Assemblies of God vs. Christianity, Part 4
(see entire series)
UPDATE: Case is scheduled to come before the Michigan Court of Appeals on Wed, Jun 3, 2009.
BACKGROUND: The Assemblies of God, Michigan District has sued a small church for its property of 25 years, despite never having contributed a dime for the property’s purchase or upkeep. Why? Because the church decided to break its ties with the AOG fellowship of churches. In its legal briefs, the AOG Michigan District claims the AOG is hierarchical, and therefore the local church forfeits all its rights after voluntarily joining the AOG. The church disagrees. The legal battle was originally won by the church, but the AOG Michigan District appealed to Michigan Court of Appeals. The Appeals Court sent the case back down for a determination of whether AOG is hierarchical. The local judge ignored the facts and made a decision in favor of AOG Michigan District (probably based on his own church affiliation, which is hierarchical). The church appealed. Now their day in court is scheduled for June 2009.
Update July 9 2009: In restrospect, the entire thing appears to have been rigged. A cat and mouse game played not only by the Assemblies of God, but the Michigan Court of Apeals. The case lawyers representing the Assemblies of God didn’t even attend the Michigan Court of Appeals oral arguments, after they had gone to the trouble to reserve the opportunity to present oral arguments. Instead, the case lawyers for the Assemblies of God the day before called up another lawyer unfamiliar with the case, and asked if she would argue the case before the Michigan Court of Appeals. We wonder now if the Assemblies of God and their lawyers knew that they already had the case in the bag, so why bother to show up for oral arguments? Another strange thing is that the Appeals Court panel of 3 judges all were cross-examining the Assemblies of God fill-in lawyer, asking tough, pointed questions such as “Who owns the title deed to the property?” (Answer: “Gospel Lighthouse”). The fill-in lawyer had no good answers to the questions being presented by the panel of judges. Conversely, there was no cross-examination of the lawyers representing Gospel Lighthouse. No tough questions. There was no “Facts A, B, and C persuade us toward awarding in favor of the Assemblies of God. What do you have to say that might persuade us otherwise?” Rather, all the tough questions were asked of the Assemblies of God fill-in lawyer. This tone of questioning was misleading, causing us to think the Court of Appeals judges would likely rule in favor of Gospel Lighthouse. Imagine, then, our total surprise when only 2 weeks later the Court of Appeals in no uncertain terms ruled in favor of the Assemblies of God. Keep in mind that these decisions usually take over 2 months from the time of oral argument. It is therefore apparent that the Court of Appeals judges had a pretty good idea during the oral arguments that they were going to rule for the Assemblies of God during the oral arguments, but instead played their questions to make it look like they were leaning the opposite direction. How misleading! What a shame! We can’t even trust the Michigan Court of Appeals judges to be straightforward.
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