DATELINE: Sun-Sentinel.com
April 27, 2000

West Palm pastor loses fight to keep Seventh-Day Adventist name on church

By CATHERINE WILSON
Associated Press

Web-posted: 10:53 p.m. Apr. 27, 2000

MIAMI - A federal judge ruled Thursday that the Seventh-Day Adventist denomination is entitled to keep a West Palm Beach pastor from using its name on his church, but he plans to keep fighting.

"I thought that in this country you could express your religious belief openly without any oppression," Raphael Perez of the Eternal Gospel Church said after losing the case. He called the decision "an open violation of my religious conviction."

U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King ordered Perez to stop using the Seventh-Day Adventist name and acronym, but Perez said afterward that he has no plans to remove it from his church.

"He's saying he doesn't plan to abide by a judge's lawful order", asked Kermit Netteburg, an assistant to the denomination's president. "We have not come this far in order to simply stop."

Attorney Jeffrey Tew, who represented the Silver Spring,Md.-based denomination at trial, said he would ask for contempt proceedings against Perez if he doesn't comply.

If Perez plans an appeal, Tew said the pastor would still have to comply with King's decision and stop using the name unless the judge agrees to suspend his injunction.

While the case hinged on trademark law, Perez's preaching against Catholicism in newspaper ads and radio programs produced undercurrents in the case.

The denomination considers Perez's church a hate group for denouncing Catholics for worshipping on Sunday and likening them to Satanists and pagans.

The denomination obtained a trademark on its name in 1980,and Perez formed his congregation in 1991. He was not ordained in the church and his church was denied admission to Seventh-Day Adventists conferences because of his refusal to stop anti-Catholic broadcasts.

Perez said he was "very sad" to see King rule the denomination's name was "trademarked like a McDonald's, Burger King or Coca-Cola."

He also has used the Adventist name in church services and on signs, fliers, billboards and cassette tapes.

Perez still insists that the Seventh-Day Adventist name is generic and given by God to followers through a prophet.

"I'm a Seventh-Day Adventist by faith. That's my religion." Perez said. "If we need to go to the Supreme Court with this, we are going to go. We can not see our constitutional rights being thrown out of the window."

The religion's name is based on beliefs in honoring the seventh day, Saturday, as the Sabbath and in the second coming of Christ.

Saturday, April 29

Church defiant of federal ruling.

By Joel Engelhardt, Palm Beach
Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 29, 2000

The Bible, they say, decrees that disputes are better settled within the church.

The 19th-century prophet Ellen White says the name Seventh-day Adventist is theirs, a gift from God.

So it comes as little surprise that the word of a federal judge holds little sway for the tiny, fundamentalist Eternal Gospel Church of Seventh-day Adventists on Southern Boulevard, west of Haverhill Road.

Trademark law overcame religious dogma in a ruling released Thursday by U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King. The little church must stop using the name Seventh-day Adventist because it infringes on a trademark filed in 1980 by the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, which claims about 900,000 U.S. members.

The West Palm Beach-area Eternal Gospel Church says about 70 people attend regularly. But it won't be denied its preferred name, even in the face of a federal mandate and possible contempt citations.

"We can't go along with that ruling," board member and assistant pastor Andres Roman said Friday. "It's absurd. There's no way we're going to allow our freedoms to be taken away."

The name will stay, he and pastor Raphael Perez said. It's more than a name; it's their belief. They say the name came to them in the writings of their prophet, Ellen White.

"She told us that this name was given to us by God. We must always call ourselves by that," Roman said.

The small church was forced into court by the 1998 lawsuit. It never would have gone voluntarily, Roman said, because in I Corinthians, the Bible says disputes should be settled within the church and not "before the unjust."

But that book of the Bible also exhorts the faithful "to suffer the loss" rather than get caught up in a court fight, according to John Fitzgerald, a University of Miami religious studies professor.

The court rejected the argument that Seventh-day Adventist was a general term under which a number of different branches or churches could exist, like, for example, Baptists.

But King ruled Seventh-day Adventist is mostly identified with the Silver Springs, Md.-based General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists.

Roman said his church will appeal.

In the meantime, it must stop using the name, said Jeffrey Tew, the Miami attorney for the national church. "If they don't comply, we'll ask the judge to enforce it," he said.

While the case hinged on trademark law, Perez's preaching against Catholicism produced undercurrents in the case.

The denomination considers Perez's church a "hate group" for denouncing Catholics for worshiping on Sunday and likening them to Satanists.

Perez was not ordained in the church, and his congregation, founded in 1991, was denied admission to Seventh-day Adventists' conference over his anti-Catholic broadcasts.

The religion's name is based on a belief in honoring Saturday as the Sabbath and in the second coming of Christ.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

joel_engelhardt@pbpost.com

Email: mailto:crmin@ix.netcom.com