TRI In The News
Saving Winchester
9/9/2011
TRI IN THE NEWS: SAVING WINCHESTER
From Fredericksburg.com
Original article available here.
Back in the 1760s, when Anglicanism was the established faith in Colonial Virginia, some Baptist preachers found themselves in the clink for publicly evangelizing. Today the dominant religion of many cities is tourism dollars, so in Winchester, the police forbade street preacher Michael Marcavage from proclaiming the Gospel via hand mike during the 2010 Apple Blossom Festival. But there have been a few changes in Virginia during the last 250 years, e.g., the U.S. Constitution.
Spurred by a First Amendment suit filed by the Rutherford Institute, Winchester has agreed to pay Mr. Marcavage $2,500 in damages. Also, the city will revise its noise ordinance, which makes a single listener's annoyance at "unnecessary" sounds the criterion by which police can muzzle speech--a standard that could turn that fair city into a silent movie set.
Nor did Winchester seize the moral high ground when it dispatched plainclothesmen to film the sidewalk sermons. Maybe the city mistook the Book of Revelation for a terrorism threat.
We don't know how many souls the Rev. Mr. Marcavage won, but he "saved" the citizens of Winchester--from a law only a king could love.
