Christian School Fires Teacher for Not Getting Married Quickly Enough

The poor woman, she must be feeling terrible right now! Considering that she’s worked there for three years, I think it’s fairly safe to say that she’s a Christian too, so to go from feeling part of a community like that to feeling betrayed by people so similar to her must be terrible!

I hope she’s successful in any legal action about this, the school’s behaviour’s absolutely disgusting.

If the recent SCOTUS ruling is any indication, the application of the
term minister will probably stick here.  They ruled 9-0 against the
teacher of a religious school, siding with the school on religious
freedom grounds, even though the religion wasn’t the issue there.

I don’t see where the legislation intended or defined that a teacher is a minister, especially if they aren’t ordained or have the kind of education religions generally require to become a minister, but that’s the ruling in a very similar situation.

Urk. I made the mistake of reading the comments in the original article. The stupid is very strong there

I think the ‘Christian’ reply might be she shouldn’t be having sex outside of marriage in the first place.

Do I hear “fundraiser” in the future? Because that would be a good idea for us atheists to be a part of after her Christian community got rid of her.

What WOULD that hypothetical fourth-grade girl think of her caring, attentive, supportive teacher for being pregnant out of wedlock? Oh, right…she’d probably think she’s caring, attentive, and supportive.

As soon as a female representative from that school stands up and speaks against Miss Samford, then I’ll listen; some ass-backwards, morally-void argument from a male administrator just somehow holds no water in my eyes.

Trick question: Would they have fired Mary for becoming pregnant with Jesus if she were a teacher?

Answer: She wouldn’t have been allowed to teach anyways.

“I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.” – 1 Timothy 2:12

Therein lies the hypocrisy of this school; they simply cherry pick the Bible the vague verses about premarital sex in the Bible (namely 1 Corinthians 7:2) whilst ignoring 1 Timothy 2:12.

None if it holds water in my eyes, I don’t care what gender the speaker is.

This isn’t a matter of biblical “morality” but secular law. Religious schools simply shouldn’t be be allowed to do whatever they want just because some ancient book says so

Is anybody really surprised by this?  Isn’t this just the norm?  And why should we care?  She chose to be oppressed by joining this organization.  

I despise organized religion.  I think it’s detrimental to society.  But in this country we respect the rights of religious organizations to act as they feel within their organization.  It is not our right to force our moral values on this church.  Now if she were working at a public school in a small town and the church leaders urged the school board to fire her, well then we would have cause to be outraged and legal action should be taken.  But this is church business, not ours.  

This is just like that situation a while back where a kid got suspended from an ultra-conservative Christian school for attending a dance at another school.  He knew the rules, he knew the consequences for violating the rules, he then broke the rules and whined to the press.  I have very little sympathy for such people.  

This was a private Christian school where she most likely signed a morality agreement when she was employed (based upon the lawyer’s comment regarding the contract).  She obviously breached that agreement. The school has an obligation and the right to uphold it. She violated the moral agreement they all agreed to when she accepted the job and when they hired her. There is nothing in the article that says the school enjoyed making this decision or that it didn’t have compassion for her, but they have an obligation to stand up to the moral tenets that they preach.  It would be hypocritical for them to do otherwise. And yes if the father of this child worked at the school he should be fired as well.

” This is a Christian school. Where they act like Jesus and throw the unwed pregnant people out of their church school”

“And what should a Christian woman be like? Should she be a wonderful educator? Apparently, that doesn’t matter. Neither does being a successful coach. Or being in a long-term, committed relationship.”

I see a problem with these statements. Am I the only one? Look, if having sex or getting pregnant outside of wedlock were *actually* immoral, then there might be good reason not to have such people on staff as teachers. To see this, all you have to do is substitute “pregnant out of wedlock” with something we all agree is immoral, like “repeat shoplifter.” Now try making a statement like Hemant’s again:

‘Apparently it doesn’t matter if you’re a wonderful educator or a successful coach. If you’re a thief, then Heritage Christian Academy doesn’t want you.’

Well duh. The entire premise of HCA’s argument is that “being pregnant out of wedlock is wrong,” and the rest follows (more-or-less logically)  from that. Hemant’s argument is akin to saying that Cathy Samford’s good qualities outweigh the bad. But they wouldn’t necessarily outweigh the bad if she were a shoplifter, so I see Hemant’s argument as fundamentally flawed. If you want to argue that Samford is a good teacher, you have to challenge HCA’s premise – that there’s something wrong with being pregnant out of wedlock. There fucking isn’t. That’s the point.

I’m staying out of the legal debate here since I’m not familiar enough with this specific situation, though I do think it is a societal injustice that a woman can be fired for being pregnant out of wedlock.  It’s just interesting to me, in a larger context, that people can identify as Christians and then be surprised when other Christians judge them negatively based on the book they should really all have read.

The relationship this woman has with her husband would certainly be considered “marriage” in the Bible, either the Old or New Testaments. And the school’s definition- presumably a consensual relationship between the two adults, “sanctified” by some sort of priest, was almost unheard of in biblical times.

Once again, we see Christians operating under arbitrary rules that have little connection to anything actually found in their own scripture.

Hemant – Umm, this woman is obviously in need and a victim of religious discrimination…how come there isn’t already a pledge drive going for her like we did for Damon and Jessica?  Do we only help other atheists in trouble?   Can we start a small pledge drive for her to help her through this time and show some atheist love?

Wow, a bit alarmist don’t you think?  And a Christian school is not a completely secular business fulfilling a secular function.  Hospitals are a different matter altogether than schools.  It’s silly to compare the two.  

When I went to Catholic school there was religious instruction as well as mandatory mass attendance 2-3 times a week.  How secular was that?  The school was funded by the church, and if our parents tithed the appropriate amount then our tuition was covered.  In what way was that a secular business?

 Please cite a verse that says that. Culturally at the time of the Bible and as described in the Bible, marriages were highly organized, arranged relationships between the families. There is no evidence that people could just start living together and they were then considered married.  In fact, Jesus acknowledges the difference when he talks to the woman at the well telling her that she had been married many times before and that the man she was living with now was not her husband. 
 

Was she getting ministerial housing tax exception?  

I do understand that but as the Supreme Court says that does not apply to religious institutions.

 Bingo – gender never matters.  Actions matter.  And the actions of this school are as wrong as can be, and I hope they get utterly crushed in the ensuing lawsuit.

If Cathy and/or her attorney are reading this: We’re behind you 100%.  Go for the jugular.

Explain how this answers the question of pointing to a biblical verse that says that two people living together is considered marriage in the Bible?  

Hemant, please start up some sort of campaign for her to help pay her medical bills.  I will gladly donate.

 It does too! I saw cognitive dissonance cause heads to explode on Austin Powers, so IT MUST BE TRUE! LOL!

See Dias vs. Archdiocese of Cincinnati
It only applies to those in ministerial capacities. 

The bar is:
(1) The employer must be a religious institution and (2) the employee must be a ministerial employee. 

Cheryl Perich was a ministerial employee and taught religion classes who was issued a “diploma of vocation” and the title of “Minister of Religion, Commissioned”.

A religious institution can’t just fire someone and then call them a *minister* after the fact.

Point to a verse that limits marriage to something sanctified by a priest.

I wrote my thesis for an undergraduate history degree on the history of childhood, which necessarily involved researching family structures. In western and near-eastern cultures, up until a few hundred years ago, almost all marriages were what we’d today call common law. There was no formal recognition in the church, and usually little in the way of ceremony. Most marriages were simply informal arrangements between the partners and their families. When the Bible was written, this defined the vast majority of marriages, and is certainly what “marriage” means in most biblical passages and contexts.

The exception to this was where political control was involved: marriage amongst the rich, the powerful, the nobility. These marriages were usually much more formal, and often involved the church. Of course, in many cases these were forced or polygamous, as well- something that the Bible has no problem with.

With you on the fact that religious men speak way too often on the topic of female “morality,” but religious women can form ass backwards, morally void arguments, too.

me too. 

What do you mean by “at the time of the Bible”? The stories were written over about 1000 years, and many had oral precedents stretching back a couple of thousand years before that. The interpretation of marriage certainly varied over that interval.

Marriage is a cultural institution, with a meaning well understood within any culture. That is why it is undefined in either the Old or New Testaments. Everybody knew what it meant (basically, the recognition by family and society that a couple were entitled to have sex and produce children, and an understanding of property rights). So in scripture, you see the word used, but no definition required. To understand marriage during different biblical times, we need to look to historical references. This is actually pretty easy for Roman Palestine, since good records were kept.

Contrary to your assertion, marriages were NOT particularly formal outside of the aristocracy. Marriage was primarily by consent of the partners, usually with some involvement of their respective families (often, simply the purchase of the female partner from her father).

A family like that of this teacher: a couple, sharing their resources, living under one roof, in a committed relationship, producing a child, with no other marital claimants to either party, would come about as close to traditional as you could get around the time of Jesus.

 Yes, she’ll probably lose. The church considers her a “minister” in the “Teaching Ministry”. The guy who swabs the toilets is in the “Custodial Ministry”, and the people who drive the church buses on Wednesday and Sunday are “Bus Ministers”.
This didn’t hold true when Greg Dixon had the Indianapolis Baptist Temple seized for not paying employee (minister) withholding, but the make-up of the SCOTUS is different now.

If somebody signs a moral code when taking a job with a private organization, then intentionally violates that moral code with full knowledge of what the consequences are, so be it.  And equating eating at McDonald’s to getting pregnant is stupid.  Now if a teacher at an Orthodox Jewish school brought bacon chocolate chip cookies to class, well yes, I would expect them to be punished.  

A public university football coach was just fired for having an affair, lying about it, and influencing the hiring of the girl he was seeing by the university.  Where’s the outrage over that?  Why should he be fired for that?  Unless she’s not qualified for the job, then what’s the harm? 

 “She chose to be oppressed by joining this organization.”

Libertarian idea detected.

My thoughts exactly. Does anyone know what we need to do to get something like this started?

Personally, I’m not deeply interested in what kinds of ceremonies were held twenty centuries ago.  But I’d be curious…

Can you DEFEND what they’ve done here?  I’m sure you’ll say they were obeying scripture (though I wonder if scripture says that unwed mothers should be fired, please point to THAT verse), but what I’m really wondering is if you personally think they did the right thing.

Are they all going to be BETTER Christians now that she’s gone?  Is this how this SHOULD have been handled?  It’s not as if she was NEVER going to get married, it was just delayed.  Presumably, they knew this, and were unwilling to wait.

Does her parental status or marital status have any bearing on her ability to teach or coach?  Is it really MORE important that she have a RITUAL at the “proper” place in her timeline, than that she is in love with her fiance and PLANS to spend the rest of her life with him?  Is this how a god would WANT her to be treated, stripped of her livelihood, unable to properly care for her coming child, all because her wedding date was pushed back?  Is this a desirable Christian policy, that others should model?

In the Catholic elementary scho0l I taught in, the PE teacher had a 2 year old child, and was living with the father, not married to him.  During the 2nd year of her teaching there, she and the father decided to marry, and did so in a huge downtown Cathedral.  The 2 year old daughter was in the wedding.  The school knew she was unmarried with a child, but hired her, and didn’t seem to have a problem.  The children were old enough to know the situation too.    After her marriage, they had another child.  Apparently this Catholic school wasn’t passing judgement on her situation or they wouldn’t have hired her to begin with.   IMO, Catholics can be the first to “condemn” out of wedlock situations, but not in this case.  She was a very good PE teacher too!   This Christian school apparently hasn’t got the same out look as my former employer.  

 Bathsheba was married to someone else, not David. That is why his acts with her constituted adultery.

Nobody in this discussion has been talking about a state marriage  just a marriage.

 I am a lawyer in one of those states.  One of the key elements of a common law marriage is holding yourself out to the public as being married.  Clearly this lady and her fiance did not do that.  They specifically said that they were not married, thus they could not be considered common law married.  Actually, the amount of time to live together is not true.  At lest in Texas the amount of time does not matter.  It is the intent and the public declaration along with living together.

But can you DEFEND what they’ve done here?  I’m sure you’ll say they were obeying scripture (though I wonder if scripture says that unwed mothers should be fired, please point to THAT verse), but what I’m really wondering is if you personally think they did the right thing.

Are they all going to be BETTER Christians now that she’s gone?  Is this how this SHOULD have been handled?  It’s not as if she was NEVER going to get married, it was just delayed.  Presumably, they knew this, yet were unwilling to wait.

Does her parental status or marital status have any bearing on her ability to teach or coach?  Is it really MORE important that she have a RITUAL at some “proper” place in her timeline, than that she is in love with her fiance and PLANS to spend the rest of her life with him?  Is this how a god would WANT her to be treated, stripped of her livelihood, unable to properly care for her coming child, all because her wedding date was pushed back?  Is this a desirable Christian policy, that others should model?

 You will notice that I specifically said the eating of the cheeseburger was done outside the school, the point is what say does your employer get in what you do outside of work and to what extent. You think the school can tell a teacher she must be married before having children but does the school get to dictate that she get a church wedding with a priest of a denomination approved by the school or would a wedding preformed by a justice of the peace will do? If the latter then can you explain how is a wedding preformed by a judge (or Elvis) different, from a religious point of view, then no wedding.
As for your coach example, that is a completely different issue. I don’t know the story but assuming both parties were consenting adults the affair itself shouldn’t be an issue but trying to manipulate the hiring process is clearly a work related offense.  This example would be comparable if the teacher was fired for, as an example, providing favorite students the answers to exams in advance.

“Instead of making this an attack on the church with some false sense of outrage on how this will effect her children, why not have people stand up and be responsible for their own actions?”

Her being unmarried, pregnant, and in a long-term monogamous relationship that resembled marriage in everything but the eyes of the State *didn’t hurt anyone.*

The decision to fire her does hurt plenty of people, and the only basis on which this woman is punished is for having sex outside of some culturally nebulous notion of ‘marriage’ as defined by a particular subset of American Evangelical-Fundamentalist Protestants who think that “taking responsibility” for sexual actions (something I don’t even think is worth punishing) is slut-shaming women and depriving them of income.

Thank you for reaffirming why I (and the rest of us here) are atheists and why I think Christians are the most hateful, bigoted, and downright irrational creatures on this planet. Only a Christian could turn a pregnant schoolteacher mother into a moral enemy.

 I’m in

Is nepotism illegal?  Does it matter if you disclose it or not?  I’m guessing it’s not.  Rather he was fired for violating his employment contract.  

 “Please point to a Bible verse where it says that two people living
together who do not consider themselves married are married by Biblical
standards? Either Old or New Testament would do.”

Adam and Eve.

If you’re going by Biblical standards, polygamy is acceptable. Marrying your brother’s childless widow is mandatory, presumably even if you’re already married. Please point to a Bible verse where it says that a woman who conceives a child out of wedlock should be fired.

By the definitions of marriage when the New Testament was written, they are married. They are engaged (erusin), and have moved in together (nissuin). We’re not talking about modern common law marriage requirements, because the standards being used here are 2000 years old. By those standards, the couple should be considered married. Jesus would have considered them husband and wife.

As I noted earlier, the school is making up their own standards from a mix of Old Testament, New Testament, and (mainly) Roman Catholic tradition… and throwing in some of their own judgment that comes from none of these. And they’re arguably violating labor laws, since contracts defining “moral” behavior are frequently not legal, and my be found illegal in this case. We can certainly hope so.

 That’s interesting to me. I went to a Catholic high school, and while the administration wasn’t totally awful, I do remember that one male teacher was forced to resign because he wanted to marry a woman who had previously had a divorce, which I guess constitutes adultery in that awful cult. Still shameful.

Since it was a public, as in taxpayer funded, university then there are laws that regulate the way such institutions hire people and he may have violated the law by manipulating the system, but even if there wasn’t an actual criminal activity the point you keep ignoring is that his action were directly related to the way he preformed his job while the teacher in the story was fired over something that she did (or didn’t do) in her personal life and that had no effect on her job.

What? Forgiveness, among Christians? It’s such a rarity these days.

There’s no need for cognitive dissonance just because a Christian institution is involved. Christians are human too, as you’ve acknowledged. Chalk it up to one more sign of how Abrahamic religions are ruining the world.

 Are you a moron or do you just play one  on TV? This is not a case of their religious freedom is threatened its a case of them insisting that they have a right to impose their religious morays on other people. The didn’t do point was referring to the getting married not the having sex part.

 I’d chip in.

 STUPID

 I don’t give a rodent’s donkey about how christians will interpret it , the facts are that they demand the ability to control how their employees conduct their personal lives and all I can say for that is , fuckem.

Marriage can be secular, religious or common law, but in all cases it is marriage.  This couple was not married in any respect by their own admission.

If she is a Christian then she understands what that means and I am sure she would agree that having sex out of wedlock is not a Christian role model.  One of the responsibilities  of Christian leaders is to admonish and correct those that are in the ministry to protect the church.  That is what the school was doing here. that does not mean that they will not also forgive her.  Forgiveness does not mean that you don’t also face the consequences of your sin. For example, if I lied to someone, when I was caught, I could be forgiven but still have to face the need to make it right.  What you are saying is that the church should not have her face the consequences of her actions.

It doesn’t matter, because this isn’t about common law marriage by modern standards. It is about marriage by biblical standards. And by those, this couple is married.

I disagree.  Even in Biblical times they would not be married. They would be betrothed at best but during that time they would not live together nor would they have sex. After a year of this betrothal period they would then have a ceremony where they would be married. The ceremony would most often last a week or more.  It was no small affair. So even if you use the idea that because they were engaged they would be called man and wife in biblical times, they would have violated the biblical standard of not having sex until the marriage ceremony took place.  Doing so would be considered premarital sex and would not be allowed. in fact during this time the couple would have a chaperone to prevent them from doing so.

In most states gay marriage would not be legal and in Texas that is the case.

You clearly know nothing of marriage customs in “biblical times”, or even in the times when the New Testament was written.

You are conflating medieval Christian marriage practices, medieval Ashkenazi marriage practices, and the customs of the ancient aristocracy.

These people are “commoners” by biblical standards, and the state they are currently living in would have been considered marriage in western and near eastern cultures for most of the last 5000 years.

 According to jewish halacha law all that is  required for a marriage to be valid is for the man to say the magic words (you are now sanctified to me by this ring according to the religion of Moses and Israel), in the presence of two witnesses who are jewish males over the age of 13, that’s it. You only need an actual ordained rabbi involved when you want to have the marriage recognized by the state.

Intent to get married is not the present intent that they are married which would make them common law.  You really are not very smart.

So kicking a woman out of her job for getting pregnant before she gets married is “Christian”?  Can the school administrators not forgive her for her sin and let her keep her job and get married?

What about love?

It comes to something when a place whose very raison d’etre is supposed
to be the well-being of children can decide that they’d rather a child be
born to an unemployed unwed mother than an employed unwed mother, for no other reason than sheer spite, and all in the name of morality and positive role models!

I’m reminded of a quote, Arthur C Clarke I think, or it may have been
Asimov: never let your sense of morality stop you from doing the right
thing.

Suddenly there is none of that  love, compasion and forgiveness that your sky-daddy taught you.
Jesus is not proud of you, you hypocrite.

Mary and Joseph did not consider themselves married either, if the Bible account is correct.  Yet they traveled together and looked for rooms together in the inn, and the stable.  And had a child together. 

After that, if you’re Catholic, they lived together without ever having normal sexual relationships.  What a stressful abnormal relationship! Can’t have been good for Jesus. Perhaps that is why he turned out so strangely.

 Since we are on the topic, how would this so-Christian school react if this woman had been her baby’s father’s half sister?  Apparently the Bible god was happy to bless this kind of marriage with a child. (Remember the story?  Abraham and Sarah, his half-sister, had a child in Sarah’s old age.  At this point Abraham abandoned Sarah’s maidservant slave together with the bastard son he had sired, and left them to die in the desert.)  Is this the type of godly behavior that the Christian school wants to emulate?