Your New Scoop Site

Welcome to Scoop!

To help you figure things out, there is a Scoop Admin Guide which can hopefully answer most of your questions.

Some tips:

Most of the layout is changed in "Blocks", found in the admin tools menu
Features can be turned on and off, and configured, in "Site Controls" in the admin tools menu
Stories have an "edit" link right beside the "Full Story" link on an index page, and right beside the "Post a Comment" link on the full story page. They can also be edited by clicking the story title in the "Story List" admin tool
Boxes are what allow you to write new features for Scoop; they require a knowledge of the perl programming language to work with effectively, although you can often make small changes without knowing much perl. If you would like a feature added but cannot program it yourself, ScoopHost does custom Scoop programming as one of its services.
If you aren't sure where to look for a particular feature or piece of display, try the "Search Admin Tools" link in the admin tools menu.

For support, questions, and general help with Scoop, email support@scoophost.com

ScoopHost.com is currently running Scoop version Undeterminable from .

Tag: City of Walker

City Requiring Churches to Get Licenses to Practice Religion

By Kevin Rex Heine, Section News
Posted on Mon Mar 15, 2010 at 03:56:50 PM EST
Tags: U.S. Constitution Amendment 1, U.S. Constitution Amendment 4, City of Walker, separation of church and state, Rob VerHeulen (all tags)

Article 1, Section 4, of the Michigan Constitution states:

Every person shall be at liberty to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience. No person shall be compelled to attend, or, against his consent, to contribute to the erection or support of any place of religious worship, or to pay tithes, taxes, or other rates for the support of any minister of the gospel or teacher of religion. No money shall be appropriated or drawn from the treasury for the benefit of any religious sect or society, theological or religious seminary; nor shall property belonging to the state be appropriated for any such purpose. The civil and political rights, privileges, and capacities of no person shall be diminished or enlarged on account of his religious belief.

This, of course, is a direct offshoot of Amendment 1 of the Constitution of the United States, and is fairly straightforward on its face.

I'm a pretty big believer in the constitutional concept of keeping church and state separate. The faith I practice holds that both the church and state are both instituted and sanctioned by God, and that the proper relation between them is preserved only when each remains within its divinely assigned sphere of influence and uses its divinely entrusted means of operation. Thus, with regard to church and state, those who practice the same faith as me reject - among other things - any attempt by the state to restrict the free exercise of religion.

So I was understandably distressed to hear from a friend of mine on the Kent County Committee on Religious Freedom of an attempt by one municipality in this county to dupe every religious organization within its borders into complying with federal, state, and local laws . . . including laws with which those religions may be compelled by conscience to disagree.