Why the conservative church is changing on behalf of children (and why this may lead to a legal ban)

 Many people in the anti-spanking world distrust fundamentalist Christians. I myself am one in the literal tense of the term, before the left corrupted it. I go by the whole Bible, not just the parts I like. You actually can, and if you understand the whole context, the Bible is a pro-child, anti-spanking document. Things are improving in the conservative church, and so maybe I can attend the building someday, instead of solitary membership of God's Church.

In the past, things were very hard on children growing up in conservative religious homes, meaning most conservative Christians see children as having a will that needs to be broken. I do get into the concept that children have a will, but they are capable, even at a young age, of breaking it all on their own by modeling after their non-violent, gentle parents - their will to sin depletes when their loving parents who don't punish don't sin in their vicinity. Most conservative parents are very different from how I would be, and see "breaking their will" as literally whipping them to the point where they are begging for mercy, then "instructing" them, often in an order that is age inappropriate, meaning they shouldn't know Hell exists until they are a teenager, and only by absorbed teaching or asking parents questions. Much of my religious teaching would involve questions, with them asking questions, and me maybe asking questions in return to get them to think for themselves on religious instruction, as was the method fathers used to teach their sons the Law in the Bible.

How have things changed? Not much, if anything. No conservative church, apart from LDS and the United Church of Christ, has statements against spanking or else anti-spanking leadership, and even then, anti-spanking ideas haven't flowed through the veins that make up communication on church policy. Most denominations, conservative or liberal, are silent on the spanking issue, meaning leaving it up to parents. However, most pastors are for spanking individually, so this doesn't make much of a dent in the church abuse problem. But, on the other hand, churches have gotten better at accommodating anti-spanking, gentle parenting members, meaning they aren't kicked out, but are simply given a back seat in the church, at are the lowest in terms of church hierarchy. Thus progress is slow in this regard, but sure.

America is not going to become a godless country, and even in Europe, most countries that are anti-spanking are Christian, but in the way most Christians here believe, liberal or conservative. There really is no such thing as a secular country, as the children's rights movement in those countries incorporated children's rights into the cultures there. In our culture, we go by Christian family values and the teaching of depravity, meaning our roots are Calvinistic in nature. This can be reconciles with our movement by flipping the scripts on the parents. We have religious roots here at children's rights, but the abusers stole them, and now I want to bring that back.

Change on these issues comes from within the church, and then without to the whole of society, then leading to legal change in which all abuse of children is prohibited, including physical and mental punishment.

If most conservative Christians knew where the teaching of "biblical spanking" came from, they wouldn't do it, It was an idolatrous practice, where children were whipped by pagan families in Greco-Roman culture, and adolescent girls were spanked to force chastity requirements on them, "lest they sexually threaten the men". The Mosaic Law only allowed for judicial corporal punishment, and only of adults, with the father acting out of place on behalf of the Israelite government, otherwise being a friend to his son, gently imparting the Law to his son by being strict on himself, and encouraging his son to be strict with himself accordingly. Spanking a child is idolatry because it's only real justification in our society is the "reasonable chastisement" defense, which comes from Roman law, and the Roman legal custom of patrias potestas, meaning the father owns his wife and children, whereas Jewish law simply called for the man to be the breadwinner, and encouraged him to show love to his wife, not be bitter with his wife, and punish her only with her consent. Very few women would consent to physical punishment now, though that option remains as long as a contract is signed or else state assault and battery laws are obeyed - person A striking person B with the consent of the latter is not battery if there are no injuries, with assault meaning injuries. Most men were pressured to be pacifists, meaning most domestic discipline in Christian homes was in the form of verbal rebuke, with the wife listening and respecting her husband since he otherwise was chivalrous to her and provided for her. There was no such thing as striking a child then, because the Apostle Paul cracked down on it in the Ephesian and Colossian churches, as depicted in the Pauline Epistles (Col. 3:21; Eph. 6:4). "Punitive custody" meant simply that a husband's word was binding law for a wife, but with her having the right to leave with the children at any time she perceived her husband to be entitled or abusive, meaning whatever the woman perceived. We are talking sensory gaslighting here. "Providing custody" meant a parent's word was not the law, but simply gentle teaching and instruction. Neither role involved any proprietarian ownership of one's family by a man. It was a caregiver/ward type setup. When the Roman Catholic Church was founded in the 3rd Century, meaning when Rome became a Christian nation, many pagan elements were conflated with Judaeo-Christian elements to sell God's Word to pagan cultures. The teaching of spanking was one of those teachings that was made up by the Catholic Church, based on pagan customs that were absorbed into Catholic teaching. Spanking and whipping of "errant" children is what pagans did in Europe before the coming of Christianity, and the Roman Catholic Church left the custom go in those European cultures, even as they otherwise converted to Christianity and claimed Christ as their Savior.

There is nothing Christian or conservative about spanking or punishing children, even if most Christian parents are punitive parents. It is an idolatrous, pagan practice, based on the Catholic infiltration of God's church with entitled, violent pagan ideas. The church is starting to get the message, albeit slowly, and is abandoning support for the corporal punishment of children, starting with the United Methodist Church in 2003. Most individual churches do support "biblical spanking" in the United States, but most denominations at least nod to gentle parents, so it is a start. Sweden had a state church when striking children was banned, and the church then was okay with a ban, and was long before then. That means what clergy have to say about child abuse has a lot to do with whether state houses pass anti-spanking laws. Most American parents get their parenting advice through religious sources, and once those religious sources become more updated and enlightened in their hermeneutics and biblical research, they will come to oppose spanking, perhaps as strongly as I do. Things are getting better, and we hope that the change goes further.