A D.C. zoning appeals board was asked Tuesday to decide a long-running dispute between American lay Buddhists and residents of the neighborhood surrounding Embassy Row, a bitter fight featuring accusations of disinformation, discrimination and ignorance.
The overriding question in the three-year battle: What defines worship?
“This is a community center,” said John Magnus, leader of a community group contesting construction of a temple at 3417 Massachusetts Ave. NW. “This is not a house of worship.”
Construction is well under way on the Soka Gakkai Buddhist Culture Center, a building slated to include two sanctuaries, a chanting room, conference rooms, office suites, a bookstore and classrooms. The parcel comprises the former side yard of the Babcock-Macomb House, a historic property that serves as the Embassy of the Republic of Cape Verde.
The facility, Soka Gakkai’s attorney say, will be a center for “day-to-day worship and activity use” for about 170 D.C. members of Soka Gakkai International-USA, an American Buddhist association.
But in its attempt to forestall construction, the Friends of Babcock-Macomb argues the Buddhist facility is no place of worship, a designation that allowed the group to build as a matter of right. The issue went before the Board of Zoning Adjustments Tuesday in a discussion that ran long and had to be continued until next week.
Magnus, president of the friends group, accused Soka Gakkai of purposefully mislabeling its facility as a church. The two sanctuary rooms account for roughly 6 percent of the building, Magnus argued in a BZA filing, “if one assumes that ritual chanting in front of scrolls … constitutes worship for the purpose of the government D.C. law.”
The District’s zoning administrator disagreed, citing the “predominant use of the structure” as for worship.
In its motion to dismiss the appeal, Soka Gakkai said the friends’ argument lacks any factual basis, which “strongly suggests that it was filed for reasons that are ignorant at best, or discriminatory at worst.”
Magnus said “every neighbor residing in the vicinity of this project opposes it,” though he offered little evidence of that.
