Many More Cases of Dying Children

In March 1956, a traveling faith-healer named Jack Coe visited Miami, Florida, with his tent show, and preached to 8,000 people. Shortly thereafter, he was taken to court by Ann Clark after he claimed he had healed George, her 3-year-old son, of polio and ordered her to remove his crutches and braces. The boy fell to the floor and two days later underwent emergency treatment. The braces were replaced just in time to prevent serious damage to his limbs. Clark charged Reverend Coe with practicing medicine without a license. He testified in court that he was only practicing his religion. The judge agreed, and he walked away free. In Barstow, California, in 1973, an 11-year-old diabetic boy died when his parents, Lawrence and Alice Parker, withheld his insulin and decided that prayer and fasting would cure him. Months after his death they continued to believe that he would be resurrected. They were convicted of involuntary manslaughter but placed on probation rather than being sent to prison. Four years later, a judge changed their verdicts to “not guilty.” Neither the itinerant faith-healer who had ordered the insulin withheld nor the Assemblies of God Church was charged. Still affiliated with the same church, the parents now believe that their denial of their son’s medication and their expectation of his resurrection following his death were “tragic errors.” They now blame their errors, not on their church or on themselves, but on “Satan’s deception.” After this experience, Lawrence Parker decided thatour error was in thinking that all we had to do was believe hard enough. All of our actions should be based on love. If the thing we are contemplating seems to be in conflict with the principle of love, then that’s the wrong thing to do.

Sensible as that statement is, it is in direct contradiction to what faith-healers would have us believe. With them, faith is everything, regardless of how illogical it seems. Mr. Parker was denying his faith. John Barron, county coroner in Ebensburg, Pennsylvania, was satisfied when William Barnhart, 56, and his wife, Linda, were convicted in 1983 of involuntary manslaughter and endangering a child’s welfare. Two years previously, their 2-year-old son, Justin, had died of an abdominal tumor while they withheld medical attention because their church, the Faith Tabernacle Congregation, taught that faith, rather than doctors, was their only source of healing. Said Barron:Maybe it will put parents on notice they’re responsible for their children regardless of their religious beliefs when it comes to the life and death of their children.

But Barnhart felt differently. “This hasn’t wavered my faith a bit,” he told the press. His faith was partially vindicated when, in August 1985, the prison sentence was changed to probation, with the Barnharts being required to perform public service as a condition of that probation. This is a decision that I find just. The Church of the First Born in Enid, Oklahoma, prayed for 9-year-old Jason Lockhart to be healed of a ruptured appendix in 1982. When he died from lack of medical help, his parents, Patsy and Dean Lockhart, were tried for manslaughter and acquitted. In Shelbyville, Kentucky, when their second child in 15 months died at birth, the parents were tried for reckless homicide. They were members of the Faith Assembly. In Kosciusko County, Indiana, 26 deaths, including those of several children, were ascribed to the Faith Assembly church, which also forbids medical intervention. In February 1984, preacher C. D. Long and his wife, members of the Church of God in Summerville, Georgia, were acquitted of involuntary manslaughter after they allowed their 16-year-old son to die of a ruptured appendix because their sect forbids the use of medical help. The judge decided that there was insufficient evidence to convict them. In Charlotte, Michigan, Kenneth Sealy was convicted of child neglect for allowing his 11-day-old daughter to die in accordance with his religious beliefs. Nationwide, at least 44 states allow parents to refuse medical care for their children on religious grounds. Courts often intervene, but often after it is too late.