A higher authority: the cult of preservation.

A FIERCE DISPUTE raged in Washington, D.C., last spring over the city's proposal to designate seven hundred buildings in Logan Circle as historic landmarks. Logan Circle is a mixed neighborhood, with yuppies moving in and upgrading homes in a generally dilapidated, high-crime area that includes numerous soup kitchens and homeless shelters as well as several distinguished old churches. The designation means that owners have to get permission from the local Historic Preservation Review Board for any changes to their buildings. Many of the social-service providers fiercely oppose the proposal, since it will probably make it more difficult for them to serve their clientele. Said the Reverend Beecher Hicks, pastor of Metropolitan Baptist Church: "Our opponents have filed this application to prevent such unhistoric activity as feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and caring for children proliferating in our neighborhood."

Spokesmen for the Metropolitan Baptist Church and the Luther Place Memorial Church complained that the borders of the historic district had been drawn to include their property while excluding a fancy condominium complex. "The debate over the historic designation," the Washington Post noted, "has become a fight between a group of mostly white, affluent residents who own houses around Logan Circle and a disparate cast of social-service providers and black parishioners."

As the Logan Circle controversy illustrates, local governments are increasingly sabotaging freedom of religion with historic preservation ordinances that prohibit congregations from modifying their houses of worship. By forbidding changes in religious architecture, these ordinances in effect dictate that people may pray only in government-approved spaces. Forcing congregants to maintain their church's existing structure is as bad as forcing them to continue using old prayer books.

Some courts have not seen it that way. In the 1980s St. Bartholomew's Church on New York's Park Avenue repeatedly sought permission to sell its community house to developers who wanted to build a high-rise office building. The congregation planned to use the revenue from the sale to finance repairs to the church and to fund charitable activities. But the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission denied the church's request because the church and its community house had been designated as historic landmarks. The church sued, arguing that the restriction violated the First Amendment's guarantee of religious freedom and the Fifth Amendment's requirement that private property not be taken for public use without "just compensation." In 1991 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejected both arguments. "The church has failed to prove that it cannot continue its religious practice in its existing facilities," the court ruled. Furthermore, "so long as the church can continue to use its property in the way that it has been using it--to house its charitable and religious activity--there is no unconstitutional taking."

The court's decision thus redefined property rights to exclude every possible use of property except the current use. Laurie Beckelman, chairman of the New York City Landmarks Commission, hailed the ruling as affirming the commission's "absolute power . . . to designate and regulate religious properties as landmarks."

Sympathetic Courts

OTHER courts have been more sympathetic. In 1992 the Washington Supreme Court ruled that Seattle's attempt to impose a landmark designation on the First Covenant Church violated the free-exercise clause. Yet the city is still pursuing designation of other churches. The First United Methodist Church has been engaged in a running battle with Seattle's Landmarks Preservation Board. The church's membership has fallen by almost 75 per cent, and the current church members can no longer afford to preserve the church in the style preferred by city officials. The Seattle Times noted that "church members want a more welcoming worship space. Remodeling could range from moving the pulpit closer to worshippers and expanding the vestibule, to allow people to mingle before and after services, to replacing all or some of the building with a new, smaller sanctuary." But the city thinks the church is fine the way it is.

Some preservation commissions act as if they are entitled to interpret Holy Writ. In 1987 the Boston Landmarks Commission prohibited the Immaculate Conception Church from altering lighting, windows, paint, doors, finishes, and a painting of the Assumption of Mary inside the church. The Society of Jesus, which owned the church, had proposed renovating the interior to reflect architecturally the changes made to the Roman Catholic liturgy by the Second Vatican Council. The city overruled the Jesuits, arguing that the church interior "has major aesthetic importance independent of its religious symbolism."

The Jesuits sued the Boston Landmarks Commission, whose decision was eventually overturned by the Massachusetts Supreme Court. As Seton Hall law professor Angela Carmella wrote in the Villanova Law Review, "by determining which religious beliefs are worthy of architectural expression, the state compels affirmation of particular religious beliefs.... Design control involves fundamental threats to religious liberty ... because [it stems] from the state's conviction that it can codesign religious architecture, consequently reserving for itself a role as coauthor of doctrine and worship and of religious expression."

Sometimes the decisions of landmark commissions cannot be understood even on aesthetic grounds. In 1991 a Washington, D.C., court imposed a preliminary injunction to prevent modification of a Christian Science church and office building while the city considered designating the structures as historic landmarks. The Washington Christian Science Church, built in 1971, represents the worst of modern architecture. As one cynic noted, "This is a building of which Saddam Hussein would be proud. It could take a direct hit with a missile and nothing would happen--it is a solid block of concrete." The church has already spent tens of thousands of dollars challenging the city's interference.

A few local governments have shown sensitivity to the rights of worshippers. In 1987 Chicago enacted a landmarks ordinance that let owners of religious properties exempt their buildings from historic designation. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a federally funded organization, was outraged and sued the city in 1990, claiming the exemption was unconstitutional because it "has the purpose and effect of endorsing religion, in violation of the First Amendment's establishment clause." In other words, if the government is persecuting property owners in general, the Constitution requires that it also persecute churches.

If the historic-preservation movement had been as strong in the tenth century as it is now, the magnificent Gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages might never have been built. The preservationists would have been outraged at the demolition of eighth-century stone-block churches to make room for the new buildings and would probably have run to the nearest king for an injunction. Politicians must not be allowed to make the cult of preservation into America's official religion.

Mr. Bovard, an adjunct analyst with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, is the author of Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (St. Martin's, 1994).