Last week, police announced they're in the process of investigating the Word of Life Christian Church, a small, independent congregation in upstate New York, after several parishioners are alleged to have brutally beaten two younger members, one of whom—19-year-old Lucas Leonard—died of his injuries. The other victim, Lucas' 17-year-old brother Christopher, required hospitalization. Now facing manslaughter charges: the brothers' parents, who allegedly took part in the beatings.
The case brings fresh attention to the operations of small, radical churches in the United States, which are often protected by special religious exemption laws. In theSeptember/October issue of Pacific Standard, journalist Julia Scheeres reported on another independent church, the Twelve Tribes, which believes that frequent and hard corporal punishment is good for children's development. Former Twelve Tribes members who had grown up in the group talked to Scheeres about being beaten many times a day, for small infractions such as not raising their hands at the dinner table. In her piece, Scheeres argues that U.S. lawmakers' deference to religious groups' lobbying—to keep corporal punishment legal, and to allow them to pull their children out of school early—left children in the Twelve Tribes vulnerable to abuse for years. In 1984, authorities in Vermont raided a Twelve Tribes community, where they rounded up the children, to later ask a judge for permission to check for signs of excessive corporal punishment. But the judge rejected the prosecutors' request: "The Twelve Tribes hailed the decision as a victory for religious freedom," Scheeres writes. "God had delivered His people."
[For more of this story, written by Francie Diep, go to http://www.psmag.com/politics-...gious-exemption-laws]
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