Parents rights and Christianity
September 8th, 2009 ~ Current events, La Vida IglesiaI understand the state’s insistence that Christianity not be given preference. But that doesn’t help me make my way smoothly through these two cases, documented in a Wall St. Journal piece entitled “Christian Girls, Interrupted”:
Two Christian girls. Two sets of distraught parents. And two state courts smack in the middle of it.
One of these courts is in New Hampshire, where a judge recently ordered that home-schooled Amanda Kurowski be sent to public school. The order signed by Family Court Justice Lucinda V. Sandler says the 10-year-old’s Christian faith could use some shaking up—and that the local public school is just the place to do it. So while the child’s lawyers at the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal outfit, filed a motion asking the judge to reconsider, last week Amanda started fifth grade at a local public school.
At about the same time Miss Kurowski was starting school in New Hampshire, a state court in Florida was considering what to do with 17-year-old Rifqa Bary. Miss Bary fled to Florida from Ohio a few weeks back, where she sought refuge with a Christian couple whose church she had learned about on Facebook. She says she ran away from home because her father discovered she’d become a Christian—and then threatened to kill her. On Thursday, Circuit Judge Daniel Dawson ordered the girl and her family to try mediation and set a pretrial hearing for the end of the month.
Rifqa’s parents are Muslim. They say they don’t care what religion she practices, so it remains for an objective third-party to judge the truth. But … do we have an objective third-party in the courts? You wonder sometimes. Consider the first case of the court forcing a home-schooler to go to public school because she’s too Christian. Amanda’s parents are divorced, and apparently there’s a guardian who didn’t like the home-schooling:
… the order appears to be based on the guardian ad litem’s worry about Amanda’s “rigidity on faith.” The order also accepts the same guardian’s conclusion that Amanda belongs in a public school because she “would be best served by exposure to different points of view at a time in her life when she must begin to critically evaluate multiple systems of belief and behavior and cooperation in order to select, as a young adult, which of those systems will best suit her own needs.”
In a state whose motto is “Live Free or Die,” this is an extraordinary line of reasoning. Just how extraordinary might best be appreciated by contemplating the opposite scenario: the reaction that would ensue were a court to order a young girl out of a public school and into an evangelical one so she might gain “exposure” to other “systems of belief.”
This has the smell of a double-standard. There is a portion of the population that is extremely uncomfortable with active, intelligent Christianity, and that population seeks to join more and more to its ranks. Nothing makes them more unhappy than for Christians not to reinforce the stereotype they have in their minds, and that looks like what happened here. And so it was beside the point that the court’s assessment of Amanda found that “the evidence support a finding that Amanda is generally likeable and well liked, social and interactive with her peers, academically promising, and intellectually at or superior to grade level.” The truth was the stereotype: that young Christians must be brain-washed or intellectually inferior.
Well, I’m getting into a rant, and this isn’t my battle to fight. But why do I find myself feeling like it’s a foregone conclusion that parents’ rights will be held up as inviolate in Rifqa’s case and disregarded in Amanda’s?
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September 9th, 2009 at 5:27 am
I have the same feeling you do…..
We homeschooled our four children from 1985 until 2001. It was not SO much for religious reasons, although as Christians, that did permeate out classes. We were in the military and moved 19 times in 30 years - it was more to give the kids a stable, constant education. One through 10 grade, the others through 8th grade. And even with that, one child attended three different high schools in 4 years and the others each had 2 high schools. (If you’re thinking about it, you will realize that the one who was home schooled through 10th grade still had two different high school for 11th and 12th grade!) Every child received at least one scholarship, many were renewable each year based on grades. One graduated summa cum laude and one cum laude.
I am so glad that we were able to do that, that the window of opportunity was open to us. And although I would love to see the same for my grandchildren, I am fearful that parents will have to work especially hard at home to counter what they are taught in the schools. The peer pressure to conform to non-Christian ideas is so great, it is nearly impossible to counter without solid teaching at home! And too many parents either don’t realize it or don’t care enough - they don’t see the danger. I fear our country is rapidly going to hell in that proverbial basket.
Poor Rifqa! We must all pray for her!
September 12th, 2009 at 11:13 am
This has the smell of a double-standard.
That’s because you’re assuming there are standards where there are none. First, these are two different states. Second, one case involves a guardian ad litem in a divorced family where the other involves, essentially, a run-away (though, the 17year old is close enough to majority that one wonders why they even try).
Besides the WSJ being mentioned in the same story, the only thing these two have in common is that their respective states are now involved in the religious up-bringing of these children but in neither case did they set out to get involved in that.
What remedies would you suggest? And if you suggest broad legal remedies, have you considered all the applications of them?
September 12th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
It was a cultural observation from one humble culture-watcher, and offered up just as that. The cases have some different factors, as all cases do, but I’m not sure that means they can’t be contrasted. Apparently, the WSJ didn’t think so either, because they’re the ones that conjoined the two in one story, not me. Reading the entire story (HERE) might give more info, if you’re interested.
September 13th, 2009 at 6:30 am
“Besides the WSJ being mentioned…” should have been “Besides being mentioned in the same WSJ story” since I did understand they were from the same story.
All I’m saying is that there are too many other factors involved here to see this as symptomatic of a changing societal stance that favors Islam over Christianity.
September 13th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
I don’t think it’s a Christianity vs. Islam issue. I do think there has been a pattern of refusing to consider Christianity as a cultural force for good, and I think these are two examples of that. I think that’s the reason that the authors connected the stories, and the reason that I picked it up.
If it doesn’t strike you that way, then that’s your opinion. But I don’t agree that I owe it to the world to refrain from voicing opinions on my own little blog without some imagined number of data points that would convince all readers all the time. I doubt that anyone really proceeds that way. I certainly don’t. I don’t think anyone who sticks around this particular blog for long would be surprised to hear that.
But again, if you’re just feeling like a trip to the Argument Clinic, you’ll want to go to the story on WSJ and wade into the comments section. Last time I checked, there were over 1,000.
September 14th, 2009 at 11:13 am
Um… Did I come across as hostile? I hope not. If I did, my apologies.
I didn’t ask you to refrain from anything. I do think that if you aren’t willing to consider other ways of interpreting a situation, you’ll rapidly become more and more paranoid about perceived slights. Which is not to say that perceived slights aren’t real — just that dwelling on them doesn’t do us a lot of good.
For Christians in an increasingly secular West, this can be particularly difficult: where do we need to fight against suppression and when do we need to let things go? I’m troubled by the number of small offenses that people seem (to me) to blow all out of proportion. Sending a boy to a public school is not exactly martyrdom. The girl, however, may have a real reason to fear for her life.
I’m really not looking for an argument. I’ve said my piece. I’ll avoid commenting further.
September 14th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Not hostile, exactly. When a first-time commenter opens by putting me on the hot seat, I’m not sure where they’re coming from.
But on the big question we’re on about, I suspect it’s a subjective matter whether we’re overreacting or not.
I don’t think it’s a bad thing for secular people to understand how embattled Christians feel. (Consider Anam Cara’s comment above.) We are pressured to keep our religion to ourselves “in the privacy of our own homes,” and now here’s a court coming into one parent’s private home and telling her she can’t raise her child in the faith. If it seems like we’re getting paranoid, do you see how it happened?
September 14th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
PS: Don’t refrain from commenting, if you want to. I love the MP skit about the Argument Clinic, so I assume that other people will, too. I just know that I’m not very good at that stuff, and the WSJ commenters are.
September 16th, 2009 at 3:36 am
I just read that the authorities in FL have found that there is no threat against Rifqa in FL or OH. The judge has yet to rule whether or not she will be returned home from her foster care, but with no threat to her, how can he not send her home…..
September 16th, 2009 at 10:51 am
I would think that apart from any physical danger she might be in, there would be an unbelievable amount of pressure coming to her from her family and other Muslims, near and far. She’s a high-profile case of a young Muslim converting to Christianity, and I would think they’d try very hard to make her regret that decision. Lord, have mercy (on her and on her new faith, which could easily become distorted from this exposure.)
September 19th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
Grace,
I’m not a first time commenter — if you look around you’ll find one or two other comments.. I’ve been following your blog for some time — as a fellow Orthodox, you’ve had some interesting posts. I just don’t think public school is martyrdom. Even though my wife and I have chosen not to use the local public school to educate our children ;)