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| Arrested for Abusing 15 year old |
On December 11, Orange County Register reported the beating of a 15 year old for the sin of carrying a cigarette lighter and was presumed to be lying about smoking. The father of the boy apparently gave permission to a leader in the church bring the boy their Irvine home in order tto beat his son repeatedly in the back of his legs with a metal pole which was reported to be 1 inch thick.
Police arrested the 39 year old man who
worked for a Lutheran Church in La Habra, California, an individual
in the church which this
source states is employed by church members to deliver aggressive
discipline to their children.
Though not confirmed, the congregation
is believed to be an ELCA Congregation (Evangelical Lutheran Church
in America). The ELCA is generally known to be a more liberal
Lutheran denomination.
The LCMS (the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod) accepts
the Danvers Statement, a doctrinal statement about gender that
emphasizes submission that is often used by individual churches to
justify the abuse of women, but the ELCA opposes this position on
gender. (I rather expected to learn that the church in question
was an LCMS congregation and is therefore given to an overemphasis on
authority and hierarchy, so I am surprised to learn that the
congregation is affiliated with the ELCA.)
