Thanks for your wisdom and expertise!

The big issue is that we really are not dealing with non-profit law here, we are dealing with copyright law so definitions may not be transferable.

The copyright law actually spells out that it must be a non-profit academic institution in order to make the distinction among all 501(c)(3) organizations and brings up even the specific point (as an example) that a preschool must carry a license or gain specific permission to show a movie, even for educational purposes.

Isn't it fun to have such clearly defined laws that are so easy to live by? (Sense the sarcasm there!)

3. If I make a lesson out of the movie I want to show I will be within the copyright laws.
A non-profit educational setting has previously been specifically defined as a non-profit academic institution. The main activity of a church is not academics."

From a church-state law perspective, these two assertions seem to be false. Here's my reasoning: Most churches, if they are incorporated, are 501(c)3 organizations. Many, many other institutions fall into this category including the following: churches, mosques, temples, educational institutions, charitable organizations, sports organizations, and abuse prevention organizations (among many, many others).

Given that so many other organizations fall into the same nonprofit category is would appear that it does not matter if the "main activity" of the church is not "academics." The federal government and most state governments recognize churches as nonprofit institutions and make no distinction whatsoever between whether the institution is "academic" or not because no such distinction exists in nonprofit law.

Some in the church think that we can do whatever we want because of "religious freedom" but we are also called to submit to the authorities the God has placed in our lives and if those authorities are not directly against God then we need to submit.