That’s a question Northampton County Council will decide this year. At its Oct. 1 meeting, council voted unanimously to approve 37 grants, funded with table games taxes, for numerous municipal and nonprofit projects. They tabled a 38th grant request for $20,000 to restore the steeple at Easton’s United Church of Christ. Council Solicitor Chris Spadoni has been directed to research whether this proposed gift runs afoul of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.

Church steeples are very common in Christian churches. They are symbols of man’s attempt to reach the heavens or the Divine. They serve a religious purpose. As explained on the Aleteia.org website, steeples were also used to remind a local community to remain focused on God. Other secular buildings were usually built lower than the church steeple, making the local church the highest and most important building of the town. You couldn’t go anywhere in town without seeing the steeple and as a result be reminded about your duty to God.

UCC members described the 187-foot tall steeple, last restored in 1971, as a “landmark” and “beacon of hope and faith.”

Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that a state grant for church playground surfacing is consistent with the Establishment Clause. Obviously, the grant was for a secular purpose. No one religion was given preference over another. There was no excessive entanglement of religious and governmental institutions.

The First UCC Pastor is Rev. Michael J Dowd. He is a former Northampton County Council member and president. He served in the Greater LV Chamber of Commerce and is a member of the Lehigh Northampton Airport Authority board.

Shiloh Baptist Church in Easton has a completely secular after-school mentoring program. Other churches have food pantries. Even more churches sponsor athletic programs. There are even some churches, like Easton’s Rock Church, with historic steeples of their own in need of restoration.

Yet only Dowd’s church is passing the collection plate.

No other church applied or even considered the possibility of a county grant except for the pastor who happens to be connected.

County Executive Lamont McClure is being careful. “I believe in God and the First Amendment,” he says.

Well, you can believe in both and deny this grant.