A Washington, D.C.-area Lutheran church has removed a wireless network transmitter previously located on its rooftop, according to an advocacy organization that expressed concerns with the installation.
Last week, Joe Sandri, a former telecom executive and attorney who serves as president and general counsel for Environmental Health Trust (EHT), shared images with The Christian Post of St. Luke Lutheran Church in Silver Spring, Maryland, that appear to show a cell phone tower behind what looks to be a chimney-like structure on its roof.
Sandri says EHT team members first identified the antenna after they “recognized unusual activity” at the church. Images provided by Sandri’s team showed utility crews using a harness to work on what appears to be a cell phone tower antenna encased in “faux brick” material, Sandri said, to conceal its contents.
In another image, an unidentified utility worker dangles from a harness attached to the structure while installing a false front on the chimney to enclose the antenna.
St. Luke’s also has a sign visible from the street advertising Saint Luke Christian Day School, a preschool for kids as young as 2, with the same address as the church.
CP reached out to St. Luke’s for comment but did not receive a response.
On July 10, a spokesperson for Sandri informed CP that the installation was removed from the church’s roof. It’s not clear whether the network transmitter was transferred to another location on the property or removed entirely.
The spokesperson shared two “before and after” images: one showing the previously reported installation and a more recent image of the same structure reduced in size with no visible transmitter behind it.
In response to St. Luke’s removal of the installation, Sandri told CP Monday that he welcomed the news but questioned whether the church has taken additional precautions.
“It is welcomed that the hidden, massive wireless radiation mobile network transmitters were suddenly removed from the pre-school rooftop,” he said. “That said, did they ever conduct the required reports that those systems were continuously operated within the FCC’s human radio-frequency exposure limits? If so, will they release those required reports?”
CP again asked St. Luke’s for comment on Monday. This story will be updated if a response is received.
According to its website, St. Luke’s is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), a liberal Mainline Protestant denomination with about 3.3 million members nationwide. In recent years, many congregations have left the ELCA due to its increasingly progressive stances on theology and politics.
An interactive map indicates that a wireless facility located at the high-traffic intersection of Dale Drive and Colesville Road (U.S. 29), where the church sits, was approved on Jan. 8, 2014.
County records show that AT&T filed a tower coordination application in Montgomery County, Maryland, on Oct. 28, 2013, detailing a plan to attach 12 panel antennas atop St. Luke Lutheran Church.
The application states that the antennas would “be concealed within a faux chimney” to be constructed alongside an already existing faux chimney that T-Mobile constructed to conceal its antennas to match the existing chimney at the church.
The plans provided with the application show that the height of the tower was to be approximately 25 feet above the top of the church roof. The application was recommended by a county official on the condition that the generator operate in compliance with the county’s noise ordinance.
According to Sandri, churches are popular sites to house cell phone tower antennas because their steeples, bell towers and spires provide excellent height for signal coverage, they are often centrally located, and leasing space generates revenue — as much as $1,000 to $3,000 per month or more in some cases — for the church.
He pointed to a number of similar cases at other churches in recent years, including Epiphany Lutheran Church in Lake Worth, Florida, which attracted media attention in 2009 after it fashioned a 100-foot-tall cross made out of cell phone tower antennas in exchange for about $1,800 in rent from T-Mobile every month.
Sandri said a common method used by churches to conceal the installations is to place them inside existing steeples or bell towers or, like Epiphany Lutheran Church, to build the antennas into the shape of a Christian cross.
In 2021, EHT and Children’s Health Defense took the FCC to court over its refusal to update 1996 cell phone and wireless safety limits, a case in which Sandri filed a “friend of the court” brief. The landmark lawsuit ultimately forced the FCC to increase its transparency on non-cancer health effects linked to wireless radiation.
