Church Towers as Cell Phone Towers

Charging a cell phone company to put its antennas in your church's tower is a new way some churches are earning revenue.  See this story in the Baltimore Sun.  On the surface, it makes perfect sense:  churches, particularly old ones, are often located on centrally located real estate and have large towers ideal for antennas;  those same churches need revenue to cover operating expenses; and those cell phone companies need antennas in prime locations to provide good cell coverage.  It sounds like a win-win scenario.

The GetReligion blog identifies some aspects of the story that deserve attention, namely, that this church tower-cell phone tower phenomenon may, for some particular reasons, be more common among mainline Protestant denominations than other denominations.