Atlanta Church Embroiled in Corporal Punishment Controversy

For the Rev. Arthur Allen Jr., it comes down to Proverbs 23:13 - "Do not withhold correction from a child, For if you beat him with a rod, he will not die."

Allen and members of the House of Prayer church, located in Atlanta, take the verse literally. Perhaps too literally, according to officials at Georgia's Division of Family and Children Services. Atlanta police and state social workers are investigating whether Allen's discipline of children from his congregation is so severe that it may constitute abuse.

According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, three members of the House of Prayer pleaded not guilty April 19 to charges they participated in the beatings of two children at the northwest Atlanta church. Their arrests brought to 10 the number of House of Prayer members charged in a massive investigation of child abuse. Among the seven previously charged was the congregation's 68-year-old pastor, Allen.

The case has brought national attention to the church and to Allen's practice of directing members to whip unruly children, often during church services.

Police began their investigation after two boys - one 10, the other 7 - displayed welts and other wounds to their teachers. They told police they had been beaten under Allen's direction with belts or switches while adults held their arms and legs and suspended them in midair.
The boys were beaten at the church Feb. 23, Investigator C.R. Dean of the Atlanta police testified April 19. When the detective interviewed the children on March 7, she said, "there were physical injuries still" on the 10-year-old boy.

On April 25, Allen was released on bond from an Atlanta jail, where he was booked on charges of ordering the beatings. This past Thursday and Friday, state social workers examined 20 children from three church families, including six of Allen's own, for signs of physical abuse. It is likely that some of those children soon will be taken into protective custody, joining 41 others already removed from their homes.

Allen says the child abuse investigation and questions about his congregation's worship practices amount to religious persecution. "The only thing we go by is the Bible," he says. The case has ignited debate across the nation over when corporal punishment becomes child abuse and over the rights of parents to discipline their children.

According to Scott Summerville of the Home School Legal Defense Association in Purcellville, VA, "Child abuse, under Georgia law, is defined as physical injury or death inflicted on a child by a parent or caretaker, by other than accidental means. However, physical forms of discipline may be used as long as there is no physical injury to the child." (Ga. Code, Section 49-5-40a)
"So," says Summerville, "under Georgia law, spanking is permitted. What is not permitted is 'physical injury,' which usually means some permanent damage to tissue, such as a cigarette burn."

Summerville says there have been three state Supreme Courts that have ruled one instance of bruising during spanking is not child abuse, in and of itself. "But if you know that each time you are spanking the child, you are bruising the child, then you are intending to bruise and that is illegal. If you are not intending to bruise the child and the spanking is reasonable, but a bruise does occur, that is not abuse."

Members of the House of Prayer agree they won't stop whipping their children when it's necessary. Kim Ogletree and her husband, Charles, said they refused Wednesday to take state-sponsored parenting classes and to stop spanking their children. Parents of children seized last month have said they were asked, and refused, to make similar pledges.

Allen told reporters on Thursday he would accept no compromise that would allow congregants to regain custody of their children. According to Allen, to change their disciplinary practices "would really take something that's impossible: God would have to change the Scriptures. There's no middle ground."

According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Allen has not received much support for his views, not only on disciplining children but also on other church matters, including his approving marriages for girls as young as 14.

State officials are concerned about the number of young women from the House of Prayer who cross the state line into Alabama to marry. Five times in the past two years, records show, girls as young as 14 from the House of Prayer have been wed in Heflin, the first county across the state line from Georgia. While Georgia forbids children to marry before they turn 16, Alabama allows 14- and 15-year-olds to wed with their parents' permission.

Allen says the young marriages prevent out-of-wedlock sex and pregnancy. "If you're not ready to marry, you're not ready to have four or five bastard children, either," he says. "I believe it's best for them to have sex with their husbands, have babies by their husbands only."

He has explained to the media that he bases his philosophy on the Word of God, particularly the King James Version of the Bible. In defending his approach to discipline, he points to Proverbs 23:13: "Withhold not correction from the child: for (if) thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die."

"If you're going to give a meaningful lesson," Allen says, "give them a meaningful lesson. It's hard to give them a meaningful whipping without putting a mark on a child. But whipping is the last resort after parents have tried other measures such as taking away privileges or sending a child to his room. If they show some remorse, they can get out of it altogether."

Other clergy disagree with Allen's methods. "Lord knows, everybody interprets the Bible in different ways," the Rev. Gerald Durley, pastor of the Providence Missionary Baptist Church, told the Atlanta Journal Constitution. "I know of very few churches that use this type of behavior to discipline children."

Meanwhile, Georgia officials are scrambling to find foster care for church children. The state must find foster homes for the 41 children already seized from parents. The House of Prayer parents could get their children back by agreeing to the conditions laid out by Fulton County Juvenile Court Judge Sanford Jones.

So far, the parents have refused to renounce their pastor's teachings on discipline. They left their children in foster care rather than accept a deal that would have reunited their families. The children, ages 2 to 17, could remain in state custody a year or more.

Allen makes it clear that the parents whose children were seized would be in conflict with the church if they reunited their families by promising a judge they would not follow the church's disciplinary practices.

"They'd be compromising their faith," Allen says. "Either you love the Lord thy God with all your heart and soul or you don't. God doesn't accept serving two masters."

By Janet Chismar, Religion Today