Not all Christian Legal Centre cases go to the courts or are heard in the media – in fact, most people are able to resolve their situations before it gets to that stage. Here are three stories related to education which show how the Christian Legal Centre was able to aid and intervene in various situations – in order to resolve them before they escalated.
This article is from the Ambassador Magazine, issue 6.
A son with gender struggles
A family got in touch with the Christian Legal Centre, needing urgent help. They had just found out that their son was being treated by his school as a girl. Staff were using female pronouns and providing counselling services entirely without the parent’s knowledge.
Sadly, their son had started questioning his gender identity during lockdown, and rather than working with the whole family to support him, the school had decided to go down the route of secrecy and transgender ideology.
However, through the Christian Legal Centre, the parents were able to find an alternative counsellor for their son and communicate the inappropriateness of the school’s behaviour. Through this process, the school was persuaded to revert to the use of birth name and pronouns, rather than continuing to add to the confusion the boy was experiencing.
As a result of the new counselling, the boy was able to work through the process of accepting his maleness, eventually becoming comfortable in his true identity. Through this, he was prevented from going down a painful and unnecessary path of transition which would have led to harm, obscuring the truth of how God made him.
Investigation for calling priest ‘brave’
A man working as a special educational needs assistant in a Catholic primary school opened his phone to find a notification from the internal staff group chat. Someone had shared an article criticising a priest who had spoken out against the teaching of LGBT issues in Catholic schools.
A number of messages had flooded in, adding to the criticism and condemnation. But this individual didn’t join in – instead, he commented that he thought the priest was very brave to be speaking up on the matter, and he agreed with him. This did not go down well.
As a result of this message, he was invited to an ‘informal chat’, where he was notified that his comment was in breach of school policy, and he was asked to consider whether he would be able to continue working at the school without making more breaches going forwards. This escalated to a follow-up investigation meeting.
However, before that took place, he reached out to the Christian Legal Centre, who helped him draft a letter to the governors of the school, which he sent to them ahead of the meeting.
As a result of the letter, at the meeting, the staff members acknowledged that rather than his comment being inappropriate, the whole exchange should not have taken place at all. The school decided not to pursue the matter any further, and the entire incident was wiped from his record.
Banned from communion for Pride criticism
A contractor was working in the kitchens of a private grammar school. He had recently posted on Facebook, complaining about the ubiquity of ‘Pride’ branding on the platform – a post so trivial that he had actually forgotten he had shared it. Despite this, the post had come to the school’s attention.
As a result, he was summoned to a disciplinary hearing. The school took the extraordinary step of banning him from receiving communion from the school chaplain.
Very distressed by this turn of events, he reached out to the Christian Legal Centre. They offered to meet with him, help him prepare, and draft a letter for him to read out at the hearing.
While the consequences of the hearing were not as severe as they had threatened to be, it still resulted in the complaint against him remaining on file for three months, which would force him to be incredibly careful about saying anything the school might have considered to be violating their values. The only consolation was that his permission to receive communion was reinstated.
However, the ordeal was not yet over. He began receiving threatening correspondence in the post. This further increased the distress he was experiencing, and he felt compelled to bring the matter back up with his manager. He shared how he felt he’d been unfairly treated, to the point of feeling as though he had been put in danger.
After this, his manager finally understood the severity of the client’s experience, and in liaison with the school, decided to close the case. The manager physically ripped up the file and threw it away in front of him, and the case was erased from his record.
We give thanks to God for the ways these and many other situations have been resolved. The sooner people get in touch with the Christian Legal Centre when facing issues at school or in the workplace, the better the chance is that justice can be done quickly, avoiding a lengthy legal battle.
Due to the early involvement of the Christian Legal Centre, these three situations were all resolved without legal escalation. This kind of unseen work is key to allowing Christians to live out their faith in the workplace instead of leaving their faith at the door.
If you or a friend need help from the Christian Legal Centre, please call 020 3327 1130 to speak to a member of the team
