If they get away with this in Texas, other states will be next. PJ
 

IMPORTANT RELIGIOUS FREEDOM NEWS FLASH!!!

STATE ACTUALLY SEEKS TO REGULATE THE TRAINING OF CLERGY

The free exercise of religion has been under attack in

Texas.  The issue is state control over Texas seminaries.

Most states do not regualte the training of clergy.  However the State of Texas has claimed the right to control seminary course content and determine which seminaries can issue theological degrees.

In 1998 the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board hit

Tyndale Theological Seminary in Fort Worth (http://www,tyndale.edu) with a $173,000 fine. With no warning, the seminary was given notice that it would be fined as punishment for issuing theological degrees

without a certificate of authority from the state.

Tyndale filed suite and Hispanic Bible Institute and the

Southern Bible Institute joined the suit.  The Liberty Legal

Institute (http://www.libertylegal.org) has taken on the case.

No long after this Beit Netzarim Yeshiva was contacted by

the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.  We were also

informed that offering "degrees" without state authorization

was illegal and we were directed to immediately stop

offering anything called a "degree".  We immediately

complied with the law (which we had been unaware of).  We

checked with an attorney and learned that the law was

already being challenged as unconstitional.

The Tyndale case has since worked its way up to the Texas Supreme Court which is currently hearing the case.  The free exercise of religion in Texas weighs in the balance.

In the mean time the Texas Legislature has moved on its own to deregulate Texas Seminaries without the courts. In June of 2003 the
78th Texas Legislature passed Senate Bill 1652 which requires that the Interim Committee on Higher education's recommendations include a plan for deregulating seminaries and similar institutions offering exclusively religious education or training.  However this plan has not  been put into effect and there is no gurantee that it will be.

"This is an historic case and one of the most important church-state cases to ever come before the Texas Supreme Court," said Kelly Shackelford, chief council for Liberty Legal Institute.  "The outcome will forever determine the way the future leaders of our churches are trained. If the state controls the religious training and education of church leaders, it is able to control all of our churches and religious organizations,".
 

One of the largest Seminaries in the world, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (SWBTS) in Fort Worth (which is fully acredited) has sided with Tyndale and religious freedom.  The SWBTS says in court documents that the state has no right to regulate the granting of degrees by seminaries and religious schools.

This case may ultimately go before the U.S. Supreme court.

Beware, the religious freedoms we have so long cherished are being challenged and taken away.

James Trimm