Church to Evict Preschool, Cites Biblical Mandate : Education: Six-man committee says Scriptures make it clear that children should be reared by their parents. One woman says elders are ‘living in another age.’

The return to so-called traditional family values is getting more than lip service from officials at Placerita Baptist Church: They have decided to evict a preschool operating on church property, saying children should be reared by their parents.

“The responsibility for the care of children from the biblical mandate is very clear, and that is that it belongs to the family,” said Mike Long, chairman of a six-man church committee that decided against renewing the lease of the Santa Clarita Valley Learning Center.

“Ideally, I think that is true,” said Gene English, a Newhall resident who was picking up his 5-year-old grandson from the preschool while his daughter, a single mother, was at work. “On the other hand, parents have to earn a living and many have no choice.”

Area church and religious officials say they know of no other congregation that has taken similar action. Many parents at the preschool are upset, saying the decision is unrealistic and meant to encourage women to stay home.

Parents say finding child care is especially tough in Santa Clarita, where a 1990 city study found that most licensed programs have waiting lists because of high demand by working parents.

A 38-year-old woman whose two children attend the preschool 10 hours a day, five days a week, said the decision sounds as if it were made “by a board of elders living in another age.”

“I put my husband through law school,” said the woman, who asked not to be identified. “What was I supposed to do? Say, ‘No, I’m going to stay home because that’s my responsibility?’ That probably would have led to a divorce.”

She said that even if she stayed at home, she probably would place her children in a preschool for a few hours every day so they could play with other children. The implication that only bad parents leave their children with a third party for day care is wrong, she said.

“As a working mom you have so much guilt laid upon you in life as it is,” she said.

The church is not passing judgment on parents who place their children in preschools or day-care facilities, but the church should not encourage the practice, Long said.

“We’re just trying to prevent ourselves from making a message to the community at large that we’re not authorized to make,” he said.

Some religious officials said the Placerita decision is uncommon among theologically conservative churches, many of which operate day care or preschool facilities if they are large enough to afford it.

The Rev. Jess Moody, senior pastor of the Southern Baptist-aligned Shepherd of the Hills Church in Porter Ranch, said his congregation runs a preschool to help parents who need a safe place for their children and to introduce youngsters to a Christian environment.

“A good number of Foursquare Gospel churches have preschool or day-care centers because of the positive results from parents who wind up going to the church as well,” said Ron Williams, a spokesman for the Los Angeles-based denomination.

The American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A., a 1.5 million-member denomination, adopted a resolution at its 1989 national convention that encouraged church-run day-care centers because of the increase in single-parent families.

Long said the decision by Placerita church leaders was reached largely because the congregation is searching for a new pastor and “we know that there are men within the evangelical Christianity community who would not be able to accept the pulpit at this church because of the preschool.”

The church oversight committee is made up exclusively of men because “biblically, we believe in male leadership and male authority over the family,” he said. However, he added that the church is not singling out the mother as the parent who should stay home.

The Placerita church committee had originally asked preschool operators to leave at the end of the 1994-95 school year. But they now say the preschool can continue to operate until its lease expires in the summer of 1996--enough time, Long said, for it to find another facility.

Operators of the preschool declined to be interviewed. One worker--who asked not to be identified--called the church’s decision “pretty crummy.” The Santa Clarita Valley Learning Center had operated for several years elsewhere before leasing space at the church for the past three years.

Several Christian scholars said they are not aware of any specific biblical references that would directly apply to day care and single-parent families. But they said inferences can be drawn from various passages, although there is disagreement whether the Bible prohibits parents from leaving their children with caretakers while they work.

The Old Testament places the responsibility for child-rearing on parents, said Wayne Mack, a professor of biblical counseling at the Master’s College, a Christian college adjacent to Placerita Baptist Church.

Mack said children need their parents most during the first few years of life, which is probably what influenced the church’s decision.

“It’s not that they’re trying to be nasty or mean, I’m sure,” he said.

John Crossley, a professor of religion at USC, agrees that the Old Testament places an emphasis on the family. “What was expected was the husband and father worked out in the field, and the mother and her servants took care of the children,” he said.

On the other hand, portions of the Bible also allow polygamy, and in some instances the family was not always placed first, Crossley added.

“The apostles are terrible examples because they left their homes to follow Jesus around the countryside,” he said.

Times staff writer John Dart contributed to this story.