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Friday, November 05, 2010

Church claims it is being evicted because of support for Israel

From TheJC:
A Zionist Christian group says it will take legal action to fight eviction from its premises because it supports Israel.

Father's House, a small church group of 40 people based in the Welsh village of Gwernymynydd, near Mold, says this is the first case of a Christian church being evicted from a public village building because of its beliefs.

In May, the group received an eviction letter from the village centre from which it has run church services for 11 years. The centre gave the group six months to leave and said: "There has also been great concern expressed about the content of your website, and the very controversial views it contains. The Village Centre Committee does not wish to be associated with your views."

The website contains news and editorials about anti-Israel activity.

Father's House pastor Mike Fryer, a former National Crime Squad detective who studied at Yad Vashem in Israel, said the eviction was discriminatory under the Equality Act as it is connected to the group's beliefs. No-one from the Village Centre Management Committee was available for comment, but they have previously said the decision was taken because they wanted to use the church's weekly booking for children's parties and other events.
The church website is liberally decorated with stars of David and menorahs. It is not merely pro-Israel; it identifies strongly with the Judaism that they say early Christians practiced and with todays' Jews. It is clearly not close to a mainstream church, as it celebrates Jewish holidays and says
These Feast days are appointed by God Himself and He commanded us to keep them sacred. However they were removed from Christian practice in the 4th Century as a direct result of hatred towards the Jews, giving a victory to paganism over The Church. The Gentile Bishops of the day replaced The Lord's Feasts with pagan feast days in order to isolate the Jewish people. As a result, The Church has become the main persecutor of the Jews throughout history. We at Father’s House have been called to stand in the gap and repent for these sins and their consequences, including murder - during the Crusades, the Inquisitions and the Holocaust.