Teacher/coach fired from Christian school for out-of-wedlock pregnancy. She's due in 3 months and now has no health insurance. Fair or foul?
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In an incredibly bizarre situation that appears headed for a legal
challenge, a Dallas-area volleyball coach and science teacher was fired
by the Christian school at which she worked for becoming pregnant before
being married.
As first reported by Dallas Fort Worth network WFAA, Rockwall (Texas) Heritage Christian Academy volleyball coach and science teacher Cathy Samford was fired during the fall semester after she became pregnant
out of wedlock. Samford had led the volleyball program for three years
and had been named the school's coach of the year once during that span.
Still, that couldn't help save her job when she first admitted her
pregnancy during the fall semester, with the school terminating her
based on a violation of her contract's morals clause because it was
determined her pregnancy meant she could not serve as "a Christian role model."
"I looked it up and thought, 'They can't do this,'" the 29-year-old
Samford told WFAA. "We all have different views and interpretations.
It's not necessarily the Christian thing to do to throw somebody aside
because of those."
While Samford and her lawyer, Colin Walsh, are working toward filing a
discrimination suit against the school, their case may be complicated
by the fact that Heritage Christian Academy is a private school, and recent Supreme Court decisions have defended the right of Christian schools to exert more influence on their hirings and firings because they consider teachers to be "ministers in the classroom."
"The Supreme Court, as a matter of fact in the last month, has ruled
9-to-0 that a Christian school does have that right, because this is a
ministry, so we have the right to have standards of conduct," Heritage
Christian Academy headmaster Dr. Ron Taylor, who acknowledged that the
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had contacted the school,
told WFAA. "How's it going to look to a little fourth-grade girl that
sees she's pregnant and she's not married?"
While the two parties attempted mediation, those efforts failed
quickly because the school refused to consider a settlement for the
case.
That has left Samford uninsured and in financial distress as she
heads towards giving birth, a situation she never considered possible
when she was a proud member of Heritage Christian Academy's faculty.
Top Opinion
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MsTlynne 2012/04/12 15:21:47Fair. It's a private school, and she had a morals clause in her contract.
+7AddStop putting labels on people. You look stupid trying to do it. I am a liberal, but I believe that the private Christian school has a right to hold her to morality clause in the contract she signed. That is more than fair.
Second, A school large enough to have a vollyball coach probably has enough employees to be covered by COBRA, so she could probably have insurance.
Third, even if she was rehired, her pregnancy would probably be a pre-existing condition and therefore still not covered.
After the legalities, WHERE'S THE FATHER?
And I agree it is not a very forgiving attitude for a religious school.
IMO, she still deserves some consideration in that she didn't take the easy trip to Planned Parenthood and have the baby killed.
These two created a family , let them assume the responsibility.
If it doesn't look bad on the school, then they had even less of a reason to fire her.
If they had done the truly Christian thing -- that is, to hate the sin but love the sinner, and stand by her in her time of need -- nobody would have heard about this. It never would have made the news.
But because they fired her (leaving her financially strained and without health insurance for the last 3 months of her pregnancy), it's all over the news now.
The school has basically given its students the message that if you sin, you can expect no mercy or support or love from the very people who are supposed to give those things to you. Rather, you can expect to be abandoned, shunned, and maybe even left financially destitute and have your health put at risk.
That's not a very Christian attitude, in my humble opinion.
While I understand and appreciate your visceral response, the basis of the evaluation should be whether the consequence is a morally right state of affairs, not whether it violates your sense of justice (not whether you like or dislike the concept). Firing her because she broke the contract is the consequence for her behavior. The idea of firing her is unpleasant however it is the morally right thing to do. I'm sure the school is taking no pleasure in holding her accountable. Often doing the right thing isn't pleasurable--something she failed to take into consideration when she got herself pregnant.
I think you are focusing too much on the softer virtues like love and tenderness while you have forgotten the hard virtues of holiness, righteousness and justice. Christianity includes both--although you wouldn't know it because most people's reactions are based on American sentimentalism.
If the concept of being held responsible for your actions violates your sense of justice, then I'm sure you probably won't like the Christian teaching of hell either.
Edit: remove the word you and add the word are.
It also says a few things about loving sinners while hating their sins. What this school is now teaching its students is that if they sin, they can expect no mercy or support or charity from the very people who are closest to them in life and are in a position to provide them.
Besides, her unborn child has committed no sin here. The school isn't only punishing the teacher -- they're also punishing the child by leaving his/her mother unemployed and uninsured.
>>>As for tossing her to the curb, this says that it occurred during the fall semester. School is almost over now. Why hasn't she got another job since then? If she had then she wouldn't be scrambling for insurance now.<<<
Easier said than done in this economy. Besides, do you know of many schools looking to hire teachers in the middle of the school year, or near the end of it? I don't. Especially, again, in this economy.
>>> Or maybe she should have the baby's father pay for it?<<<
Well, we don't know the story there. Maybe the baby's father has split and can't be located. Maybe she doesn't even know who he is. Maybe your idea has already been considered, but for some reason, isn't able to be carried out.
I'm as conservative as they come, and I'm as church-going (Catho...
It also says a few things about loving sinners while hating their sins. What this school is now teaching its students is that if they sin, they can expect no mercy or support or charity from the very people who are closest to them in life and are in a position to provide them.
Besides, her unborn child has committed no sin here. The school isn't only punishing the teacher -- they're also punishing the child by leaving his/her mother unemployed and uninsured.
>>>As for tossing her to the curb, this says that it occurred during the fall semester. School is almost over now. Why hasn't she got another job since then? If she had then she wouldn't be scrambling for insurance now.<<<
Easier said than done in this economy. Besides, do you know of many schools looking to hire teachers in the middle of the school year, or near the end of it? I don't. Especially, again, in this economy.
>>> Or maybe she should have the baby's father pay for it?<<<
Well, we don't know the story there. Maybe the baby's father has split and can't be located. Maybe she doesn't even know who he is. Maybe your idea has already been considered, but for some reason, isn't able to be carried out.
I'm as conservative as they come, and I'm as church-going (Catholic) as they come. I don't condone at all a teacher at a Christian school having sex out of wedlock and getting pregnant.
But what's done is done. The school says she can't serve as a Christian model for the kids now -- but her situation is temporary. Meanwhile, the school isn't exactly serving as a Christian model here, either. Not in the departments of mercy, forgiveness, and helping a person get back on their feet (spiritually speaking) after serious sin.
Didn't Jesus say something about people not throwing stones if they're not sinless themselves? It's a good thing for the adulterous woman in John 8 that the school's administrators weren't around -- they probably would have started stoning her.
Why do people insist on thinking that they are entitled to a job even if they don't do what they are suppose to do?
It's kind of like signing a mortgage agreement. You sign it and you shouldn't act surprized when you don't make your payments that you lose your house.
Not trying to change your mind or anything. I see what you're saying. Just don't agree, that's all.
It is great to say that to be christian you should be forgiving and that is true. However to forgive everything, no matter how wrong, is actually a good example of the difference between conservatives and liberals. It's easy to be a liberal. You don't have to forgive anyone because you hold no one to any type of standards.
So in my opinion, forgive the the sin but not the agreement she signed when applying for the job.
Plus, the woman isn't the only woman being punished here -- so is the unborn child, in a way, given that his/her mother is now unemployed and uninsured. That will obviously have a negative affect on the child, although he/she did nothing to deserve it.
As a Christian based school they have the right to require certain conduct. She will lose this strictly on the basis of she entered into the contract of her own free will and chose to work for the school. Where contracts are concerned "ignorance or lack of understanding" of the contract freely signed is not a defense or grounds for severance of the contract.
But from a Christian moral/ethical standpoint, I think what the school is doing is wrong.
The school says she can't now be a Christian role model for the kids. But why can't the school be a Christian role model for the kids -- by loving the sinner while hating the sin, and not casting her out in her time of need?
Besides, we Christians (whether Catholic like me, or Protestant like the school) are supposed to be pro-life. We're supposed to encourage women, including unmarried ones, not to have their unborn children murdered in abortion mills. The school's decision here, in my view, goes against that in a way.
They could have told the kids, "What she did was sinful, but we are to only hate the sin, not the sinner. And she needs help and support right now, so let's make sure she gets it."
Nothing could be more Christian than that.
It's not like she subscribed to Playgirl or went to a strip club -- she got pregnant, and pregnant women need help. They don't need to be cast off, left without income or health insurance, all while they're choosing life for their children rather than murder in an abortion clinic.
They could have hated the sin while loving the sinner, and supporting her in her time of need. That would have been a perfect Christian message to teach the kids -- that while they don't condone the sin, the sinner is in need of love and support.