LOS ANGELES: Private Christian school teachers say baptism cost them their jobs

[IndyJones]

I posted a few snips from the article, but read it all. This WAS the church we attended. It's suddenly gotten weird and the pastor has become cultish. Anyhow, I'm posting this here to get your opinions. I was told that the local paper won't touch the story, but I don't know why. This just seems so wrong that teachers can be fired like this with no recourse. They get no unemployment, and the job market for teacher right now is really bad. :(

http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81803_123285_ENG_HTM.htm

Some teachers at a private Christian school in Corona, California, say they lost their jobs because school officials didn't consider their baptisms adequate.

Crossroads Christian Schools, a K-10th grade institution located in but not affiliated with the Southern California Diocese of Los Angeles, did not renew the contracts of at least nine staff, because they were not baptized as adults by full immersion, the teachers contend.

"In January, we had a teacher's meeting and they started talking about level-4 Christian living," recalled Marylou Goodman, who taught for a year at Crossroads.

"Afterwards I met with Chuck" Booher, the senior pastor at Crossroads Christian Church, a nondenominational evangelical church with about 8,000 members. The school is considered a ministry of the church.

"He told me at that meeting that the only biblical way to be baptized is by full immersion, that it's in the Bible and that's it," said Goodman. "He said he was requiring all teachers to have been baptized by immersion."

But things changed under the leadership of Booher, who became senior pastor of Crossroads in 2007.

At a meeting last August, Fitzgerald said Booher listed about six local churches he considered acceptable for school personnel to attend -- none of them Catholic or Protestant. "I walked right up to him and said … I've been teaching here 14 years and I'm Catholic. And he said 'well, you can't be. You will not be able to teach here unless you change.'"

She was told she could keep her job if she presented a letter from her priest, denouncing her religion, she said.

Robin Rezner said she removed her four children from the school after learning by word of mouth about curriculum and staff changes.

"My fourth-grade daughter came home one day and said a girl at school told her she's going to hell because she's Catholic," she said. "This little girl's mother told me her daughter had come home three Friday nights in a row from a youth group called Impact where they've been telling the kids that Catholics are not following the right path to heaven."

[Oerdin]

1. It sucks...

But the law lets religious groups get away with this sort of stuff.

[DBoon]

2. this is the best reason for church/state separation

imagine the damage a group like that could do with the force of government behind them

[Adsos Letter]

3. AMEN!