’t count for much and congregants less.
http://www.hylesanderson.com/pdfs/family_ties_winter_2005.pdf
This was interesting too:
“Jason Burrick Pastor of the Allen Baptist Church in Allen, Michigan Our graduate, Jason Burrick, became the pastor of the Allen Baptist Church in Allen, Michigan, on September 10, 2005. The church then had a membership of 13 people. The town of Allen has a total population of 220 people with about 70,000 people in the surrounding area. On November 6, 2005, the Allen Baptist Church had 91 in attendance with 25 souls saved for the week. In the nine weeks that Jason Burrick has been the pastor, they have had over 50 visitors and 43 people saved.”
This is the school:
Holy smokes!... check out their “maybe you wouldn’t like” section. These are real legalists!
http://www.hylesanderson.com/about_us/maybe_you_wouldnt_like
““If you don’t stand up for yourself, we might as well all start wearing burkas,” said Caskey.”
What a great statement, we all could learn much from this woman, a 71 yr old gets what 5 members of the Supreme Court doesn’t, what the leeches on Capital Hill cannot comprehend, and what the majority of the media cannot grasp and what weak kneed Christians, the worst offenders, will not bring themselves to do, stand up for yourself, or wear a burkha.
This Pastor is a cowardly moron IMO, a letter to a member who has been there 40+ years? Shame on that man.
Isn’t she someone we’d all love to meet! As opposed to, say, the pastor. A little carried away with his new-found importance, it appears. Imagine any new pastor, 1.5 years on his first job, kicking out a 48 year member and others, and then having her arrested for attending church. If I were the woman’s lawyer, the first thing I’d look into are the church’s books and tax-exempt status.
If you followed the links above to his alma mater, you may find some contradictions. In one they show students going to Chicago for Christmas celebrations, including dancing at the Navy Pier; in the next they say dancing is strictly prohibited. Place sounds as mixed up as the pastor.
Hope Allen Baptist dumps this character real fast.
They sound almost like a parody.
I know where Allen is, having gone to college not far from there.
This is simple silliness. While they may belegally correst that once teh people are asked to leave they’re trespassing, why would they throw her out and not allow her to worship there?
I would suggest that the woman get a ride into teh county seat and try the church there.
WHY???
Was she wearing white shoes before Easter????
Yeah but would an episcopalian bishop actually kick someone out?
I know, I had to double check too. Sad huh?
Because she protested how the pastor was changing things.
I guess...
It seems you hear these kinds of stories more and more lately! with anywhere from "there's the door if you don't like it" to formal arrests of people who just want to attend church.
ha! Maybe her skirt was above the ankle. (check out the ‘what you may not like’ link for the Christian college the pastor attended/graduated from)
that’s shameful -
she’s obviously feisty to go after receiving the letter. But it’s shameful that she was arrested.
Arresting an elderly lady like that is shameful. At the Catholic Church, we may deny someone Communion, but we would never toss them out of church if they were sitting there praying during mass. While I’m quite conservative, their college rules are too much. The kids that go there have to be very devout in order to attend. I’m surprised they find kids willing to attend. Although, I reckon they’ll probably be good, productive members of society.
Be interesting to know if the pastor has turned the church into a feel-good entertainment center
It sounds like this new pastor found the same types and booted their rear ends out of their. GOOD FOR HIM!
>>91 in attendance with 25 souls saved for the week. In the nine weeks that Jason Burrick has been the pastor, they have had over 50 visitors and 43 people saved.<<
King David, in his pride, ordered a census be taken so he could see how great his numbers were. God punished him sharply for his pride and arrogance.
I always look at “numbers driven churches” in the same light. Their numbers reports read like a corporate business review or shareholders meeting.
This, I suppose, is a natural byproduct of what happens when you run your church like a marketing firm.
I’d say that 9 weeks is far too short a time to determine if 43 people were actually saved, or just getting themselves whipped up into emotional hysterics and thinking that equates to salvation. Jonathan Edwards used to wait months before accepting members - he wanted to see if their lives bore any actual FRUIT from their professed belief.
Their statement of faith appears to be more worldly and legalistic than having even a glimmering of understanding of faith.
Since only God the Holy Spirit regenerates the human spirit and not the volition of arrogant thinkers such as that who think they are the ones converting souls, their claims of success IMHO merely make them low.
From their website:
OUR EMPHASIS ON THE PRACTICAL We blend the finest of scholarship with the best practical teaching possible. We teach not only what to do but how to do it. Preacher boys are taught how to start churches; how to build buildings; how to borrow money from lending institutions; how to raise money and adopt a budget; and how to organize, operate, and perpetuate a New Testament church.
"Preacher boys"????
IMHO, it reads to me as closer to a school for scandal and how to target small extablished churches to harvest their worldly value, without any clue of the ministry of the Holy Spirit. IMHO, unstable ground to work from.
It’s dangerous to have the pastor controling the finances and the governance of the church. This is not the scriptural model. Most serious pastors are glad to hand off the administration tasks to elders; after all that’s what the different gifts are for.
Are you sure? I recall a Catholic church a few years ago that had a similar problem - the woman was praying in a loud voice, disrupting the service.
Interesting case. Have to know more about the contractual basis between the pastor and congregants. Is there any written contract, any long-established policy?
Here you go. Catholics DO ban disruptive pray-ers. Found it in a Google cache:
NATIONAL DESK
Times Select Content 2 Accused of Disrupting Church Attend Easter Services Quietly
Two rosary-chanting women whose loud praying led to their being barred from two churches and charged with trespassing attended services at a third church on Saturday night and again this morning without making noise. Joan Sudwoj, 43, and Cynthia Balconi, 60, turned up for Easter services at Visitation Roman Catholic Church in Mount Pleasant, about 20 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:7CNd-2a2is4J:topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/r/roman_catholic_church/index.html%3Foffset%3D10%26query%3DPRAYERS%2520AND%2520PRAYER%2520BOOKS%26field%3Ddes%26match%3Dexact+catholic+loudly+praying+woman&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=10&gl=us&client=firefox-a
Search was catholic loudly praying woman
“If you don’t stand up for yourself, we might as well all start wearing burkas,” said Caskey.
I like this lady! Sorry that she's been treated so badly. Having someone arrested for attending a worship service seems to me to be about the most unChristian thing anyone can do. This 'pastor' needs to give up his day job...he's seriously missed his calling.
The operative part here seems to be the "loud disturbance" issue ... now, if we can only get the "minister of music" ejected for creating a "loud disturbance" we'll be getting somewhere. ;'}
We had to eject a crazy guy a few weeks ago. Got the plainclothes cop to do it.
From a little Googling, it sounds as though these two women were being disruptive on a regular basis (something on the order of years) before attempts were made to force them to stop. It’s a bit more like the “crazy guy” you’re talking about in post 29 than like this poor woman who was arrested simply because the pastor is a hardliner and he and his new flock didn’t like her.
i’m sure she would be welcomed into the RCIA class at the local Catholic Church, too!
Oh, my.
The people are the church. The church is not the building. The church is not the Trustees. The church is not the minister. The church is the members, the congregation. Without them, you hve nothing.
Interesting article! How absurd. The pastor has some real control issues. Just read City on a Hill by Philip Ryken which is an excellent book looking at church polity. The mp3 by Bob DeWaay and Dick Kuffel (Critical Issues Commentary) also deals with this issue of uncritically supporting the pastor. It’s 27 minutes long and it is excellent on “Need for Elders who Guard the Flock.”
There is such a thing as going too far! This whole line you quoted strikes me as very prideful.
Ooh, sounds good! I always forget to look at those because the one on OnePlace is different than the one on podcast. Both are always good too. I am so thankful for Bob, Brian, and Dick producing such good teaching by the grace of God.
I’d almost agree 100% with your statement, however, there is that chance that she is suffering from mental defect. Still no reason whatsoever to have her arrested and I admire her greatly for standing up for herself. How dare man decide who gets to worship God.
Odd,I always thought the calling of pastor was to minister to the community,to preach the Good News,and encourage people to be better.Now I find it is about bossing people around.
The only people Jesus is said to have thrown out of the temple were the moneychangers ;he ministered to a prostitute,a Roman soldier and other undesireable persons.
What Was He thinking?
So, you know better than God, who is worthy of communion? Why do you get to choose who is worthy?
I guess unlike my church no newbie Christians need apply for membership there. They must already be saints prior to joining.
Don't be a smartass, it's not becoming. He took over as pastor.
Odd,I always thought the calling of pastor was to minister to the community,to preach the Good News,and encourage people to be better.Now I find it is about bossing people around.
Once again, being a smart ass. If the church members don't submit to the authority of the pastor and cause dissension and strife, they've got to go. PERIOD!
What Was He thinking?
The only thing that's odd is how you wonder what was he thinking but then ignore what his two disciples, Peter and Paul said related to church order and discipline.
What kind of a church does this? I mean, if she was dancing naked in the aisles or given to inappropriate outbursts, I could maybe understand it, but from the story, it sounds like this church serves a god other than the God of the Bible.
Name calling,how nice.But I'd rather be called a smartass than a dumbass.And even if I am an ass,an ass was good enough to carry Him into Jerusalem.
And please do not use potty language on the Religion Forum.
So this is acceptable?
This sorta reminds me of Free Republic
But the potty language is not appropriate for the Religion Forum. So knock it off.
It's right here in black and white.
But I'd rather be called a sm*** than a dumb***
That’s a good point. I guess I should have said praying quietly. If one was praying out loud in such a manner that it was disrupting mass or acting in a way that was disrupting mass, the priest would probably ask him/her to pray silently so others around him/her could pray.
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