Pregnant at 18. Hailed by Abortion Foes. Punished by Christian School

This entire discussion is really about a more basic issue:

• What Biblical authority does a Christian school have to discipline students?
• At what point does it usurp the authority and responsibility of a local church?
• If a local church has already taken actions it deems appropriate, does the school have a Biblical right to “pile on?”

I haven’t spent time thinking of these issues before, and don’t plan to devote any real time to it right now. But, it is an interesting question. I’d appreciate some perspective from any Christian educators who may be lurking at SI …

Bert, I don’t know how old your children are, but let’s say you decided to punish your teenager by taking away his driving privileges for a week. Suppose your teen challenges the punishment as excessive because the Bible doesn’t say anything about taking away driving privileges. Are you going to say, “You’re right. I have exceeded my authority. There is no Biblical instruction for taking the car from you.” Or, are you going to say, “God has given parents authority over their children, and I have decided this is the appropriate punishment for you in this situation.”

…specifically the lack of authority on the part of ministry leaders to impose punishments outside of Scripture.

Now apart from the fact that parents do indeed have a lot of authority that pastors and ministry leaders do not—to forbid marriage (Exodus 22:16-17), refuse to allow vows to be fulfilled, use the rod, etc..—even they go wrong when they use un-Biblical punishments like withholding the car keys or grounding.

Biblically speaking, I can see two basic approaches to two basic categories of children’s sin. When they neglect chores and other work obligations, they simply get to do those chores/obligations when it’s not convenient instead of when it is. When they are willfully disobedient or rebellious, a rebuke per Matthew 18 and/or spanking/the rod are prescribed by Scripture.

Why on earth would we think we could improve on God’s Word here?

We can do some of the hard work of exegesis and hermeneutics and apply the realities that the Bible tells us

I think we should all the hardwork of exegesis and application. But that’s exactly what I think you aren’t doing. As a prime example, you say, Biblical punishments are emphatically not punishment for the sake of punishment, but are rather predicated on the risks to others and you used theft and capital punishments for example. But theft isn’t punished by simply restitution and it doesn’t have to do with risk to others. It is restitution plus more as a punitive punishment for theft. And capital punishment has nothing to do with risk to others but because someone stamped out the image of God in man. Furthermore the Bible very clearly teaches that consequences and punishments are to be used as deterrents for sin. It gives some pretty “excessive” punishments such as stoning for working on the Sabbath or disrespecting parents. It’s a robust approach to punishment. Not walking at graduation seems small potatoes.

You have already admitted that there is no verse on this. So you are, in effect, adding to Scripture to get your point and then holding everyone else to your conscience on the matter in spite of your admitted lack of revelation. I find that authoritarian, on which see later post.

Put another way, if we have no Biblical mandate for or against a given consequence….maybe….just maybe….we ought to err on the side of caution?

Maybe. Maybe not. But the Bible doesn’t say that, does it? And why do you assume “caution” in this case is letting her march? What if “caution” is not letting her march? You haven’t made an argument for that yet and that is a major failure. You can’t just assume what you want to prove.

The Bible does not say, after all, that the person striving to flee fornication ought to be excluded from fellowship, and the very notion that being excluded from fellowship and in-person teaching would somehow enhance Godliness ought to strike us as at least counter-intuitive.

The school in this case did not exclude her from fellowship or in-person teaching, and so far as I know her church didn’t either. And the Bible does teach that exclusion from fellowship and in-person teaching is one way God might bring someone to godliness. So I think you are incorrect on both counts here.

You talk about whether “the girl ought to be punished beyond the consequences of her sin.” That doesn’t even make sense. The punishment is the consequence. It is impossible to punish beyond the consequences. But even if we grant the idea, why have you concluded that not walking is not a consequence of her sin? It very clear seems to be. After all, had she not sinned in this way, she would be walking (assuming there was nothing else). That seems, by definition, a consequence of her sin. You simply think it is too much. Fine. It might be. As I have said, I don’t really know. But let’s not confuse the issue by conflating terms and ideas.

You want to lean on the idea that because the Bible doesn’t say to do it, it is therefore excessive. But that’s not a good standard. The Bible commands us to practice wisdom and that is what this takes. What is the wise course of action in a situation like this? I don’t know. I don’t have a great problem with this course. I don’t have a great problem with another course. The problem, it seems to me, is that you are asserting an authoritarian dogmatism that is unwarranted.

The spirit of anti-authoritarianism is apparently alive and well among American fundamentalists.

Perhaps it is just authoritarianism in the other direction. After all, there doesn’t seem to be much leeway in the mind of some. It is their way or the highway. That is what authoritarianism is. If someone questions their authority, they respond rather harshly and without benefit of argument in some cases.

It reminds me that most ex-fundamentalists are ex at all. They just exchanged fundamentals.

[Larry]

The spirit of anti-authoritarianism is apparently alive and well among American fundamentalists.

Perhaps it is just authoritarianism in the other direction. After all, there doesn’t seem to be much leeway in the mind of some. It is their way or the highway. That is what authoritarianism is. If someone questions their authority, they respond rather harshly and without benefit of argument in some cases.

It reminds me that most ex-fundamentalists are ex at all. They just exchanged fundamentals.

Obviously, when someone acts as if the statement that’s in all of our church Constitutions, that the Bible is our sole rule for faith and practice, is actually true and should be applied, he is subverting the first Fundamental and Sola Scriptura. Obviously, the first Fundamental requires that we not pay attention to how the heroes of the faith handled situations, as it’s far better if we just apply human wisdom.

So our local pro-life shelter linked to this article today, in which Maddi recites what happened and gives us all the details of her pregnancy and subsequent punishment. Here’s a pertinent section:

I’m only 18 years old, and I’m about to have a baby boy in the fall as a result of my deliberate failure to adhere to a pledge of chastity I signed at my school….

…My dad was, at the time, the president of the board at Heritage Academy. He called an emergency board meeting to explain my situation. I was not allowed to attend school as my principal and the board decided if I would be allowed to return at all, and I would be stripped of all leadership positions.g I wasn’t allowed to attend sports games to watch my brother play basketball or baseball, and I wouldn’t be allowed on campus until after the baby was born. I would be allowed to receive my diploma, but I would have to take all my classes at home, and wouldn’t be allowed to walk at graduation.

Anyone still want to defend the leadership of HCA on this one?

I would also advise everyone to read the comments as well.

The school would have been entirely within their rights to do so.

All this whinging about “they won’t let her march” is incomprehensible. There are far greater problems in life than never having marched in a high school graduation.

Good grief.

You don’t understand. Her life is now over. It’s all so unfair.​ :(

On that point, TylerR, we agree. This entire story, starting with Maddi’s sin, is sad. Horribly sad.

If HCA had handled this with a modicum of grace towards Maddi and her family, there wouldn’t BE any angst about it.

But they had to essentially declare and treat her as an non-person and ban her from the school grounds entirely, lest someone be offended that she sinned.

And we wonder why people leave Fundamentalism in droves.

FTFY

Many of the comments on this tread accused the board of tacking on the graduation penalty as additional punishment not originally stated when her penalties were first communicated. Now we learn that this was emphatically not the case. It was clearly articulated from the beginning as part of the whole package. The board did not arbitrarily cast another stone later on as spiteful vengeance. Will any who so accused the HCA board issue an apology?

Was the punishment of the HCA board excessive? Perhaps, but that’s strictly a matter of subjective opinion. Was the board within their rights? Clearly. Is there clear Biblical instruction to determine this issue? No. There are lots of heated opinions, but nobody has been able to demonstrate from Scripture that this punishment exceeds Biblical boundaries. As has been pointed out several times, HCA would have been justified in simply expelling Maddi and leaving her to find another school to accept her credits and let her graduate. Good luck on that one. To allow her to graduate under these circumstances demonstrates mercy.

I believe the Christian school that our four daughters attended would have expelled Maddi. One of our daughters was expelled for a much, much smaller offense, and we did not complain about it. We had her write a letter of apology to the school and another to our local church, and finished her schooling at home. It’s not easy to commence home schooling in the Junior year of High School, but that’s what the situation warranted. This daughter turned out well, and we continue to support the Christian school in question.

Studies in the Biblical doctrine of authority, and the Biblical doctrine of repentance would bring a great deal of clarity to this situation.

If HCA had handled this with a modicum of grace towards Maddi and her family, there wouldn’t BE any angst about it.

But they had to essentially declare and treat her as an non-person and ban her from the school grounds entirely, lest someone be offended that she sinned.

Jay, this is simply flat out false. You have said many things that are unsupported (or that you refused to offer any support for), but this is beyond that. They did not treat her as a non-person and they did not ban her from school grounds entirely. Why make stuff up that you know is wrong? The school showed more than a modicum of grace towards her and for that, you are shaming them.

Obviously, when someone acts as if the statement that’s in all of our church Constitutions, that the Bible is our sole rule for faith and practice, is actually true and should be applied, he is subverting the first Fundamental and Sola Scriptura. Obviously, the first Fundamental requires that we not pay attention to how the heroes of the faith handled situations, as it’s far better if we just apply human wisdom.

No one here has suggested that in the least, Bert, and you know that.

Sola scriptura has never meant that only explicit statements of Scripture are the rule of faith and practice and everything else is fair game or no game. It’s a great deal more than you are pretending. So you are attacking something that very few actually believe and that is practically unworkable.

As it turns out, you don’t even believe it yourself. If we only go by what Scripture says, there is no basis for a Christian day school to exist, much less to have rules and discipline students. The Bible doesn’t tell us to suspend a student for two-days or one hundred days. It doesn’t tell us to remove a student from a student leadership post. Those are, to use your word, “unbiblical” by your own standard (a lack of biblical command to do so). But you don’t have a problem with those, right? You are fine with some extra-biblical punishments and not fine with others and you don’t have a reason for why except your human wisdom. You are fine with your wisdom; you just don’t approve of the wisdom of others. But you don’t have a verse for that either—for why your wisdom or application of the Bible trumps everyone else’s. And that is a rather large problem, it seems to me.

I think you lost this line of argument when you admitted that the Bible doesn’t address this. You are therefore left with your human wisdom about how what the Bible does say about other situations should be extended to this one. You have, in effect, added to the Scripture by prohibiting a course of action that Scripture doesn’t prohibit and, while doing so, have approved a number of disciplinary steps that Scripture does not command. Your whole argument continues to be fraught with foundational problems of understanding and methodology that more pontificating won’t solve.

Anyone still want to defend the ‘godly leadership’ of HCA on this one?

What in the world is this about? Not to defend the school, but why is “godly leadership” in quotes? And how does this help anyone understand anything?

You realize, don’t you, that until the very recent past none of these actions would have been controversial even in public schools, right?

How are you any different than the caricature of a fundamentalist who demands that your view is the only acceptable one and that everyone else is dead wrong? (That’s not rhetorical. That’s an actual question.)