Discipline or Abuse?
Church renews spanking debate
By Dahleen Glanton
Originally published in the Chicago Tribune, April 1, 2001
ATLANTA — A minister jailed for ordering children in his congregation to be whipped "because the Bible allows it" has refocused attention on corporal punishment, an issue as old and as controversial as Scripture itself.
Though spanking and harsher forms of physical discipline have been part of American culture for centuries, the debate over whether adults should have the right to strike a child has created tension between those who firmly believe in its benefits and those who consider it abuse.
Nowhere has the issue been more volatile than in the South, where corporal punishment is deeply rooted in fundamental Christian values and is practiced openly by parents anywhere a child might become unruly, from the grocery store to the playground. While the law says that no one has the right to physically harm another person, most states give parents wide latitude when it comes to discipline.
Authorities said the case involving the Rev. Arthur Allen Jr., pastor of the House of Prayer in Atlanta, is one in which authority was clearly abused.
Allen, 68, was charged with cruelty to children for ordering the whippings of two young church members because they had been unruly in school.
On Wednesday, a judge put 41 children in foster care for a year after their parents refused to stop whipping them in church-sponsored beating sessions and forcing teen-age girls to marry.
"I hate to see these children jeopardized by what I consider to be a cult," Juvenile Court Judge Sanford Jones said.
The judge was told about a 7-year-old left with welts and bruises and a 10-year-old with open wounds on his belly and side.
A former church member also testified that she was forced to marry at 15 and was beaten when she refused to have sex with her 23-year-old husband.
Authorities removed 41 children ranging in age from 5 months to 17 years from the church and their parents' custody after investigators learned of the alleged abuse. Six church members also were charged and additional charges are pending involving other children.
Allen, who served 30 days in jail in 1993 after ordering church members to beat a 16-year-old girl, acknowledged that he instructs parents to whip unruly children and that he has no plans to discontinue such corporal punishment at his 130-member church.
"The Bible says, 'Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beat him with the rod, he shall not die,'" Allen said, quoting Scripture that he said gives parents the right to use corporal punishment. "We use this as a last resort, when everything else fails. It's not something we do on a regular basis."
"We haven't done anything wrong under Georgia law, but they are trying to do everything they can since they have made such a bold and senseless move to take away our children," he said.
Irwin Hyman, a professor of school psychology at Temple University in Philadelphia, said corporal punishment is most common in the United States and Canada. The United States, he said, "has the highest rate of spanking, leaving more bruises and welts than any other country we studied."
Although the number of parents who use corporal punishment on children over age 12 has decreased dramatically, an overwhelming majority of them continue to spank toddlers, said Murray Straus, a professor of sociology and director of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire.
In Straus' most recent study, conducted in 1995, about 94 percent of parents reported using corporal punishment at least once with toddlers, a figure that was relatively unchanged since the first study two decades earlier.
The research also indicated that parents often will spank their children, even if they don't approve of such forms of discipline. But attitudes may be changing: When asked if they agree that it is sometimes necessary to give a child a good, hard spanking, 55 percent of the parents said yes, compared to 94 percent who answered yes before.
"Everybody spanks toddlers, in part, because the recidivism rate for whatever crime a toddler commits is about 80 percent, sometimes in one day," said Straus, author of the book Beating the Devil Out of Them. "The parent might get some immediate gratification with spanking, but it is no more effective than any other form of discipline, including time out or explaining to a child. The key is persistence. With toddlers, it takes many repetitions, but the child will eventually learn."
Research also points to long-term negative effects of corporal punishment, which can include depression, violence, bullying and low self-esteem.
While most states ban corporal punishment in day-care centers, family day care, group homes or institutions, and in family foster care, only 27 states have banned physical punishment in public schools. It remains legal in almost every Southern state to whip children in school, though many school districts have prohibited such practices. In Illinois, corporal punishment is forbidden by law in schools and every form of child care. But for parents, it's another matter.
"There is no statewide law that forbids parents from spanking their children, but there are civil laws that do forbid excessive corporal punishment. That means: when children are hit hard enough to cause welts, bruises or abrasions on the child," said John Goad, associate deputy director of the Cook County, Ill., Child Protective Services. "We consider kids under 6 to be very vulnerable, and any mark would be excessive punishment to an infant. But if your kid is fussing and you're in a store and you swat the kid on the bottom a couple of times, we don't consider that abuse. You would have to do something much more serious before we get involved."
In a case such as the allegations involving Allen's Atlanta church, religion or any other reason given for the abuse would not hold up in court, says Robert Tsai, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union in Georgia.
"In general, people have the First Amendment right to practice their faith as they like, but there are limits. The major one is that it doesn't harm another person. So when you are accused of harming another person by your conduct in following your faith, case law has pretty well established that there is no religious defense," Tsai said.
The religious foundation of corporal punishment is rooted in the Old Testament, largely from the Book of Proverbs, where King Solomon said, "He that spares a rod, hates his son," according to some theologians. But even within the fundamentalist Christian movement, there is division over whether the Bible encourages corporal punishment.
