Church Allowed to Fire Someone Living in Sin

An Orange County, California church wins this time. Vik Jolly reports in the Orange County Register.

An appeals court has upheld the decision of a Tustin church to fire its preschool director for continuing to live while unmarried with her boyfriend with whom she had a child.

So... it really is about the church following a Biblical model of human sexuality - sex is for marriage – and not about hating people with homosexual feelings. Imagine that.

Sara Henry, who also taught preschoolers at the Red Hill Lutheran Church in Tustin, filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against the church following her dismissal in May 2009 for her living arrangements contrary to the religious beliefs of the church and its school.

An Orange County Superior Court judge in 2010 ruled in favor of the church finding it terminated Henry's employment because she violated a church precept. Henry appealed.

The Fourth District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana last week agreed with Judge Derek Hunt's ruling.

"According to the church, Henry's employment was terminated not because she had a baby out of wedlock, and not because she remained unmarried, but because she continued to live with her boyfriend in a sexual relationship while unmarried," the appeals court's three judges wrote in their opinion.

The church teaches that sex is for marriage. How can it be expected to keep someone in a teaching position who is choosing to live in a situation that indicates ongoing fornication? Note that she was warned and they would have accepted either her living apart from her boyfriend or marrying her boyfriend. Shacking up is correlated with many negative indicators, including for their child.

In the past, most women would have been mortified for people to know they were shacking up. They certainly wouldn't have sued their employer and called attention to it.

Will we see the kind of response we would see if she had been living in a sexual relationship with another woman?