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Most parents have the sneaking suspicion that they should be disciplining their children, despite the fear that doing so will cost them their child's affection. Pastors rightly seek to fan this tiny spark of parental responsibility into a little flame capable of shining needed light into their child's life through setting meaningful limits.

But many modern parents, influenced by the latest child rearing philosophies, have become reluctant to impose ANY consequences at all on their children. These people have no spark of parental responsibility left in them to fan. Enter the pastor: Armed, figuratively speaking, with gasoline and a blow torch, he steps into the pulpit determined to save the future of mankind by rekindling the flames of parental discipline. Since many modern parents are about as incindiary as soaking wet newspaper it is reasonably safe in most cases to thoroughly drown them in unleadeded fuel and set a zippo to them. Even with these extreme measures you are lucky to ignire even a tiny flickering flame.

Yet, despite their good intentions, all too often it has been discovered after the fact that these pastors were inadvertantly dumping gasoline onto raging bonfires of physical abuse.

I have a unique perspective on the problem, having been severely physically abused as a child by parents who justified their actions by citing the teachings of our independent Baptist church. As early as pre-school I remember my father reading from the bible while delivering dozens of belt lashes that were hard enough to peel skin, raise 1/4" tall welts, and leave bruises that lasted for weeks.

I believe that our pastor had only the best intentions. I also believe that most people took his advice as he meant it, and tempered their discipline with grace and mercy. No doubt, pastors have a responsibility to teach parents to be parents, rather than friends, to their kids.

But I also think that Pastors have a responsibility to make sure that they are not inciting abusive parents to escalate abuse against their kids. In numerous recent abuse cases we have seen abusive parents approaching the church for help, and rather than having their abuses pointed out to them and corrected, they have been sent away with the same one-size-fits-all advice. The result is that in a few cases parents have been incited by their pastors into an escalating pattern of abuse.

It is important for all of us to raise awareness among fundamentalist pastors about the existence and prevalence of child abuse. Insist to your pastor that his statements about physical discipline be qualified with warnings against abuse. It is not necessary to write a book on the subject in order to make a clear distinction. My 1975 edition of “The New Emily Post’s Etiquette,” says, “I believe there is no substitute for a good, hard — not brutal — spanking.”

Pastors need to show some discretion about where, when, and upon whom they are dumping their inflammatory teachings.

Some of the scriptures cited by Christians who beat their children:

Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying.
- Proverbs 19:18 (The Hebrew word for “chasten” means literally “chasten with blows.”)

The blueness of a wound cleanses away evil: so do stripes the inward parts of the belly.
- Proverbs 20:30 (The Hebrew word translated “stripes” means “beating.”)

Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beats him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shall deliver his soul from Sheol.
- Proverbs 23:13-14

As a man chasteneth his son, so the Lord thy God chasteneth thee (with blows).
- Deuteronomy 8:5

For whom the Lord loves he chasteneth, and scourges every son whom he receives.
- Hebrews 12:6 (The Greek word translated “chasteneth,” also means “beating.”)

AND IF BEATIN’ ‘EM DON’T WORK…
“If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.”
- Deuteronomy 21:18-21 [Based on this verse, Rev. William Einwechter, vice-moderator of the Association of Free Reformed Churches, is convinced that we as a nation are in danger of suffering the penalty of God’s wrath unless we begin stoning to death “disobedient children” who are in their “middle teens or older.”]

AUGUSTINE'S VIEW OF INFANTS WHO ARE NOT BAPTIZED
Infants, When Unbaptized, are in the Power of the Devil… The Christian faith unfalteringly declares that they who are cleansed in the laver of regeneration (i.e., the baptismal font) are redeemed from the power of the devil, and that those who have not yet been redeemed by such regeneration are still captive in the power of the devil, even if they be infant children of the redeemed… From the power of the devil … infants are delivered when they are baptized; and whosoever denies this, is convicted by the truth of the Church’s very sacraments, which no heretical novelty in the Church of Christ is permitted to destroy or change, so long as the Divine Head rules and helps the entire body which He owns--small as well as great. It is true, then, and in no way false, that the devil’s power is exorcised in infants, and that they renounce him by the hearts and mouths of those who bring them to baptism, being unable to do so by their own; in order that they may be delivered from the power of darkness, and be translated into the kingdom of their Lord.
- Saint Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence, Book 1, Chapter 22

Philip Greven’s book, Spare the Child, cites American Protestant authors who continue to promote violence against children.

Alice Miller’s, For Your Own Good, traces the roots of physical violence towards children in the western world to the influence of Christianity. To illustrate her point she includes many biographical accounts, including a look at the Christian training that Adolf Hitler received during childhood.

Annie Laurie Gaylor’s, Betrayal of Trust: Clergy Abuse of Children, documents cases of child abuse by the clergy.

Mary Raftery and Eoin O’Sullivan’s, Suffer the Little Children: The Inside Story of Ireland’s Industrial Schools, tells the story of cruelties on children perpetrated by minions of state and church.

Many churches in the Western civilized world were in favor of keeping children in factories and in the fields, and hence opposed child labor laws (to put the children in classrooms). Such churches also favored forcing children to obey their parent's wishes via corporal punishment. It was also a time when beating one's wife for her disobedience was also considered normal behavior.

Julia Scheeres's book, Jesus Land, unlocks the door to her Calvinist childhood home plagued with domestic abuse, and her being sent to a Christian reform school in the Dominican Republic when she was a teen. There are a number of such Christian Reform schools even today in both hemispheres, including Christian counseling centers where they employ shouting and other punishments to turn children away from such evils as "rock and roll" or "being gay."

Other ways religious parents have put their children at risk include refusing medical care "for religious reasons," or taking their children along with them on missionary trips to dangerously anti-christian countries. But there's also the strife that results in a household where the children may rebel against their parents conservative religious beliefs, or where the father or mother grows increasingly more conservative (or one grows strikingly less conservative) in their religious views.

P.S., I hope no one reacted to my two previous posts except in the sense of my having forwarded information, Bible verses, a quotation from Augustine, book titles, etc. I do not blame all the verses in the entire Bible nor all Christians for "beating children." I think Christianity or rather all of the Christianities that exist today are sufficiently broad such that some of them focus on some Bible verses and teachings while other Christians focus on other verses.

I might add that I am also repelled by the simplicity of some Evangelical arguments to the effect that atheism or evolution are the root of all evil and that "Darwin and the theory of evolution was to blame for Hitler." I am equally repelled by arguments that Christianity is the root of all evil or that Christianity was to blame for countless wars and atrocities--usually Christians killing, torturing, enslaving, or persecuting other Christians--over the past two millennia. But we still have the theory of evolution and Darwin's theory of natural selection around today, it is taught worldwide in fact and by the world's leading scholars, and it is now many decades since Hitler's death and the demise of the Third Reich and that type of fascism in a European country (moreover, evolution was also being taught in the universities of Western nations, the same nations who fought against Nazi Germany).

Conversely, it's also been a long time since the Thirty Years War between Christian nations decimated central Europe.

Such wars in the past, either for German nationalism or for religious nationalism, appear to have taken place due to a confluence of factors, many of them taken to the extreme at that time and place.

I might add that nationalism is a force that even trumps religion during the modern era, as it did during some of Europe's greatest wars in the 20th century. The rise of extreme nationalistic fervor is thus as much to be questioned as extreme religious fervor in a nation (and they often add impetus to each other). Cf. Eric Hoffer's The True Believer, a classic little work on the alluring yet dangerous psychological attractions of extremist mass movements in either politics or religion.

A police investigation into a Corpus Christi, Texas area Baptist group, the People’s Baptist Church, has uncovered allegations of child abuse…Eighteen-year-old Justin Simons told police that a church employee punched him in the chest, and punished him and another young boy by tying their wrists together and forcing them to run through the woods and even dig a 15-foot-deep pit. “When I tried to jump the pit, I fell and sprained both ankles.”

The People’s Baptist Church operates the Rebekah Home for Girls and the Anchor Home for Boys, and carries on a ministry founded by the late evangelist Lester Roloff. Practices at Roloff’s various “homes” and other ministerial operations attracted concern in the past from media and authorities over charges involving abuse, beatings and other forms of “Bible based discipline” which the evangelist unabashedly espoused. Roloff defended his punitive child-control techniques, declaring, “Better a pink bottom than a black soul.” Then-Texas State Attorney General John Hill bluntly responded, “I don’t mind pink bottoms. What I do object to is black, blue and bloody…”
- “Probe of Abuse Charges at ‘Bible Discipline’ Home Leads to Bush, Raises Questions of Faith-State Partnership”

Joan Grise, 70 years old and suffering from cancer, is making a valiant effort to have her grandson freed from the clutches of a private religious prison operated in Arcadia, Louisiana by the New Bethany Baptist Church. The boy’s father, a member of the authoritarian sect, decided that his son Matthew is “evil” and must literally have sin driven out of him. So, he turned the youngster over to the clutches of Rev. Mack W. Ford, who is notorious for his brutal style of corporal punishment.

Ford says that his treatment is designed “to reach the unwanted with the love of God,” but even the local Deputy Sheriff of Bievnville Parish, where Ford’s compound is located, refers to the place as a “private jail.” It looks it too, surrounded by barbed-wire fencing and out of sight from observers. Sheriff Stewart told the Rocky Mountain News that Ford gets kids “down here and works the heck out of them and spanks the heck out of them and does what he wants to do…”

A 1984 report in the New York Times discussed a similar religious compound that Ford was operating in South Carolina. Along with the heavy regimen of corporal punishment and Bible-verse indoctrination, youngsters were divided into levels. At the bottom were boys described as “in bondage.” According to the newspaper reports, they were “marched into fields to work while tied together with rope,” and prohibited from even talking or laughing. Above them, the “bonded servants” enjoyed the privilege of conversation, but still were in forced labor. At the top were the “sojourners.” South Carolina authorities raided Ford’s work camp, and the county prosecutor declared, “Most of the boys were brainwashed, just like Hitler did with kids.”

At his new compound in Louisiana “Ford repeatedly has rebuffed the attempts of state regulators to inspect the facility,” notes The News. “Even the state fire marshal is not allowed on site to assure the safety of the approximately 50 children housed there…”

A raid on his South Carolina compound produced evidence of children being struck with a “rod of correction,” and reports that children were confined in cells with ropes and handcuffs, and evidence of physical bruising.

Although I’m “against” spanking, it was such an integral part of my upbringing that I’ve internalized a huge part of the pro-spanking agenda. I feared spanking for almost everything. My parents often glowed from compliments on how well-behaved we were, yet we kids agreed that we only behaved in public because we were terrified of catching hell in private.

The rules for spankings changed with nearly every Bill Gothard seminar or other religious gathering my father/parents attended. They’d come home and announce that their three-stroke limit was unbiblical, that the proper way to spank was until the child *STOPPED* crying in demonstration of a surrendered spirit. Maybe that worked for meek kids, but I had strong lungs. Another time they learned that nightmares were a child’s way of punishing her/him-self, so when one of us screamed out at night, Dad would bring the paddle in and “free” us from guilt so we could go back to sleep.Waking up to the sound of a sibling being spanked is traumatic in its own right. Ah, and our father made many wooden paddles in his shop… with a handle cut in and a leather loop for hanging convenience. Our mom inscribed Bible verses on the surface and helped stain and shellac the little numbers. They gave a bunch of them away as presents, but we had plenty left for ourselves.

Yet I remain conflicted about spanking. I *know* it’s not a good idea, but any other way of raising kids is still foreign to me. A few years ago I read Irwin Hyman’s book, The Case Against Spanking/Discipline Without Hitting, and was astounded that someone actually thought a spanking-free childhood would be okay, even preferable. After reading it I had a discussion with my youngest brother, who was often spanked quite severely, yet who says it’s the only way to raise “Godly kids.” Little parrot. “Mom and Dad spanked me so they could get their loving boy back.” I’m 18 years older than he is, but not much further ahead of him in coming out of this mess. I still expect to be hit randomly without grounds.

The better--and safer--my personal situation gets, the more I remember bizarre things like my father’s consideration of stoning as an appropriate punishment for my rebellious nature, and his friend who spanked a three-month-old because he “saw rebellion in his son’s eyes”. Oh, and forced fastings to bring us into contact with the Holy Spirit, but that’s another topic. I still have a lot of nightmares, many of trying to escape from my father when he’s coming after me to punish me.

Sorry to spew so much personal history here...I have a feeling that others besides P.& R. have experience with this stuff and understand the Biblical twist on narcissistic parenting. I haven’t yet found a therapist who can do more than stare at me with mouth gaping if I talk about this stuff.

- Naomi at exitfundyism@yahoogroups.com (Mar. 25, 2001)

Austin, Texas--Twenty-three-year-old Joshua Thompson, pastor of the Spanish-language congregation at “independent fundamental” Capitol City Baptist church, and his twin brother and assistant at the church, Caleb Thompson, were convicted in the beating of a Bible student. They used an inch-thick tree branch to beat Louie Guerrero, an 11-year-old boy, for “goofing off” during Bible class because he was not taking preparations for a Scripture recital competition seriously. “The indication that we have is that (the boy) had been accused of cheating in memorizing Bible verses.” Court records allege the beating was to physically “break” the boy for lying. As punishment, Pastor Thompson took the boy from the church school to Caleb’s home, snapped a branch off a tree, and beat the boy as Caleb held him facedown on a bed. They turned up the radio to cover the child’s cries. The boy told his family the beating lasted about 90 minutes, and he was allowed to take a break in the restroom during the beating. Contra the boy’s testimony, Pastor Thomson said “the beating lasted about 10 minutes.” The boy and a doctor who treated him said he was hit at least 100 times. Jurors saw graphic photos of the boy’s back with red and purple bruises and blood spots from scrapes or puncture wounds.

Pastor Thompson and his brother took the boy home, where they met Louie’s mother and stepfather and told them we have a “big problem.” The pastor told the boy’s stepfather that he was unable to “break” the boy, and that the stepfather should “beat Louie for two more hours” to fix it. “Do it!” Thompson said three times, according to court papers. The pastor added that he would not allow their son to return to church because his bad example might affect the other children.

After the pastor and his brother left, Louie’s mother and stepfather discovered bruises and small cuts from his neck to his buttocks as a result of the beating. More bruising was found on his arms and the right side of his head. Police said the boy’s back was a giant swath of red peppered with cuts and blood spots.

The pastor said the boy’s parents had given him permission to punish the boy and that he didn’t intend to inflict serious injuries. The boy’s parents deny telling the pastor that he could hit their child. The boy was admitted to intensive care at Brackenridge Children’s Hospital. Broken blood vessels had caused his kidneys to fail. A nurse told investigators that he needed a blood transfusion to live. The boy spent five days in intensive care after the beating.

The boy told police that in the past he had been spanked or forced to maintain a push-up position for an extended period, and that he has seen other children physically disciplined. Others members of the church have called Bobby Taylor, the boy’s attorney, alleging abuses, and he advised them to call the police. Detective Douglas Havens of the child abuse unit said the boy reported seeing a church member spank another child at the church but that the child was not injured. “The indication of the family is that many church members approve of this kind of thing or at least have accepted the religious philosophy behind it.” Havens added that the boy’s family indicated harsh and severe discipline is often used in the Spanish-speaking segment of the church. Havens said the victim told police he had never before been hit with “the rod” as church members referred to the stick.

Pastor Thompson reportedly testified that at the time of the beating he thought he was doing the right thing, but that since the July 3 incident he has realized that his actions were “totally, totally, totally, totally, totally wrong.”

“When I lay my head on my pillow at night, I try to forgive myself,” Caleb Thompson said.

SOURCES: “Texas Boy Nearly Beaten To Death by Pastor,” July 9, 2002 (Reuters); The Houston Chronicle, “Accused Pastor, Brother Surrender, Austin Police Probe Possibility Other Youths Abused in Church,” July 10, 2002; The Dallas Morning News, Newspaper, “Pastor, Brother Face Charges in Boys Beating,” July 10, 2002; Fox News, “Pastor, Brother Charged With Beating Boy For Cheating In Bible Studies,” July 10, 2002; AustinChronicle.com, Dec. 12, 2003: Politics: Naked City; Jim Vertuno, “Brothers Guilty in Beating at Bible Study” Associated Press/Dec. 10, 2003

Spanking is not a Christian doctrine. Churches should leave the subject alone, or if anything, preach against it, if they actually intend to follow Christ's teachings.

Every cited verse that directly promotes child hitting is taken from the Old Testament, where slaves could also be legally beaten to death and the owner lose his money, adults could be beaten and killed for breaking the Sabbath and other petty crimes, and etc. As Paul said in Galations, if you wish to live by any part of the law, you must live by all of it.

The one metaphor to parental hitting and God's discipline in Hebrews is no more an endorsement of parental spanking than the dozens of similar comparisons of Christians and slaves is an endorsement of slavery. They were merely metaphors of the current Old Testament and Roman empire culture. Unlike the slave metaphors, however, the writer of Hebrews takes a specific detour to acknowledge that many fathers may spank children for their own pleasure, while God does so only for our own best interests. In other words even this metaphor in in that violent and backward time is no endorsement of earthly child hitting and makes this distinction very plain.

Christ himself never taught anyone to hit anyone, nor did any Apostle. In Matthew 18 Christ seems to say that child abuse is among the gravest sins imaginable, and says we would be better off if we had our hand cut off than using it for sin (in the context of offending his little ones), or we would be better off with a millstone tied to our necks and drowned in the depths of the sea.

Since Jesus and the Apostles never once spanked or paddled a child or advocated any follower do such, spanking is clearly not a Christian doctrine. It is high time for preachers to end the misleading and lying, perhaps opening their own eyes to the truth for the first time. Once we realize that Christ did not teach or advocate spanking, we are free to let our reason and science show what is good or harmful in childcare. Spanking entails many risks, some of which are seldom studied, and can even be a form of sexual and sadistic abuse here on earth, as the writer of Hebrews intimated. As we are learning now, just as we don't stone people to death for violating the Sabbath or beat slaves to death, we no longer need to follow Old Testament child beating practices to raise wonderful children. Remember discipline means to make disciples, and if you are following Christ nonviolence and respect for children's sexual modesty and dignity are supreme examples to leave them with.

Jesus said if the salt loses its savor it is good for nothing but to be trodden down under the feet of men. I have no respect whatsoever for preachers and churches that promote spanking, and in too many cases, where preachers and church staff engage in spanking other people's children in churches, camps, and church sponsored schools. I think most often these people are wolves in sheeps clothing, are hidden child exploiters and abusers, often make money selling books of that theme to others so inclined who are looking for excuses and rationales to abuse, and in any case offer reckless, dangerous, and antichrist teaching at best.

I am a Pentecostal minister and co-director of an evangelical outreach to cult members who has been specifically focused upon helping victims of the Remnant Fellowship sect for several years now. I can testify most candidly, that on the basis of classic Christian creeds and Biblically-based doctrinal positions held in common by many Christian groups from Roman Catholicism to Pentecostalism, that Remnant Fellowship is most decidedly a dangerous and aberrant group. It's doctrine and practice are in thrall to the personal mores of its founder, Gwen Shamblin, than anything related to the liberal Church of Christ culture she broke away from to create her cult, trying hard to come off like the next great Restoration of Truth to the apostate church facing God's judgment.

And that is the point, however, that is missed entirely by this essay. It is the unhealthy social domination of Shamblin's warped personal piety that has imparted to Remnant's membership the seriously and abusively skewed perfectionism she demands of them. Child discipline is another aspect of this. It is a painful, sensitive and tragic reality that few seem to squarely consider, but it is there. This is probably because most external observers of Remnant do not have the perspective our interaction with ex RF members and Remnant produced teachings brings us.

Shamblin has had circulated throughout her sect for years a body of oral teaching (preserved in her teaching and preaching that has been recorded) that makes abundantly clear that in her view, child discipline is to include questionable forms of communal and family corporal punishment but also a process she calls "death to self" in which any expression of the child's self-will that the parent believes to be "rebellious" is to be mercilessly quashed. As part of our ministry research, we have copies of these recordings and know of too many heartbreaking instances in which Remnant parents have followed it to the letter in ways that we beleive hold great potential for psychological damaging.

It is NOT loving discipline that is to be faulted here but the Shamblinesque spin she puts on it, and then deceptively misrepresents as "time honored child rearing." It is not the Biblically mandated discipline and admonition of children we would object to. It is Gwen's matriarchal megalomania that warps her take on it that is truly troubling.

To Rev. Martinez,

Congratulations on working with abuse victims from the child beating cult. However, I think any minister who preaches "good spanking" as though it were a "christian" practice is in some ways even more culpable and responsible for more child abuse overall than the whackos who occasionally make the news. There is much "routine child abuse" that is promulgated by much false teaching.

I would not mind so much if the "ministers" stuck to what Christ actually taught, and if they knew which Testament they were in. Many swing to the Old Testament to preach spanking, but they don't likewise preach animal sacrifice and stoning people to death.

Jesus never spanked or paddled any child, nor did any disciple, nor is there any instruction for anyone else to do so. Some "ministers" actually say this is a Christian doctrine nontheless, and some like the CA minister in the news claim you cannot be a Christian unless you spank, and sometimes unless you let him or others spank your children. This is the height of false teaching, and adding to the word of God in the most harmful fashion possible.

I fully concur with you and others on that assertion, that beyond the cellulite-free wombs of Remnant Fellowship that there are vast and virtually uncharted expanses of evangelical culpability behind which child abuse has been sanctioned in the name of "discipline."

Corporal punishment of children, at best, is a last resort the New Testament doesn't directly refer to. I would affirm that the Old Testament mandates are still valid points of reference that have to be interpreted in the context of a New Testament theology that affirms both grace and justice. The Biblical language referencing chastening and admonition cannot be ignored however if meaningful discipline is to mean any thing. It's not meant to be the stuff of lyrical memory - but grievous and painful reminders of the need to comply with what is right. If that means I have to take my son over my knee, it will be done .. but in a right spirit, a right manner and with enough of the teachable moment worked in so the child learns from it, not gets scarred by it.

Avoiding the "appearance of evil" in terms of "sparing the rod" simply to comply with the compulsions of a Christian culture more given to letting adults freak out on kids who are being kids is plain wrong. Anger, embarassment and frustration are easily sanctified and immediately brought down on children who, while needing discipline, are too often the victims of carnal brutality - not Christian beneficence.