A Catholic priest is a bit more than a “head preacher”.
Which ones, please?
Scientology is a religion in name only because there is no God involved. Perhaps I should rephrase and say that they dont have traditional services. The highest power in Scientology is money.
No. They may be non-traditional in some way but the Scientology “locator” part of their website says “find a church, mission, community center or Ideal org near you”. The wiki page on them says they have services too though it doesn’t seem an important part of the practice.
Sometimes less.
They dont have what would be considered a service. They dont believe in a God. They only claim being a religion because of the tax break.
So? They still deserve a police department as much as the railroads! First Amendment!
Do you not think that the Nation of Islam will send some of those Fruits to police academy as the core of their new Temple police departments?
It’s not like they’d be empowered to just make up their own laws, you know. They’d be bound by the same operational restrictions as regular police, they couldn’t make arrests without probable cause any more than anyone else, and the same prosecutors would be making the decisions to charge, and they’d be tried in the same courts, etc.
I mean, I think this is a bad idea for other reasons, but it’s not like you’d be re-creating the fucking Inquisition.
I never suggested anything of the sort.
Would they be eligible for that military surplus deal?
…then what other concern would there be that would make a Unification or Scientology police force more troublesome than one attached to a more mainstream religious tradition?
Innuendo is not argumentation. If you have some specific concern, state it outright; don’t make us try to read your mind.
Episcopalian Church
Eastern Orthodox
Community of Christ
Latter-day Saints
Some Japanese Buddhists
Shall I go on?
Not run of the mill Prodies, are they? 
Doesn’t matter, now does it? Your assertion was that only the Roman Catholic Church has priests. There is even one example provided for a faith that does not postulate deity but still has priests.
Oh, and the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States has deacons, priests, bishops, and archbishops. And they’re all protestant.
Nothing, but they could only arrest suspects that were caught in the act.
Police power can be abused and some entities that can legally call themselves a religion are full of crooks and frauds. And they don’t have to be enforcing religious views or making up their own law books to be bad news. We definitely don’t want to open the can of worms that religious compounds can have their own police. We shouldn’t be expanding privately run police departments at all, but I find going in this direction particularly bad. Not because religion is “icky” but because of the principle of separation of church and state should be respected even when we can maybe sneak a change like this past the courts.
Or those who sing.
There is no violation of the principle of separation, as has been explained repeatedly. And since you state that the possibility of abuse isn’t what you object to, nor making up new law books, nor the possible presence of crooks and fraud, and since those objections don’t disqualify private organizations from having their own police force, I can see no reason besides “religion is icky” to prevent this church from doing what other private organizations have done.
Regards,
Shodan
You’ve said this before…which means you are still not acknowledging any of the concerns and questions brought up in this thread.
edited to add: It’s rather fucking obvious that this is a special case, since they created a special bill that covers only this one special church.
A couple of points …
Some of the posters here have expressed concern about this legislative bill allowing a specific Church to have their own police … I don’t know about Alabama law, but here in Oregon this is always the case, any city police department requires specific approval by the State legislature … and this request is included in the application for incorporation … we can’t just say “we a city now so we can have our own police” … this all has to be approved by the legislature on a case-by-case basis …
Second, I think way too much is being made of the constitution issues … courts generally don’t declare laws unconstitutional on a willy-nilly basis and are typically loath to do so … the legislature is privileged to write the bills, the governor is privileged to sigh these bills into law … and the bill in question here in no way states that Briarwood is to become the Official Church of the State of Alabama …
This all boils down to “churches are icky” … and somehow priests are more corrupt than politicians …