By Matthew Haag
Karen Pence, the second lady of the United States, returned to teaching art this week, accepting a part-time position at a private Christian school that does not allow gay students and requires employees to affirm that marriage should only be between a man and a woman.
The website of the school, Immanuel Christian School, which enrolls kindergartners through eighth graders at its campus in Springfield, Va., details its religious beliefs and expectations of both students and their parents, as well as those who wish to work there. The school’s employment application requires candidates to describe their faith in Jesus Christ, affirm that they are a born-again Christian and vow to adhere to specific standards in their personal and professional lives.
The eighth item on the application’s “Articles of Employment,” which requires applicants to sign their initials next to a list of beliefs, outlines Immanuel Christian’s definition of marriage and stances on sexual identity.
“I understand that the term ‘marriage’ has only one meaning; the uniting of one man and one woman,” it reads, adding that certain “moral misconduct” would be disqualifying, such as “heterosexual activity outside of marriage (e.g., premarital sex, cohabitation, extramarital sex), homosexual or lesbian sexual activity, polygamy, transgender identity, any other violation of the unique roles of male and female.”
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It was not clear whether Mrs. Pence, who previously taught art at Immanuel Christian when her husband, Vice President Mike Pence, was a member of the House of Representatives, had to fill out an application for the position. A spokeswoman for Mrs. Pence, whose office announced this week that she had accepted the job in December and had already started to teach at the school twice a week, did not answer a list of questions about her new job and her personal beliefs.
“Mrs. Pence has returned to the school where she previously taught for 12 years,” Kara Brooks, the communications director for Mrs. Pence, said in an email on Wednesday. “It’s absurd that her decision to teach art to children at a Christian school, and the school’s religious beliefs, are under attack.”
Mrs. Pence, 62, taught at Immanuel Christian School from 2001 to 2013. Their daughter Charlotte, 25, graduated from the school, according to its website. The school did not respond to a request for comment.
Unlike public schools, private schools can require students and employees to follow specific religious beliefs and adhere to certain behavior in their private lives. They are not restricted from teaching from religious texts in class and are not subject to employment discrimination laws.
In many ways, the religious beliefs set forth by Immanuel Christian School, which were first reported by HuffPost, resemble those taught at religious schools across the country. But Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, a professor of politics and religion at Northwestern University, said that the school’s requirements appeared more extreme than other religious schools and noted that not all Christians would agree with them.
She said that Mrs. Pence’s choice of employment was not surprising because the school’s values appeared to mirror those of the Trump administration.
“Given the exclusionary nationalism in this administration and sorts of politics taken on various things, it would not be at all surprising for the second lady to associate herself with some prominent fashion with an institution like this,” Professor Hurd said. “It raises important issues about education and diversity, and what kind of forward-facing public officials we want representing our country at home and abroad.”
Since at least 2013, when the Pences left Washington and returned to Indiana, the school’s employment application has required prospective teachers to agree to its “Articles of Employment,” according to its website. Its 2013 application clearly articulated the school’s stance on sexual identity: “Homosexual acts and lifestyles are clearly perversion and reprehensible in the sight of God. Persons so involved cannot be employees of Immanuel Christian School.” (That wording is not in the current application.)
Some parts of the applications have remained the same. For instance, a question-and-answer portion has asked over the years: “Explain your view of the creation/evolution debate.” Ms. Brooks did not respond to questions about Mrs. Pence’s views on evolution and creationism.
Immanuel Christian School does not state its views on evolution on its website, but it contains clues. A middle-school science teacher asked parents this month to pray for students who were about to study the topic. “We will also study the importance of Origins and why having an intelligent, loving Designer is crucial to our world view,” the teacher wrote.
The students, the teacher wrote, were expected to travel in March on a field trip to the Creation Museum in Kentucky, which portrays the Bible as a book of history, asserts that the universe is 6,000 years old and claims that humans coexisted with dinosaurs. Science, on the other hand, has established that the universe is billions of years old — dinosaurs became extinct about 66 million years ago — and humans did not roam the earth with T-rex.
Source” https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/16/us/politics/karen-pence-school-lgbt-ban.html