TN County Faces $11M Suit for Denying Bible Theme Park
A Christian family in Tennessee that was pushing for Rutherford County to approve a bible theme park being built on their land are now suing the county for upholding the will of neighboring citizens and denying to rezone the land. Another case of typical Christian greed at the cost of taxpayer money.
The county and County Attorney Jim Cope face an $11 million-plus lawsuit from Shelton family members for not approving Bible Park USA last May to be built on their 240 acres of farmland on Blackman Road west of Murfreesboro, according to court documents.
The family contends the county cost them a land deal and wants $11 million plus interest and attorneys fees and punitive damages assessed to Cope.
The county, meanwhile, is appealing in state court a lawsuit from the Sheltons for not approving Bible Park USA last May to be built on their land.
Their case in state court contends their property rights were violated because of a petition rule forcing a two-thirds vote for rezoning approval. It applies when 20 percent of property owners with land adjacent or across the street from a development submit petitions in opposition to the project.
Commissioners favored Bible Park USA in a 12-9 vote, but that was two votes shy of what was determined to be necessary after County Attorney Jim Cope and County Planning Director Doug Demosi determined enough valid petitions were submitted to force a two-thirds vote.
- Read the full article here by Scott Broden.
Rally against Bible Park USA
What a bunch of sorry losers. Two lawsuits at the expense of hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorney fees already for the county. All because this family wanted to make a buck off their irrational beliefs and burden their neighbors with a tacky theme park designed to bring in fundamentalist nut jobs into their area.
I am proud that the citizens and local government of Rutherford County took a stand and blocked this theme park. Their actions helped their county and the state avoid being a haven for fundamentalism and a joke to the rest of the nation. Anything to delay this park being built helps prevent it from being used to indoctrinate children especially in this state. People of all faiths were able to recognize this bible theme park was a terrible idea and worked to successfully stop it. Hopefully it won’t be at a great financial expense.
As for the Shelton family I hope they realize how their greed is hurting their neighbors and drop their lawsuits. But this will not happen because if this family cared anything for their neighbors they wouldn’t have pushed for the park when the majority of people in the county opposed it. Either way I doubt this greedy trash will stick around Rutherford County when its all over and the county assessor needs to adjust his books since the land is worth so much according to the Shelton’s themselves.
Related posts:
- TN Youth Minister Arrested for Raping Young Boys
- Congressman Reads Bible During Hearing
- Tennesseans Protecting Environment for Wrong Reasons
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I wonder when “love thy neighbor” became “sue them until you get to build Jesusland”?
The moment people presume Jesus is a capitalist when it’s more likely he’s a socialist type of anarchist or a socialist in general. But who knows…like trying to explain quantum physics to Newton.
What really ticks me off is a bunch of dumb a$$e$ who twist and tweak anything Christian to suit their own stupid ideas. Yes, I’m angry. I’m angry at people who call themselves athiest and use the internet to spread so called truth, yet all it is is spin. This one article is an outstanding example of people who shouldn’t be on the internet. Your so called facts are lies. The people who didn’t want the theme park, didn’t want their part of the country turned into a zoo. There were many MANY Christians who didn’t want that theme park there! Just because people protested the theme park, doesn’t make them any less a Christian or any more an atheist. Stop spinning the news for your own benefit and just tell the truth. If the TRUTH can support your stupid ways, then you have what you need. But obviously it doesn’t, as you need to spin it to make it work for you.
For you others who think love your neighbors mean don’t sue, we are tired of people like you stepping on us, crushing us and then laughing about it. What you’ve done is create a bunch of pissed of Christians who are ready to take a stand and fight, and I mean fight hard. We are tired of turning the other cheek. Just as Jesus stormed the church turned gambling hall, we will storm, fight, and take back what is ours. That includes our country, WHICH WAS BUILT ON THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHRISTIAN BIBLE, as can be proven in many quotes from fore fathers as well as Congressional law 97-280. Follow the New Testament and you will find your life richly rewarded. Teach the world the New Testament and how to live by it’s words and the world to be a much nicer place to live. That’s FACT! If you want to keep God out of your lives, that’s your business. When you LIE to convince others not to believe, then that’s my business, it’s every Christian’s business.
@God’s Warrior
Another little christian with the persecution complex. I never said it wasn’t christians protesting and I praised these people for it.. Also perhaps you should quit quote mining the founding fathers and deluding yourself and fool being a gullible fool by really researching something for yourself. Sure many of them were christians but they intended this nation’s government to be secular for that is the reason people left europe where christian governments were forcing their own flavor of religion upon them just like christians, especially here in the bible belt, are trying to do today.
Just so your aren’t an ignorant fool here are some real quotes.
United States Constitution
The First Amendment
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…”
Article VI, Section 3
“…no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”
John Adams (the second President of the United States)
Adams signed the Treaty of Tripoli (June 7, 1797). Article 11 states:
“The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.”
From a letter to Charles Cushing (October 19, 1756):
“Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, ‘this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.’”
From a letter to Thomas Jefferson:
“I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved — the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!”
Additional quotes from John Adams:
“Where do we find a precept in the Bible for Creeds, Confessions, Doctrines and Oaths, and whole carloads of trumpery that we find religion encumbered with in these days?”
“The Doctrine of the divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity.”
“…Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind.”
Thomas Jefferson (the third President of the United States)
Jefferson’s interpretation of the first amendment in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association (January 1, 1802):
“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and State.”
From Jefferson’s biography:
“…an amendment was proposed by inserting the words, ‘Jesus Christ…the holy author of our religion,’ which was rejected ‘By a great majority in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mohammedan, the Hindoo and the Infidel of every denomination.’”
Jefferson’s “The Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom”:
“Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, more than on our opinions in physics and geometry….The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
From Thomas Jefferson’s Bible:
“The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.”
Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia:
“Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these free inquiry must be indulged; how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse ourselves? But every state, says an inquisitor, has established some religion. No two, say I, have established the same. Is this a proof of the infallibility of establishments?”
Additional quotes from Thomas Jefferson:
“It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.”
“They [the clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition of their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the alter of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
“I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology. Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half of the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the earth.”
“In every country and in every age the priest has been hostile to liberty; he is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.”
“Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear….Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it end in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue on the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise and in the love of others which it will procure for you.”
“Christianity…[has become] the most perverted system that ever shone on man….Rogueries, absurdities and untruths were perpetrated upon the teachings of Jesus by a large band of dupes and importers led by Paul, the first great corrupter of the teaching of Jesus.”
“…that our civil rights have no dependence on religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics and geometry.”
James Madison (the fourth President of the United States)
Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments:
“Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise….During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.”
Additional quote from James Madison:
“Religion and government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.”
Benjamin Franklin
From Franklin’s autobiography, p. 66:
“My parents had given me betimes religious impressions, and I received from my infancy a pious education in the principles of Calvinism. But scarcely was I arrived at fifteen years of age, when, after having doubted in turn of different tenets, according as I found them combated in the different books that I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself.”
From Franklin’s autobiography, p. 66:
“…Some books against Deism fell into my hands….It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quote to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations, in short, I soon became a thorough Deist.”
Thomas Paine
From The Age of Reason, pp. 89:
“I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of….Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and of my own part, I disbelieve them all.”
From The Age of Reason:
“All natural institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.”
From The Age of Reason:
“The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion.”
From The Age of Reason:
“What is it the Bible teaches us? — rapine, cruelty, and murder.”
From The Age of Reason:
“Loving of enemies is another dogma of feigned morality, and has beside no meaning….Those who preach the doctrine of loving their enemies are in general the greatest prosecutors, and they act consistently by so doing; for the doctrine is hypocritical, and it is natural that hypocrisy should act the reverse of what it preaches.”
From The Age of Reason:
“The Bible was established altogether by the sword, and that in the worst use of it — not to terrify but to extirpate.”
Additional quote from Thomas Paine:
“It is the duty of every true Deist to vindicate the moral justice of God against the evils of the Bible.”
Ethan Allen
From Religion of the American Enlightenment:
“Denominated a Deist, the reality of which I have never disputed, being conscious that I am no Christian.”
Well, I had a nice long reply for you, but it looks like it was rejected since it didn’t post. I came back to add another statement, that I believe the people doing the suing are definitely wrong. There should be NO lawsuit!
However, that doesn’t mean I agree with any other part of your post. I am no little persecuted Christian, but I appreciate the attempt at empathy. You claim I don’t know my history, nor the people who started this country, nor the history of Europe, etc. etc. Boy, you couldn’t be further from the truth if you actually tried.
I am not a persecuted Christian. I am quite simply, a Christian who is fed up with dim witted idiots claiming to have access to actual quotes from founding fathers. Instead what you have are quotes listed by some other idiot and you’ve taken them as truth and shared them as if you did all your homework. Since you wish to discredit actual truths, then I have no other action available than to prove you and the person who wrote those quotes, as being wrong.
Let’s look at John Adams as one example. That one faupaux on your part discredits your entire, lengthy, WRONG post, being that you just being a sheeple being led around by some other idiot. You didn’t research anything yourself and decided to believe some other atheist who sounded like he knew what he was doing, but in fact did not do their homework either, or intentionally misquoted so it would prove his point instead of showing the facts.
What happens when you take a single sentence and quote it, rather than the whole paragraph? You either do it intentionally to spread your lies further, or you just don’t get what you read. Take this quote for example, concerning a common misconception by most sheeple who blindly believe the athiest who posted it was sharing the truth, like you did:
The above letter mentioned here is a copy of the original letter written by John Adams. You can see it at the Library of Congress.
“I have seen many people quote John Adams as saying that “This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!” — but notice that this is taken severely out of context and that Mr. Adams is relaying his frustration with those who fight between denominations, supposing that their particular Christian denomination is best and should be the only one [as the Schoolmaster is noted as saying in the above letter]. John Adams believed that government should never impose a denomination/particular religion upon the people. And in his frustration he said that he almost wished there to be no religion, but this of course was not his true wish. His true wish was for peace between denominations and lack of governmental pressure to adhere to a certain denomination. As he said above, “Without religion this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company, I mean Hell…”
Taking quotes out of context:
Notice how Adams could be misunderstood if one or two phrases were quoted out of context? That is exactly what is done by many who do not want to admit to our Founders faith and vision for faith in government. Many who use quotes improperly do so out of ignorance, others simply knowingly lie.”
You stated this country was started because Europe was forcing Christianity on her people. Boy, don’t you know your history? Haven’t you ever read the Declaration of Independence?? You couldn’t have and made such a stupid statement unless you are complete moron! Go back and read the Declaration of Independence which CLEARLY states why these people split off from the king. Here, I’ll even help you get there so you can learn something instead of being some damn gullible sheep believing any atheist you come across. In case you won’t read it, this is the last line. “And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.” Divine Providence is God by the way. KNOWLEGE IS POWER. GET SOME!
And you call me gullible. HAHAHA You have no clue what you’re talking about! All you are doing is repeating some other idiot’s words, a little plagerism there to make it look like you’ve done some homework on this. LOL That’s a riot. See, another reason I know you’re wrong is because I’ve seen some of these documents with my own eyes. Take a trip to DC and go through the Smithsonian. Look at the ORIGINAL letters and documents that are in there. Read the full document instead of looking at one sentence and trying to play it off as a complete statement. Do your own homework and stop letting people lead you around by the nose and stop being so gullible that you believe someone who has to make himself look good by plagerizing some other nitwit.
To save space, sense my last message was either too long or was rejected to hide the truth, read these quotes and learn what was REALLY said at http://www.eadshome.com/QuotesoftheFounders.htm
Before you go off saying this isn’t a valid site to show the quotes, many of these quotes I have seen on original documents or found in the Congressional Library. Now that’s proof!
@God’s Warrior
We can argue about and guess what the intentions of the founding fathers and how their constitution has been interpreted over the years forever. I think we can both agree people’s freedom of speech and freedom of religion, or lack there of, is part of what this country was founded on.
As I look over the posts and the article written I do not see how any of this argument on the religious foundings of this country is relevant commentary on the above article and quite a drawn out tangent. In the article I actually commended “people of all faiths” coming together and protesting against this park and potential waste of taxpayer money. I believe my main criticism was directed towards the Shelton family that were pushing for the park and now suing the county when it was rejected.
I am not hear to argue whatever people come here to argue about. There are plenty of forums for that. The religious origins of the United States has nothing to do with the above article and either way does not prove in any way that christianity is a true religion or that god is exists.
Oh and I love the Smithsonian, especially the National Museum of Natural History
I just wanted to tell you something about the family who is sueing the county. Of course they want that money. Any one of us would like to make a few million off of property we own it doesnt make someone a horrible person. I have mixed feelings about the park but it would have brought good and bad. The woman who owned the property already had plans for the money such as giving some to her family and to different charities, one of which was an orphanage in africa which saves kids from slavery and gives them a home and education. Of course she is mad about not being able to sell her property. It didnt matter whether it was a bible park or a developer. Dont talk bad about someone when you dont know anything about them or their intentions. Ive met her and she is a wonderful caring person that also helped me with money to get to that orphanage in africa to work with the children.