A Muslim teenager's conversion to Christianity has prompted British officials to strip her evangelical foster mother of all responsibilities after ten years fostering kids for the government.
The woman, who has fostered eighty kids in the past decade, says she's being persecuted as a Christian. What's more - she says she tried discouraging the girl, now seventeen, from switching religions.
Not named because of legal reasons, the foster mother told the British Daily Telegraph that she offered the girl alternatives to living a Christian lifestyle, despite her own church-going practices. The caregiver attends an evangelical church and says family services was aware the girl had chosen to attend with her. They were OK with it, until the girl was baptised.
"I offered to take her to friends or family. But she said to me from the
word go: 'I am interested and I want to come [to church]'," the woman told the Telegraph. Her case against the government - an attempt to regain her "job" as a foster mother (which did provide her income), is being funded by the Christian Insitute, which has charged the government with violations of both the girl's and women's right to religious freedom.
I'd tend to agree that a child of sixteen making a religious conversion is markedly different from a child of five or six (it's one reason I've always argued for baptism later rather than at birth). Teens have some sense of the gravity of decisions, and they're also relatively open to change. Teenagers like to make big decisions and take some control of their own lives. The fact that this girl had a troubled childhood, pushing her out of her home and into foster care, would understandably make her more willing to make a change in her life - especially one that would please a caregiver.
Does that mean the caregiver MADE her do it? Maybe. Maybe not. But maybe this could have all been avoided if the government either a. placed her in a home with a Muslim foster family or b. provided some means for the child to attend Muslim services, then checked up to see why she wasn't attending. At sixteen, she could have answered for herself.
She has answered for herself since. The girl is back with her own parents now and says she supports her former caregiver. She's staying a Christian, and she doesn't regret it.
So what do you think?
Image: BeliefNet
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