Salvation? Maybe. Mercy? No.

An editorial in last week’s Memphis Flyer applauded a city attorney’s opinion that the City cannot hand over a portion of the Fairgrounds to the Salvation Army. Instead, according to the attorney, the land can be sold to the Salvation Army at market price, which is currently around $3 million. The Salvation Army, using a grant from the widow of McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc, wants to build a $20 million recreation and community services facility in Memphis; its choice location is one of the more attractive pieces of the Fairgrounds property – the East Parkway frontage between Fairview Junior High School and the old Libertyland site. The facility would represent a $72 million total investment: $48 million donated by the Kroc Foundation and $24 million raised by the Salvation Army in Memphis. The City, of course, envisions yet more housing at the Fairgrounds site; this in spite of the fact that without annexation, Memphis' population would continue its steady decline.

Besides the site location, the City is concerned with potential church-state conflicts. Lest we forget, the Salvation Army is a Christian organization, a church actually. Its roots are in Methodism, and it has a decidedly evangelical slant. Its leaders serve dual roles: they are both program administrators and clergy. Certainly, the City of Memphis should not be expected to provide public lands for churches. Besides the Constitutional concerns, there simply is not enough prime space to satisfy everyone; each religion or denomination would cry foul because another was given frontage space at a busy intersection.

Yet, if the Kroc Center does not get built, the community as a whole—regardless of religion—will lose. The same Memphis Flyer issue that praised the city attorney’s opinion includes an article about the rise of juvenile crime in Shelby County. The summer of 2006 was a disastrous one for teens in Memphis; the shutdown of Libertyland and the lack of a coordinated City summer job program left thousands of inner-city teens with little to do. A crime wave that lasted all summer left Memphis residents fearful for their safety and several teens injured or killed. A Kroc Center centrally located at the Fairgrounds would be accessible to teens in some of the least advantaged areas of Memphis via a single bus ride.

A quick glance at the homepage of the San Diego Kroc Center gives an idea of the kinds of services Memphians could expect from a Kroc Center here. Sports and arts programs, parenting classes, tutoring, child abuse prevention programs, and emergency food and housing assistance are among the services offered by the San Diego Kroc Center. Certainly, regardless of religious preference, we should all be able to agree that those services would benefit the Memphis community. Should we remind ourselves of the statistics? Memphis is second in the country in violent crime. Memphis has the highest infant mortality rate in Tennessee. Only 65 percent of Memphis City Schools students graduate high school.

Despite the good things the Kroc Center can do for Memphis and the City’s need for these things to be done, the question remains: Should a religious organization that provides much-needed services to the entire community be excluded from City programs that are designed to help the community? Until recently, the City has had little problem giving tax credits to for-profit companies that locate here, even though many offer only the slimmest promise of having a positive economic impact on the City. The Kroc Center, on the other hand, will undoubtedly have a positive effect for years to come on areas of Memphis where other development has all but stopped. What are those who oppose the Kroc Center on religious freedom grounds doing to raise up the Binghampton, Beltline, and Orange Mound communities? If the statistics are to be trusted, it is clear that few—save for a handful of dedicated community and religious leaders—are doing anything to help those communities. What is the greater good: the individual’s freedom or the community’s needs? This is a discussion that is worthy of more than an attorney’s solid-as-the-Gospel opinion.