Church Defends Its Rule That Preschool Staffers Be Christians

Rejecting protests from parents and staff, Pastor John Powell defended on Friday the decision by the First Presbyterian Church of Sherman Oaks to require all of its nursery school teachers to be practicing Christians.

“Our purpose at this point in history is to have a Christian nursery school,” Powell said in explaining the controversial requirement, which angered parents and teachers at the school, where five of 14 teachers and nearly half the pupils are Jewish.

“A lot of lies have been aired, and a lot of hatred,” Powell said. “We are not doing this in hate. We can affirm our beliefs without denying anybody else’s.”

Powell’s announcement Thursday prompted the administrator and 12 of the school’s 13 teachers to hand in formal letters of resignation Friday, to take effect at the end of the term in mid-June. The 13th teacher was on vacation, but relatives said she also planned to resign.

‘Panicked Parents’

“This has panicked parents,” said Marilyn Freitag, a teacher with the school for 14 years. She said parents of past, present and even future students called teachers Friday to offer support.

She said that the school has a lengthy waiting list for admission and that parents of children who were to start school in the fall have asked staff members, “Where are we going to send our children?”

Powell said that the change in the school’s philosophy should not have come as a surprise, however. He said the church’s board of elders, known as the Session, has been unhappy with the direction of the nursery school for several months.

“The issue is who will be in charge and what will be taught. What will be the world view of this nursery school?” he said. “I would say it was taking a universalist religious perspective, in which Jesus Christ was not the focus or the center.”

Nearly Half Jews

A staff member of the Jewish Federation Council’s Community Relations Committee said that many of the Jewish parents sent their children there because of its good reputation and its policy of encouraging faith in God but not formally teaching Christianity. Jewish preschools in the area are all fully enrolled, with waiting lists full of pupils hoping to enter school in the fall term, she said. The school had been run by a board of its own.

All the children, aged 2 to 4, said a daily prayer: “Dear God, You are very good to us. Give us food each day to make us big and strong, so we can work and run and play. Amen.”

Determined that the mission of the 47-year-old church is “to bear a winsome witness to Jesus Christ, (because) we believe Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God,” the Session voted recently to take direct control of the school, Powell said.

“But out of concern for families and children . . . we stipulated no changes in the philosophy, curriculum or staff would take place until the fall of 1989, so we would have a year of transition. One of the new requirements would be as a bona fide occupational qualification, since the specific Christian teaching would take place within each class, that the teachers would be professors of faith in Jesus Christ.”

With the staff’s resignation, however, the church now will have to “either continue with a new staff or probably close down . . . until we’re ready to reopen,” he said.

Although federal law bans discrimination in employment on the grounds of religion, the U.S. Supreme Court has found that a church may hire and fire workers for religious reasons because of the freedom of religion guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution.

In its most recent decision, the high court ruled that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was within its rights in firing a janitor at a church-owned gymnasium because he was not a Mormon in good standing.

“That would apply even more clearly to teachers in quasi-religious or religious schools, because it’s closer to clergy,” said Isabelle Katz Pinzler, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, which argued on the losing side in the 1987 case involving the Mormon church.

‘Certainly Unfortunate’

Betsy R. Rosenthal, western states counsel for the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation League, agreed, although, she said, “it’s certainly unfortunate for teachers who have been teaching there for 14 years, because they must have had some sort of expectation that they would continue. However, (church officials are) within their rights to do so. Religious institutions are allowed to discriminate on the basis of religion.”

But the staff was not convinced. “Our school has been for everyone,” said Wendy Cummings, who resigned as director. “How would I explain that their teacher had to leave because she was Jewish?”

“We were devastated,” Freitag said. “I take it as a personal assault. They’re saying they don’t want the Jewish influence. They don’t want the Jewish people teaching the children. . . . I think God would be ashamed of these people.”

But the Rev. Joreen Jarrell, executive presbyter for 34 Presbyterian churches in the San Fernando Valley, said she does not feel there was any anti-Jewish feeling behind the decision of the Sherman Oaks church.

“Most of the schools are under the direct supervision of the Sessions and it is the prerogative of the Session in our system to make those decisions and to give oversight to any organization within our church,” she said.

Similar Opinion

Rabbi Harvey J. Fields, senior rabbi of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, spoke with Powell on Friday on behalf of the Community Relations Committee of the Jewish Federation Council of Los Angeles, an umbrella group representing most of the Jewish community.

“I regret that this action on its part has been misconstrued by some as an action motivated by anti-Semitism,” Fields said. “After discussion with Rev. Powell, the minister of the church, it is clear to me that there is no such intention on his part nor on the part of the church leadership.”

But Fields also said that it is “unfortunate that the brand of fundamentalism now represented by the church seems to rule out the more pluralistic needs of its community and of the families that reside there.”

Jane Kelly, president of the school’s parents’ association, said the group regularly holds fund-raisers for the school and that the status of those funds is now in question.

She said the association raised about $10,000 at a May 6 fund-raiser and said many parents have told her they do not want to see those funds passed on to the school.