http://www.christian.org.uk/news/20090208/christian-carer-struck-off-after-muslim-girl-converts/
What do you think.. Should the foster carer have prevented the child attending their church even though it was her choice and they tried to encourage her not to? Should this 16 year old been prevented from making her own choices and was it right to strike off the foster carer for this, even though she has cared for 80 looked after children before this?
Has anyone tried stopping a 16 year old from doing something they are determined to do?
As she was on a care oder she should probably have had parental permission (the local authority) before being baptised. Did the person carrying out the baptism know that she is on a care order and should have permission?
Which social workers broke the matching guidelines that placed a Muslim child in a Christian home?
Would a Muslim carer be struck off if a Christian child converted to Islam?
Were there any other issues with this carer's quality of care (no indication of any in the news reports about this case)?
Fostering is a horribly hard job. If this carer has acted with integrity and not encouraged the girl to convert then she should not have been struck off.
You asked good questions aitch. I wish I knew more about this case as on the face of it, it doesn't seem fair/right to me.
If there was any pressure applied by the foster carer to convert or to even participate then that would obviously be wrong, but it seems that the girl may have used her foster carers Christianity as an opportunity to learn and made a choice about her faith. I think we should be careful about throwing foster carers to the wolves (or lions even) without establishing genuine wrong doing.
"We speak, and the word goes out beyond us, to consequences and ends which we had not conceived of." - Gadamer
A deeper question here, I think.
There is an underlying assumption that this girl was Muslim in the first place simply because her parents were.
If she's too young to adopt Christianity then wasn't she also too young to adopt Islam?
Either she's old enough to make an informed choice or she isn't. Why should we have a go at a foster carer for respecting choice when we could be tackling the rather silly assumption that biological heritage somehow makes religious belief an inevitability?
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I did wonder if the Christian website I first found this on was publishing under a bias but the Telegragh gives out the details exactly the same, according to them, the council is now offering to review their decision
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/4559867/Christian-foster-mother-struck-off-after-Muslim-girl-converts.html
Watch this space then.
Stuart - your comments are just superb and to the point. Everyone should be enabled and encouraged to explore a range of alternatives before coming to a firm decision. Whilst we see huges influences on belief systems based on those of parents that too is declining in recent times - religious adherence should no more be based on that of ones parents than should political adherence. Also, as you have pointed out in other postings, people should be free to follow no religious (or political) faith or to change from one to another. If a faith / belief system means anything it should be arrived at through serious study, examination and challenge.
Aitch, I do not think that the fact that the girl was on a full care order has anything to do with it to be honest. When Churches speak of parental permission for Christening they refer either to the availabilty of godparents who vouch to bring up the child in the said faith or refer to the birth parents doing the same. You will also see that there are huge differences between the various types of Christianity and for some it is ok to baptize without the parents' knowledge.
However when a child reaches religious maturity, and again the age varies from one denomination to the other, s/he can request to be Christend her/himself without anyone's permission and the priest does not have to check if the PR holders agree. Actually at times this is the whole point, as seen in the very early Christianism. What the priest should do, however, is check that the person to be Christened understands the faith and fully embraces it. In this case, this would ensure that the girl is not doing this to please the carers and feel closer to them, but that the girl fully believes the doctrine of the new faith. In this case to ban her then from being Christened would be a breach of the Article 9 of the Human Rights Act 1989, as the lawyer rightfully pointed.
I have noticed in my work that the religious side of the cultural needs of a child is very often misinterpeted or neglected, and I even got the impression that for many social workers belonging to a faith is treated in assessments and plans like belonging to a social club, like a non-obliging membership or like box to tick. And yes, I do feel that Christianity is the most neglected of all. To be a practising believer for many religion, including Christianity, means that the doctirne and faith take precedence over the law of the land. With Christianity, the believer's soul is at stake - for many denominations to prevent a believer from being baptized has very serious consequences and could be equal to denying one's faith. I have not yet come across a training that would explain to Social Workers the differences between the systems of faith and what they mean to the people following them. I have realized also that there is very little awareness of the differences between Christian denominations and all of the implications. One simple example - I am Greeek Christian Orthodox and our Easter very rarely coincides with the C of E Easter, this year it will be a week difference, but it can be as much as a month. Would a Social Worker know that or even be interested by it? Would they know the implcations of placing for instance an Orthodox child with a Methodist family?
I agree with Stuart
RP - I agree with everything you have said about the Christian approach to baptism, the differences between denominations, etc, and especially the lack of training and tick box approach to meeting 'religious' (and cultural) needs. But I do think you are only looking at it from one side.
RP:To be a practising believer for many religions, including Christianity, means that the doctirne and faith take precedence over the law of the land. With Christianity, the believer's soul is at stake - for many denominations to prevent a believer from being baptized has very serious consequences and could be equal to denying one's faith.
I think it's a bit more subtle than 'doctrine and faith' taking precedence over the law of the land. The law of the land is to be obeyed (give unto Ceasar what is Ceasar's) but where the law demands you to do something which is against the law of God then the law of God takes precedence (Daniel refusing to worship the king and continuing to pray to God).
I'm not entirely sure whether it is prescribed in the law that a young person on a care order needs to have parental permission before being baptised but as this is a significant event in a person's life, particularly in this case where the young person is considered to be 'changing' her religion (Stuart's very accurate comment notwithstanding), and most things have to be run past the social worker and sometimes even the court itself, then it would have made sense to ask for 'parental permission' before going ahead.
(And yes, this is another example of the way young people who are on care orders are treated 'differently' from their peers.)
This child may have reached the commonly accepted age of religious maturity (most religions accepting this as around 13) but she is not yet legally an adult. Does asking this child to wait until she is legally an adult before baptism raise sufficient concern for her spiritual welfare to constitute 'doctrine' taking precedence over the law of the land in this case?
Even when 'doctrine and faith' are thought to take precedence the law can still exact it's punishment, whatever the outcome of that punishment (Daniel again). In this case it's the adults who will be subject to the punishment - the foster carer for not being seen to prevent the baptism and possibly the minister who baptised the girl without the appropriate permissions.
The foster carers' job is a minefield but it would just have made sense and been good practice to have confirmed this with the local authority (legal parent in this case) in advance of the baptism.
What if this young women had converted to another faith (not that of her foster carer) would the foster carer still have lost her job?